Liverpool Narcos (2021) s01e01 Episode Script
Heroin
(upbeat music)
- [Man] Liverpool, a
world city at the heart of
the new county of Merseyside.
It's a city full of contrasts.
A kaleidoscope of contradiction.
Contradiction.
Contradiction.
Contradiction.
- We don't class ourselves
as being English.
We're the People's Republic of Liverpool.
- I guess the thing about
the Republic of Liverpool is,
you know, it's a community
of immigrants, right.
So there's always been a bit
of a siege mentality here.
- [Emile] We have a degree of
accepting lawlessness here.
- It was like cowboys and Indians.
- They don't follow the rules
because they're outlaws.
- We have an ingenuity that
a lot of people don't have.
- So Liverpool was the epicentre of drugs.
- There's a story to tell about
this city, which is unique.
And I think drugs,
crime, is a part of that.
- Welcome to Liverpool.
Some people say a man
is made out of mud ♪
A poor man's made out
of muscle and blood ♪
Muscle and blood and skin and bones ♪
A mind that's so weak
and a back that's strong ♪
You load 16 tonnes, what do you get ♪
Another day older and deeper in debt ♪
St. Peter don't you call
me 'cause I can't go ♪
I owe my soul to the company store ♪
(rhythmic music)
- We are live.
- Under no circumstances are the drugs
ever to be out of sight.
We can't afford another fuck up.
- [Woman] The informant has arrived.
He's being escorted up to the room.
Over.
(tense music)
- No money no drugs, do you understand?
- This is not my first time.
- Well it's my first time with you Haji.
If they don't pay we can't arrest them.
- Okay.
(tense music)
- We have our target.
Good luck everyone.
- [Director] What is it about Liverpool
that made it such a big
player in the drug trade?
- The docks.
The docks have always
been a part of our lives.
I used to come down here as
a child and, to me, a child,
it's like wonderland.
There was thousands of men
loading lorries by hand,
sacks of this, sacks of that.
It was glorious.
You'd see the wealth.
Everywhere you looked,
something was going on.
But the contrast between
the docks and our areas,
which were totally depressed
and slums, it was hard to take.
- Imagine goods coming
in from across the world,
and you are living in
poverty, essentially.
You've got a family to support.
You're gonna do anything to
support them so you survive,
and that they survive.
So if you had to take
something, you took something.
(tense music)
- Everything got pilfered.
Everything.
People just accepted it for what it was.
As far as they were concerned,
it were perks of the job.
Five-finger discount.
- And it wasn't looked down upon.
You weren't a thief, and
everyone knew someone
who could get things from somewhere.
You could get something from
Jimmy here or from John there
or Peter can get you that.
And then you put drugs
into the mix of that.
It allowed the drug trade
to grow very, very quickly.
- Customs investigators
and police have no doubt
that Liverpool has been one of the major,
if not the major point of entry
for drugs being smuggled
into this country.
(gentle piano music)
- We're definitely the first.
Definitely.
Went to Nigeria and during that
time I met up with somebody
who had some weed he
wanted to put on a ship.
Wanted to know if I knew
anybody in Liverpool
who would buy it.
I did.
So I contacted people in
England who met the ship,
bought it, and I thought to myself,
well why make money for other people
when I could make it for myself.
- [Director] Do you
remember how much you made
in that first trade?
- [Michael] We were selling
at 300 pound a pound, so.
- [Director] And how many
pounds did you smuggle?
- 300.
- 300?
- Yeah.
- [Director] At 300 pounds a pound.
- Yeah.
So I then started to send
weed myself to Liverpool.
We started out small and we went big.
(tense music)
Well, we progressed up to a tonne.
The easy part was getting it on.
Compress it through a metal container.
Weld it shut.
Use the crane, put it on first,
before the general cargo went on,
and it'd be right at the bottom.
And thousands of tonnes on top of it.
The hard part was getting it off.
Customs were very, very
alert in Liverpool.
Our firm had people who had
relatives in senior positions,
and that was it.
It was just a matter of
choosing the right time
for them to take it off.
Then pass it onto our sales division
and our sales division did their work.
Then when I came home
just counted the money.
- [Director] You liked that bit?
- Yep.
I enjoyed the fact that we
were sort of pioneers
and a lot of people emulated us.
And say, the police knew but
couldn't do anything about it.
- [Director] You were aware
at that point who he was?
- Yes I was well aware,
well aware of who he was.
He was a big player, he
was a big influencer.
He developed his routes
into Africa and, yeah,
he was doing it ahead of
a lot of other people.
But the customs and the police
didn't work well together
in those days, and they
were at odds with each other
and didn't share their intelligences.
So who's gonna win from that?
There's only one person gonna
win, and that's the dealer.
That's Michael.
- I was 15.
There was a dance in
the local Labour Club.
We put our best clothes on
and went there and we danced
and after a couple of times
we were confronted by a group who said
they didn't want niggers come up there,
dancing with their women.
There was a fight and a guy was stabbed,
and five of us were arrested.
I had my 16th birthday in Walton Prison.
The judge gave us what
they call a dock brief,
which is a barrister who
spoke for everyone on the day
for a fixed fee.
He said you're all being very silly.
It's quite obvious that all five of you
couldn't have stabbed him.
Go upstairs, plead guilty.
The most you're gonna get is probation.
So we all changed our plea to guilty
and two years later I came out of borstal.
It's hard, when I think about
it, it does make me angry.
Our futures were taken from
us at such an early age.
Criminalised at such an early age.
Which sort of meant you
had very little future.
Pleading guilty when I was 15
to something I hadn't done.
That's my greatest regret.
My greatest regret.
'Cause that started it all.
(rhythmic music)
- [Woman] Charlie one to control.
Car park is clear.
No movement, over.
- [Man] Charlie three to control,
Charlie three to control.
Lobby is quiet, nothing suspicious over.
(knocking on door)
- Who is this?
How'd he get in unnoticed?
- [Woman] He must've snuck
in by the fire escape sir.
- Great.
We have someone at the
door, everyone ready?
On my mark, we go for the arrest.
- I represent men who
wish to buy your product.
You have 12 kilos, yes?
- Uh-huh, yes.
- We would very much
like to buy all of it.
But for now, a kilo.
To verify the quality so
the price can be agreed.
- All units standby, deal is imminent.
- Okay, but price is 11,000 for one kilo.
It's a very good price.
- You do not understand.
We wish to take a kilo now
and we'll pay later for everything.
- What?
- We have a little cash flow problem.
If you give us a kilo, we'll
sell it and use the money
to buy the rest.
(speaking in foreign language)
- No money, no drugs.
Without the cash this
whole thing falls apart.
(tense music)
- Look.
I have many powerful people in Pakistan
that will do me and my family harm.
So this I cannot do.
(tense music)
- No deal, repeat no deal.
Subject has left the room.
Approximately 30 years old, five foot 10,
dressed in a brown suit and blue shirt.
Can we get a tail on him?
- [Man] Roger that, we have eyes on.
He's leaving by the fire escape.
- They don't have the money?
- [Reporter] Produced
from the cannabis plant,
possibly the most widely
used drug in the world.
Marijuana.
- I grew up in a city
where we got cannabis
from all over the world.
You got Durban poison from South Africa.
- Yeah.
- You got
Congolese laughing grass.
Three types of Moroccan,
four types of Lebanese.
Egyptian, Afghani black.
- Pakistani black.
- Pakistani black.
Do you know, Humboldt
County from California.
The best pot in the world
coming through the docks at Liverpool.
Unbelievable.
And it was all about "The Beatles"
and "Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds" and smoking pot
and LSD and free love, and I
thought that's the life for me.
So that was it, went off
like a 10 bob rocket.
Did all the things teenagers do.
Grew the hair, wore the flares,
and took all the drugs that came my way.
And that was all lovely.
But then in the 80s,
that's when a number of things conspired
to bring brown smokable
heroin to Liverpool.
(tense music)
- [Reporter] The statistics
alone in Liverpool 8
tell a very acute story.
47% of black workers unemployed,
43% of white workers.
- No opportunities at all.
You know, no opportunities whatsoever.
- [Man] The area's all rundown.
- Neighbourhoods like Bootle,
Kirby, Toxteth, Croxteth,
all these different
places, were falling apart.
There's no jobs, there's no opportunities.
Young people weren't of
any value to society,
or so they felt.
- [Lyn] And then of course we
had the Toxteth riots in '81.
- A visitor from the USA
came in the 80s and said
this is like Beirut.
This is like a bombed-out
shell, a husk of a city.
And a number of other things
were going on that didn't help.
Like Russia invading Afghanistan in 1979.
The freedom fighters
there, the Mujahideen,
had to raise money to buy
guns to fight the Russians.
The only commodity they had,
that they could sell on a
world market, was opium.
Now they'd been using,
growing opium and using
opium for centuries,
but suddenly it was a cash crop.
So they upped production of opium
in clandestine laboratories.
Turned that into morphine-based
brown smokable heroin.
- Liverpool's built on immigration.
So that, in itself,
gives you familial ties
across the world.
So those links, when
combined with the drug trade,
whether it be cannabis or heroin,
you had connections in these
other places in the world
where you could acquire those goods.
- [Director] Seven
separate trips to Pakistan.
- Yeah.
And I didn't go there
'cause I like a samosa.
(rhythmic music)
- [Director] What took you out there?
- The best heroin in the world.
My daughter says to me "Daddy,
why's your hands so big?
You've got hands like the Honey Monster."
- [Director] What'd you tell her?
- Well I don't tell her it's 'cause
I used to inject snowballs into them,
that's for fucking sure.
Around '81, '82, I was involved with
buying and selling
cannabis and amphetamine,
and the game changer
was a cheap, high grade
smoking heroin became available.
It was from Pakistan.
And I've got Pakistani family.
So I immediately kind of
seized the opportunity
to capitalise on that, yeah.
Back then I sat in Islamabad, in Pakistan,
talking to the commanders
of the police over there
who'd seized heroin, and
I was buying it from them
and they were giving me samples
to send over to the U.K.
If you went to source in Peshawar,
you'd be buying a kilo over
there for 2500 pound, 3K, yeah,
and that'd be 80, 90%.
There was a German baby
laxative called Mannitol
that was used as a cutting agent,
'cause that didn't affect the smokability
of the brown powder, yeah.
So you could turn one K into two.
So for your initial
investment, the two and a half,
you know, you could get maybe 80K back.
Liverpool, at that time, it
became the perfect storm.
You know, the shipyards closing down.
You've got all the unemployment.
And then if someone gives you
a five-pound bag of heroin,
it takes all that away and
you forget all your problems.
You know, it's little wonder
that so many people here
in Liverpool picked up.
(bell chiming)
(tense music)
- I can only describe
heroin as like a silent bomb
that landed in Liverpool.
You know, no one heard it coming.
(punches thumping)
It took away sons,
daughters, mothers, fathers.
It was just total destruction.
You know, it spread like cancer.
Straightening out your foil.
Putting your little bit
of powder at the corner
where you wanted it.
Getting a little pleat in your foil.
Tilting it a little bit.
Your flame underneath the powder.
And then inhaling.
(breathing deeply)
(gentle music)
Everything seems to slow down a bit.
You feel comfortably numb.
No more worries, no stress, nothing.
Just comfy.
- What you gotta understand is,
you know, I don't use this lightly.
It was an epidemic that
happened in this city.
You know, this city was
flooded with narcotics.
- [Reporter] Drug abuse is so
rife on some housing estates,
the area's known locally as smack city.
A growing number of addicts are under 15,
many hooked on heroin they bought
for as little as five pounds a packet.
- It seemed like a whole
generation of young people
had just jumped into
heroin use feet first.
No matter where you went,
there was groups of kids
hanging on street
corners waiting to score.
A lot of the kids would say
oh it's terrible round here,
in the past two years
heroin's just taken over.
And I'd say well "How many
people around here take heroin?"
"Everyone."
"What, everyone's on heroin?"
And I used to think how
the hell did that happen?
(downbeat music)
- It was a job.
You'd go out and then you'd be grafting.
You'd be like either shoplifting,
burgling, robbing cars,
whatever you could, to fund your habit.
Any ways and means to get what you needed,
do you know what I mean?
I'd be knocking at my mum's for a fiver.
She'd go "I haven't got it."
"Give us a fiver."
"I haven't got it, go away."
"Give us a ciggie."
"I haven't got any."
"Can I have a biscuit then?"
As long as you had
something, know what I mean?
I had to take something.
I had to have something.
There was just no escape.
- I got involved on every
level of the heroin business,
which led me in time to
becoming very addicted to that.
It stripped me.
I lost my dignity, I lost my self-respect,
I lost my self-worth.
But I had to do it because I was ill.
I had to use to live.
And I lived to use.
(tense music)
- How is it we get a dealer
who apparently can't even afford
to buy one kilo of heroin?
At least someone's enjoying themselves.
(voices shouting)
(tense music)
What's going on down there?
Are we compromised?
- [Man] Hello darling.
Do you have a room I can rent?
- [Woman] Just put that down, now.
- [Woman] Sir it would appear
the entire Australian Rugby League team
have arrived with a coach load of fans.
Looks like they're quite drunk sir.
(voices shouting)
(phone ringing)
- Phone, everyone focus.
- Hello?
- [Man] Take down this number.
Been trying to get hold of you.
0151 496 7088.
Call them.
- Who was that?
Was it Michael?
- Whoever it was sir,
he doesn't sound happy.
- The police were pretty
irrelevant in the early days,
'cause they didn't know what to do.
They didn't know what they were chasing.
They didn't know the shape
of it, the colour of it,
the size of it.
- The problem was I don't
think the senior officers
saw that heroin was their major problem.
They were fixed on cannabis
and large importations
coming into the area.
We'd be stopping individuals
and you find a few wraps on
them, so it'd be personal use
and they were getting taken in.
But the likes of Michael and the others
who were involved in the importation,
they didn't pay attention to them.
They didn't keep their eye on the ball.
Also, at the same time, the
riots had changed everything.
The guys organising things on the streets,
they knew that they had
struck a lot of fear
into the police.
And so after the riots,
we were told not to go into the area.
There was a map of Toxteth
and there was a triangle.
And it was in red lines and you knew
you could patrol up to that point,
but you couldn't go across the road.
So there was a certain
amount of frustration
amongst myself and colleagues.
- One two.
Jab.
Jab.
One two.
One two.
- They used to say, jokingly,
when you got posted to Toxteth
that you had to get a
bullseye put on your back.
- And four.
One two.
One two.
- I think you'll find
an argument for saying
that some of the organised crime
that happened in Liverpool,
built up in Toxteth
in kind of the quiet
spell after the riots.
- Yeah.
- It wasn't policed rigorously.
- Certainly people in Granby Street
were able to operate as they wanted.
We were behind the curve.
(tense music)
I think the people that were
making money from heroin
had stepped up their game.
- And suddenly these guys
were doing seriously well.
And flaunting it.
And that kind of rankled with us.
So we kind of took that personal.
- Then the police had to react
as opposed to being proactive.
We had to react to it.
And I do think we were behind the curve.
(downbeat music)
- And I remember the police
picking me up one day,
throwing me in the back of the car.
Took me to Newsham Park.
One of them got out the
car, opened the boot,
got a towel out of the boot.
Inside the towel was a gun.
He come back in the car, sat in the car
and put the gun in me mouth.
I don't say this lightly,
he put the gun in me mouth
and was like, bang.
Who's selling all the drugs?
Tell us.
I was one of those mixed-up
kids, you know, we had nothing.
I was just a pawn on a chessboard.
You know, for someone to take money from.
It's them who are up there
are using them that are down there,
so they don't get their hands dirty.
It's always been the same.
- [Director] In the 80s Michael
you were accused of being
a prolific heroin smuggler.
- Well, it's nonsense because
heroin didn't exist for us
in those days.
I was involved in
cannabis and that was it.
(upbeat music)
- [Director] This is the early 80s?
- [Michael] This was the early 80s, yes.
- [Director] You were driving
around in a white Rolls Royce.
- [Michael] Yes.
- [Director] You understand
why people in the community
think that you were smuggling heroin?
- I mean, I can understand
a little bit, but as I say,
those who know me, they know
where I earned my money.
- If he wasn't dealing
heroin you wanna know
how has that guy got a white Rolls Royce.
- Nobody drove Rolls
Royce's round Toxteth.
That's kind of a sign that
he was saying here I am,
look at me, I'm loaded, what
are you gonna do about it?
- I know he had his own game plan.
His game plan was to
control the heroin trade.
He knew how to control people.
The young kids on the streets,
he had them looking up at him.
It was like hail, our hero's just arrived.
This is what I wanna be.
So if some of these kids
became loyal to him,
he would eventually
move them up the ranks.
So he kept a tight cell of
only those that he trusted.
So he wasn't a fool.
He was a very astute man.
I think anyone who ever
treated him as a fool
was the fool themselves.
- Checkmate.
- When you've got someone
who's making themselves
so high profile and they're
rubbing it in your face,
that's when you have to do something.
- It may have been that at that stage
they were just trying
to get him for anything.
Whether the connection
with him was strong or not,
it was worth chancing
their arm and going for it
and seeing if they could
get a conviction against
what they regarded as
this notorious figure.
So in 1983, the police tried
to prosecute Michael Showers
for the second time in short succession.
On this occasion it was for
possession of a firearm,
cannabis and heroin.
The case collapsed at
court and Michael Showers,
to this day, maintains that
the case was never legitimate against him.
In effect he was fitted up.
- [Director] So why do you think
the authorities would frame you?
- I was very, very high profile,
because of the car and all the rest.
And I was getting too big politically.
And the thing is, you had to understand
every fibre of this city was racist.
- [Director] That's you here?
- Yeah, I remember that march well.
Fighting for equal rights.
That's what I was hoping for,
a generation of black kids
that didn't have criminal records,
that wouldn't be criminalised.
- [Director] And how did
the establishment see you?
- They saw me as a threat of some kind.
They despised me and
anything they could do
to get rid of me, they did.
- [Reporter] Unofficially,
police describe Michael Showers
as the godfather of Liverpool 8.
He has few words of
comfort for the police.
- We live with these people
and they're supposed to be
there to protect and uphold
the rule of law and order.
And we take crap day after
day from these people.
- The Liverpool black
community was a very old one
and a very well-established one.
I don't think they got much respect
or much help from anybody,
including the police.
But I think Michael
maybe saw an opportunity
to take advantage of that.
- Michael set himself up as
a community representative,
and that was a shrewd move
because that meant he
had the community onside.
I mean later he had a
paid job with the council,
as an immigration adviser.
- He wasn't hiding, he was
very very high profile.
And if, in the course of a patrol
in or around the edges of
Toxteth, you pull somebody over
and start having a chat to
them or started searching them
or looking through the car or whatever,
you could be pretty sure
that Michael would turn up.
So he was very, very influential.
- [Director] I presume you would have been
the only person in this movement
living the lifestyle that you were?
- I suppose so, yes.
Yes.
- [Director] So you can see why
there was a lot of attention on you?
- Yeah.
But as I say, I wasn't doing
anything so I wasn't bothered.
- I was like on patrol,
working off very limited intelligence.
I didn't have the means to deal with him.
The chances of searching
Michael in his Rolls Royce
and finding a shed-load
of heroin, were nil.
Michael didn't have to go near it.
The answer to dealing
with the likes of Michael,
who lives in a big, fine
house, immaculately dressed,
immaculately spoken, to break
that down and get behind it,
you needed long, sustained,
informed investigations.
- Criminal fraternity tended
to call us the Church,
which is short for Church of England,
which is the Customs and Excise.
People were more worried about
the Church being after them,
than they were about the business.
If it's the business,
okay, we've got a chance.
If it's the Church, we're stuffed.
(dramatic music)
- I'm not sure the
deal's gonna happen sir.
Lack of funds apparently.
Yes, sir.
I understand.
Church pulled the plug
on the armed officers
'cause the overtime and the
room service blew our budget.
Not that Michael was gonna show up anyway.
- [Woman] Someone's
pulling into the car park.
It's Zubair, can confirm it's Zubair.
He's carrying a bag, over.
- Is he alone?
- [Woman] Yes sir.
No one else in the car.
He's approaching the lobby.
- Do we have eyes on Michael's house?
- [Man] Yes sir, we're outside his house.
The car is parked outside, no movement.
- Stay focused everyone.
- [Woman] Suspect is through
lobby, approaching corridor.
- We have no backup, so be careful.
On my word, we go in hard and quick.
(knocking at door)
- It's Zubair.
(tense music)
Your money.
11,000, and I'll take one.
- Go, go, go!
All units, go for the knock!
(dramatic music)
- I'm arresting you on
suspicion of the involvement
of the illegal importation
of a controlled drug.
You do not have to say anything.
Anything you do say may be taken down
and used in evidence against you.
(voices shouting)
- [Man] Michael Showers, I'm arresting you
on suspicion of the involvement
in the illegal importation
of a controlled drug.
You do not have to say
anything, but what you say
may be given in evidence against you.
- Next thing I know, at half
past two in the morning,
customs raid my home.
I'm in bed with my wife
who was then pregnant.
And arrested.
(tense music)
What happened was that I was
working at the immigration unit
and a client, Mohammed Zubair,
wanted entry clearance for his wife.
What I didn't know is that
he was doing a heroin deal
and that customs were following him,
and they followed him
to the immigration unit.
And once they saw that I was
part of the immigration unit,
I became the target.
- [Director] Can you tell me about
how Operation Rainman came about?
- So this guy Haji
goes to the British High
Commission in Pakistan
and he says he's been
approached by a supplier
to take drugs to the U.K.
for a man called Michael.
So Haji is offered payment
to take part in the smuggle,
as the courier, so that
they could trap the gang
with the drugs in the U.K,
so they would have
the strongest possible
evidence against them.
And so the operation commences.
So this supplier in Pakistan,
the commander in the Mujahideen,
gives Haji the heroin,
and he takes it to the
British High Commission
and gives it to a customs officer.
British customs subsequently
bring the heroin into the U.K.,
while the courier, Haji,
travels on another flight.
The heroin and the courier
were reunited once in the U.K.,
and he holes up in a hotel
near Manchester Airport.
- The truth is, I had no
idea this man existed.
Had no idea whatsoever.
I had no idea about the
hotel or anything else.
- Showers denied that he'd been involved
in a drug importation.
As far as he was concerned,
he was helping one of the defendants
with an immigration appeal.
But itemised phone records
produced at the trial
told a different story.
There were phone calls
to and from Peshawar.
One of the phone numbers in Peshawar
was printed on a bus stop,
right next door to the
location of the drug handover.
Evidence was also produced
that Showers telephoned Haji at the hotel.
- Hello?
- [Man] Take down this number.
Been trying to get hold of you.
- When this was put to
Showers in cross-examination
he admitted it.
But said he was simply
returning a call himself
from the hotel.
It was just an error.
That was his explanation.
When Showers was finally arrested,
they found a complete
set of telephone numbers
and phone messages tied to
the conspiracy at his home.
- [Director] You were
convicted of smuggling heroin?
- [Michael] Yeah, convicted
on fabricated evidence
by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise.
- [Director] You're innocent of that?
- Yes.
Yeah.
(gentle piano music)
When the jury came in
none of them looked at me.
And I put a brave face on it.
I shook my head and said no.
Nope.
- He was convicted over a conspiracy
involving 12 kilos of heroin.
And he was sentenced to
20 years imprisonment,
which, for that amount of
drugs, was extraordinary.
Maybe that tells you
something about a system
that wanted to make an example of him.
It could just be that
he fought a bad case.
But it was an extraordinary sentence.
- I know that it withstood the scrutiny
of the Court of Appeal, and it was upheld.
So his denials really have
been tested and found wanting.
- [Director] There is a sadness sometimes
I see in your eyes, is that fair to say?
- Oh yeah, I mean, I'm sad
about what was stolen from me,
time-wise.
That broke up my families.
That's it.
- You know, if he's done 20 year,
he's had about 10% of
the jail he could've got.
It's the same for me.
Yeah.
I got away with a lot.
I'm not gonna say I got away with murder
but I got away with a lot.
Yeah.
If I'd been caught for what I've done
we wouldn't be sat here now.
(downbeat music)
- In the '80s, when we
were like in our teens.
It went from your beer goggles it on
you doing a slowey and
thinking, oh yeah, she'll do.
And then it all just went
to bink, bink, what the?
(rhythmic music)
- My first ecstasy experience
is just unbelievable.
I couldn't believe
anything could be so good.
(rhythmic dance music)
- You walked up that corridor.
What the fuck's that noise?
- You needed the money
to get into the clubs
and the bloody drugs.
- If we had no money we'd do a ram raid,
'cause you couldn't miss it.
- You go to a club with 2000 people in it,
for me it was like
look at the money that
could be in this now.
Some people say a man
is made out of mud ♪
A poor man's made out
of muscle and blood ♪
Muscle and blood and skin and bones ♪
A mind that's weak and
a back that's strong ♪
You load 16 tonne, what do you get ♪
Another day older and deeper in debt ♪
St. Peter don't you call
me 'cause I can't go ♪
I owe my soul to the company store ♪
- [Man] Liverpool, a
world city at the heart of
the new county of Merseyside.
It's a city full of contrasts.
A kaleidoscope of contradiction.
Contradiction.
Contradiction.
Contradiction.
- We don't class ourselves
as being English.
We're the People's Republic of Liverpool.
- I guess the thing about
the Republic of Liverpool is,
you know, it's a community
of immigrants, right.
So there's always been a bit
of a siege mentality here.
- [Emile] We have a degree of
accepting lawlessness here.
- It was like cowboys and Indians.
- They don't follow the rules
because they're outlaws.
- We have an ingenuity that
a lot of people don't have.
- So Liverpool was the epicentre of drugs.
- There's a story to tell about
this city, which is unique.
And I think drugs,
crime, is a part of that.
- Welcome to Liverpool.
Some people say a man
is made out of mud ♪
A poor man's made out
of muscle and blood ♪
Muscle and blood and skin and bones ♪
A mind that's so weak
and a back that's strong ♪
You load 16 tonnes, what do you get ♪
Another day older and deeper in debt ♪
St. Peter don't you call
me 'cause I can't go ♪
I owe my soul to the company store ♪
(rhythmic music)
- We are live.
- Under no circumstances are the drugs
ever to be out of sight.
We can't afford another fuck up.
- [Woman] The informant has arrived.
He's being escorted up to the room.
Over.
(tense music)
- No money no drugs, do you understand?
- This is not my first time.
- Well it's my first time with you Haji.
If they don't pay we can't arrest them.
- Okay.
(tense music)
- We have our target.
Good luck everyone.
- [Director] What is it about Liverpool
that made it such a big
player in the drug trade?
- The docks.
The docks have always
been a part of our lives.
I used to come down here as
a child and, to me, a child,
it's like wonderland.
There was thousands of men
loading lorries by hand,
sacks of this, sacks of that.
It was glorious.
You'd see the wealth.
Everywhere you looked,
something was going on.
But the contrast between
the docks and our areas,
which were totally depressed
and slums, it was hard to take.
- Imagine goods coming
in from across the world,
and you are living in
poverty, essentially.
You've got a family to support.
You're gonna do anything to
support them so you survive,
and that they survive.
So if you had to take
something, you took something.
(tense music)
- Everything got pilfered.
Everything.
People just accepted it for what it was.
As far as they were concerned,
it were perks of the job.
Five-finger discount.
- And it wasn't looked down upon.
You weren't a thief, and
everyone knew someone
who could get things from somewhere.
You could get something from
Jimmy here or from John there
or Peter can get you that.
And then you put drugs
into the mix of that.
It allowed the drug trade
to grow very, very quickly.
- Customs investigators
and police have no doubt
that Liverpool has been one of the major,
if not the major point of entry
for drugs being smuggled
into this country.
(gentle piano music)
- We're definitely the first.
Definitely.
Went to Nigeria and during that
time I met up with somebody
who had some weed he
wanted to put on a ship.
Wanted to know if I knew
anybody in Liverpool
who would buy it.
I did.
So I contacted people in
England who met the ship,
bought it, and I thought to myself,
well why make money for other people
when I could make it for myself.
- [Director] Do you
remember how much you made
in that first trade?
- [Michael] We were selling
at 300 pound a pound, so.
- [Director] And how many
pounds did you smuggle?
- 300.
- 300?
- Yeah.
- [Director] At 300 pounds a pound.
- Yeah.
So I then started to send
weed myself to Liverpool.
We started out small and we went big.
(tense music)
Well, we progressed up to a tonne.
The easy part was getting it on.
Compress it through a metal container.
Weld it shut.
Use the crane, put it on first,
before the general cargo went on,
and it'd be right at the bottom.
And thousands of tonnes on top of it.
The hard part was getting it off.
Customs were very, very
alert in Liverpool.
Our firm had people who had
relatives in senior positions,
and that was it.
It was just a matter of
choosing the right time
for them to take it off.
Then pass it onto our sales division
and our sales division did their work.
Then when I came home
just counted the money.
- [Director] You liked that bit?
- Yep.
I enjoyed the fact that we
were sort of pioneers
and a lot of people emulated us.
And say, the police knew but
couldn't do anything about it.
- [Director] You were aware
at that point who he was?
- Yes I was well aware,
well aware of who he was.
He was a big player, he
was a big influencer.
He developed his routes
into Africa and, yeah,
he was doing it ahead of
a lot of other people.
But the customs and the police
didn't work well together
in those days, and they
were at odds with each other
and didn't share their intelligences.
So who's gonna win from that?
There's only one person gonna
win, and that's the dealer.
That's Michael.
- I was 15.
There was a dance in
the local Labour Club.
We put our best clothes on
and went there and we danced
and after a couple of times
we were confronted by a group who said
they didn't want niggers come up there,
dancing with their women.
There was a fight and a guy was stabbed,
and five of us were arrested.
I had my 16th birthday in Walton Prison.
The judge gave us what
they call a dock brief,
which is a barrister who
spoke for everyone on the day
for a fixed fee.
He said you're all being very silly.
It's quite obvious that all five of you
couldn't have stabbed him.
Go upstairs, plead guilty.
The most you're gonna get is probation.
So we all changed our plea to guilty
and two years later I came out of borstal.
It's hard, when I think about
it, it does make me angry.
Our futures were taken from
us at such an early age.
Criminalised at such an early age.
Which sort of meant you
had very little future.
Pleading guilty when I was 15
to something I hadn't done.
That's my greatest regret.
My greatest regret.
'Cause that started it all.
(rhythmic music)
- [Woman] Charlie one to control.
Car park is clear.
No movement, over.
- [Man] Charlie three to control,
Charlie three to control.
Lobby is quiet, nothing suspicious over.
(knocking on door)
- Who is this?
How'd he get in unnoticed?
- [Woman] He must've snuck
in by the fire escape sir.
- Great.
We have someone at the
door, everyone ready?
On my mark, we go for the arrest.
- I represent men who
wish to buy your product.
You have 12 kilos, yes?
- Uh-huh, yes.
- We would very much
like to buy all of it.
But for now, a kilo.
To verify the quality so
the price can be agreed.
- All units standby, deal is imminent.
- Okay, but price is 11,000 for one kilo.
It's a very good price.
- You do not understand.
We wish to take a kilo now
and we'll pay later for everything.
- What?
- We have a little cash flow problem.
If you give us a kilo, we'll
sell it and use the money
to buy the rest.
(speaking in foreign language)
- No money, no drugs.
Without the cash this
whole thing falls apart.
(tense music)
- Look.
I have many powerful people in Pakistan
that will do me and my family harm.
So this I cannot do.
(tense music)
- No deal, repeat no deal.
Subject has left the room.
Approximately 30 years old, five foot 10,
dressed in a brown suit and blue shirt.
Can we get a tail on him?
- [Man] Roger that, we have eyes on.
He's leaving by the fire escape.
- They don't have the money?
- [Reporter] Produced
from the cannabis plant,
possibly the most widely
used drug in the world.
Marijuana.
- I grew up in a city
where we got cannabis
from all over the world.
You got Durban poison from South Africa.
- Yeah.
- You got
Congolese laughing grass.
Three types of Moroccan,
four types of Lebanese.
Egyptian, Afghani black.
- Pakistani black.
- Pakistani black.
Do you know, Humboldt
County from California.
The best pot in the world
coming through the docks at Liverpool.
Unbelievable.
And it was all about "The Beatles"
and "Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds" and smoking pot
and LSD and free love, and I
thought that's the life for me.
So that was it, went off
like a 10 bob rocket.
Did all the things teenagers do.
Grew the hair, wore the flares,
and took all the drugs that came my way.
And that was all lovely.
But then in the 80s,
that's when a number of things conspired
to bring brown smokable
heroin to Liverpool.
(tense music)
- [Reporter] The statistics
alone in Liverpool 8
tell a very acute story.
47% of black workers unemployed,
43% of white workers.
- No opportunities at all.
You know, no opportunities whatsoever.
- [Man] The area's all rundown.
- Neighbourhoods like Bootle,
Kirby, Toxteth, Croxteth,
all these different
places, were falling apart.
There's no jobs, there's no opportunities.
Young people weren't of
any value to society,
or so they felt.
- [Lyn] And then of course we
had the Toxteth riots in '81.
- A visitor from the USA
came in the 80s and said
this is like Beirut.
This is like a bombed-out
shell, a husk of a city.
And a number of other things
were going on that didn't help.
Like Russia invading Afghanistan in 1979.
The freedom fighters
there, the Mujahideen,
had to raise money to buy
guns to fight the Russians.
The only commodity they had,
that they could sell on a
world market, was opium.
Now they'd been using,
growing opium and using
opium for centuries,
but suddenly it was a cash crop.
So they upped production of opium
in clandestine laboratories.
Turned that into morphine-based
brown smokable heroin.
- Liverpool's built on immigration.
So that, in itself,
gives you familial ties
across the world.
So those links, when
combined with the drug trade,
whether it be cannabis or heroin,
you had connections in these
other places in the world
where you could acquire those goods.
- [Director] Seven
separate trips to Pakistan.
- Yeah.
And I didn't go there
'cause I like a samosa.
(rhythmic music)
- [Director] What took you out there?
- The best heroin in the world.
My daughter says to me "Daddy,
why's your hands so big?
You've got hands like the Honey Monster."
- [Director] What'd you tell her?
- Well I don't tell her it's 'cause
I used to inject snowballs into them,
that's for fucking sure.
Around '81, '82, I was involved with
buying and selling
cannabis and amphetamine,
and the game changer
was a cheap, high grade
smoking heroin became available.
It was from Pakistan.
And I've got Pakistani family.
So I immediately kind of
seized the opportunity
to capitalise on that, yeah.
Back then I sat in Islamabad, in Pakistan,
talking to the commanders
of the police over there
who'd seized heroin, and
I was buying it from them
and they were giving me samples
to send over to the U.K.
If you went to source in Peshawar,
you'd be buying a kilo over
there for 2500 pound, 3K, yeah,
and that'd be 80, 90%.
There was a German baby
laxative called Mannitol
that was used as a cutting agent,
'cause that didn't affect the smokability
of the brown powder, yeah.
So you could turn one K into two.
So for your initial
investment, the two and a half,
you know, you could get maybe 80K back.
Liverpool, at that time, it
became the perfect storm.
You know, the shipyards closing down.
You've got all the unemployment.
And then if someone gives you
a five-pound bag of heroin,
it takes all that away and
you forget all your problems.
You know, it's little wonder
that so many people here
in Liverpool picked up.
(bell chiming)
(tense music)
- I can only describe
heroin as like a silent bomb
that landed in Liverpool.
You know, no one heard it coming.
(punches thumping)
It took away sons,
daughters, mothers, fathers.
It was just total destruction.
You know, it spread like cancer.
Straightening out your foil.
Putting your little bit
of powder at the corner
where you wanted it.
Getting a little pleat in your foil.
Tilting it a little bit.
Your flame underneath the powder.
And then inhaling.
(breathing deeply)
(gentle music)
Everything seems to slow down a bit.
You feel comfortably numb.
No more worries, no stress, nothing.
Just comfy.
- What you gotta understand is,
you know, I don't use this lightly.
It was an epidemic that
happened in this city.
You know, this city was
flooded with narcotics.
- [Reporter] Drug abuse is so
rife on some housing estates,
the area's known locally as smack city.
A growing number of addicts are under 15,
many hooked on heroin they bought
for as little as five pounds a packet.
- It seemed like a whole
generation of young people
had just jumped into
heroin use feet first.
No matter where you went,
there was groups of kids
hanging on street
corners waiting to score.
A lot of the kids would say
oh it's terrible round here,
in the past two years
heroin's just taken over.
And I'd say well "How many
people around here take heroin?"
"Everyone."
"What, everyone's on heroin?"
And I used to think how
the hell did that happen?
(downbeat music)
- It was a job.
You'd go out and then you'd be grafting.
You'd be like either shoplifting,
burgling, robbing cars,
whatever you could, to fund your habit.
Any ways and means to get what you needed,
do you know what I mean?
I'd be knocking at my mum's for a fiver.
She'd go "I haven't got it."
"Give us a fiver."
"I haven't got it, go away."
"Give us a ciggie."
"I haven't got any."
"Can I have a biscuit then?"
As long as you had
something, know what I mean?
I had to take something.
I had to have something.
There was just no escape.
- I got involved on every
level of the heroin business,
which led me in time to
becoming very addicted to that.
It stripped me.
I lost my dignity, I lost my self-respect,
I lost my self-worth.
But I had to do it because I was ill.
I had to use to live.
And I lived to use.
(tense music)
- How is it we get a dealer
who apparently can't even afford
to buy one kilo of heroin?
At least someone's enjoying themselves.
(voices shouting)
(tense music)
What's going on down there?
Are we compromised?
- [Man] Hello darling.
Do you have a room I can rent?
- [Woman] Just put that down, now.
- [Woman] Sir it would appear
the entire Australian Rugby League team
have arrived with a coach load of fans.
Looks like they're quite drunk sir.
(voices shouting)
(phone ringing)
- Phone, everyone focus.
- Hello?
- [Man] Take down this number.
Been trying to get hold of you.
0151 496 7088.
Call them.
- Who was that?
Was it Michael?
- Whoever it was sir,
he doesn't sound happy.
- The police were pretty
irrelevant in the early days,
'cause they didn't know what to do.
They didn't know what they were chasing.
They didn't know the shape
of it, the colour of it,
the size of it.
- The problem was I don't
think the senior officers
saw that heroin was their major problem.
They were fixed on cannabis
and large importations
coming into the area.
We'd be stopping individuals
and you find a few wraps on
them, so it'd be personal use
and they were getting taken in.
But the likes of Michael and the others
who were involved in the importation,
they didn't pay attention to them.
They didn't keep their eye on the ball.
Also, at the same time, the
riots had changed everything.
The guys organising things on the streets,
they knew that they had
struck a lot of fear
into the police.
And so after the riots,
we were told not to go into the area.
There was a map of Toxteth
and there was a triangle.
And it was in red lines and you knew
you could patrol up to that point,
but you couldn't go across the road.
So there was a certain
amount of frustration
amongst myself and colleagues.
- One two.
Jab.
Jab.
One two.
One two.
- They used to say, jokingly,
when you got posted to Toxteth
that you had to get a
bullseye put on your back.
- And four.
One two.
One two.
- I think you'll find
an argument for saying
that some of the organised crime
that happened in Liverpool,
built up in Toxteth
in kind of the quiet
spell after the riots.
- Yeah.
- It wasn't policed rigorously.
- Certainly people in Granby Street
were able to operate as they wanted.
We were behind the curve.
(tense music)
I think the people that were
making money from heroin
had stepped up their game.
- And suddenly these guys
were doing seriously well.
And flaunting it.
And that kind of rankled with us.
So we kind of took that personal.
- Then the police had to react
as opposed to being proactive.
We had to react to it.
And I do think we were behind the curve.
(downbeat music)
- And I remember the police
picking me up one day,
throwing me in the back of the car.
Took me to Newsham Park.
One of them got out the
car, opened the boot,
got a towel out of the boot.
Inside the towel was a gun.
He come back in the car, sat in the car
and put the gun in me mouth.
I don't say this lightly,
he put the gun in me mouth
and was like, bang.
Who's selling all the drugs?
Tell us.
I was one of those mixed-up
kids, you know, we had nothing.
I was just a pawn on a chessboard.
You know, for someone to take money from.
It's them who are up there
are using them that are down there,
so they don't get their hands dirty.
It's always been the same.
- [Director] In the 80s Michael
you were accused of being
a prolific heroin smuggler.
- Well, it's nonsense because
heroin didn't exist for us
in those days.
I was involved in
cannabis and that was it.
(upbeat music)
- [Director] This is the early 80s?
- [Michael] This was the early 80s, yes.
- [Director] You were driving
around in a white Rolls Royce.
- [Michael] Yes.
- [Director] You understand
why people in the community
think that you were smuggling heroin?
- I mean, I can understand
a little bit, but as I say,
those who know me, they know
where I earned my money.
- If he wasn't dealing
heroin you wanna know
how has that guy got a white Rolls Royce.
- Nobody drove Rolls
Royce's round Toxteth.
That's kind of a sign that
he was saying here I am,
look at me, I'm loaded, what
are you gonna do about it?
- I know he had his own game plan.
His game plan was to
control the heroin trade.
He knew how to control people.
The young kids on the streets,
he had them looking up at him.
It was like hail, our hero's just arrived.
This is what I wanna be.
So if some of these kids
became loyal to him,
he would eventually
move them up the ranks.
So he kept a tight cell of
only those that he trusted.
So he wasn't a fool.
He was a very astute man.
I think anyone who ever
treated him as a fool
was the fool themselves.
- Checkmate.
- When you've got someone
who's making themselves
so high profile and they're
rubbing it in your face,
that's when you have to do something.
- It may have been that at that stage
they were just trying
to get him for anything.
Whether the connection
with him was strong or not,
it was worth chancing
their arm and going for it
and seeing if they could
get a conviction against
what they regarded as
this notorious figure.
So in 1983, the police tried
to prosecute Michael Showers
for the second time in short succession.
On this occasion it was for
possession of a firearm,
cannabis and heroin.
The case collapsed at
court and Michael Showers,
to this day, maintains that
the case was never legitimate against him.
In effect he was fitted up.
- [Director] So why do you think
the authorities would frame you?
- I was very, very high profile,
because of the car and all the rest.
And I was getting too big politically.
And the thing is, you had to understand
every fibre of this city was racist.
- [Director] That's you here?
- Yeah, I remember that march well.
Fighting for equal rights.
That's what I was hoping for,
a generation of black kids
that didn't have criminal records,
that wouldn't be criminalised.
- [Director] And how did
the establishment see you?
- They saw me as a threat of some kind.
They despised me and
anything they could do
to get rid of me, they did.
- [Reporter] Unofficially,
police describe Michael Showers
as the godfather of Liverpool 8.
He has few words of
comfort for the police.
- We live with these people
and they're supposed to be
there to protect and uphold
the rule of law and order.
And we take crap day after
day from these people.
- The Liverpool black
community was a very old one
and a very well-established one.
I don't think they got much respect
or much help from anybody,
including the police.
But I think Michael
maybe saw an opportunity
to take advantage of that.
- Michael set himself up as
a community representative,
and that was a shrewd move
because that meant he
had the community onside.
I mean later he had a
paid job with the council,
as an immigration adviser.
- He wasn't hiding, he was
very very high profile.
And if, in the course of a patrol
in or around the edges of
Toxteth, you pull somebody over
and start having a chat to
them or started searching them
or looking through the car or whatever,
you could be pretty sure
that Michael would turn up.
So he was very, very influential.
- [Director] I presume you would have been
the only person in this movement
living the lifestyle that you were?
- I suppose so, yes.
Yes.
- [Director] So you can see why
there was a lot of attention on you?
- Yeah.
But as I say, I wasn't doing
anything so I wasn't bothered.
- I was like on patrol,
working off very limited intelligence.
I didn't have the means to deal with him.
The chances of searching
Michael in his Rolls Royce
and finding a shed-load
of heroin, were nil.
Michael didn't have to go near it.
The answer to dealing
with the likes of Michael,
who lives in a big, fine
house, immaculately dressed,
immaculately spoken, to break
that down and get behind it,
you needed long, sustained,
informed investigations.
- Criminal fraternity tended
to call us the Church,
which is short for Church of England,
which is the Customs and Excise.
People were more worried about
the Church being after them,
than they were about the business.
If it's the business,
okay, we've got a chance.
If it's the Church, we're stuffed.
(dramatic music)
- I'm not sure the
deal's gonna happen sir.
Lack of funds apparently.
Yes, sir.
I understand.
Church pulled the plug
on the armed officers
'cause the overtime and the
room service blew our budget.
Not that Michael was gonna show up anyway.
- [Woman] Someone's
pulling into the car park.
It's Zubair, can confirm it's Zubair.
He's carrying a bag, over.
- Is he alone?
- [Woman] Yes sir.
No one else in the car.
He's approaching the lobby.
- Do we have eyes on Michael's house?
- [Man] Yes sir, we're outside his house.
The car is parked outside, no movement.
- Stay focused everyone.
- [Woman] Suspect is through
lobby, approaching corridor.
- We have no backup, so be careful.
On my word, we go in hard and quick.
(knocking at door)
- It's Zubair.
(tense music)
Your money.
11,000, and I'll take one.
- Go, go, go!
All units, go for the knock!
(dramatic music)
- I'm arresting you on
suspicion of the involvement
of the illegal importation
of a controlled drug.
You do not have to say anything.
Anything you do say may be taken down
and used in evidence against you.
(voices shouting)
- [Man] Michael Showers, I'm arresting you
on suspicion of the involvement
in the illegal importation
of a controlled drug.
You do not have to say
anything, but what you say
may be given in evidence against you.
- Next thing I know, at half
past two in the morning,
customs raid my home.
I'm in bed with my wife
who was then pregnant.
And arrested.
(tense music)
What happened was that I was
working at the immigration unit
and a client, Mohammed Zubair,
wanted entry clearance for his wife.
What I didn't know is that
he was doing a heroin deal
and that customs were following him,
and they followed him
to the immigration unit.
And once they saw that I was
part of the immigration unit,
I became the target.
- [Director] Can you tell me about
how Operation Rainman came about?
- So this guy Haji
goes to the British High
Commission in Pakistan
and he says he's been
approached by a supplier
to take drugs to the U.K.
for a man called Michael.
So Haji is offered payment
to take part in the smuggle,
as the courier, so that
they could trap the gang
with the drugs in the U.K,
so they would have
the strongest possible
evidence against them.
And so the operation commences.
So this supplier in Pakistan,
the commander in the Mujahideen,
gives Haji the heroin,
and he takes it to the
British High Commission
and gives it to a customs officer.
British customs subsequently
bring the heroin into the U.K.,
while the courier, Haji,
travels on another flight.
The heroin and the courier
were reunited once in the U.K.,
and he holes up in a hotel
near Manchester Airport.
- The truth is, I had no
idea this man existed.
Had no idea whatsoever.
I had no idea about the
hotel or anything else.
- Showers denied that he'd been involved
in a drug importation.
As far as he was concerned,
he was helping one of the defendants
with an immigration appeal.
But itemised phone records
produced at the trial
told a different story.
There were phone calls
to and from Peshawar.
One of the phone numbers in Peshawar
was printed on a bus stop,
right next door to the
location of the drug handover.
Evidence was also produced
that Showers telephoned Haji at the hotel.
- Hello?
- [Man] Take down this number.
Been trying to get hold of you.
- When this was put to
Showers in cross-examination
he admitted it.
But said he was simply
returning a call himself
from the hotel.
It was just an error.
That was his explanation.
When Showers was finally arrested,
they found a complete
set of telephone numbers
and phone messages tied to
the conspiracy at his home.
- [Director] You were
convicted of smuggling heroin?
- [Michael] Yeah, convicted
on fabricated evidence
by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise.
- [Director] You're innocent of that?
- Yes.
Yeah.
(gentle piano music)
When the jury came in
none of them looked at me.
And I put a brave face on it.
I shook my head and said no.
Nope.
- He was convicted over a conspiracy
involving 12 kilos of heroin.
And he was sentenced to
20 years imprisonment,
which, for that amount of
drugs, was extraordinary.
Maybe that tells you
something about a system
that wanted to make an example of him.
It could just be that
he fought a bad case.
But it was an extraordinary sentence.
- I know that it withstood the scrutiny
of the Court of Appeal, and it was upheld.
So his denials really have
been tested and found wanting.
- [Director] There is a sadness sometimes
I see in your eyes, is that fair to say?
- Oh yeah, I mean, I'm sad
about what was stolen from me,
time-wise.
That broke up my families.
That's it.
- You know, if he's done 20 year,
he's had about 10% of
the jail he could've got.
It's the same for me.
Yeah.
I got away with a lot.
I'm not gonna say I got away with murder
but I got away with a lot.
Yeah.
If I'd been caught for what I've done
we wouldn't be sat here now.
(downbeat music)
- In the '80s, when we
were like in our teens.
It went from your beer goggles it on
you doing a slowey and
thinking, oh yeah, she'll do.
And then it all just went
to bink, bink, what the?
(rhythmic music)
- My first ecstasy experience
is just unbelievable.
I couldn't believe
anything could be so good.
(rhythmic dance music)
- You walked up that corridor.
What the fuck's that noise?
- You needed the money
to get into the clubs
and the bloody drugs.
- If we had no money we'd do a ram raid,
'cause you couldn't miss it.
- You go to a club with 2000 people in it,
for me it was like
look at the money that
could be in this now.
Some people say a man
is made out of mud ♪
A poor man's made out
of muscle and blood ♪
Muscle and blood and skin and bones ♪
A mind that's weak and
a back that's strong ♪
You load 16 tonne, what do you get ♪
Another day older and deeper in debt ♪
St. Peter don't you call
me 'cause I can't go ♪
I owe my soul to the company store ♪