Ray Lewis and the battle to fix Britain's broken boys - Telegraph
Ray Lewis and the battle to fix Britain's broken boys
He was supposed to be Boris Johnson's secret weapon in the war on knife crime. Instead, Ray Lewis was forced to resign from his job under a cloud. But his work – taking potentially dangerous young men and turning the into leaders – never stopped. Anthony Horowitz reports
'Maximising potential, developing self-worth and finding a sense of purpose.' So reads the slogan on the annual report that has been sent to me and which could have come from any minor public school in Britain. A group of smiling boys, all of them in suits and two of them holding trophies, stand in front of what looks like either a golf or a tennis tournament.
But already there are anomalies. It's raining and the boys are sheltering under umbrellas that advertise Curzon Global – a major finance group. Their uniforms – dark suits, crisp white shirts and bright yellow ties – don't look right. You'd expect businessmen on a training scheme or perhaps a cricket team that takes itself too seriously to be wearing them rather than this particular bunch of kids. There are no Latin words on the crests on their jackets – just three gold bars which stand for… what? Wealth? Prison? It could be either. One of the objectives set out on the first page of the report is to create the next generation of successful leaders. The other is to keep them out of the criminal justice system.
Let's not beat around the bush. What really stands out in this photograph is that all the boys are black. And what is puzzling is the context. No hoodies. No graffiti. No MP3 players. No face jewellery. No scowls. Add a few of those and you wouldn't look twice. This is my introduction to the Eastside Young Leaders' Academy (EYLA). Its name might not be familiar to you but the name of its creator and full-time director will be.
Ray Lewis was briefly appointed Deputy Mayor for Young People by Boris Johnson on 6 May, 2008. Just two months later he was forced to resign amid a blizzard of allegations relating to financial impropriety, dishonesty and – just for good measure – some slightly sinister but ill-defined accusations from the Church of England.
Academy. It's a rather highfalutin word for the shabby community centre that greets me round the corner from Upton Park. And this is not an attractive part of London either. In fact Newham ranks six out of 354 local authorities for deprivation. On the way from the station I pass halal butchers and Islamic centres. Pound World stands next to Pound Express with Pound Traders opposite. Is there anything here that costs more than a pound?
I finally reach a Victorian school, the sort of building that would have been converted into chic flats in other parts of London. Here it's just been left to rot. A banner reading ONE LOVE COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION hangs above a Portakabin parked beside the main entrance. This, it turns out, is Ray Lewis's office.
I go in. Ray is sitting behind a desk. My first impression is that he is quite small, bullet-shaped and black. He is wearing a grey sweatshirt, tracksuit trousers and Nike trainers and he is talking on the telephone. He talks and talks and talks. Eventually he hangs up and seems to notice me. 'You're Anthony?' he asks. 'Yes,' I tell him. He examines me briefly. 'Come with me,' he says.
He is not exactly bothering to endear himself to me, which is strange because I would have thought he could use some positive publicity after all he has been through. I follow him into the main compound of what is the oldest school building in Newham: it's rented part-time to the academy, which means they can put up no posters or decoration of their own. This is a serious handicap for an institution that puts so much emphasis on personal identity.
We come into a small, square room, painted two hideous shades of brown a long time ago. The paint clings to the wall like some sort of grim treacle. A kitchen – this a bilious yellow – stretches out behind a counter. Ray's three assistants stand waiting at the sides: Ade, Brenda, and Anne Collard, the academy's project manager and, apart from me, the only white face.
Forty boys are sitting at tables. They range in age from eight to about 16 and in height from tiny to menacing. They are in normal street gear and I'm rather drawn by one T-shirt with a Warner Brothers logo. It reads: 'If you see da police. Warn a brother!' Attendance today is low. It's the first day of 'term'. Normally there would be 70 of them crammed into this room and they would be in uniform. The boys come here every Saturday and four days a week after school. 'Gentlemen, be upstanding please,' Ray says. And as one, they allget to their feet. I slide behind the counter and try to keep out of sight. I'm not quite sure what to expect.
And what follows is 40 minutes of theatre so extraordinary that if I had scripted it for a television drama, I couldn't have done a better job. Ray is a brilliant performer. He is funny, dirty, uncompromising, authoritarian, passionate, serious, rude and quite staggeringly politically incorrect, moving chameleon-like between the different personalities so that it's impossible to pin him down. I scribble to keep pace and these are his exact words.
'I am going to tell you what my expectations are of you,' he begins. His voice is deep and though not loud, it carries. 'And if you do not live up to them, you will regret it. Your eyes should be looking at me, boy. Feet on the ground, please.' This without pausing for breath. 'It's been a while since I saw you and some of you are looking uglier. There's nothing I can do about that. Some of you… I don't even know your blasted names.' Someone mutters something. 'Who was that?' he snaps. Silence. 'I asked a question. I'm not waiting for an answer.'
Eventually, the interruption is sorted out. 'I was extremely hurt by your exam results,' he continues. 'Milo f---ed up. He had the talent for a great future and he thought PlayStation was more important. Well, this year I'm going to be up your a--- more than you know. Some of you older boys may think p-ssy is more important than physics. That won't get you a job. That won't get you a future…' He turns round and snaps at a nine-year-old who has adopted a laid-back pose. 'Close your legs, boy. You're not in a whorehouse.'
He continues. 'The white man will give you nothing. You have to work twice as hard. There's a package holiday waiting for you beginning with HM something. But you've got 11 years to prepare for a two-hour exam. How f---ing hard can that be?'
What are you thinking, reading this? It may sound crude and even threatening but you have to be there to get it. Ray is inspirational. He is talking to these boys in their own language and it's obvious from the start that he's connecting. Maybe, to an extent, he is playing to the gallery, to me – but a short while later he has the boys marching on the spot and although the immediate aim is discipline, it soon becomes more like dancing. Then Ray turns it into a game. The boys must do exactly the opposite of what he tells them – be it marching, wheeling, standing, falling to the floor – and soon everyone is howling with laughter and I am completely forgotten.
The academy does sometimes break out of these four walls. Over the summer, some of the boys have been to the Isle of Wight on a sailing holiday, the boys paying a nominal £20 with the rest taken care of by sponsors. In the past there have been trips to Jamaica. They have done community work at a local hospice – Richard House ('They were great, a really eager bunch of boys. The scheme seemed excellent,' Rachel Powers, its director of human resources, told me). In addition, there are football matches and visits to businesses such as Ford Motors and Morgan Stanley. During the week, the boys are given extra tuition in a range of school subjects. But they are also taught manners, presentation and, above all, self-worth.
The basic idea is to provide structure and support to boys who lack it, the majority of whom are without fathers and are referred to the academy by head teachers who see them drifting towards exclusion… or worse. Newham is full of gangs waiting to suck in kids like these. The E13 Brigade. Razor Boys. The Paki Panthers. In this part of London, you can get killed just forstepping into the wrong postcode.
'Some of the boys we work with are very dangerous,' Ray tells me later. 'They're disruptive.' One of them, Jason, has just been charged with murder. 'We were one of the few people who could reach him,' Ray laments. 'The boys come here when they are eight. I wish we could take them at two-and-a-half months.'
It's perhaps not surprising that Ray Lewis himself came from a broken home. His father, who came to Britain from Guyana, walked out on the family when he was five. His mother brought him and his two brothers up in a council house in Brixton. Both of his brothers have been in prison and Ray himself was only saved by an English teacher, Miss Archer, who recognised something in him and gave his life the direction it needed. He studied theology at Middlesex University and worked in the prison service. Then, one day, he happened to see an interview on – of all things – The Oprah Winfrey Show. This introduced him to a young leaders' academy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He quit the prison service, flew out and invested £20,000 of his own money, importing their methods to the UK.
06-07-08, 03:11 PM
