ABSTRACT
The publication of this book marks ten years since I self-published my autobiography, Never Ending Circles, which I decided to write following the 2011 England riots. It was a reaction to the news reports that followed where there was talk about “broken Britain” and the need for local role models and going back to the old-fashioned values. They talked about knife crime as if it was a new phenomenon and once again young black men were being blamed for the gang culture that was staining our land. The idea of writing Never Ending Circles was really to show that nothing mentioned in those reports was anything new and that 30 years earlier I experienced or witnessed most of them in one way or another. You will see how the north-east was torn apart by the “Thatcher” government in the 1980s which left a wake of misery and despair and how by moving around to find work I witnessed the same racial tension in places like Birmingham and London. As with this book, the theme of Never Ending Circles was my life-course narrative drawing on my own dysfunctional life which included imprisonment, probation and mental health issues.
