An ex-gang member explains why the film should not be banned
As the film ‘Blue Story’ is pulled from cinemas, one ex-gang member tells Cara Mcgoogan why it’s so vital
The streets of Nechells, inner-city Birmingham, are no stranger to knife crime; a fault-line between rival gangs in one of the most deprived areas of the country, residents often refer to the area as “a war zone”. But the “machete brawl” that broke out between scores of teenagers at the local Vue cinema in between screenings of Blue Story and Frozen 2 on Saturday afternoon attracted more attention than most.
Seven police officers were left injured, five teenagers, including a 13-year-old girl, were arrested, and
Blue Story – a film about south London gang rivalry, which its director describes as “a love story” – was swiftly pulled from the chain’s 91 cinemas across the country, blamed for inciting violence. Tanayah Sam, 39, a former gang member who grew up in Nechells, was shocked: he believes Blue Story could actually help stem it.
“Violence has been on the rise for a long time,” he says. “Blue Story and the incident are two separate matters. We need more [films like this] to show young people the consequences.”
Sam was touched by its portrayal of those growing up in gang lands: “There’s a guy who is stabbed and [ends up] in a wheelchair,” he says. “It gives young people a behind-the-scenes look at how that impacts his life, to the point where he commits suicide. How many cases do we hear like that? Blue Story deglamourises gang life, and shows those of us not in that world how people can get caught up in it.”
Sam would know. When we meet at the Nechells base of his non-profit youth organisation, Tanayah Sam Associates – which supports at-risk young people at 24 schools in London and Birmingham – he shows me his scars from being stabbed, shot at, and hurling himself out of a moving vehicle to evade attempted kidnap.
He was 14 when he fired his first gun, handed to him by his itinerant father in a strange rite of passage that marked his entrance into manhood – and criminality.
A football-loving boy, raised by a hard-working, loving and largely single mother, the return of Sam’s father opened the door to a criminal underworld that he couldn’t resist (they later served sentences in the same prison at the same time). “I went to school and was like, ‘Why am I even here? I’ve fired a gun, man, I’m looking to be a gangster,’” he recalls. “I felt invincible and disillusioned.”
At 15, Sam was excluded from school for stabbing a friend in the chest with a screwdriver (his clothing protected him from serious injury). “When you get kicked out of school it’s like you graduate into badness. I hate them kicking kids out of school; it’s a prison pipeline. Within a year, I was in jail.”
On the front line as a prominent member of the notorious Badder Bar crew, in one of the bloodiest eras of Birmingham’s gang rivalry, Sam’s crimes quickly escalated from drug dealing to handling firearms. At 19, he skipped bail while awaiting trial for armed robbery, and spent four years on the run (during which he travelled to Yemen to learn more about Islam). In total, he spent seven and a half years behind bars, and lost countless friends to murder and suicide.
Now 39, Sam is a father of six, guest lecturer in criminology at Cambridge University, devout Muslim, and leading gang worker. Having served time in 13 prisons across his multiple convictions, he has worked to help rehabilitate prisoners since his final release and founded TSA in 2015 in the area where he grew up.
“I know what it’s like to have a balaclava on my face; to hold a knife in my hand,” says Sam. “I have been convicted of firearm offences, sold drugs, and managed to break away and turn my life completely around.”
It was Sam’s conversion to Islam that introduced him to a new community, who helped him to save himself – “Nobody wants to be bad,” he says – but it was another epiphany, during his final sentence, that spurred him to help others. “During my time as a prisoner, the only place where there was solace and tranquillity, a moment when you felt free, was in the gym,” he says. “When there is violence or a riot in a jail, it is never in the gym.”
After he was released from HMP Birmingham, Sam returned, with a set of keys in hand, to set up a sports academy, working with the same people he knew from the street.
“It was empowering for them, too,” he says. “Prisoners used to say to me, ‘Don’t ever go back to your old you, because you’re offering a way out for me.’ I took my responsibility seriously.”
His success with prisoners helped Sam to realise that sport could help disaffected young people who hadn’t yet “felt the buzz” of criminality. He played cricket for the first time in 2017, and thought it was perfect for being non-contact, inclusive and enjoyable for boys and girls.
“Football is the usual cliché, so we’ve steered away from that,” he says, adding that TSA is partnered with cricket charity Chance to Shine. “Initially, the girls are like, ‘I ain’t doing no cricket – my nails’. But the year before last they won our tournament.”
The Nechells youth centre, which Sam set up two years ago, aims to bring the splintered community back together, and show young people that crime “doesn’t pay”. It is fitted with a 14m-high climbing wall, a graphics studio, green room, DJ booth, recording studio and games room. Last year, it welcomed 1,300 people through its doors.
There, and at other locations, Sam engages young people with tough love and sports ethics. He knows the work is vital, having watched violence surge as the number of gangs proliferates. Social media desensitises people, and members become younger and more diverse (girls increasingly carry knives).
And these gangland stories are becoming part of the cultural landscape, too, with series such as Netflix’s critically acclaimed Top Boy, starring rappers Asher D and Kano, becoming critically lauded.
“We’ve got a big, bloody mess today,” he says. “It’s now the culture to carry a knife [even if you’re not in a gang]. That’s a big change. The mantra of young people today is, ‘I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by six’ – rather kill a man and get caught than be buried.”
Another shocking twist is the growing use of male-on-male sexual violence. “People are emasculating their rivals by raping and sexually assaulting them,” he says.
Sam believes it is up to society to show young people alternative escape routes to crime: “Rapman [director Andrew Onwubolu] and many of the cast of Blue Story are individuals who were once caught up in this and are now doing something great,” he says. “Young people can’t be taught this stuff by people who don’t look like them or come from their environment.”
Sam has written a book of his own, After Hardship Comes Ease, which he plans to release in February. “Those of us who come from deprived communities, who always felt like we would never amount to anything, are going to be successful – and we’re going to tell our stories.”
‘Young people can’t be taught this stuff by people who don’t look like them’