Gang MURDERS Are Uncontrollable | Drug Lord Andrew Pritchard Exposes Border Control

28:50That's how the system works. Always has worked like that. But when you've got the elite teams now that are going after guys who are making money, they create public interest immunity documents. These are documents that are created by different Interpol, DEA, Customs and Excise, There's NCA, Metropolitan Police, different units, squads, metro, the whole lot. And this intelligence is shared and things are given different grades. So it says, you know, it's come from a phone tap, come from an informant, and they classify the different ratings of the intelligence, how reliable it is, okay? So they see things and they're privileged information.

29:30On one occasion, they picked up a piece of intelligence and said one of my co-defendants said nine million pounds in euros and dollars in the boot of one of his cars sitting somewhere in East London. So when he sees that coming across in a PIR document, he's in charge of Case, him and his close team, and they suddenly see another set of bank police that have been paid off, which they know have been paid off, to clear this in the first place, and they're in a position of thinking to themselves, is it even worth it? Right? That's how the approach is made. So when them four who are running that case, they'll say, you know what, let's get into them and say, if they give us$300 ,000 or$250 ,000, we'll destroy the case.

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30:52With the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu. So when Keir Starmer says he's going to smash the gangs... Ridiculous. How out of his depth is he? To catch a smuggler, right? You have to be a smuggler, right? If you can circumvent a system, which you can do, because drugs, use drugs as the perfect example. You're never going to stop drugs from coming to the country. So you're not going to stop anything else from coming to the country because smugglers will always operate around a system.

31:41So it's like the door's closed. Here's a closed door. You don't say, knock, knock, can I come in? You climb over the wall. You go through the door. You go under the door. You find a different method, and you always find a method. There's a saying, organised criminals are either working or planning. So it's always a matter of time and another method. And that is the name of the game. So unless you've got people who can operate so swiftly, so sharply and so dedicated and can be uncorruptible, uncorruptible is a magic word, okay, you'll always have a problem. Even if you can magically get them at this end uncorruptible, You're still going to have the other end you've got to contend with.

32:27But my cue, it does give it a 50-50, you're taking the odds down. But when you've got both ends that are working, their system's blind to it. And to put it into perspective, how many years did you get away with smuggling? I got involved in smuggling from about the age of 24 years old. And let's be honest about this. I got caught on a very serious case, 100 million pounds, half a metric ton of cocaine, which there was a very famous documentary made about in 2007. And obviously I was fighting. He did catch up with me, cashed up with me in 2013. I paid my comeuppance for that and for perverting the course of justice, paying off bent old Bill.

33:05But the reality of it is, that period of time, you're talking about excess of the best part of 30 years. That should raise serious concerns with people that are putting their trust in Keir Starmer to stop the gangs. Well, listen, people are career criminals. Just like a geezer would get up and go to college and go and get himself a job and progress. Criminals get into the system. They learn from older criminals. They go to prison. They learn. And they have a career pathway. Not so much now because young people are just, they don't look at it like this now. They've got more interest in shooting and killing each other, which otherwise a clear saying, right?

33:43One drop of blood costs more than 100 kilos of cocaine. because that price, not only is it, you know, destroying and taking away people's lives, which you cannot do without a clear conscience you can't have because you're smuggling drugs in the first place, but the heat that brings down from the police, from everybody, the community, it is not worth it. You cannot turn and say to yourself that you're involved in crime and you're making a living out of crime and you're going around killing people because it doesn't work. The two do not mix as much as people think they do. Yeah. So before we get to when you enter jail, because at the moment it all sounds glamorous like it always does.

34:23Rave sick, illegal raves, smuggling, tens of millions of pounds, living a high life in restaurants. But with all that must come gang warfare, guns being pulled. On the documentary that I watched, your partner Wayne said he was kidnapped three times. So right. So tell me, give me the downsides of all the criminality you got involved with before jail. I'll give you downsides, okay? And I'll give you serious downsides. First of all, there are two – you've got two sets of places. You've got abroad, overseas, where you're involved in drugs, and you've got Britain, okay, where you have local criminals.

35:03Partners I've had abroad, one of my very close business partners, a guy by the name of Albert Bonner, Blackadoosh they called him, he was what was called a constituency don, all right, in Jamaica. we worked together you know made a lot of money together over the years and on one occasion it was 2000 and I think it may have been 2002 if memory serves me correctly I wasn't in Jamaica at that time I'd come back to England and he went for a meeting with someone uh in one of the constituencies in Jamaica, which was what they call garrison, right, which is a lower part of the ghetto, right, with another person they'd classify as a Don and another person who is also described as a Don, community leaders we call.

35:52They have influence with local politicians, but they obviously have a lot of intimacy with those constituencies, so they help, you know, stuff ballot boxes and get votes, right? So they have power in terms of smuggling and criminality. He went for a meeting. I would have probably been there with him just for the sake of just being in his company that day. He went to meet a guy called Willie Huggett, where his supermarket is, the road going in, the three of them were sitting outside having a drink on the, you know, corner of payment. A car drove down there in broad daylight. Two guys got out with automatic machine guns.

36:32It was a white Corolla. They were wearing white shirts. They very much look like Jamaican CID, okay? So automatically, Blacker had a weapon on him. He produced his weapon, so he's a licensed firearm holder. The other two didn't have weapons on him, which is very suspicious, and I'll tell you why. Anyway, as he'd done that, they lifted the AK-47s and they shot all men, three men to pieces, basically, went over the bodies and discharged further rounds in to make sure everyone was dead and drove out of there. if I had been there which I could have easily been there I would be dead today okay what's more serious is when you're playing at that level these guys had a lot of influence in the constituents in the area so what it meant was how could a car drive through there and come back out of there without looking like a cheese grate with bullets by the local guys because obviously what happened was and what my understanding was one of the individuals had been working with someone who was connected to some Colombians.

37:34They ripped the Colombians off in America. The Colombians didn't let it go. They had access to a more senior police officer in Jamaica. And what they then done was had information from him to say a raid was going on that day in the constituency, which means, because everyone's got corrupt police out there. So Willys Police or Blackers Police would have said, don't have any firearms in there that day. There's raids going on. And the place was cleared of firearms. So what happened was the guys went in there, committed the murders and left. So corruption and, you know, murder and someone losing their life is an everyday thing.

38:13Here, an occupational hazard is just going to prison probably. And you might get killed now because that's the way things are going. But if you're in that business, it's an everyday thing. You'll see people die and you won't blink an eye. You know, many people I've worked with, another guy I knew who went for a meeting, he'd done something he shouldn't have done to someone turned up at the meeting, got shot in the head put in a boot at the car, set on fire another guy, and this was just completely insane I knew and a funny stranger, I had a friend who was on the run here and I sent him down to stay in my house in Jamaica and every day he was down there enjoying the beach, enjoying the villa and this guy was going by to see him all the time luckily on this a week before my friend came back to England and this guy decided, because my pal wasn't there, he went by to another friend who had a car rental business, completely not involved in the drug industry, nothing like that, took him down to a meeting in New Kingston.

39:09Two guys then who he met who he believed was going to do a drug deal with had no intention of doing a drug deal. The guy had a gold Daytona watch. That's what they wanted. They tied him both up with barbed wire to a chair and hacked him to death with machetes for a gold watch. So these are the environments and people you deal with when you're talking about being a drug trafficker. That's there. Here, yeah, you've got people who will do what they've got to do and you're dealing with villains. And if you're honest about it, you're a villain yourself because you've got to be that way. If you're living in that environment, you've got to be part of that environment.

39:46Now, this whole kidnapping thing with the warehouse party, It was a ridiculous fabrication that Wayne made up, I think, because he used to sell a book. And what made it worse was, and this was like the most staggering bit, when I had my big case in 2007, I was given a book deal about the case. And, of course, the case was, you know, my defence was I was smuggling cigars, which obviously now, you know, we have a different version of that event, as the police have proven. But also, obviously, the document slid under my door by some secret society. We now know, because I've been nicked for it, that it was bent police I had that I bought those documents from.

40:31But in the mix of this story, I had my friend Norman Parker, who'd written Parker's, so was double, you know, done 28 years he'd done for double murder. He was a writer, and I thought, I've never written a book. I asked Norman to ghostwrite a book for me. He goes to write the book and he took part of Wayne's book from it. But he credited Wayne rightfully in the back to say Wayne's book was a source, basically, in the acknowledgements. But then I hadn't read the book. None of them I hadn't read until I went to prison in 2013 and the prosecutor was using the book to prejudice the jury against me.

41:06So when I sat and read the two books, I was like, what the fuck has Norman done? He's written all these bollocks about getting kidnapped by gangsters. all happened right was two of our very close friends one day went by for Wayne they went by his mum's house in the morning there was a heated discussion that had been going on between some football lads and what happened was they had to go and sit down to get it all rectified uh some other guys I know very well you know within a little group of them went down to some guys who run a boxing gym in East London who have been under sort out problems and ran a security company and they sat him down and during the meeting with fear, because Wayne's there, turned up on this meeting with people who will probably do him serious on, broke out crying and gave away 50 % of Genesis, which was my organisation.

41:58Of course, that was put straight and they didn't take 50 % of the parties, but he created it as a kidnapping. It wasn't a kidnapping. You're not getting wrapped up and things put over your head and all sorts of things. The other occasion, again, I know that was just a load of bollocks. I think another lad turned up and, you know, maybe owed him some money or something like that. And his guy just said, look, you know, you're going to have to sort the money out again. But people fabricate these stories, as I said, for no good reason, because the real stories are actually better because they have merit and credibility.

42:32So all that was nonsense. Don't get me wrong. People was kidnapped during that time. Nothing to do with us. but there are people that did go through things. One of them I actually know because I spoke to the fellow and said, isn't it my story? That happened to me. So he took that and coined that and used that for himself. But, you know, if you speak to anyone, right, we was all friends. Do you know what I mean? Like, so, as I said, so that'll put that to bed here and now. That never happened. That was a categoric lie, you know. And what made it worse was the fact that Norman had probably copied a lot of this stuff and put it in my book.

43:10So I was almost endorsing it. But what I'd done was in, I think it was 2017, I wrote the publisher after I'd read it from prison. I managed to get the rights reverted back. I took that book out of circulation, okay, and I sat there for three, four years, literally every day, writing, and I wrote 150 ,000-word manuscript called Empire of Dirt, which I've now only this kind of last week and a half given to my literary agent who's now going to submit it to publishers because the story and the history of what happened back then, it was a great time politically. It was a great time musically. It was culturally a wonderful time.

43:53Lots of things happened. And if you're going to just talk history and make stories up and give people this, you know, perverted almost version of events, they'll never get to experience it because these ones who are reading it are too young to have been there. So I'm about being a historian of the history of what's happened and telling the story straight as it is. You can ask me any question. I don't shy questions. Do you know what I mean? I invite them. Well, talk to me then about how the empire come crumbling down and then life in prison, because you've done some, you've done Belmarsh, Whitmore, which is a lifers jail, all different.

44:31So I'm sure, I mean, you're great to interview because I could just sit back and just suck it all up because you've lived a hell of a life. So how did the empire come crumbling down? And then what was jail like? Because these are the things that people that are considering crime or parents that have got kids that are getting into crime need to listen to and listen to real clear, isn't it? So to any young person, and I say this, as glamorous as all these things seem, as fabulous as it all seems, it is the biggest mistake anyone can make in their life because it will end in death, destruction and misery.

45:07And how that will look is it will be a very long sentence, OK, where not only will you serve a long sentence, if you manage to accumulate anything, the government will take it from you in a confiscation order. You'll come out of prison, an old person having to start all over again, right? That's if you're lucky. If you're not so lucky, you can get drawn into a conflict that will get your life taken away from you. Plus, not to mention all the suffering and grief you put through and burden you become to people you supposedly love and care for. But on a conscious level, and it takes a while to get there, it did for me, you have to reflect and look at the damage and destruction, devastation you're doing to all your victims because it's not a victimless thing.

45:54When you were smuggling, did you think it was a victimless? Of course I did. Because in my mind, I was so self-absorbed in making money and thinking about myself, as most criminals do. You don't consider it and you make excuses for it. And I'll tell you the thing, Liam, right? This is how rehabilitation happens. And you've got to understand, people don't get it. That's why such a state is rehabilitation. First thing is this, and I blame this on a number of different people as well here. This is part to do with the system we've got. As a criminal, you get caught, all right? The first thing you're going to do is you look at a big sentence, you're going to go, I'm not guilty, because you think yourself, you know what, I'm going to fight this case.

46:33And you sit there on remand, could be a year, two years, three years. In this case, there's four or five years waiting list, by the way. That's how bad state the criminal justice system is in. and that's a fact. While you're sitting there, you sit and you fabricate this story. You wait for the disclosures to come. You tailor your defence. And by the time that grand finale turns up, you've actually convinced yourself of your defence, okay? I actually had a cellmate for a period of time when I was in Wombos, 2006, yeah, a guy called Henry Freegard. They made a film about him called The Rogue Agent.

47:08This was the guy that pretended to be a MI5 man, okay, and conned all these women out of money. Well, this gunbag, right, he actually helped me fabricate a story, right, of cigars and create a great defence because he was a top con man, right? Now, everyone on different levels will create their defence, okay? They tailor it as best they can. Disclosure comes, they create it. Then you have a situation where you go to court. Now, it might turn out all right and you get found not guilty and you go home and always forgotten. You go back to do what you're doing until next time. However, it goes wrong and you get a sentence.

47:49You forgot you've made up a story and you believe what you've been told and you think you're innocent. And you're walking around prison, certainly for the first 18 months where you're going through the appeal process and particularly all these young guys who are doing these huge wrecks because the only thing you've got is a little bit of hope you might get out on an appeal. You continue this lie. So this lie isn't helping you progress. It's not helping you get through the system. And you're carrying this thing on your shoulders and on your back until you've believed to yourself that you ain't done nothing wrong when you're as guilty as sin.

48:21It makes you go around hating the system, right, because you feel that you're unjustly in there, right, and you're delusional. And what will happen is you'll serve the time bitterly. You'll come out. You'll do the same thing again. You'll go back again, and it's a repeat circle, right? Rehabilitation doesn't come into it. That's the first thing that happens. The second thing is solicitors have a lot to do with this because particularly when these kids are on murder cases, and this is what I'll just speak to myself, they get paid a lot of money for those cases. They're the big ticket cases, right?

48:52So murder and terrorism, two biggest tickets, right? Unlimited purse is given for those on legal aid. Now, when they go, they get top QCs, you're entitled to silks. So they can come on now. They can represent, the case can go up three months, four months. Some of them still have three, four grand a day, right? The solicitors are making fortunes because they will disclose they get paid by the sheet, what they're reading. There's loads of legal visits coming up. They've seen you twice, three times a week. They're charging for those. So there's a massive taxpayer bill coming in, right? They love it.

49:26They're getting paid for it. But worse than that, they're disillusioning the kid who has done something. They know they've done something, but they believe they're going to get off. Sometimes the solicitors just say, listen, you're fucked. The evidence is too overwhelming. Go in here now, right? You know, go and get your furred off or murder case different, but throw yourself at the mercy of the call, right? Get your sentence and start to progress and think about how the next five or ten years are going to look for you in prison and progress through the system. They don't. They hold them on to get as much money as they can.

49:59They throw them to the wall for the last minutes. They get a bigger sentence than they've already got. Then they're in there again, bitter, believing they're half innocent because they're held on with a pill for a few more years. They're putting all their family through that, their girlfriends, you know, their parents, and it's a horrible system how it's been designed. What I'd done was, on this occasion when the wheel fell off, something happened to me, and it wasn't finding God, as most people that change fine religion or there is this pinnacle moment. My pinnacle moment came actually walking around a prison yard when I saw two young lads that I knew.

50:40I knew their parents and they were arch enemies, parts of postcode gangs. And I was like, what's happening? What you think is like, no, no, no. They talked to me and we killed so-and-so. I said, listen, I know your mum and I know his fucking dad. Yeah, you grew up as almost like you could be classified as cousins. Because when I grew up, never had babysitters. We used to get dropped around in your uncle's house. And then, you know, you'd have all these cousins, relatives there. And you knew each other. You grew up with each other, right? Whether they were a cousin or not, you tagged them as a cousin, right?

51:18So the hostility wasn't that bad, right? But now people are separated. They're divided. I mean, it's sometimes done deliberately to create this animosity between them. And I said, what is this postcode stuff? I just want to understand what is it. And of course, his uncle, maybe because I'm old or maybe it's a bit of respect now, he's like, uncle, I love every single brick on my estate. And I said, but you don't own any of it and you never will. Why are you dying for it? And killing. Why are you killing and dying for it? Why are you sitting in prison and life sentence for it? And the question is unanswerable because they're sold into this mentality and young kids who haven't got any money, right, who are, you know, pushed against it, right, and not necessarily for any fault of their own, they're born into a state of poverty, are driven that they have to be part of something.

52:12And older kids bring them, this is classic grooming now, right, it's called poverty grooming. him. And from a young age, there were guys that would get a kid in for a chicken meal deal for like, you know, he's there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,£5 or£10 a box of chicken every day. By the end of the week, they come at him, you owe me 50 quid. Kid ain't got 50 quid. We owe you 50 quid. I can't go and tell my mum that. All right. You got them, right? It's as cheap as that. Then it's a pair of trainers and And this pair of trainers is the price, well, can you hold on to this gun? And then it's a track suit.

52:51And a track suit is the price of, here's a G-pack of drugs. Take this phone and you've got a line. And a kid now has grown into something and nothing about it. They're putting themselves at risk and they're cannon fodder, right? But don't just look at it even on that level. I look at companies like Nike, companies like Adidas, who are producing trainers, producing T-shirts, producing tracksuits, the kids, this stuff's getting groomed and they're buying it with money they haven't even got to try to show off. They're going to JD Sports and they've got to wear this, they've got to wear that. And kids are getting robbed for these things as well, by the way, if they walk through the wrong estate, right?

53:31They should be going up and turning around and saying, we're going to go and we're going to give 1 ,000 tracksuits away to kids on the estates that do these courses, these courses to better themselves, these courses in sand, media, electronics, brickland, building. Give something back to reward them for doing the right thing rather than let people who are going to bring them to do the wrong thing take your products and use them to do bad things in. That's why it breaks my heart is that people don't step in, right, and think these are our kids. Regardless of being white or black, they are stuck in a poverty situation where there's nothing for them, okay?

54:15And unless we're prepared to be brave about it and accept, well, the government's not going to do anything to help them, why don't we turn and say, if we can make these kids a bit more civilised and bring these kids into a bit more compassionate and respect the area a little bit more, not because if someone walks in you want to chop their head off, but you can welcome them coming into the area like we did as kids, yeah, that's when we see change, Liam. And it sounds like a big thing, but I started it in prison. and we started something called One Postcode. Seeing the kids coming in, and every minute the bell was going off.

54:51A friend of mine, a very well-known armed robber, a man by the name of Clifford Hobbs, we called him Mumbles. He was an escapeeater in prison. You know, he was a double-cut-A prisoner, white fella, six years older than me. He was like, and what is going on? Why are these kids doing this? We went to the governor and said, look, this is madness. This can be stopped. You've opened doors to problems the system cannot deal with, okay? And you haven't got solutions to the problems. Let us get some of these guys together who are coming in from the dispersal system, who are lifers, who are all gangbangers, who we know, and let's bring them in first.

55:29Let's deal with their problems because they themselves haven't been properly, you know, understand what their issues are. And let's get them to meet out these problems. So when the kids were coming in through the first night centre, We're sending them down now to call them out and say, look, don't tell us you're not in a gang because you are. I'm not a screw because no screw is going to tell the police. You're going to go to court. You get found guilty. That's aggravating facts. That's another three years. Let us know because you're going to put it on a different wing. Then we're going to, within a week, have a sit down between two more senior people from those areas, like things used to happen in the old days, and we'll squash the beef while you're in here.

56:08They're going to do life sentence, most of these kids anyway. Once it's squashed, it's squashed, right? What it means is it's a safer environment for people visiting the prison. It means you haven't got a restraining resource on the prison by having three officers having to walk around with one person every day they leave their cell, okay? It's a safer environment in terms of the officers are not going to get caught up in the middle of this. It's a safer environment of the people who are in that prison for whatever he's locked up in that prison for. or maybe he ain't paid his tax, maybe he ain't paid his television licence.

56:41I don't know. He can walk around without a fear of getting cut with a razor from a gang-lain problem. So a simple solution to a problem, the truth of the matter is, these kids don't want to – they didn't want to go and kill anyone and certainly not serve a life sentence. They don't want to kill themselves. They got sucked into something at a young age, and it's too late once you're on that road. So when you offer opportunity to say, look, without losing face, we can squash that beef. The deal is, the minute you fuck up, but you attack someone in there or you do anything, what will happen is you're out of that list, you're out of the programme, and when you get sentenced, you will probably end up in dispersal.

57:20You will end up in dispersal, where everyone in there is a murderer. Everyone in there would hesitate to wipe you out, right? And that's a different world altogether. And, of course, it was a massive success. It went without saying. At that point, I realised it worked. I myself went up the road. I got sent into dispersal systems, even for being that, because I made my bed, I had to lay in it. I'd done too much to the system to aggravate them, to piss them off, and there was always this guy who was aggravating character. I was going to have to pay the price. But I'm a big man. I expect that, and you deal with it.

57:59That's occupational hazard of being a criminal. Yeah, you're going to get time at some point. It's what it is. Just get on there and deal with it. But what I'd done was, earlier on, I thought, I'm a clue finder. I'm an earner. So what can I do with the next six years of my life? And it was like, I'm going to fucking learn this because 10 ,000 learning hours is what makes you an expert authority on the subject. If I'm in here, 24 hours a day, I'm active 10 hours a day in the fucking prison from the day that door pops open. if I put seven or eight hours in a day for the next three and a half years, I'd come out, I'm an expert authority in the subject.

58:38So I'd done, I would have got myself a job in every single different department at that prison, right? From resettlement to healthcare to becoming a listener. And I worked my way through all the different activity hubs, right? And I'd done that and I moved myself from a category prisoner to the stages of category B prisoner to a category C prisoner. down to a category D prisoner over time. The minute I walked out of that prison, I wasn't going with a begging bowl. I went and became an expert authority. I could sit across the table tomorrow morning with the Minister of Government for prisons and I could tell him what he doesn't know because I've lived experience he ain't.

59:18Yeah, I've been and I've done time. I know all the different things in a prison, where the flaws are, what doesn't work and why it doesn't work. Now, these are the kind of people that should be working in the prison system, not the people that get a little chub change every now and again because some of the lads are good lads. They set up a little charity, a little CIC. They've got a great idea they leave prison with and they've got an impact and effect. But who gets the contracts for new prisons? I'll tell you, three companies. Sodexo, G4X and Serco, right? And part of their remit is to go, oh, we're going to bring in some small charities and they're going to give you a tiny little break of bread, okay?

1:00:01The smallest amount of money they can give you just to say that they fitted this social corporate responsibility as a big company. But they should be giving these smaller organisations a slice of the cake because these ones will go in deep. If you get shot with a gun tomorrow morning, don't put a plaster on the wound. You need a surgeon to go in and remove that bullet. What they're trying to do is patch a bullet hole with a plaster, yeah? And it can't be done. So prisons are in a terrible state, worse than you could even possibly imagine. Explain the state of prisons in the UK at the moment. Prisons in its reality.

1:00:37In its reality, it is staggering. And when I say staggering, overcrazing is one issue. But the fact of the matter is people are not given the opportunity to rehabilitate. Right? They're not given an opportunity to do it because they hardly come out of their cells. Prison officers are paid pittance. Right? And they aren't putting their life online for a job. Okay? You know, if something happens to them, their family are left up shit streak without a paddle. Right? So, and they get, I know what you're waiting to say. Is there a radicalization in prisons? Yes, of course there is. but there's all stuff that goes on in everything, right?

1:01:24And there's a balance to all this stuff, right? So yes, there is a lot of radicalisation. There is a huge Muslim population in prisons but you understand there was a big IRA presence in prisons prior to the Good Friday Agreement. The Muslims that were in prison were treated horrendously in prison, right? So there's patterns of power and things take over. The postcode gangs have pushed it because the conflicts these kids have, they cannot afford to have conflicts with everyone. So if they convert, they are relatively safe from conflict, right? So you call it what it is. That's the reality. But a lot of people do find religion and it does help them.

1:02:09A lot of people don't, right? They do it as convenience. Now, that's plain and simple what it is. And I'll give you another big shock as well. what should they do when someone gets caught with a knife? And everyone's sent to prison for life. Do this, do that. And I'll shock you. Do you know what should happen when a kid gets caught with a knife twice? They should do. National service. I think national service should be brought back, period. The way the youth are now. You have a caveat. They can't go to war because some people don't agree with conflicts that this country go out on, and so do I not agree.

1:02:44some of the places they go, problems they inadvertently create in other people's countries, right? But the fact of the matter is my dad done national service. Lots of people in that generation done national service and they got a trade because people don't realise when you join the Army or the Navy, you can go and get yourself an electrician's trade. You can go and get yourself a trade. You can actually not only get a trade where you can go and get a living for your family and come away from selling drugs or come away from getting involved in street crime, you can actually change your circle of people you're around.

1:03:17You can't go and have a pair of trousers off, I'd end your arse and a baseball bat turn backwards and tell a sergeant major, give me five or spug me, man, because it ain't going to work, because it's discipline. And once they learn discipline, which they will learn because you can't break the army. You can do what you want to please. You can do anything with any other organisation. You cannot do all the armed forces. That's why they're armed forces. But what it'll do is once you turn someone and you change their mindset in a way, actually, I can have value. I can, you know, be of service to myself.

1:03:53They just might say, so actually, I can also be of service to this country. How do you water down a young man's ego? Because I'd imagine a lot of violence and murders are driven by ego. How do you water down a young man's ego? Because it's hard for an older man to put his ego aside, let alone a young guy full of testosterone. There must be a technique because we're going to talk about the AP Foundation as well, because that's like a real honourable thing you've done. So you can kind of merge it into the two. Well, how do you do that? And as I say in my dad, Tom, was saying years ago, you cannot put old head on young shoulders, okay?

1:04:26What happens with people, rehabilitation is age. Most people over a period of years, the older they get, that's their stage of rehabilitation. That's what changes them, okay? Because you lose the fight. You get tired of constantly doing it, the same thing over and over again. You look at life differently. A young person has an ego because particularly now, social media flares it. Social media is one of the biggest problems we have in this country. I get it, free speech and all that, but how it's being used with, you know, rage bait, all these kind of things, that's his sites of violence, all these kids killing each other.

1:05:04Do you think these kids that are doing these videos, and I see them all the time talking about going to stab and kill and murder and maim. And I see it in the old Bailey, the prosecution's playing the video. That's what gets them convicted and gets them a live sentence. Nine times out of ten, they want to be a musician. They actually want to be an artist, but they haven't got a first clue how to enter into that world. No one gives them the help or the guidance how to do it. All these kids who are selling drugs. Listen, Elon Musk once said that 90 % of drug dealers know more than business professors.

1:05:33Fact, okay? Because they're selling products which they can't really advertise on market. They sell out of it all the time, right? They have accounts, restocking. They understand good basic business principle, okay? If you give a young person something to do that engages their interest and it lights up their spark, they will do it. It's a distraction, but you've got to get someone who they admire, somebody they look up to, to do it first. Okay, we look differently at life. We look at it, how did you walk through a minefield? And my answer to that is, look at someone who's walked through it first and follow every single footstep they've done without getting blown up.

1:06:17A young person does, and that person looks at it and says, well, this person has got this, he's got a car, he's got a watch, he's got these things, and they look and do what he wants to do. Nine times out of ten, on the estate, to have those things is a drug dealer. What they don't realise is a successful drug dealer on the street, their idea of success is a relatively all right car. When it's all right car, I'm talking a Bentley or a Rolls Royce, probably a BMW or a Mercedes convertible, reasonably nice watch, a pretty girlfriend and some holiday photographs. That's the extent of his success, okay?

1:06:54When it goes, it all goes. They take the car, they take the bloody watch, the girlfriend goes after a little period of time. The pictures, yeah, they'll stay in your cell for the 10 or 12 years that you're doing, right? But that's the extent of that life. If a geezer woman got a career as a plumber, do you know how much he would achieve in those seven or eight years after he qualifies, does his apprenticeship, he sets up his own business, he gets his house, he gets a mortgage, he gets a car, he gets the wife, he gets stability, he gets a life. These guys really want at the end of it, but it's setting off about it in the wrong way.

1:07:28We need more mentors. We need more people who are prepared to be success stories. We need people who are coming from the face of it. They've been in the, you know, you've had it headed in the lion's mouth and taken it out. You've been there. You can say, I've done all this. I've done it. I've done it bigger than you would ever imagine. And I'd be a success story in that world. But I'm telling you now I'm a failure because it all amounts to nothing. the devastation damage that have caused trying to be that guy is not worth it. So telling you now, if you've got a brain in your bloody head, which you have, why don't you look at doing a business?

1:08:06Why don't you look at, you know, set up a fashion label, which is incredibly glamorous. Why don't you become a record executive? Do it the right way. A photographer I know, he said to me, Andrew, he said, you know what? He said, me and my brother go all over the world. He said, I remember when I was 18 years old, I've got a photo shoot to do with 50 Cent. He said, we're there, all these girls smoking these zoots. He thought, this is the lifestyle that these rappers are dying for and kids are killing themselves for. I'm a photographer. I'm taking photographs. I'm living this life. He's never harmed a person in the world.

1:08:39His life is a camera. There are so many kids with stories to sell and artistic avenues to go down. Okay, we haven't got the first idea what this country has to offer with young people. And these young people do not understand what potential they've got. And unfortunately, we look at people in a very bad way. We look at people first, we judge people before we even get to know people, right? A kid walks with a hoodie, instant thing is, all stuff is a gang member. That could just be fashion, but you don't know and you can't take the chance, right? We need to be a society that we can turn around and say, we are a giving, caring society.

1:09:20We care for young people, regardless of colour, creed, religion. We care for them. If they've got nothing, we'll help provide. But we're going to help. You're going to help yourself because while you're coming off of this hamster wheel of, you know, poverty and negative cycle and it's prison, do you know every£1 spent on rehabilitation, the government saves£6.50 to the taxpayer. Every£100 is worth£650. every 100 ,000, okay, is worth 650 ,000. Every million is worth 6.5 million. Every 100 million is 650 million. That's what it saves the taxpayer if they invest in rehabilitation of people because reoffending costs you, me, the taxpayer, more money than it's possibly imagined.

1:10:16But all we do is say, let's build more prisons, okay, because we're running out of spaces. Let's, you know, well, the hardest sentence thing is called changing because it's not particularly working, but we're not looking at practicality and thinking, actually, we need houses. Big housing problem here. Why don't we look at these kids now and why don't we train these kids to be bricklayers, plasterers, give them all these skill sets? Why don't we say to them, you know what? We want you in this sector, right? Here's a career pathway for you. you're going to build houses to help with the housing shortage problem.

1:10:50And those ones who are in hostels in terms of coming out of prison, those ones who are going to leave prison are going to be homeless, those people who are ex-soldiers are going to be homeless, and all the other problems that we've got, right? What are you trying to say? You know, you're looked at as dregs of society here, right, because you're coming out of prison or you're in prison. Let's give you a trade. Let's give you a skill. And you're actually going to build your own home. And you're going to build homes for future generations. and you're going to be the investment. Maintainance company will be, you know, ex-offenders, who's the plumber, who's the electrician.

1:11:24And you can come out on day release, you can do that, and you can actually service them. We can have decent accommodation. We can have, you know, a system that works rather than very rich people who do actually own all the big contracts and manipulate the contracts because it's all done through government. Don't kid ourselves there. We pretend it's not a monopoly, it's a monopoly, right? And why don't we actually just break it, change it? So I say, to be an entrepreneur or to be successful, don't be ashamed of that. And to have a trade and turn around and say that I can do something, I can build stuff, I can walk and I can see buildings, I can see walls that my dad built.

1:12:03I can see buildings that my grandfather and my great-grandfather built. Do you know how proud that makes me feel when I walk around Eastern London? Well, it was interesting when we was in the green room when you were talking about how proud you are of your roots and which is why you stay exactly where you grew up. And I think that's what the country's lacking. Pride. Pride. But first of all, we have to invest pride in our young people. I like the fact that you're calling out the elders, essentially, to set a better example. You have to. Who's going to change it? Who can change it? No, I agree.

1:12:35Right? If we don't become accountable for ourselves. That's what this is about, what we're doing now. I set up the AP Foundation purely for that purpose. Talk to me about the, you've made my job so easy today. I thank you for that. And it's been interesting. But talk to me about the AP Foundation, because that's real honourable stuff. So AP Foundation, I reflected and thought to myself, this is something I want to do. I've now qualified myself into doing it. And I wanted to be able to make good of some of the terrible things I'd done. I am accountable for all the lives I've destroyed, all the drugs I've brought into this country, all the terrible things that probably happened.

1:13:13A lot of kids have been brought into gangs. Probably a lot of blood on my hands as well, undoubtedly, right? But it's about repairing it. My mother was a community leader, so was my father. They'd done things to rebuild the community. I'd done things that destroyed it. The AP Foundation, to me, was a way of starting to repair some of the damage I had done. It was not only overnight, It was about bringing some good back and changing the system. And I said, the first thing I said is, all these guys that have got these charities, they're going to have it really difficult, and they're going to have problems getting contracts and going into prisons and going into councils.

1:13:48If I could create a legal structure, because I understand businesses, I'm doing business at a very young age, a registered charity and, you know, go out there and utilise some people that I've known from when I'd done legitimate business, you know, If they would put their name to my foundation, it would give me a first step of credibility. And I went out there. You know what I'd done? Donald McIntyre, the journalist, had made a documentary about me in 2007, Cocoon and Coconuts. Probably expected me to get 35 years. I didn't. I asked him if he'd be a trustee on my charity. He did. He accepted. How about that?

1:14:29How about that? I went to another friend. I'd known him for a music industry for many years. He became vice president at Sony, Mervyn Lynn. And I asked him if he'd become a trustee. He agreed as well. And I asked another friend I know. I know his son, Josh Myers, who's an actor. And Martin Myers is a film executive, third generation film executive. He agreed as well. And that was the beginning. And now I have Manisha Nights, who owns MK Law, who's one of the most respected Asian lawyers in the country, an advocate and is invested in changing the way things are, right? I've just recently brought in Andrew Orr, who's the managing director of Tro, which is a huge marketing agency.

1:15:07So people with credibility have all come along and said, do you know what? Yeah, you know, we'll put our name to this because we believe in what you're doing. And people I have around the foundations cause a lot of controversy, you know, And people were like, my God, this person, that person, these people are career criminals. They're in the paper. So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays? Why would I be? Wayfair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready. What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs? My tree has tons of five-star reviews telling me how sturdy it is.

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1:16:31Everyone can change. I'm not saying everyone will change, but example was we had a night exhibition. A friend of mine, Steve and me, came down, done some art. One of the painters of Kenny Noy. We all know the history of Kenny Noy. One of the most talked about characters there is. Constantly put through the, you know, dragged through it with the papers. All right, hasn't got the best history in the world. Man's had two fights, killed two people, right? But the reality is, if you want a story and an example of why not to carry a knife, right there, you've got it. A man spent virtually the majority of his life in prison or on the run as a result of having a weapon, yeah?

1:17:11So if you want to learn from that experience, take it as an experience that don't carry it because it's not to be glamorised as much as the papers, the press and the films want to make it to be. That life is horrible. You've run away from your kids, from your family. You're demonised by the press constantly. One example, you know, and there are numerous ones, you know, Ray Betts, another friend, you know, who obviously was tagged for the Millennium Dome robbery. You know, Ray comes down, he gives his time with the foundation. He talks to young people and says to them, look, you know, this is not the path to go.

1:17:48So all of these guys you talk about, including Kenny Noy, they're all remorseful. All these people, John Tomey, the whole lot of them. People that when they look at them, Clifford Hobbs, it's like, you know, it's a rogue gallery. People are like, but these men are all in their 50s, 60s, 70s, who have been there at the paramount of organised crime as the system sees it. And every one of them has the same message. Crime may pay in the short term. In the long term, it does not pay. the price you pay is your happiness. There is none. You've lost it all. You've lost your kids. You've lost your family.

1:18:26You know, you lose everything. Plus, when you look back at it, and this is one of my memoirs called Empire of Dirt, because we build things in this belief. We're building these great empires and these wonderful things. And it amounts down to dirt. We've built nothing because all we've built is death, destruction, and misery. So back to why I'd done AP Foundation, it was a legacy project for me. So I could at least have something that I could stand proud of my parents and give something back because the worst thing she would want to see, my mum, to know what she went through coming to this country in the 50s, the stuff she put up with, to see those kids who would be the age of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren killing each other on a daily basis fighting against each other, this was not what it was about.

1:19:14it was not meant to happen like this do you know i mean but it's not just specifically that it's the kids of working class families who are born into areas that haven't got the right role models to help them out of it and the role models they're exposed to are the wrong ones and they themselves need guidance a lot of places because a lot of them aspire to be guys like us they're inspiring to be guys like us they're inspiring to be the guy that has this or has that or has done and it's done that. They're not there yet and they'll probably fall off the ladder before they get there and get a life sentence.

1:19:48But even if you're getting there, believe me, it's not worth it because you will fall off the ladder at some point and it's too hard to get back up, especially the further and the higher you get on that ladder. Is this now your destiny? Will you carry on this road forever, do you think, now? Look. Helping turning lives around. How do I see it? We're all here for a reason. my conscience became my guide and it's my reason it's what drives me and it's cliche make the world a better place and all that you know let's all hold hands and you know sing we love the world no it's being practical it's know that you can work out your street door your kids can walk down the road and they feel safe because they're not going to get stabbed by another kid because he's wearing a hoodie it's a place where you know that you can say you're doing something and you know you've made a contribution Do you know what I mean?

1:20:37You're doing something, not just for you anymore, but you're actually giving something back. And that's a great feeling. And it's another police that come and potentially kick your door down at four o 'clock in the morning and drag you out of bed, you know, or you don't know if people, every person that's walking or a car is driving behind you, you're thinking, are they the police? Or are they maybe another organisation that's looking for you to put on a drive and pop out and put one back in your nut? It's not a life that you want to be living anymore when you come to the realisation of it. If you want to carry on doing it, and some people believe me who do want to carry on doing it, but it will end one way.

1:21:11I can promise anyone that. I've seen it. I've seen the ups. I've seen the downs. And when it all comes down to it, you have to make a mark in life that you can be proud. You need to be proud of who you are, of your name, and record history the right way, not the wrong way. And how many years have you been acting in a fashion that's made you proud? How many years have you been giving back for now? Because you know, it's like in a podcast when you've got a 90-minute slot, it could sound like your crimes were last week. But how many years have you been giving back? So the charity has been going on for six years, okay?

1:21:46But I started actually, I would say, you know, a couple of years, three years into my sentence, I started. So 10 years, I've really been, you know, making what I think a positive contribution and planning and charting my way through this. And your legacy? Do you want to be remembered as the man you were or the man you've become? You know the truth of the matter is, I want to be remembered, but remembered by my family. That's all I remember by as Andrew, you know, who, you know, is Mavis LeBron's son, who, you know, he's done right for himself. I don't want to be up there as, oh, this is Andrew Pritchard, yes, AP Foundation, because I knew that by using my name and the notoriety I maybe had, it would help bring in young kids to pay attention and think, hold on, this isn't a government operation now.

1:22:36This guy, we know this guy, this guy, you know what I mean? I've seen this guy on telly, I've seen documentaries, I've seen him flash up on the news, right? So he's real. What he's saying, he's actually done. And that's the value of what my criminal past and notoriety has done. It's given that opportunity to say, this is the Andrew Pritchard Foundation. Okay, so we don't judge people here, do you know what I mean? Because we've all done it and probably done a lot worse than you can imagine when you walk through that door. I think that's got to be the first key in it. No judgment here because we're never going to turn anything around if you feel like you're judged.

1:23:15So my final question to you would be then, if there's a youngster watching this or there's a mum or a dad watching it, and either them or their son is in a gang, he's been sucked in, he's been groomed, he doesn't want to be there. what's the first step he should take to get out? Well, the first thing they should start to do, okay, and it's difficult, very, very hard. The first thing is with parents. Parents should become aware at a very quick stage of their kid might be getting in a gang. And a parent, if a kid has drugs in their house and it's your house, you're responsible as the adult for that.

1:23:52So there's no harm in searching your child's room. If a child's wearing a pair of trainers that cost£200 or£300 of plans and they're not working, there's no question you're thinking something's wrong here. If you see them hanging around with kids who are older than them and it just doesn't quite fit, these are all the early signs. And that's why it's important. Well, what we do is we signpost. So there are organisations we work with and, you know, individuals. You can go onto our website. We run a 24-hour line now. We can give advice. We can signpost. And we can try to direct or at least bring understanding to the parent, okay?

1:24:27because it might not be nothing. The kid might just be, you know, a young person, you know, dressing, listening to certain music, having a certain kind of thing. If a young person is generally at risk, we try to signpost them in a direction that we can get them onto one of our courses, we can drag them away a little bit, bring them into mentoring and assess the situation as best we possibly can. But that is something the government should be doing, right, with small organisations on a major level across the country. Do you think the AP Foundation will ever get a government contract? Probably not after this podcast, it won't.

1:25:00What would your pitch be to them though? Because there's no one that knows rehabilitation like someone that's been rehabilitated. Well, I've done them. You know, we've once won a circle contract for Fosse Way Prison. You know, I've won contracts with big people like Maximus and, you know, NGS and organisations which are the organisations that, you know, kind of are there. But the reality of it is these aren't contracts we need to have. The contracts we need to have is we need to be able to go and bid directly to government and turn and say, we are a circle except there's 50 of us all together as one.

1:25:37And we're all little guys who are all together, but we've got a structure called the foundation that's organised. We've got the people who can handle the account and all the accountability for you, the compliance. We can handle that. but we can get the kids or the guys on the street who will make a difference, that will go in and connect properly and will make a difference. Well, I tell you what, now that I know what you do and where you come from and my audience will, I'm sure there'll be times where we can get back together and talk about actual topics and subject matters that are current that we can maybe make some sense of and give some value back to the audience.

1:26:13So this is a very nice introduction to my audience, to you, and I look forward to the next time we sit down and try and make the world a better place. Thank you. Excuse the cliche. Thank you. Good health, brother. You too. Cheers, mate.

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