ABOUT THE SILENT BROTHER

Working in the east end of Newcastle could be pretty dispiriting. Hard as we tried to make things better, there was always someone, plenty of someones, ready to tear it down. Drug and alcohol abuse was everywhere – as was anger and frustration, vented in seemingly pointless, and often vicious violence.

Put in a new central heating system, they’d rip it out to sell the copper pipe. Give them double-glazing, they’d put a brick through it. During the riots of 1999, local people set fire to their neighbour’s homes. In the end, it was hard to avoid feeling that these people deserved what they got.

They didn’t.

There was a time, in living memory for some, when fully half the world’s shipping was built on the Tyne, and people would joke about the obvious foolishness of bringing coals to Newcastle. Not anymore.

These days, when a major employer closes down, special teams are brought into the area to help with retraining and to attract new employers. But in Thatcher’s Britain, when the unions, heavy industry and even the north itself was the enemy – closing down the mines and the decline of the shipyards was an end in itself. A victory. Something like the victory in Iraq, with no plan beyond winning the 'war'. The effect on these communities was devastating. Generations of skilled workers lost their jobs. More than that, they lost their identity and their union, and often their families. How could they teach their children the meaning of a hard day's work for a fair day's pay? - in this new world of every man for himself. And why would their children listen to these old mens' stories? - when both father and children were signing on at the same dole office.

Abandoned and useless, these once proud men faded away. Worse still, their children grew up without hope or direction. The old order was gone, and there was nothing to replace it and nothing to do, except anaesthetize yourself from day to day, until the hopelessness got too much - and erupted into violence. Ambition meant getting a few quid together, enough to score a deal to get you through the emptiness, until next week’s giro. Dignity and community were replaced by crime and booze and drugs.

We’re on the third generation now. For them, the glory days are something the history teacher drones on about. It has nothing to do with their lives.

In a community with so little hope, overstretched social services and policing priorities elsewhere, it’s easy for the gangsters to take over – and anyway, no one likes a grass. Some, heroically, stay and fight for their community. But the truth is that most of the time, those who can, get out.

This is the world our hero, Tommy grows up in. So if The Silent Brother is dark in places, it’s because my aim is to tell it how it is. To highlight the link between victim and perpetrator, and show you that often, they are one and the same. In writing this book, I asked myself – if I had grown up in this world, what, if I was brave enough, might I have done to survive? The Silent Brother is my answer.

Simon Van der Velde March 2022

ABOUT BACKSTORIES

CAN YOU FIND THE FAMOUS PERSON HIDDEN IN EVERY STORY?

Dreamers, singers, heroes and killers, they can dazzle with their beauty or their talent or their unmitigated evil, yet inside themselves, they are as frail and desperate as the rest of us. But can you see them? Can you unravel the truth?

This book is dedicated to the victims of violent crime, the struggle against discrimination in all its forms and making the world a better place for our children. That is why 30% of all profits will be shared between Stop Hate UK, The North East Autism Society and Friends of the Earth.