There's plenty of aggro and bovver going on in this female variation on James Moffat’s usual ‘rags to borstal’ tales. Writing under the name Richard Allen, Moffat became an unlikely poet laureate figure to many an aspiring teenage yobbo during the 1970s. Moffat wrote fast, and drank faster, helping turn around the fortunes of publishing company New English Library, particularly with his series of skinhead books like Skinhead (1970), Skinhead Escapes (1972) and Dragon Skins (1975). Moffat’s writing could be charitably described as ‘unpretentious’, or if you were inclined to be less charitable ‘artless’. To give credit where it is due though, Moffat’s cheap, trashy, violent books engaged a young, working class audience in a way that more highly regarded literature did not. Interviewed in ‘Skinhead Farewell’ a 1996 documentary about Moffat, teacher Barry Pateman remembered “here they were with ‘Skinhead’ reading it of their own volition, of their own interest, kids who didn't dress like skinheads, who weren't skinheads, still found it an enormously exciting and interesting book”.
Moffat's
ability to write about working class gang life was such that his initial fan
base even thought he must have been a skinhead himself, the reality couldn't have
been more different. Behind the Richard
Allen alias was a 50-something man of Canadian-Irish heritage with little in
common with the skinhead culture he documented, apart from a kinship with its
more intolerant, right wing elements.
Read today it is difficult to see why anyone would buy into the idea of Moffat
being a young violent thug who led the kind of lifestyle he wrote about. The punk attitude that screams at you from this
book’s cover, belies the fact that the only two popular singers to get a name check
in Knuckle Girls are David Soul and Max Bygraves. Moffat clearly regarded kids as the scum of
the earth and the tone of his books is one of fist shaking disapproval. At the same time Moffat's books reveled in hooliganism,
sex and bad language, giving the fear to straight society and the older
generation. Moffat’s intention, no doubt,
was to demonize the working class youth of the 1970s, yet in doing so he also
gave them an intimidating, outlaw image.
Which, dare I suggest, is why that demographic took his books to their
collective bosom.
You’d
certainly cross the street to avoid Moffat’s protagonist in Knuckle Girls, Ina
Murray, a brawling, queen of aggro, born in the slums of Glasgow and brought up
on the equally wrong side of the tracks in London. By the time we're introduced to her in the
book, Ina is already responsible for one woman crime wave. All of which is anecdotally being related to Gladys
Gardiner, the do-gooding social worker who is given the difficult moral dilemma
of whether to recommend leniency or throw the book at Ina. Given Moffat's politics there is little doubt
which side of that debate Gladys will ultimately fall on. Knuckle Girls is the last of three books Moffat
wrote dealing with female tearaways. The
others being Skinhead Girls (1972) and Sorts (1973) presumably in an attempt to
exploit the lucrative subject of youthful hooliganism from all angles and
genders. Moffat as a writer of female
characters tends though to be an awkward fit as an iron fist in a velvet glove. Ina is the Minnie the Minx to the Dennis the
Menace characters Moffat wrote about in his skinhead books. She looks the same as them, dresses the same
as them, and thinks the same as them. The
only female characteristics Moffitt gives her, tends to be weaknesses that lead
to her downfall. Ina goes through a repeat
pattern of dating guys who cheat on her with more sexually attractive women. Leading the insecure, jealous Ina to take a
razor to her love rivals “she nearly had a boob less when I finished, her face looked
like it had gone through a meat grinder”.
Moffat
writing from the perspective of a left leaning social worker and career woman
like Gladys, is even harder to swallow, and Knuckle Girls just doesn't convince
at all in that respect. We barely get to
know Gladys before she's having doubts about rehabilitating the likes of Ina,
and debating whether to throw her career aside, in favor of getting married and
being kept by boyfriend Ray. After a
while Moffat doesn't seem to know what to do with Gladys other than having her listen
to David Soul records at home, and admire her nakedness by the mirror “she knew
what equipment she had and liked knowing that men enjoyed her breasts, thighs, buttocks,
dark pubic hair, all of her”. Even Ina is
in awe of Gladys “what firm, handable tits! and a pair of buttocks that moved,
shifted, switched, kind of bounced like a woman's buttocks should”. After leching over her in print, Moffat largely
retires Gladys in favour of a male character, probation officer Ken Gibson, who
comes in after Gladys struggles with both her conscious and ability to finish
her report on Ina. Ken Gibson is a
closest to a hero this book has and is a likely proxy for Moffat himself. Ken being an old-fashioned, immaculately
dressed, pipe smoker who pines for Gladys from afar.
Unlike
many writers of so-called trash fiction from the era, who seemed to have given
a damn about their craft, Moffat’s books leave you with the impression that he
didn't really regard writing as anything more than a tedious, steady job…the
sort that you dispassionately clock on to at 9:00 a.m. and clock off at 5:00
p.m. Moffat’s language is basic, with
little flair, and a fondness for meandering conversation designed to fill up
pages. Moffat's books only really come
to life when they are they are showing their vicious side. Aggro was his strength. No one could write a description of a pub brawl,
the trashing of a train, and violence on the terraces quite like Moffat. These books really do put you at the
dangerous centre the action, amidst the spilt beer, shattered bones and broken
chairs. If you want kicks, Ina Murray is
your gal. Throughout Knuckle Girls we
follow her and an odyssey of anti-social behavior that includes a spell in an
approved school, stabbing a man at a football match, engaging in underage sex,
kicking a child up the ass then punching its mother in the face. You have to hand it to Moffat, he really
could write a character who gets under your skin, burns her way into the memory
and leaves a few lasting scars along the way.
Moffat's worldview was cold and unfeeling for the most part, but there
are flashes of sympathy and understanding along the way as Ina suffers under a parade
of horrid characters. A weak spineless mother,
a drunk emotionless father soon replaced by a pervy lodger turned stepfather,
and a boyfriend who beats her up after his she discovers him screwing another
girl. Moffat might not be Ina’s number
one fan but he has a far greater grievance against her mother, who he has Ina
metaphorically put the boot in for him “poor pathetic mother, it serves you
bloody right, mother, makes you want to vomit, doesn't it, mother”. Moffat also unleashes a few indignities of
his own invention at Mum. Initially
partnering her up with a drunk, abusive husband, then throwing her in the
direction of lodger Mike, whose ‘highly irregular acts’ she has to submit to,
in order to keep him from her daughter's bedroom door. One of the more satisfying elements of the
book is Ina turning the tables on evil sleazeball Mike. Going from a victim of his dubiously
motivated spankings… to seeing him lose his power when confronted by the ‘Acton
Swords’ a skinhead gang… to slashing him up with a razor when he finally makes sexual
advances to her “she crouched, a she-tiger about to devour its victim”. Unlike in real life, sexual predators get no
preferential treatment in Knuckle Girls.
Had Ina ran into Jimmy Savile back then, you're in no doubt she would
have cut his cock off.
It is
said that one of the least desirable jobs at New English Library was editing a
James Moffat novel, because of the tons and tons of racism that would have to
be exercised to make them fit for general consumption and presumably prevent N.E.L
from possible prosecution. Given that
the versions of his books which made it into the public’s hands were pretty
racist, you do have to wonder how extreme and incendiary Moffat’s original
manuscripts must have been. Knuckle Girls
largely keeps the race hate elements at bay till towards the end, but when they
do arrive they have the impact of a well-timed sucker punch delivered with the
aid of a knuckle duster. Surprisingly,
given Moffat's own Irish ancestry, the bigotry initially flares up when Ina and
the Acton Swords attempt to stir up aggro at an Irish pub by throwing around
anti-Irish slurs “they should ship the bombers back to their soggy Island”. Sentiments that Moffat surely couldn't have
personally endorsed. In that instance
you’d be inclined to chalk up the prejudice there as disingenuous, and Moffat playing
to a perceived, bigoted English readership.
Less easy to brush aside however are the anti-black aspects of Knuckle Girls
which register as far more heartfelt, especially as they are so randomly crowbarred
into the very end of the book. Basically
we learn that Jean Turner, an adversary and love rival of Ina, hates the Acton
Swords, but then she gets to thinking about how she also hates the immigrants who
have moved in next door to her parents.
A chain of thought that allows Moffat the excuse to rant about the indignity
of living next door to “blacks, browns and other foreigners from the natives”
as well as the “liberals and do-gooding left wingers” who create laws to
protect such people. It’s a hateful
diversion the book takes, which serves only to remind everyone that James Moffat
wasn't exactly overflowing with love for non-white people.
Be
they white or black, English or Irish though everyone is in this book is
destined to be left a little more broken and damaged than they were at the start. The only exception being Gladys, but even
there Ina’s final thoughts in the book suggest that Gladys days of happiness,
marriage, listening to David Soul and admiring her breasts, thighs, dark pubic
hair and buttocks (that bounced like a woman’s buttocks should)…will be
short-lived. Aside from the racism, Moffat
is such a poverty porn junkie, drawn to misery, urban squalor and the harsh
realities of working class life that it becomes an uphill battle to fight off
an overall feeling of depression and find entertainment value in his work. Knuckle Girls offers no hope or solution to
the social problems it comments on. Politically
Moffat might be as far removed from movies like Ken Loach's Kes (1969) as
Churchill was from Castro, but just as Winston and Fidel shared a love of big
cigars, so Knuckle Girls and Kes are united in their pessimistic belief that
the working classes are basically fucked and any attempt to reach out and
improve their lives is doomed to failure.
Although if Ina was the main character in Kes she’d have probably
strangled the kestrel herself, then kicked her well-meaning teacher in the
balls.
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