Vendor interview: Trolley
How long have you been selling the magazine for?
About two and a bit years. A little bit more, maybe?
And what got you into it? How did you hear about it?
I knew a guy up in Highbury. He was one of the first people I saw with it, and I remember him saying to me one day, “The one thing it's done for me, is give me self-belief and self-esteem”….. People look down their nose at most people and treat them pretty bad and I’ve always been confident in myself, I suppose, but I come from quite a brutal background, so I’m always one for explaining myself which isn't great, you shouldn't have to explain yourself so much.
So do you find the magazine useful for you?
Yeah, I think it's brilliant.
Do you get bother from anyone for selling the newspaper?
Well, I get a few people thinking that you know, they can tell me about myself, but like I say, I’m very efficient and confident with anything, me…
I understand we need a police force to an extent, until we come up with a better idea. Barcelona was brilliant [Editor note: referencing the anarchist revolution in 1936]. The whole bartering system when they were hemmed in by Franco. But it didn't work in the long run because half of the people were snakes. The Communist Party were complete snakes. They sold everybody down the line. And they all get lined up and shot dead… But yeah, until we come up with a better idea, we need police. But just because we need police, it doesn't mean that people have to look at them like they're any more important than us.…
I watched my brothers being murdered when I was seven years of age in my bedroom. I spent 20 years having a thing called night-terrors. Waking myself up screaming every night. I'm now past all that, I've dealt with it all, you know, but life's hard, you know what I mean?
You seem to know a lot about anarchism, are you an anarchist, would you say?
Well, you know, listen, I always want everybody to feel the love, but no one to take the piss. I've been involved in all sorts of political things. The Martin Foran campaign, he was framed by the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad for armed robbery. The Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four. I've been involved in lots of things because I don't think injustice is a good thing, and I think people have to be called to answer for what they do wrong in life.
[Editor’s note: referencing the poll tax protests] I've done lots of different things that day. I didn't do a violent act, not a single one…. McDonald's will remember me forever, but none of the staff felt endangered any time. I had them all laughing, you know. I mean, even the M11 link road protest, the whole community was destroyed just for a three-and-a-half-mile piece of road. On the street I lived on, Claremont Road, there was an 83-year-old woman who had lived there most of her life, and they took her away to put her in an old people's home. Eight months later, I'm driving a milk float with her body on the back to bury her. Because it destroyed her, taking her community away from her. But I'll tell you, the government won’t ever forget how hard it was for them to do their thing.
If you could change one thing tomorrow about the world, what would it be?
I would want everybody to understand that everybody should have the right to have a house.
DOPE Magazine is free for anyone who wants to sell it in the street.
Photos: Emil Lombardo
Your £3/month subscription is used to print 30 copies per issue, worth £90 for our vendors. We went from 1000 copies per issue in 2018 to roughly 40,000 per issue in 2025. The only thing stopping us doing more is money. With your support we can go even further. Help us print and distribute more copies for free to anyone who wants to sell it by becoming a monthly subscriber.