LETTER FROM TEL CURRIE -  09 January 2007

So for our great friend Charlie Bronson yet another Christmas and New Year slip by in maximum security. Chaz phoned me over Christmas and was his upbeat, hilariously funny best. It's a total waste of time and energy for any fool who tries to break this mans spirit, they simply will not succeed.

Charlie Bronson has so many legitimate business opportunities to take advantage of if he were free it's mind blowing. The criminal days are over for him, he's been there, done that and anyone who knows him will tell you he is not one to live in the past. Chaz would be in demand, he would lead a nice, busy legit life. Something tells me though that the faceless, gutless, cowardly but ultimately powerful public school boy mob don't want this. They will do what they always do, make him criminally bankrupt and hope to whatever God they kneel to (or bend over for) that he will be forced back into crime. This has happened to many of my friends so I am not fantasizing just to vent anger, this my friends is what they do.

Please do not be fooled, rehabilitation is not a priority, in fact it is a transparent myth. Revenge is the order of the day. Again, please do not think the often over used word 'society' includes us. 'Society' does not include the working classes, 'society' means the upper classes or toffs. You will not find a judge or the like from Peckham! A threat to 'society' means a threat to the rich and powerful NOT us. I'm genuinely sad to say that men like Charlie and Ronnie Biggs are the victims of a clash of classes. My dear friend and great man Charlie Richardson received twenty years for GBH, the train robbers received thirty years for an unarmed robbery of surplus bank notes, the Kray's received thirty years for the murder of Cornell and Mcvitie or so the story goes. Or, did Charlie receive thirty years for his (legitimate) involvement with the South African government?

Did the train robbers receive a ridiculous thirty years because it rocked a government still licking it wounds from the Profumo scandal when Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies brought down a government much to the monumental embarrassment of the upper classes. Were the sentences of the Great Train robbers and Charlie Richardson actually a result of upper class veiled venom?

Which do you think judges, politicians and the like would be more worried about, the Kray killing's of two fellow gangster's or the complete embarrassment of the Lord Boothby affair dubbed 'The Peer and the Gangster'?

"So what is your point you rambling fool?" I hear you cry.

My point is that the same underhand political or upper class motives are working in the case of Charlie Bronson. The fact he shouldn't be in there anymore is the reason he has so much support from us normal folk; he is famous because supporters have brought his cause to general public attention. You don't become a well known prisoner unless you have huge support. Charlie, to the great fear and trepidation of the 'toffs', is actually popular!

The same thing happened with Reg Kray ... and the toffs shit themselves! Unfortunately, when the faceless, gutless, hooray Henry's are worried they do not adopt the help of courage, they do the obvious and cowardly. Only an act of courage would of released Reg Kray after thirty two years in prison (he was sentenced to thirty and was a dying man anyway when brave Jack Straw released him.) Only an act of courage from the upper classes would release a sick old man called Ronnie Biggs and only an act of courage would release Charlie Bronson who has actually done more for children's charities than many a millionaire. Alas, no courage was forthcoming ... are you surprised?

I find it hard to swallow that a government who needlessly and shamelessly can kill good men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan and lie repeatedly to us, the ordinary, non silver spoon folk about why this slaughter is occurring. We cannot win that war, we never could, they knew that all along, the word 'Vietnam' haunted their thoughts before they even tagged along on Bushe's war on terror. Yet, good people are still being killed daily. A frightening thought then that those people who commit these young folk to their deaths can turn around and declare Charlie Bronson 'dangerous' Warlords are telling people that a man who committed an unarmed robbery over forty years ago is a threat to society ... who's society?

This is why our friend Charlie Bronson is still incarcerated because those at the top are scared. They are scared because he is popular, they are scared because we working class folk are NOT scared. When they are scared and we are not, the only option they have is to try and MAKE us scared. Newspapers, TV ... All propaganda. Joseph Goebbells would be proud of what they have turned the likes of Charlie Bronson and Ronnie Biggs into.

We must never be taken in by the propaganda. Keep supporting Charlie Bronson... And we may just be rewarded by an act of courage.

RESPECT,
TEL CURRIE