Barrow town centre drinkers tell their message from the bottle

I have to admit this was a learning experience with my long time comrade Ellis Butcher who for some strange reason our jobs have coincided throughout my career since I started in Barrow in 1992. We had to learn what the street drinkers had experienced and Ellis got “taxed” for his lighter.

It was a learning experience as you need to have the confidence to approach anybody when you are working on a story and you should always expect the unexpected. This is how it was used in the paper:

The seats near the market on Barrow’s Dalton Road have been the home to Barrow’s daily boozers for years.

The council removed the seats to try to get of the problem but now the drinkers have found a new home just yards away.

‘The Office’, as they call it, is a nearby supermarket doorway and the men say they are here to stay. Reporter ELLIS BUTCHER spoke to them about life on the streets.

“YOU’RE working, I’m not,” slurred Jek, the 32-year-old Scot as he stuffed my lighter into his jacket pocket.

“You’re not getting it back, you can afford another,” he hissed bitterly.

“Oh no, he hasn’t bumped you has he?” groaned the self-appointed spokesman for the winos, Dennis Vance.

“Give the lad his lighter back,” he said, clutching a three-litre bottle of Gaymers Old English to his chest.

Jek was adamant. “He does that to us all you know, we’ve all been bumped,” Dennis assured me.

This was my introduction to life on Barrows street’s – don’t trust anyone. Cigarettes are the currency you want to get these people to talk. And I was eight down with a lighter to boot.

They now congregate in the side doorway of Dalton Road’s Kwik Save, which they have affectionately nicknamed The Office.

They ve all got mean haircuts and are dressed heavily in several layers of clothes.

Stagger

A few drinks in them and they re wearing intimidating scowls like ugly Halloween masks as they stagger on and off the pavement.

Shoppers pass by and either stare in disgust or act as if the men are not even there. Letters to the Evening Mail, from “taxpayers” have seethed with resentment.

Dennis Vance. 44, of no fixed abode, is the group’s leader and self-styled street philosopher.

Although he has been drinking half the day his articulacy is surprising. “The minority are being picked on by the majority – live and let live,” he says.

Earlier this year, JJ, one of the regulars, died unexpectedly. All the men talk about him with great affection.

“People said in their letters that we shouldn’t have bought flowers for JJ because we are on the social, and the dole, and we should have bought meals with the money. How much does a meal cost compared to respect?

“We went up to his grave today because it’s his birthday.”

He takes a long swig of cider.

“We are the down-trodden members of society because some people have got places to live and places to go — we haven’t,” he explains.

I comment on how cold it is getting Tony O’Hara, 32, looks at me and laughs. “This isn’t cold. Me and Denny slept in Coronation Gardens the other night — now that was cold.”

“Do you drink every day?” I ask. “Every minute,” grins Tony.

Dennis knows all about going to bed under the stars. Last year while napping in his sleeping bag in barrow park. two youths attacked him and broke his jaw in four places.

“I’m a nomad, born in Ormsgill,” he says proudly. “I have been to lots of different towns and places but you’ve got to settle somewhere.

“The community wants to get rid of winos; people that drink, but they don’t realise head. I’m a huggable sort of bloke really.

“I’ve worked at Vickers five times, we’ve all worked before. A man likes a drink. everyone likes a drink – now where’s the crime in that?” says Dennis, ending another one of my questions with one of his own.

“We have had our scuffles with other people but anything that has gone on has never happened because they didn’t deserve it,” he says.

“The seats were used for old age pensioners and for people to sit down when they have done their shopping — where can they sit now,” he booms.

Jek, the scot tries to wrestle Dennis’s bottle from his grasp. At that moment two women draw to in a white F-Reg Fiesta and run over Jek’s foot.

Jek staggers around to the driver’s side hurling abuse at the woman.

“Now that’s the sort of punishment we have to put up with.” says Dennis shaking his head.

Jek joined the drinkers six months ago. He is the most inebriated of the lot and his speech is difficult to decipher. “Drinking Is an Iliness but people treat it as a disease.” he splutters.

I can see what he means. His lips are blood red and hang open in a stupor, his eyes are cloudy, and his eyes are cloudy and his skin has a grey, withered pallor.

Trouble

“Some of us have got wives and kids.” he says trying to balance himself. “We don’t want to see them end up the same way.

“We don’t cause any trouble. Windows are being kicked-in, there’s fighting outside nightclubs but we get blamed.”

June McCulloch, of Longway, Barrow, is a friend of the drunks. She met them when her car broke down and they offered to give her a push.

“Dennis stayed at my house for ages after he had his jaw broke. He’s intelligent house-clean, and very well mannered. But people don’t give this lot a chance.”

Dennis has the last word: “Is it society that has makes us like this or is it our own fault? I’m lucky. Ive got friends that help me. Most of them are worth more than Barrow council is put together.”

From the North West Evening Mail on the November 3, 1993.