Abused as a child, educated in prison... the moving story of celebrated author Alex
FOR Alex Wheatle, arriving on the set of Steve McQueen’s latest Small Axe film was overwhelming. The Oscarwinning director had completely recreated his bedsit in a social services hostel in Brixton, down to the posters and flyers on the walls.
Actor Sheyi Cole was dressed as him, lying on the narrow bed.
“I had to leave the room because I didn’t want to burst into tears in front of the crew,” Alex, 57, says. “It was like an out-of-body experience, like going back in time to 1981. It reminded me of a time when I was completely lost.”
Alex’s room was recreated for a film named after him, which airs on BBC1 on Sunday. It tells the story of how he went from being a child abused in care to prison and ultimately to becoming an award- winning author with an MBE.
McQueen’s film contains sickening scenes of abuse inside the notorious Shirley Oaks children’s home in Surrey, which housed hundreds of vulnerable children and a network of paedophiles. In 2014, Alex wrote a front-page expose for the Daily Mirror where he described his abuse by a doctor there, helping lift the lid on the abuse of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others.
Thanks to the bravery of Alex and others, some perpetrators have since been brought to justice, compensation has been awarded to survivors, and historic allegations at Shirley Oaks are under investigation by a public inquiry. “I’m proud I wrote that piece,” he says. “It helped start the ball rolling.”
He still carries the pain of his childhood. “Just because I’m a successful writer, that doesn’t mean I’m more able to carry emotional traumas,” he says. “Sometimes it overwhelms me. But if I live up to my creative potential it means those people who abused me when I was very young didn’t win.”
Alex spent years as a youth worker, and still spends time working in schools.
“When I was a child I was described as ‘ an animal’,” he says. “I lived in fear every day from when I was six or seven. I feel a sense of pride that I survived it.” Comics saved him. “My coping mechanism was reading,” he says. “I would read Dandy, Beano, Whizzer and Chips. I would just gobble them up. My reading skills just accelerated from there. I needed to get out of that space somehow and I did it through my imagination.”
By the time he arrived in Brixton, Alex was numb. “I didn’t really understand the concept of giving love, or even the act of hugging. No one probably hugged me throughout my whole childhood. As an abused person, human interactions can be difficult, like your growth is stunted. I would just feel in a rage, but couldn’t explain why.”
Alex was initially employed by McQueen to work on Small Axe as a writer. But when the director was looking for a story that tackled black people’s abuse by institutions, fellow writer Alastair Siddons suggested Alex’s own story was worthy of a film.
Brixton is at its heart. “People thought Brixton was rough, but it was full of compassion,” Alex says. Raised in Surrey, at first he couldn’t understand Jamaican patois.
“It meant I really had to sit and pay attention, which was training for being a writer. That was my PhD. Being quiet in the corner, listening.” He went on to found the Crucial Rocker sound system, performing his own songs as Yardman Irie.
In January 1981, 13 young black people were killed in a house fire in New Cross, South East London, with breathtaking inaction from the authorities. For Alex, the sense that young lives like his meant nothing, led to him angrily joining the 1981 Brixton uprising.
Arrested and sent to Wormwood Scrubs, the film tells of his bond with his older cellmate, Simeon, a selfeducated Rastafarian. Alex devoured Simeon’s teachings and his prison library, returning to South London as the Brixton Bard, with a head full of stories. He stole his social services records from Lambeth and set about investigating his past. He discovered his mother had been a married woman, with children in Jamaica, when she became pregnant in London and had to give him up. His father had been left to raise him but simply couldn’t cope. He had left Alex in care before returning to Jamaica himself. “Of course, I was angry with my dad,” Alex says. “I was raging. But he thought I had been placed in a secure institution by social services.” He traced his mum to America, who was deeply pained to find out her son had endured years in abusive care. Meanwhi le, his prison mentor Simeon returned to Jamaica. “For years, I sent him every novel I wrote, and he’d send me 10-page critiques,” Alex laughs. The author of novels including Brixton Rock and East of Acre Lane, his latest, Cane Warriors, is receiving rave reviews. In 2008, Alex was awarded an MBE for services to literature. “That day I thought of the scared little kid I was,” he says. “It felt like validation. I hope my story inspires anyone in care to think that their life has the same worth as anyone else.”
Small Axe: Alex Wheatle, Sunday, 9pm, BBC1 and iPlayer
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As a child I was called an animal and lived in fear every day