This book is available on www.amazon.com and is well worth a look! Like myself, Noel Smith was born in London of Irish immigrant parents. Indeed many of London's top criminals have Irish blood in their veins. From the Krays to the Richardsons and down to their henchmen. Here is an introduction, in Smith's own words, to his autobiography:
The writing of A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun was a long and sometimes painful process that started the last time I was on the street, back in 1998. I had been released from Albany Prison, on the Isle of Wight, in August 1997, after serving a decade behind bars for armed robbery, possession of firearms, and prison escape. I was 37 years old, with no useful qualifications, no work record, and no prospects for the straight world, but I did have the perfect CV for getting back into crime. With my criminal record, dating back to 1975, and with my reputation as a "staunch" violent career criminal, I was considered an asset for any team of aspiring bank robbers. So, I once again took the easy route and went back to being an outlaw.
Knowing that going back into serious crime at my age, and with my pedigree, it was odds on that if I were caught they would put me so deep into prison that they would probably have to pump air into me, was no deterrent. Crime and prison had been my life for so long that it made little difference to me whether I was in prison or not. In prison I was a "face"; I got respect from others of my ilk. I had earned it. The hard way. Over two-and-a-half decades of "doing bird", from the Short Sharp Shock of the juvenile detention system of the 1970s to the top security Dispersal jails of the 1990s, had hardened me to violence and brutality. I had been involved in riots, sit-downs, escapes and attacks on both prison staff and other inmates. I had shared the landings and walked the yards with some of the most notorious criminals in the prison system. Men who would open you up like a can of beans on no more than a whim, and then step over your body to claim your meal at the hot-plate. Prison held no fear to me. It was just like coming home.
In 1998, I knew all this, but I also began to wonder how my life had turned out this way. In the aftermath of a brutal, but average to me, bank robbery in Croydon I began to have doubts about what I was doing. I was no longer the skinny, illiterate kid who had been beaten and framed by the police at the age of 14. I was not the powerless borstal boy, raging against "the system" with physical violence as my only voice, brought to the brink of madness and suicide in the stygian gloom of solitary confinement soon after my 17th birthday. I couldn't even claim to be a "product of the system", as I had made my own choices. Nobody forced me to slash faces or rob banks, I had done it because I enjoyed it at the time. I had another life, a loving and loyal wife, and three lovely children, and my parents, sister, and brother were all normal. If I had come from a broken home it was me who broke it.
I needed to find out what had driven me to become a career criminal. Why had I persisted in such self-destructive behaviour despite the very clear warning signs along the way? And what was wrong with the Criminal Justice System when it could not deter or rehabilitate men like me, although it had us in its clutches for much of our lives? I decided that the only way I might get an answer to these and other questions was by going back to the beginning and shining a light on things that are sometimes better left undisturbed. Writing my story would also act as an explanation to my children, of who I had been, and why I had missed so much of their lives in pursuit of crime's tawdry lustre.
I had learned to read and write while in the punishment-block at borstal. And, in 1992, while serving a 15-year sentence, I had one of my poems selected by The Independent newspaper as their "Poem of the Day", as a result of winning first prize in the annual Prison Writing competition. I spent the latter years of that sentence writing, on prison matters, for various newspapers and magazines. So when I was arrested again in 1998, after a total of one year and four days out of prison, my longest stretch of freedom since 1985, I decided to finish the job I had started outside. The result is "A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun".
I don't claim to have all the answers to the very real problems that afflict the prison and Criminal Justice systems. But I do have qualified opinions about both, and how they failed in my own case, which I believe are relevant. I am now serving a total of eight life sentences for bank robbery, under the 2-Strikes Act, and I am what is known, in criminal parlance, as a "rusty gun". I have found my own rehabilitation, finally, through putting my story down on paper and examining exactly where I went wrong. The tragic death of my youngest son in 2001 also played a big part in making me realise just how many victims I have left in my wake.
"A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun" is not an attempt to justify my crimes, nor is it a plea for clemency. In my world, if you do the crime, then you must also do the time, and I don't deny that I did the crimes. I cannot change my past. But what I can do is show the degradation, violence and brutality that comes as a direct result of chosing a life of crime. And when the screaming stops, the gunsmoke clears, and the last gate is slammed shut, you'll be glad you can just walk away.
Razor Smith
HMP Grendon
March 2004 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun is the autobiography of convicted felon Noel Razor' Smith. An extraordinarily vivid account of how a tearaway kid from South London became a career criminal, it is both a searing indictment of a system that determinedly brutalized young offenders and a frank, unsentimental acknowledgement of the thrills of the criminal life. Shocking, fascinating and frightening by turns, it also reveals Razor Smith to be a remarkably talented writer.
