“File on 4” – “Taking the Rap”
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION RADIO 4 TRANSCRIPT OF “FILE ON 4” – “TAKING THE RAP” CURRENT AFFAIRS GROUP TRANSMISSION: Tuesday 3rd March 2020 2000 - 2040 REPEAT: Sunday 8th March 2020 1700 - 1740 REPORTER: Livvy Haydock PRODUCER: Oliver Newlan EDITOR: Carl Johnston PROGRAMME NUMBER: 19VQ6259LH0 - 1 - THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. “FILE ON 4” Transmission: Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Repeat: Sunday 8th March 2020 Producer: Oliver Newlan Reporter: Livvy Haydock Editor: Carl Johnston MUSIC ACTUALITY OF SIRENS AMA: He was screaming for help. From the witness accounts and from what the police have told us, he was screaming for help. It was quite secluded as well, so I think it led to him being stabbed more, and from what the witnesses have said, some of the guys were screaming, ‘Wood Green, Wood Green!’ HAYDOCK: Tottenham, North London in the early hours of Saturday, February 3rd, 2018. 22-year-old youth worker Kobi Nelson is ambushed when his Honda Civic is deliberately rammed by a stolen car. ACTUALITY OF POLICE RADIO POLICEMAN: …. Drug dealers and gang members in the vehicle … HAYDOCK: Four or five armed men get out, force him from his vehicle and kick and stab him in a brutal and sustained attack – then leave him for dead. - 2 - HAYDOCK cont: News of the assault is quick to travel on social media. Less than a mile away, Kobi’s cousin Ama is at home scrolling through Snapchat. AMA: I essentially found out on Snapchat, because there was a lot of heart emojis, you know, a lot of people using the heart emoji, and I was just wondering what was going on and I tried to look for Kobi on Snapchat and I couldn’t. He didn’t have any kind of Snap post. I was thinking, hmmm. HAYDOCK: Kobi had managed to call 999 and then alerted his brother Kojo, who was close by. He found Kobi bleeding to death and tried to stem the flow of blood. But when London’s air ambulance arrived, medics did all they could to save him, but he’d lost too much blood and later died. AMA: And then I just see broken heart, broken heart, broken heart, and just as I’m kind of going through people’s posts on Snapchat, and then people were just like, ‘Sorry for your loss, sorry for your loss, sorry for your loss,’ and I’m like, sorry for what loss, you know? And then I receive a call, I get the call that Kobi’s been stabbed, and I was like, what do you mean, Kobi’s been stabbed? MUSIC HAYDOCK: Kobi Nelson was the victim of a long running feud between rival gangs from Tottenham and Wood Green in the London borough of Haringey. It’s a conflict that has claimed the lives of many. But in this episode of File on 4, we’ll focus on one particularly violent ten-week period which left three young people dead, and we’ll reveal for the first time the driving forces behind this tragic chain of events. They include a series of social media posts and a song that catapulted an underground rap artist into the mainstream. MUSIC HAYDOCK: Our story begins three weeks before Kobi’s murder - in a BBC studio in London. A rapper calling himself Headie One from Tottenham has been - 3 - HAYDOCK cont: invited to perform his style of rap music known as drill. It’s a big deal for the young man who grew up on the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham. Headie One’s real name is Irving Adjei. His teenage years were spent playing football and making music. But he was also sent to prison three times. In 2014, he was sentenced to 30 months for possession of nearly £30,000 worth of heroin and cocaine and for carrying a lock knife. A rapper with a criminal past isn’t new and it isn’t surprising, particularly in drill music - a subset of rap which originated in Chicago. Lyrically it can be violent. Songs are littered with references to knives and drive-by shootings and draw on the real-life experiences of the artists involved. According to the London hip hop artist and writer, Novar Flip, Headie One is no different. FLIP: Broadwater Farm is a crazy kind of area. There’s a lot of history there, like the Broadwater Farm riots is a famous incident that happened there a long time ago. There’s a lot of animosity between local residents and the police and with other areas and kind of communities. It’s a hostile place to come up, to be honest. HAYDOCK: Would you say Headie One’s done incredibly well having come from somewhere so tough? FLIP: Yeah. I mean, I would say Headie One has done amazingly well coming up under those circumstances and it’s a beautiful thing for like other people from that area and other surrounding areas to see as an inspiration for what maybe they can do. HAYDOCK: An inspiration to some maybe, but Headie One’s background and associates, together with his growing profile also make him a target. A week before Kobi Nelson’s murder, a video emerges on social media showing the rapper arriving at a halls of residence at Bedfordshire University in Luton with a young woman. EXTRACT FROM VIDEO – WOMAN SCREAMING ‘HEADIE ONE!’ HAYDOCK: The images are shared widely, alerting his enemies to his whereabouts. It’s not long before a gang arrives at the university looking for him. When they find him, the inevitable happens. - 4 - ACTUALITY OF MEN ARGUING HINDS: There’s a number of men approaching him in an aggressive way, they’ve actually backed him up in a corner. He’s reaching into his bag to make it look as though he has some sort of weapon - whether he’s got a weapon or not has never been shown. But the simple fact is he was just trying to really save himself. HAYDOCK: Ken Hinds is deeply entrenched in the Haringey community. He never stops - youth worker, police advisor, gang mediator - he does it all. But he has the respect of the harder to reach boys and girls and young men and women in the area. And he knows who’s who on his patch. ACTUALITY OF VIDEO HAYDOCK: You see him on the floor. HINDS: Yeah, he’s being attacked on the floor being, physically being harmed. He was probably lucky to get away with his life and without life- changing injuries. HAYDOCK: We’ve got Headie One being attacked here. He represents which postcode? HINDS: He represents Tottenham. HAYDOCK: Who were the rivals that are attacking him? HINDS: Wood Green. So it’s N22 versus N17. HAYDOCK: I see. MUSIC - 5 - HAYDOCK: The video of the attack went viral. It was posted on Snapchat and later on YouTube. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times. JOHNNY: It is humiliating, I’ll be honest with you. It would be humiliating for anyone for someone to record you whilst you’re outnumbered and there’s a group of guys. HAYDOCK: This is Johnny from Tottenham. He doesn’t want to be identified by his real name. He’s on his home turf, but he still wears his hoodie over his head so he isn’t recognised. JOHNNY: Just someone recording and talking to you in that sort of manner and that tone, yeah, in front of not only girls and other teachers or whatever, it is degrading in some form, so you will feel hurt by that - any human would, to be honest with you. HAYDOCK: Once that’s been uploaded, it’s going on social media. What is expected from this now? JOHNNY: I could say what would be expected is from this now would be what’s Headie’s reply. HAYDOCK: It wasn’t a question of whether Tottenham would retaliate - but when. Nelson – again not his real name - has lived in Wood Green all his life. He saw the video of the attack and knew what was coming next. NELSON: It was validation, adding fuel to the fire. Seeing clips like that, if you’re from Wood Green, for example, it’s yeah, we’ve got one up. It’s like, as you hear it in their lyrics, it’s, they’re scoring points, they call it, which is so sad. But the impact now, what it would do for like people from Wood Green is it would give them a bit of a straighter back, oomph - to say like, yeah, we’re up by one, da da da da da, and then what’s happened is now is there’s a chain reaction. MUSIC - 6 - HAYDOCK: And there is a chain reaction. The evening after the attack on Headie One was circulated on social media, police were called to an incident in the car park at Wood Green Shopping Centre. Two young men had been shot. Ken Hinds again. HINDS: This one was an attempt to kill, quite clearly. When you shoot someone in the neck, that is intent to cause severe injury or even death. HAYDOCK: Do you think this is a retaliation against what we saw in the Headie One video? HINDS: Well, I can’t say hand on heart. But what I can say is simply that we know that there’s a dispute between the two, so that would lead to me believing there is a link between the two.