BOOK LIFTS LID ON GANG
HOW IRISHMAN HELPED JEWEL THIEVES TO PLAN RAIDS DURING ‘POOL GAMES
THE city of Liverpool, much like Ireland in the late 1970s, was a grim and foreboding place for many to live.
AS the loathed figure of Margaret Thatcher rose to power with the Tories, the popular port city that was crammed with a large Irish diaspora slid into decline.
Jobs in Liverpool were few and far between, leaving many of the city’s inhabitants — again like the Irish — to seek pastures new in Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada.
For those that stayed behind, many did so out of a growing and undying love for Liverpool Football Club, who dominated European football for a decade leading up to the mid-1980s.
Trips abroad for big games on the continent to cheer on Kenny Dalglish and Co became the stuff of legend, as the Reds lifted the European Cup four times between 1977 and 1984.
One man who witnessed more than his fair share of Liverpool away days at that time is acclaimed author and pl aywr i ght, Nicky Al l t .
Shadowy
Nicky has now penned an astonishing new book on the real life story of how a shadowy IRA figure teamed up with a bunch of Scouse scallies to raid jewellery shops across the UK and Europe — while following their beloved Liverpool FC as they gathered silverware of a different kind.
His book, Gold Fever Awaydays, pulls no punches as it delves into a subculture borne out of poverty and neglect — and a yearning for something b etter out of l ife.
It was in the early summer of 1978, as Liverpool lifted their second European Cup with victory over Belgian club
Brugge at Wembley, that a gang of six scousers set off on a lucrative new career as jewellery shop robbers.
Their modus operandi was simple — they would travel to a town or city where Liverpool were playing, and while taking in some football, would also smash the windows of a local jewellery store and steal its wares.
The gang, made up of five young men and one woman, were ably assisted by a London Irishman, who claimed to have close connections to the IRA.
This Cockney IRA man became the gang’s logistics chief, going through Liverpool’s fixture list to scout out which places they should go to rob jewel lery stores.
“The gang even had to pay money to this guy so it could go towards the ‘ Irish cause’,”
Nicky tells
Star.
The
“However, after a while the gang decided they didn’t feel the need to be handing money to the IRA man anymore and struck out on their own.”
Nicky’s book reveals how the tightknit group made a fortune out of their heists — before falling out and going their separate ways. “This book isn’t about glorifying their ac tions,” N icky s ays.
“It’s just documenting what exactly was going on in a particular period when we were all getting to travel around Europe supporting Liverpool.
“There’s also a context to it in that this gang would have been more than happy to have regular jobs but there really wasn’t any in Liverpool.
“They eventually made enough to buy apartments and have nice clothes, before greed took over and they all fel l out.”
While the book is based on real life, Nicky has changed the names of those involved, as some of them paid for their crimes and others made good.
His book reveals how one of the thieves later struck up a relationship with the one female member of the gang, and they moved to the southeast coast to set up — a jewellery shop.
“The book begins with this guy telling a story about how he had a brick thrown through his jewellery shop window in a raid,” Nicky said.
Humour
“He then goes into telling the tales around his own jewellery shop heists. “So while there is criminality, there is a lot of humour to some of it. “On some occasions their jobs went disastrously wrong, but on others, particularly a big job in Switzerland, they got it right and made a lot of money.”
Forty years on, Nicky is aware that the stories he is telling are from a specific period.
“You couldn’t live the way they lived as a football fan now,” he adde d . Gold Fever Awaydays is available on Amazon and at al l good bookstores.