Jackson, like many East Enders, has immigrant roots. Then something happened across the Western world, the causes and dimensions of which are still being disputed: a long, inexorable decline in property theft. I was doing lorry-loads, moving anything,” he says. I bought a caravan, put it on a site in Clacton. At the height of his thieving career in the 1980s, he was living an East End version of the capitalist dream. Jackson was prominent among the area’s unorthodox entrepreneurs. Theft is now in decline across the Western world At the height of his thieving career, Jackson was making thousands. From top to bottom: In the 1960s London’s East End had a reputation for crime. Going Kray Kray Opening image: Terry Jackson was once a prominent Cockney criminal. The cargo ships brought other opportunities too, including “pilfering” and the onward sale of stolen goods. The area’s population grew particularly fast in the 19th and 20th centuries, when goods from around the British Empire poured through its docks, creating a kind of working-class city within a city, founded on casual labour. Anyone could join in the scramble for custom in the East End – so long as they didn’t mind the precariousness of the work – and generations of immigrants and underdogs did so.
It sits just beyond the city’s famous Square Mile, where powerful guilds used to stop outsiders from plying their trades. Poverty has a long history in this part of London. The idea that he’s wealthy makes Jackson laugh. He still has a certain reputation among the local kids, who assume he is “some gangster” because he recently came out of prison. They’re all gone now: lost to Essex or the grave. He knew everyone’s nickname and their line of business. When I used to wander around the East End with Jackson 30 years ago he’d be stopped by people wanting to tip him off about an unguarded construction site, or to buy a carton of dubiously sourced merchandise from him or just to share a joke and a bit of gossip. Old postcards from British seaside towns adorn the walls, interspersed with framed photographs of Jackson’s great-granddaughter (“the one pure thing in my life”). His wife Sylvie died not long ago, but he has kept their east-London kitchen as immaculate as she used to as I sit down I notice the tea caddy and sugar pot sitting neatly in the spot where they’ve always been. He has a scar under his left eye and multiple indentations on his forehead, testimony to a life lived at the sharp end of unlicensed capitalism. Terry Jackson is in his 70s now and the tattoos on his forearms have faded.
0 kommentar(er)
