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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the

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Speaker 1: very worst people in all of history. And this week

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Speaker 1: we are talking about Peter Rockman, who is the namesake

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Speaker 1: of the term Rockmanism, which is a recognized real word

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Speaker 1: for a shitty landlord. Here to talk about this shitty

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Speaker 1: landlord is a Kevin Foster. I didn't know what a

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Speaker 1: comparison to make there. I guess you're a renter? I

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Speaker 1: assume you're not a shitty renter. I don't see holes

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Speaker 1: in your wall.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with the prostitutes from the first episode. That's right.

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Speaker 1: Prostitute solidarity.

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Speaker 3: Very pro-sex worker on this podcast.

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Speaker 1: And West Indian immigrants. And also poor demobilized Polish soldiers

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Speaker 1: trying to get by up to a point.

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Speaker 2: Does this... I've been wondering this the whole time. Who

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Speaker 2: is Dennis Rockman, and does he have anything to do

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Speaker 2: with this?

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Speaker 3: No.

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Speaker 1: I don't know who Dennis.

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Speaker 2: That's good. Is that not a... That's not a famous person?

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Speaker 1: Are you talking about Dennis Rodman? The basketball guy? Oh, shit.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, no.

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Speaker 1: That's a very different guy.

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Speaker 2: I failed.

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Speaker 1: That's a very different guy.

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Speaker 3: I've never been more disappointed in you.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry.

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Speaker 1: Dennis Rodman was like the bad boy of basketball in

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Speaker 1: like the 90s. Yeah. Gotcha.

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Speaker 2: Like, See, that's pre-me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: Don't tell me that. Don't tell me that, Kevin.

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Speaker 3: Fuck off, Kevin.

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Speaker 1: With your youth. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry.

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Speaker 1: Your knees don't hurt.

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Speaker 3: Your back doesn't hurt. You still know how to feel joy.

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Speaker 2: Well, I don't know about that.

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Speaker 1: He is a renter, Sophie.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I am a renter. I am about to lose

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Speaker 2: my health.

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Speaker 3: There you go.

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Speaker 2: Here's the question. Robert, is he.

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Speaker 3: Uh, has he seen enough that you would let me

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Speaker 3: play Landslide for him in the car?

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Speaker 1: No, no, no.

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Speaker 3: Would you let Kevin listen to Landslide is my question.

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to stop anyone from listening to Landslide,

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Speaker 1: but I don't know that you need it in your

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Speaker 1: life at that age.

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Speaker 2: What is Landslide? Wait, the book?

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Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac song. No, it's a Fleetwood Mac song about

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Speaker 1: how getting older sucks.

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Speaker 2: I have listened to the book, Lancelot.

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Speaker 1: Most Fleetwood Mac songs are either about how awesome cocaine

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Speaker 1: or cheating is, but this one is about how the

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Speaker 1: passage of time is a brutal and cruel demon.

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Speaker 3: Anyways, Kevin, what's your sub stack for those who are.

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Speaker 2: My sub stack is called Last Week in Hell.

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Speaker 3: Where I feel I am right now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Terrible.

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Speaker 2: But sort of in the name, I guess I do

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Speaker 2: Portland politics and also national stuff. Sometimes I talk about

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Speaker 2: all the horrible things happening, and then sometimes I talk

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Speaker 2: about people doing cool things. And yeah, I enjoy it.

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Speaker 1: I do feel like a deeper understanding of Fleetwood Mac

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Speaker 1: will be useful for understanding Portland politics, because Fleetwood Mac

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Speaker 1: was essentially one large dysfunctional polycule, and Portland is essentially

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Speaker 1: several large dysfunctional polycules.

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Speaker 2: Gotcha.

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Speaker 3: I have.

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Speaker 2: I've listened to Elliot Smith. I know that person.

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Speaker 1: I think he did nearly as much cocaine as Fleetwood Mac,

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Speaker 1: but no one did.

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Speaker 3: No one did.

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Speaker 1: No one did.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: No one did. Scarface didn't.

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Speaker 2: Not even Stephen King.

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Speaker 3: Robert, go to the script while I, you know.

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Speaker 1: You know who's not as cool as cocaine or Fleetwood Mac? Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe as cool as cocaine. Peter Rockman. That's more or

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Speaker 1: less a good entry way back into this story.

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Speaker 2: Hell yeah.

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Speaker 1: So on June 22nd, 1948, right around the same time

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Speaker 1: that Peter Rockman was demobilized and became a civilian, a

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Speaker 1: boat named the HMT Empire Windrush brought the first large

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Speaker 1: group of Caribbean immigrants to England's shores. This had been

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Speaker 1: precipitated by the British Nationality Act of 1948, which quite

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Speaker 1: reasonably made the people who lived in the empire's remaining

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Speaker 1: colonies British citizens. This spurred a shitload of people from

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Speaker 1: the West Indies to move to the UK looking for

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Speaker 1: a better life. Unfortunately, the UK is not an easy

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Speaker 1: place to live. It's not like moving to the US

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Speaker 1: in the late 40s, right? Like you're going to encounter

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Speaker 1: racism in either place, but at least there's money in

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Speaker 1: the States.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Britain's still rationing. You still can't buy more than a

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Speaker 1: certain amount of like meat or whatever at one time.

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Speaker 1: Like you get ration tickets and stuff up and through

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Speaker 1: like the 50s. Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Things are rough there. And so when these people get

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Speaker 1: off the boat to the UK, they are not going

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Speaker 1: to have a I mean, no, not that immigrants in

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Speaker 1: the US had an easy time of it, but it's

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Speaker 1: going to be even harder. Right. Because it's just harder

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Speaker 1: in England at this point in time. These immigrants from

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Speaker 1: what's called the West Indies, right, the Caribbean, become known

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Speaker 1: as the Windrush Generation. And these are the people who

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Speaker 1: are going to make Peter Rockman a rich man. So

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Speaker 1: it's relevant that like the year he demobilizes is when

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Speaker 1: the Windrush docks and the first chunk of these immigrants

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Speaker 1: who are going to become known as the Windrush Generation

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Speaker 1: kind of make their way into British shores.

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Speaker 2: Why is it called the Windrush?

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Speaker 1: Because that's the name of the boat that the first

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Speaker 1: of them come on is the HMS Empire Windrush, right?

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Speaker 1: So they call everyone after that the Windrush generation, even

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Speaker 1: though I presume it's other boats who are bringing most

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Speaker 1: of the other people. And these people are going to

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Speaker 1: make Peter Rockman a very rich man. Now, the British government,

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Speaker 1: in all of its wisdom, had finally agreed to do

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Speaker 1: the right thing by letting these subjects of the crown

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Speaker 1: be citizens. but they follow that up by failing to

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Speaker 1: plan at all for their arrival in the country. So

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Speaker 1: parliament does the good thing of like, well, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: got to let these people be British if they want

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Speaker 1: to be British, but they don't like take any actions

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Speaker 1: to prepare for their arrival. They don't do anything to

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Speaker 1: make sure there's like places for these people to live.

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Speaker 1: They make no effort whatsoever to give a shit about

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Speaker 1: the consequences of this decision.

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Speaker 2: This is like Reagan's amnesty in the 80s and just

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Speaker 2: being like, oh yeah, we just, It's actually about capitalism,

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Speaker 2: but it's still very divorced from where we are now anyways.

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Speaker 1: We want a lot of cheap workers, and we absolutely

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Speaker 1: are not going to think about any other aspect of

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Speaker 1: their lives or needs. And again, as I said, the

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Speaker 1: UK is still living with wartime rationing for a big

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Speaker 1: chunk of this period. Food rationing continues in England in

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Speaker 1: some form until 1954, right? So again, this would have

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Speaker 1: started 39 or 40. I forget exactly when they start rationing.

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Speaker 1: And it doesn't fully end until the mid-50s for an

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Speaker 1: idea of how different the post-war is in England to

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Speaker 1: the United States. And as I established last episode, there's

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Speaker 1: no fucking housing, right? So you add tens of thousands

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Speaker 1: of new non-white immigrants to a country where nobody has

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Speaker 1: enough housing and people are poor and don't have enough food.

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Speaker 1: It's not hard to predict how a lot of white

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Speaker 1: Britons were going to respond with racism, xenophobia, and eventually violence.

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Speaker 1: In the immediate aftermath of the Windrush docking, 11 labor

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Speaker 1: MPs signed a letter asking the prime minister to stop

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Speaker 1: the arrival of colored people. This is labor doing this,

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Speaker 1: by the way. Not that the conservatives are any better,

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Speaker 1: but like for an idea of where the vibes are at.

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Speaker 2: This is just way too close to like some of

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Speaker 2: the stuff happening today.

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Speaker 1: Time's a flat circle. So nothing is, the prime minister

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Speaker 1: doesn't do anything to stop these people, which is good,

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Speaker 1: but again, also doesn't do anything to help them. By

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Speaker 1: the mid-1960s, the situation had gotten so bad that conservative

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Speaker 1: parliamentary candidate Peter Griffiths used the slogan, if you want

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Speaker 1: an N-word for a neighbor, vote labor, as his campaign slogan.

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Speaker 1: This is like, yeah, things are bad. Jesus Christ, man.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't use the term N-word.

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Speaker 3: Even for that time period.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty bad.

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Speaker 3: That's pretty rough, bro.

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Speaker 2: Damn. Jesus, sir. Yeah, I mean, I guess how... Like

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Speaker 2: compared to the U.S., where were they at on the,

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Speaker 2: I mean, he didn't use the.

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Speaker 1: The U.K.? I mean, he did use, he did use.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Hard R is my understanding.

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Speaker 2: Very bad.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that it's. The U.K. The racism levels

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Speaker 1: seem like they're pretty similar, but there is more to

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Speaker 1: go around in the U.S. And there's more space, right? Yeah.

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Speaker 1: which again, I don't want to like minimize the difficulties

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Speaker 1: non-white immigrants face in the United States. It's just, you

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Speaker 1: have to add on to the difficulties that they would

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Speaker 1: have faced here. The fact that in England, there's not

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Speaker 1: enough food or housing for it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. They didn't have, like you said, half the money

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Speaker 2: in the world.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Exactly.

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Speaker 1: So just even worse.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: You can get an idea of how difficult it was

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Speaker 1: for non-white Britons to find accommodations by looking at this

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Speaker 1: 1950 selection of housing ads that from the Kensington News

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Speaker 1: and West London Times, curated by Neil Root for his book, Slumlord.

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Speaker 1: And I'll just read a couple of them. The Netflix

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Speaker 1: people can see that it just looks like newspaper text,

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Speaker 1: but double and single rooms, well-furnished and newly decorated, cooking

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Speaker 1: facilities in all rooms, use of bath and telephone, double

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Speaker 1: from three pounds, seven shillings, single from two pounds, 10

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Speaker 1: shillings weekly, inclusive light linen service, Europeans only. What do

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Speaker 1: you think that means? Europeans only. Another ad just reads,

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Speaker 1: no color. Another ad reads, English business people only. Another

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Speaker 1: ad says, professional people preferred, no colored. And then the

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Speaker 1: last ad says, professional people preferred, no colored. Right? So

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Speaker 1: this is just like the norm. You would also see

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Speaker 1: no Irish in this time, too, in quite a few

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Speaker 1: room listing ads in London. But less common, as this shows,

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Speaker 1: than just no colored.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, if you were wondering before.

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Speaker 1: Professional people preferred.

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Speaker 3: Where the UK stood at this time. I think we

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Speaker 3: got our answer.

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Speaker 1: It's not great. It's not great.

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Speaker 3: Boy, howdy. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: As I said last episode, Peter Rockman was definitively not

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Speaker 1: a racist. At least he's not motivated by racism against

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Speaker 1: other people. But he has no problem using racism as

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Speaker 1: a weapon against them if it makes him money, right?

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Speaker 1: And he doesn't really care what his use of racism

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Speaker 1: against these white people to make more money is. does

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Speaker 1: to the attitudes that white people have towards these non-white immigrants, right?

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Speaker 1: And the fact that that's only going to make the

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Speaker 1: conflict worse, right? And through the rest of the 1950s,

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Speaker 1: it is going to make the conflict worse. After he

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Speaker 1: successfully pushed his former tenants to leave his first property

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Speaker 1: by moving in non-white tenants, Peter realized that London was

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Speaker 1: full to bursting with homes that he could buy for

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Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. Because they're filled with rent-protected tenants and investors

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Speaker 1: feel like there's no real chance to profit off them.

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Speaker 1: So the people who own them are looking to offload

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Speaker 1: these houses and apartment buildings or whatever from whatever the

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Speaker 1: fuck they can. And Rockman realizes that like, well, one

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Speaker 1: thing that consistently pushes white people to break their leases

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Speaker 1: is having black neighbors, right? So he starts to realize

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Speaker 1: this is a reproducible business strategy that I can use

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Speaker 1: to make a shitload of money. Historian Gary Powell writes

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Speaker 1: that by 1956, Rockman had acquired some 30 properties in

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Speaker 1: the Notting Hill area of West London. Quote, many of

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Speaker 1: them run down or derelict. Powell adds, Rockman saw an opportunity,

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Speaker 1: devising a plan that he ruthlessly implemented. If he could

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Speaker 1: force out the existing tenants, he could move in Afro-Caribbean immigrants,

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Speaker 1: who at the time were having great difficulty in finding

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Speaker 1: accommodation in the London area at much higher rents. Rockman,

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Speaker 1: whilst portraying a solicitous nature to the media, a man

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Speaker 1: who was an immigrant himself providing rental accommodation to those

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Speaker 1: in need, was using severe tactics to remove existing tenants.

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Speaker 1: These tactics included the moving of prostitutes into adjacent overcrowded flats,

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Speaker 1: hiring local thugs such as Michael DeFritas, a.k.a. Michael X,

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Speaker 1: to harass the tenants with violence and threats of violence,

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Speaker 1: the playing of loud music, and even the killing of

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Speaker 1: domestic pets. The war of attrition continued with the cutting

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Speaker 1: off of electricity supplies and making the bedsits insecure by

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Speaker 1: removing door locks. We're not going to talk a lot

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Speaker 1: about him, but one of his main enforcers is this guy,

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Speaker 1: Michael DeFritas, Michael X, who is.

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Speaker 2: Like- I want to talk about him. That sounds very interesting.

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Speaker 1: He's like the British Malcolm X in some ways, but

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Speaker 1: a lot uglier. He's going to get executed for murder

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Speaker 1: when he gets returned to Jamaica because he definitely kills

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Speaker 1: some people. Jesus. He's a he's a complicated guy.

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Speaker 2: That that was just I just need to feel like

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Speaker 2: I need to pause for a second. That was just

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Speaker 2: a row of horrible.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Like executing people's pets.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Sometimes they're killing pets. Sometimes it's like threats of violence.

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Speaker 1: You're moving in these guys that either look like or

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Speaker 1: just straight up are basically criminals in order to, like,

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Speaker 1: scare these people into leaving there so that you can

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Speaker 1: fill it. And you're charging– by the way, as he's

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Speaker 1: moving in these Afro-Caribbean immigrants, he's charging them higher rents

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Speaker 1: than the white people had been paying. So again, while

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Speaker 1: they are grateful, he's also fleecing them, right? Like this

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Speaker 1: is not at all a kindness of his heart sort

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Speaker 1: of thing.

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Speaker 2: Doesn't this make you feel like the AI price-fixing people

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Speaker 2: are just like– they're not– they're really like uncreative people?

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Speaker 2: By Rockman's standards.

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Speaker 1: So, so much lazier, right? At least this is, he's

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Speaker 1: putting in elbow grease, right?

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Speaker 2: I'm grateful for that.

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Speaker 1: He's got to kill people's pets. He's got to meet

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Speaker 1: all of these like sketchy, like musicians that he can

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Speaker 1: move into apartments to like scare people. He's got, you know,

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Speaker 1: he's got to put in work. He's got to build

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Speaker 1: like a crew of toughs who are willing to beat

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Speaker 1: the shit out of people for him. That takes effort.

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Speaker 1: It's a lot more respectable than the AI price fixing stuff.

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Speaker 2: I think. How big is his empire getting at this point?

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Speaker 1: He's got like 30-something properties in Notting Hill at this point.

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Speaker 2: In time, right?

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Speaker 3: Gotcha.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know. All of these stories may not

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Speaker 1: be true, right? And there's some room to like, well,

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Speaker 1: is he moving in prostitutes as a tactic? Or does

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Speaker 1: he just really love prostitutes and like finding houses for them?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: There's some interpretation there. After Rockman's death, some of his

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Speaker 1: former muscle wound up in court and discussed what they

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Speaker 1: had done for their boss. One man, Rondell, talked in

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Speaker 1: detail about how large Alsatian dogs owned by another Rockman

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Speaker 1: employee were commonly used to terrify tenants. Quote, As well

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Speaker 1: as Rockman, a man called Raymond Nash was concerned in

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Speaker 1: the properties. Nash used to run brothels in the Earl's

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Speaker 1: Court area and was connected with various clubs.

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Speaker 2: This could be like a Guy Ritchie movie.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, these guys are kind of Guy Ritchie characters. He

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Speaker 1: makes a friend who has a bunch of huge dogs

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Speaker 1: so he can scare the shit out of people with them.

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Speaker 1: He's hiring these former heavyweight boxers because they're scary, right?

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Speaker 1: You can intimidate people into leaving. This guy can punch

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Speaker 1: you to death. I should also note that an article

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Speaker 1: in the UK Mirror described Fred Rondell as a, quote,

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Speaker 1: mentally unstable man who had a penchant for biting off

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Speaker 1: people's ears. This is another one of his stuff. Like

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Speaker 1: he's he's got he's bitten off so many ears that

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Speaker 1: decades later, the news is like this guy loved biting

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Speaker 1: off ears. Couldn't get enough of it.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 1: Real Mike Tyson type. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's great. I mean, these are just some great characters.

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Speaker 1: Another quote from that Mirror article, Rondell once sued his

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Speaker 1: defense barrister, his defense lawyer, for negligence and took umbrage

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Speaker 1: at claims that he had used a knife to inflict injuries.

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Speaker 1: He insisted he had actually used his hands and teeth,

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Speaker 1: clearly a point of professional pride for him. I don't

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Speaker 1: need a knife! It was more Australian, but you get

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Speaker 1: what I'm saying.

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Speaker 3: What the fuck was that?

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Speaker 1: That's wild.

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Speaker 3: Usually your accents aren't that bad, Robert.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true, Sophie. But I do

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Speaker 1: love the idea of a guy who's like, wait a second,

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Speaker 1: you think I stabbed those people? I bit them. Excuse me,

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Speaker 1: I'm the ear biter. I don't use a knife.

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Speaker 2: All I can think of is like the ratatouille guy

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Speaker 2: with the thumb.

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Speaker 3: I thought of Iron Mike Tyson.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, fair enough. That's honestly very respectable to be like, look,

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Speaker 1: I know that I'm admitting to a crime in court,

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Speaker 1: but I will not let this slander stand. I bit

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Speaker 1: those people. I did not stab them.

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Speaker 2: Well, maybe you could get his... Can you get your charges?

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Speaker 1: If I'm the judge, I would have let him off

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Speaker 1: entirely at that. I'd be a terrible judge. I am

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Speaker 1: a judge, but I'm a bad one.

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Speaker 2: You're a judge?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, technically in New Mexico.

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Speaker 2: Cool.

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Speaker 3: That exact scenario reminds me of Cardi B when she

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Speaker 3: was in court in August 22-5. They were trying to

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Speaker 3: get her to say that she had called somebody fat.

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Speaker 3: And she was like, I didn't call the security guard fat.

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Speaker 3: I called her a bitch. And that's the exact thing

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Speaker 3: that popped into my mind.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Fair enough.

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Speaker 3: I didn't do that. I bit the guy. I'm like, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: fair enough.

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Speaker 2: Put some respect on my name.

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Speaker 1: It's like a drug dude being like, I wasn't selling fentanyl.

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Speaker 1: I test my shit. Excuse me.

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Speaker 3: Excuse me.

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Speaker 1: This is pure Yale.

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Speaker 3: How dare you?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So today, Rockman's Defenders, and he does have some, will

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Speaker 1: point out that he was very popular with a lot

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Speaker 1: of black and brown Britons, in large part because he's

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Speaker 1: one of the only people who was willing to rent

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Speaker 1: them homes. As Carol Phillips wrote for that New York

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Speaker 1: Review of Books article, this so-called slumlord was regarded by

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Speaker 1: many in the newly arrived immigrant community as something of

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Speaker 1: a godsend. Speaking about Rockman a few years after his death,

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Speaker 1: a West Indian social worker whose job during the 1950s

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Speaker 1: had been to meet West Indians off the boat train

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Speaker 1: was clear in his assessment of him. To the West Indian,

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Speaker 1: he was a savior and people still have a lot

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Speaker 1: of respect for him, right? And this does seem to

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Speaker 1: be true. You can find a lot of positive quotes,

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Speaker 1: although you can also find he evicted West Indian people

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Speaker 1: for not payment. He would threaten them too. He's not– again,

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Speaker 1: I don't think he's actually a good guy, but you

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Speaker 1: can see how people's attitude of him would be like,

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Speaker 1: this guy's our savior, right?

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Because they just have no one in their corner at all, right?

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Speaker 1: The fact that this scummy landlord is at least willing

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Speaker 1: to do business with them is better– the best deal

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Speaker 1: they're getting. Yeah. And, you know, it is worth knowing

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Speaker 1: that while he was not a bigot, Rockman only saw

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Speaker 1: these people as a source of money. And when they

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Speaker 1: couldn't pay, he had no issue with being brutal. A

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Speaker 1: little earlier, I read you a quote that listed Peter Rahn,

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Speaker 1: a former heavyweight wrestling champion, as one of Rockman's thugs.

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Speaker 1: In 1963, Rahn spoke to the press. I was introduced

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Speaker 1: to Rockman about six years ago through one of his

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00:18:40,300 --> 00:18:43,360
Speaker 1: rent collectors. The original deal he had in mind fell through,

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Speaker 1: but Rockman asked if I would be his bodyguard. Then

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Speaker 1: he asked me to recruit a squad of men who

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Speaker 1: would throw out any of his tenants whom he wanted

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Speaker 1: to get rid of. Perhaps they were not paying their

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Speaker 1: rents promptly. I got together this squad, and the first

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Speaker 1: job we did was to throw out all of the

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Speaker 1: occupants of a house on Westburn Park Road. There were

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Speaker 1: about 15 people in this house, all colored. Six of

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Speaker 1: us got there at about 10 a.m. and stormed the house.

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Speaker 1: We rushed in like a band of thugs. We went

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Speaker 1: through every room, removing all the tenants and every bit

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Speaker 1: of their furniture. We had to jostle them on a bit.

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Speaker 1: All their cases and furniture we piled up on the

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Speaker 1: pavement and we left them there. My squad were used

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Speaker 1: to throwing people out of five or six houses. Jesus.

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Speaker 1: So he's not a friend to these people, right?

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Speaker 2: Are there like a lot of these stories? Like, do

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Speaker 2: you feel like there's certain things where he's.

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Speaker 1: Again, Ron's saying it wasn't weird for them to do

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Speaker 1: five or six houses sometimes in a day, you know?

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Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Ron also noted how differently he treated white people that

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Speaker 1: he wanted to evict. For instance, at one point, Rockman

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Speaker 1: decided to push an elderly white couple out of their

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Speaker 1: rent-controlled home, which he'd purchased. Rather than send in thugs,

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Speaker 1: he sent in a painter who only worked nights. Quote,

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Speaker 1: trampling on their bed, keeping the light on, and sloshing

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Speaker 1: paint all over the place. This went on until, in desperation,

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Speaker 1: the old couple moved out, right? And that's not nice either,

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Speaker 1: but you can see he's treating the white people differently.

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00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:03,030
Speaker 1: Because he knows, if I send thugs to these elderly

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Speaker 1: white people and they go to the news, that might

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00:20:05,230 --> 00:20:06,830
Speaker 1: bring some shit down on me, right?

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00:20:06,850 --> 00:20:06,929
Speaker 2: Yeah.

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00:20:07,359 --> 00:20:09,340
Speaker 1: If I have my thugs beat up or threaten or

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Speaker 1: force out like a black family, no one's going to

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00:20:11,980 --> 00:20:15,470
Speaker 1: give a shit, right? So he's using different tactics. Again,

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00:20:15,490 --> 00:20:18,450
Speaker 1: because he recognized– and I don't think he's more brutal

443
00:20:18,609 --> 00:20:21,350
Speaker 1: to the non-white tenants because he's racist. I think he's

444
00:20:21,390 --> 00:20:23,629
Speaker 1: more brutal because he knows he can get away with it, right?

445
00:20:24,010 --> 00:20:25,859
Speaker 1: It's all about money to him, right?

446
00:20:25,890 --> 00:20:28,020
Speaker 2: He's a very conniving bastard.

447
00:20:28,619 --> 00:20:32,439
Speaker 1: Yeah. He's a guy who– I think, you know, you

448
00:20:32,480 --> 00:20:34,420
Speaker 1: could maybe assume part of this is just the things

449
00:20:34,460 --> 00:20:36,790
Speaker 1: he had to learn to do in order to survive

450
00:20:37,990 --> 00:20:41,850
Speaker 1: maybe made him willing to be harsher to people than

451
00:20:41,910 --> 00:20:42,910
Speaker 1: he otherwise would have been.

452
00:20:43,250 --> 00:20:43,490
Speaker 2: Right.

453
00:20:43,609 --> 00:20:46,690
Speaker 1: Like you have to think that after an upbringing and

454
00:20:46,970 --> 00:20:50,520
Speaker 1: young adulthood like he had. something like having a squad

455
00:20:50,540 --> 00:20:52,550
Speaker 1: of goons force a family out of their home does

456
00:20:52,609 --> 00:20:54,169
Speaker 1: not seem near. Well, I'm not killing them.

457
00:20:54,690 --> 00:20:54,910
Speaker 3: Right.

458
00:20:54,930 --> 00:20:55,929
Speaker 1: I'm not starving them.

459
00:20:56,290 --> 00:20:56,510
Speaker 3: Right.

460
00:20:56,650 --> 00:20:58,910
Speaker 1: I had worse shit done to me. I can imagine

461
00:20:58,930 --> 00:21:01,130
Speaker 1: that being part of his like justification for this.

462
00:21:01,290 --> 00:21:01,530
Speaker 3: Right.

463
00:21:01,590 --> 00:21:04,629
Speaker 2: Especially after coming from, it seems like he grew up

464
00:21:04,690 --> 00:21:10,080
Speaker 2: in like a relatively safe affluent ish, like going to

465
00:21:10,119 --> 00:21:12,800
Speaker 2: be a dentist going to, and then it's just having

466
00:21:12,880 --> 00:21:15,420
Speaker 2: everything like that completely taken away from you. And you,

467
00:21:15,520 --> 00:21:18,740
Speaker 2: and then you end up being the, the drug and,

468
00:21:19,460 --> 00:21:21,119
Speaker 2: slinger for the british.

469
00:21:20,940 --> 00:21:26,619
Speaker 1: Army right right yeah coffee slinger yeah yeah um so

470
00:21:26,680 --> 00:21:29,800
Speaker 1: there is another ron story worth telling uh that i'll

471
00:21:29,820 --> 00:21:32,879
Speaker 1: quote from here quote another couple complained that their windows

472
00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:35,719
Speaker 1: did not fit properly rockman sent someone to take out

473
00:21:35,740 --> 00:21:37,900
Speaker 1: the windows but they didn't fit new windows in their

474
00:21:37,940 --> 00:21:40,030
Speaker 1: place this was in the middle of winter and not

475
00:21:40,070 --> 00:21:42,590
Speaker 1: surprisingly the old couple couldn't stand the cold and they

476
00:21:42,609 --> 00:21:45,330
Speaker 1: were moved out by relatives That's not a nice thing

477
00:21:45,369 --> 00:21:48,910
Speaker 1: to do either, right? Freezing elderly people in the dead

478
00:21:48,930 --> 00:21:51,770
Speaker 1: of a British winter, London winter, out of their home.

479
00:21:52,250 --> 00:21:55,060
Speaker 1: Not nice. But you know who would never do that?

480
00:21:55,710 --> 00:22:00,419
Speaker 1: I can't actually say that. Blue Apron certainly would. But

481
00:22:00,440 --> 00:22:11,410
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe not the other sponsors. And we're back.

482
00:22:12,109 --> 00:22:14,770
Speaker 1: Throughout the course of the late 50s and early 60s,

483
00:22:14,890 --> 00:22:18,070
Speaker 1: Peter Rockman gave a masterclass on the truth that you

484
00:22:18,109 --> 00:22:21,090
Speaker 1: can be a gigantic piece of shit without being much

485
00:22:21,130 --> 00:22:25,610
Speaker 1: of a bigot. Rand described his boss's oft-expressed ideology this way.

486
00:22:26,130 --> 00:22:29,030
Speaker 1: His philosophy in life amounted to this. Everybody can be

487
00:22:29,090 --> 00:22:31,530
Speaker 1: bought for a price. He boasted that he could always

488
00:22:31,590 --> 00:22:35,110
Speaker 1: buy off anyone who might create difficulties. Police, council officials,

489
00:22:35,170 --> 00:22:39,270
Speaker 1: as he attempted with the local politician Donald Chesworth. Property surveyors.

490
00:22:39,310 --> 00:22:41,310
Speaker 1: He claimed that he had all the protection he needed

491
00:22:41,350 --> 00:22:43,350
Speaker 1: in high places, but he had a great fear of

492
00:22:43,410 --> 00:22:46,949
Speaker 1: being exposed by a newspaper or in parliament, right? And

493
00:22:46,990 --> 00:22:49,540
Speaker 1: that's why he's being kind of like more cautious with

494
00:22:49,760 --> 00:22:51,480
Speaker 1: some of these older white couples is he really doesn't

495
00:22:51,500 --> 00:22:54,280
Speaker 1: want to wind up in the paper, right? And so

496
00:22:54,840 --> 00:22:57,199
Speaker 1: he's playing on like the racism of the British media.

497
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:00,439
Speaker 1: We're like, well, nobody's going to do a story on

498
00:23:00,460 --> 00:23:04,240
Speaker 1: these West Indian immigrants who are unhappy with me, right?

499
00:23:04,300 --> 00:23:06,530
Speaker 1: Like that's not going to happen. And if it does,

500
00:23:06,550 --> 00:23:08,689
Speaker 1: I have more who are happy with me, right, that

501
00:23:08,730 --> 00:23:11,250
Speaker 1: I can put in front of a newspaper man or

502
00:23:11,270 --> 00:23:14,500
Speaker 1: something like that, right? He's very cautious, and he doesn't

503
00:23:14,580 --> 00:23:17,060
Speaker 1: attract a lot of media attention during his life, so

504
00:23:17,100 --> 00:23:19,820
Speaker 1: he's very good at this. Like, he knows how far

505
00:23:19,900 --> 00:23:24,670
Speaker 1: he can and can't go, it seems, as a rule. Yeah.

506
00:23:24,830 --> 00:23:28,109
Speaker 1: Root writes that Peter only ever gave one interview to

507
00:23:28,130 --> 00:23:31,700
Speaker 1: the media in 1958. This is after the Empire News

508
00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 1: and Sunday Chronicle published an investigation to immigration in London.

509
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 1: Rockman gave an answer in this interview that did indeed

510
00:23:38,270 --> 00:23:41,570
Speaker 1: make him sound like a decent, even enlightened man. The

511
00:23:41,609 --> 00:23:44,450
Speaker 1: Rockman in this interview sounds like a much nicer man

512
00:23:44,470 --> 00:23:47,629
Speaker 1: than he was in real life. I find colored people

513
00:23:47,710 --> 00:23:50,020
Speaker 1: good tenants. Of course they have no references, so I

514
00:23:50,060 --> 00:23:51,500
Speaker 1: go on what I think of them. I work on

515
00:23:51,540 --> 00:23:53,540
Speaker 1: the principle that the first man who calls for a

516
00:23:53,580 --> 00:23:55,850
Speaker 1: flat gets it, whether he is white or colored. Some

517
00:23:55,869 --> 00:23:57,869
Speaker 1: people say I work a color bar in reverse, that

518
00:23:57,910 --> 00:24:00,090
Speaker 1: I prefer West Indians, but it isn't true. I take

519
00:24:00,130 --> 00:24:02,449
Speaker 1: people as they come. Mind you, some white people do

520
00:24:02,510 --> 00:24:04,409
Speaker 1: object to the colored people when they move in. They

521
00:24:04,430 --> 00:24:06,590
Speaker 1: don't like the way they play jazz records up to

522
00:24:06,590 --> 00:24:08,590
Speaker 1: 1 a.m. and always play loudly. So when they come

523
00:24:08,609 --> 00:24:10,390
Speaker 1: to me and say they are unhappy, I help them

524
00:24:10,430 --> 00:24:14,379
Speaker 1: find another home. That's how he frames what he's doing.

525
00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:18,500
Speaker 2: He feels like a subprime lone dude. Yeah.

526
00:24:21,430 --> 00:24:23,969
Speaker 1: And again, you can also see he's perfectly willing to

527
00:24:24,130 --> 00:24:27,720
Speaker 1: stoke some of those racial divisions. He knows that these

528
00:24:27,780 --> 00:24:30,780
Speaker 1: people aren't naturally always up playing jazz at 1 a.m.

529
00:24:30,859 --> 00:24:34,490
Speaker 1: He's asking them to, to force these other tenants out.

530
00:24:34,890 --> 00:24:36,690
Speaker 1: He's telling them, I'll give you a break on rent

531
00:24:36,850 --> 00:24:40,050
Speaker 1: if you play your music super late at night to

532
00:24:40,090 --> 00:24:43,120
Speaker 1: make these other assholes leave. Like, he is the one

533
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:44,800
Speaker 1: doing that. And he's like, oh, it's just how these

534
00:24:44,820 --> 00:24:47,320
Speaker 1: people are, you know? And sometimes when people don't like it,

535
00:24:47,340 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 1: I help them find a new place, you know?

536
00:24:48,820 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 2: It's like, if I can, you know, maybe I can

537
00:24:51,060 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 2: accept some level of like bad things happening in the world.

538
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:56,540
Speaker 2: But I'm like, you know, like, why can't we have

539
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 2: people who are like, I'll kick them out and then

540
00:24:58,300 --> 00:25:02,380
Speaker 2: I'll give like a good rent to the immigrants. It's

541
00:25:02,420 --> 00:25:04,610
Speaker 2: always like, no, no, no, I have to, yeah.

542
00:25:05,180 --> 00:25:06,629
Speaker 1: Off i just i don't think there's a lot of

543
00:25:06,790 --> 00:25:09,109
Speaker 1: altruism in the slum lording business there's not a lot

544
00:25:09,150 --> 00:25:13,210
Speaker 1: of it could use some altruism that would be helpful

545
00:25:13,310 --> 00:25:14,530
Speaker 1: but there's not a lot of it.

546
00:25:17,310 --> 00:25:19,629
Speaker 2: Um it's like if i stoke a bunch of racism

547
00:25:19,670 --> 00:25:24,170
Speaker 2: right now maybe it'll save a million people in 200.

548
00:25:23,150 --> 00:25:25,409
Speaker 1: Years no it's more if i stoke a bunch of

549
00:25:25,470 --> 00:25:27,860
Speaker 1: racism i can make an extra couple hundred pounds this

550
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:32,939
Speaker 1: month yeah so uh Some people did recall him as

551
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:35,800
Speaker 1: a kind and generous man, but even his defenders have

552
00:25:35,820 --> 00:25:38,780
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that he primarily rented to non-white people because

553
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:41,980
Speaker 1: he could charge them higher rents. Per Carol Phillips, quote,

554
00:25:42,290 --> 00:25:44,470
Speaker 1: an unfurnished room that might be rented at one pound

555
00:25:44,510 --> 00:25:46,910
Speaker 1: a week to a rent-controlled tenant could then, in racially

556
00:25:46,950 --> 00:25:49,649
Speaker 1: intolerant Britain, be rented at six pounds a week to

557
00:25:49,690 --> 00:25:52,790
Speaker 1: a West Indian newcomer as furnished accommodation. This is a

558
00:25:53,010 --> 00:25:59,020
Speaker 1: massive profit differential, right? That's why he's doing this. Now,

559
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:02,619
Speaker 1: one of Rockman's peers was the famous Lord Michael Heseltine,

560
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:05,359
Speaker 1: who was an even larger slumlord than Peter during the

561
00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:09,020
Speaker 1: same period, and also, I think, cribbed some of Rockman's tactics.

562
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:13,439
Speaker 1: In his 2000 biography, The Former Conservative MP, because Heseltine,

563
00:26:14,180 --> 00:26:16,879
Speaker 1: after being a slumlord, becomes a member of parliament, he

564
00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:20,260
Speaker 1: shared his recollections about Rockman during this period of time.

565
00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:22,900
Speaker 1: One of his managers had come to view the hotel.

566
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:25,540
Speaker 1: He was selling Rockman a hotel. It so happened that,

567
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:28,139
Speaker 1: having shown him the premises, I was standing outside talking

568
00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:30,720
Speaker 1: to him when a Rolls Royce parked alongside us. The

569
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:33,020
Speaker 1: manager turned to the man behind the wheel, saying, a

570
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:35,930
Speaker 1: little child was killed this morning, Mr. Rockman. She fell

571
00:26:35,970 --> 00:26:38,710
Speaker 1: off the balcony of one of our properties. Rockman's reply

572
00:26:38,750 --> 00:26:42,169
Speaker 1: was brief. Are we insured? Yes. And off he drove.

573
00:26:42,970 --> 00:26:48,859
Speaker 1: So that tells you. Although, Heseltine's also a scumbag and

574
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:51,940
Speaker 1: is one of the guys who's really lying on really

575
00:26:52,450 --> 00:26:56,100
Speaker 1: relies on stoking Rockman's reputation for being a slumlord to

576
00:26:56,130 --> 00:26:57,640
Speaker 1: kind of ignore the fact that he was an even

577
00:26:57,680 --> 00:26:58,700
Speaker 1: bigger slumlord.

578
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:02,639
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like the... Maybe that's true. You don't want

579
00:27:02,660 --> 00:27:05,920
Speaker 2: to be the top of the pyramid in the shithole Olympics.

580
00:27:05,940 --> 00:27:07,810
Speaker 1: You don't want to be the most visible person in

581
00:27:07,830 --> 00:27:08,950
Speaker 1: the pyramid, right?

582
00:27:09,290 --> 00:27:11,890
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did other... Wait, so did other people like make

583
00:27:11,930 --> 00:27:14,100
Speaker 2: it into the press more or was it like....

584
00:27:15,450 --> 00:27:18,189
Speaker 1: This isn't really covered all– this is covered somewhat like

585
00:27:18,230 --> 00:27:20,210
Speaker 1: the immigration thing is, like the fact that all of

586
00:27:20,250 --> 00:27:22,840
Speaker 1: these West Indian immigrants are moving. That is covered a lot,

587
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:25,939
Speaker 1: and the housing crisis is a big deal. Slumlords are

588
00:27:25,980 --> 00:27:28,359
Speaker 1: not getting nearly as much coverage, and Rockman is going

589
00:27:28,380 --> 00:27:30,570
Speaker 1: to be kind of the first one who gets a lot,

590
00:27:30,590 --> 00:27:33,660
Speaker 1: and we'll explain why later. But no, this is not–

591
00:27:33,890 --> 00:27:36,730
Speaker 1: it's just not making the news because, again, most of

592
00:27:37,190 --> 00:27:42,030
Speaker 1: what he's doing is– not super obvious right the people

593
00:27:42,070 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: who like live in his buildings aren't aware rockman is

594
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:48,220
Speaker 1: paying these people to like be obnoxious or sending you

595
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:51,180
Speaker 1: know maybe they're the white people he's not sending goons

596
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:53,980
Speaker 1: after so much as he's doing other shady stuff right

597
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:56,379
Speaker 1: so i think it's just kind of hard for people

598
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 1: to put together and there is a lot of positive

599
00:27:58,540 --> 00:28:00,639
Speaker 1: talk around him too because there's all these people who

600
00:28:00,700 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 1: only have a home because of rockman's properties right yeah

601
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:08,680
Speaker 1: um now The reality is that Peter Rockman was mostly

602
00:28:08,740 --> 00:28:11,900
Speaker 1: notorious during this period of time among the slumlord community,

603
00:28:12,180 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: not because he was a particularly large slumlord. In London,

604
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:19,080
Speaker 1: he was like a medium-sized fish, but he's not one

605
00:28:19,100 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 1: of the biggest, right? But he is super innovative, and

606
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:25,720
Speaker 1: the vast majority of his renters are Black. An investigation

607
00:28:25,760 --> 00:28:29,120
Speaker 1: by Empire News after his death declared him probably London's

608
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:33,130
Speaker 1: largest individual landlord for the colored people. He doesn't advertise

609
00:28:33,290 --> 00:28:35,820
Speaker 1: vacant rooms or flats. The colored people tell each other,

610
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:39,980
Speaker 1: go see Rockman Man. I think that was supposed to

611
00:28:40,020 --> 00:28:42,710
Speaker 1: be kind of a play on the Jamaican stereotypical accent.

612
00:28:42,730 --> 00:28:44,030
Speaker 1: Didn't like that. I can't really tell.

613
00:28:44,380 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 2: Didn't like that.

614
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: I don't know how accurate that is, but that's what

615
00:28:48,380 --> 00:28:50,860
Speaker 1: the papers are writing at the time. Like many of

616
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:54,240
Speaker 1: his peer slumlords, once Rockman cleared out a building, he

617
00:28:54,260 --> 00:28:57,180
Speaker 1: would subdivide it into multiple cramped rooms. So he's not

618
00:28:57,220 --> 00:28:59,660
Speaker 1: just clearing people out. He's like, ah, this isn't one apartment.

619
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 1: This is three. Let's put in some more walls. You know,

620
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:05,280
Speaker 1: we'll stick a table and a couple of chairs in there.

621
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: Bada bing, it's furnished. You know, we're good to go.

622
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:08,220
Speaker 3: Right?

623
00:29:08,500 --> 00:29:09,900
Speaker 1: He's the king of this shit.

624
00:29:10,220 --> 00:29:13,660
Speaker 2: I'm just glad this guy wasn't around for packaging securities.

625
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:18,940
Speaker 1: I'm assuming he's also doing the landlord paint job on everything. Oh, yeah.

626
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:23,340
Speaker 1: You've just got like load bearing layers of paint holding

627
00:29:23,380 --> 00:29:24,760
Speaker 1: the walls up at a certain point.

628
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 2: A little sinks.

629
00:29:27,220 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

630
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:31,330
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, God. By August of 1958, Peter Rockman was

631
00:29:31,390 --> 00:29:34,290
Speaker 1: a force in West London real estate. He'd done as

632
00:29:34,370 --> 00:29:37,030
Speaker 1: much as anyone to move large numbers of non-white people

633
00:29:37,070 --> 00:29:39,430
Speaker 1: into the area. And while that doesn't make what happened

634
00:29:39,470 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: next his forte, fault by any stretch of the imagination,

635
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:45,000
Speaker 1: one must assume that his habit of pitting black tenants

636
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:48,300
Speaker 1: against white ones contributed to the simmering racial unrest in

637
00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:51,140
Speaker 1: Notting Hill. And there's some evidence of that. There's some

638
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:54,690
Speaker 1: reporting that kind of jibes with that. I want to

639
00:29:54,730 --> 00:29:57,530
Speaker 1: quote now from an article titled White Riot by Mark

640
00:29:57,690 --> 00:30:02,080
Speaker 1: Olden and the Independent. Quote, Back in August 1958, Notting

641
00:30:02,100 --> 00:30:04,780
Speaker 1: Hill had been seething with violence all summer. Then the

642
00:30:04,820 --> 00:30:07,660
Speaker 1: West London neighborhood was a place of grimy streets and decrepit,

643
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,660
Speaker 1: overcrowded tenements, a far cry from the chi-chi neighborhood it

644
00:30:10,740 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: is today. The Saturday before the area finally exploded, nine

645
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 1: white youths had embarked on what one of them called

646
00:30:16,370 --> 00:30:20,050
Speaker 1: an inward hunting expedition around Notting Hill. They were armed

647
00:30:20,070 --> 00:30:22,930
Speaker 1: with iron bars, blocks of wood, an air pistol, and

648
00:30:22,970 --> 00:30:25,510
Speaker 1: a knife. By the time they'd finished, five black men

649
00:30:25,530 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: were in the hospital, three in grave condition. Now, bleak

650
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:31,990
Speaker 1: as that is, that's just the start of the Notting

651
00:30:32,030 --> 00:30:36,110
Speaker 1: Hill riot. The next week on Friday, August 29th, a

652
00:30:36,150 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 1: domestic dispute between an interracial couple attracted white passersby, right?

653
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 1: Majbrit Morrison, a Swedish woman, is married to a black

654
00:30:44,520 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 1: man named Raymond who's from Jamaica. And he had had

655
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:50,900
Speaker 1: his window smashed in a previous outburst of racial violence.

656
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:52,640
Speaker 1: And the two of them are arguing on the street

657
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:55,490
Speaker 1: when this crowd of whites descend to defend Majbrit. And

658
00:30:55,510 --> 00:30:57,310
Speaker 1: she's like, I don't want you. Like, I'm dealing with

659
00:30:57,350 --> 00:30:59,290
Speaker 1: my husband. I don't want you guys here. Like, get

660
00:30:59,330 --> 00:31:01,310
Speaker 1: the fuck out. Like, you are not wanted in this.

661
00:31:01,890 --> 00:31:04,470
Speaker 1: But they just start fighting, right? Raymond's friends show up

662
00:31:04,530 --> 00:31:06,630
Speaker 1: and it turns into a brawl and that kind of

663
00:31:06,670 --> 00:31:10,970
Speaker 1: just things escalate from there. Nothing calms down past that point.

664
00:31:11,450 --> 00:31:13,980
Speaker 1: Per an article in The Independent, by the following evening,

665
00:31:14,060 --> 00:31:16,580
Speaker 1: a 200 strong mob were rampaging through the streets of

666
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 1: Notting Hill armed with weapons, including sticks and butcher's knives,

667
00:31:19,420 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 1: shouting down with the inwards and go home, you black bastards.

668
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:27,780
Speaker 1: Three days of rioting followed. And although 108 people were arrested,

669
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:31,220
Speaker 1: no one thankfully was killed. The violence, however, would leave

670
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:34,500
Speaker 1: a last, and they destroy a lot of people's property, right?

671
00:31:34,540 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: This is businesses and homes. They are beating people. This

672
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 1: is a very ugly riot, right? And it's massively influential.

673
00:31:43,460 --> 00:31:45,420
Speaker 1: This is one of the things that really influences Joe

674
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: Strummer of The Clash, right? He sings about this white

675
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:50,420
Speaker 1: riot in one of his songs, right?

676
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:51,290
Speaker 2: Gotcha.

677
00:31:52,140 --> 00:31:56,290
Speaker 1: So this is a very influential moment in the history

678
00:31:56,310 --> 00:31:59,570
Speaker 1: of racial conflict in Great Britain. In an analysis of

679
00:31:59,610 --> 00:32:03,310
Speaker 1: the violence, Emily Cousins noted that one major cause was, quote,

680
00:32:03,650 --> 00:32:07,180
Speaker 1: competition for housing between poor black and white families and

681
00:32:07,260 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 1: tensions that were exploited by ruthless landlords. And again, Rockman's

682
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:13,959
Speaker 1: not the only one. He's not really the largest one,

683
00:32:13,980 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 1: but he's one of the larger ones. And he's probably

684
00:32:16,460 --> 00:32:19,620
Speaker 1: the guy who has innovated the most of the tactics

685
00:32:19,740 --> 00:32:21,860
Speaker 1: that are contributing to this. So he does have a

686
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:26,720
Speaker 1: role in this riot, right? Um, In Slumlord, Neil Root

687
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,030
Speaker 1: lays out how the racial tensions that Rockman and his

688
00:32:29,070 --> 00:32:31,930
Speaker 1: fellow landlords stoked for money helped to feed the growth

689
00:32:31,990 --> 00:32:34,250
Speaker 1: of the British far right as well. That's another thing

690
00:32:34,270 --> 00:32:37,690
Speaker 1: that's happening in this time. Oswald Mosley is back after

691
00:32:37,710 --> 00:32:40,990
Speaker 1: the war. He's free again. He's founded the Union Movement,

692
00:32:41,050 --> 00:32:44,020
Speaker 1: which is the sequel to his old British Union of Fascists.

693
00:32:44,500 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 1: Per Root's book, quote, In an interview with David Frost

694
00:32:47,540 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: on the Frost Program on 15th November 1967, almost a

695
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: decade after the Notting Hill riots, Mosley said that the

696
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: disaffection in Notting Hill and the appeal of his union

697
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:58,640
Speaker 1: movement to summon the area was due to unemployment and

698
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:01,750
Speaker 1: vile housing. There was undoubtedly some truth in this, as

699
00:33:01,810 --> 00:33:05,070
Speaker 1: previously mentioned, and Rockman and his likes certainly exploited the

700
00:33:05,110 --> 00:33:08,290
Speaker 1: very poor housing conditions, but Mosley and his organization were

701
00:33:08,310 --> 00:33:12,030
Speaker 1: also instrumental in consciously and ruthlessly inflaming racial tensions in

702
00:33:12,050 --> 00:33:14,890
Speaker 1: and around Notting Hill for their own ends, which culminated

703
00:33:14,930 --> 00:33:17,710
Speaker 1: in the riots. So again, I want to be accurate

704
00:33:17,730 --> 00:33:21,010
Speaker 1: about Rockman's contributions to the problem without blaming what happened

705
00:33:21,090 --> 00:33:24,870
Speaker 1: on one shady landlord, right? Mosley's crew and other fascist

706
00:33:24,910 --> 00:33:29,800
Speaker 1: organizations like the BNP recruited by complaining about slumlords flooding

707
00:33:29,860 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 1: London with non-white people, right? And that doesn't mean it

708
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: was bad to offer homes to those people, but it

709
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:39,140
Speaker 1: does mean that Rockman's tactics gleefully exploited and in some

710
00:33:39,180 --> 00:33:41,550
Speaker 1: ways incited further race hatred, right?

711
00:33:41,570 --> 00:33:42,150
Speaker 2: Yeah.

712
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: He's making money off of contributing to this problem, right?

713
00:33:47,790 --> 00:33:53,470
Speaker 1: And Mosley and his fellow fascists see these landlords as like, oh, well,

714
00:33:53,490 --> 00:33:55,750
Speaker 1: this is a great thing to campaign on, right?

715
00:33:55,810 --> 00:33:55,990
Speaker 2: Yeah.

716
00:33:56,070 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 1: Is these guys who are changing the character of the neighborhoods, right?

717
00:34:00,140 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 3: Yeah.

718
00:34:01,540 --> 00:34:04,300
Speaker 1: Rockman built doing this into a science, one that was

719
00:34:04,380 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 1: followed by many larger landlords in London. One of these

720
00:34:07,220 --> 00:34:11,060
Speaker 1: guys was Nicholas von Hoogstraten, who laughingly described Peter in

721
00:34:11,100 --> 00:34:14,400
Speaker 1: an interview as more or less small potatoes, right? He

722
00:34:14,420 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 1: was like, well, he wasn't a very big landlord compared

723
00:34:16,580 --> 00:34:18,970
Speaker 1: to me or some of my friends. But we definitely

724
00:34:19,070 --> 00:34:21,250
Speaker 1: took some ideas from him. And one of the ideas

725
00:34:21,290 --> 00:34:24,830
Speaker 1: he took was what he called destating with de-Schwarzers. And

726
00:34:24,850 --> 00:34:27,690
Speaker 1: this is a term he took from Rockman, right? Schwarz

727
00:34:27,810 --> 00:34:32,649
Speaker 1: is a Yiddish term for black. And Rockman popularized using

728
00:34:32,690 --> 00:34:35,010
Speaker 1: it that way, right? The Schwarzers are the black people.

729
00:34:35,510 --> 00:34:39,440
Speaker 1: and de-stating. Stats are legal renters with rent protection. So

730
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: de-stating with de-schwarzers is forcing out legal renters with rent

731
00:34:44,300 --> 00:34:47,899
Speaker 1: protection by moving in Black people, right? Like, that's what

732
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:50,339
Speaker 1: Rockman meant when he would say that. And the fact

733
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:54,170
Speaker 1: that this other, like, larger landlord, von Hoogstraten, used the

734
00:34:54,210 --> 00:34:57,810
Speaker 1: same term that Rockman popularized is evidence of the influence

735
00:34:57,850 --> 00:35:01,950
Speaker 1: that his tactics had among, like, the slumlord community in London. Yeah.

736
00:35:02,430 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 2: I feel like these guys all have, like, Evil names.

737
00:35:06,410 --> 00:35:08,730
Speaker 1: Oh, God, Van Hoogstraten's a real bad one.

738
00:35:09,290 --> 00:35:12,110
Speaker 2: Rockman is like, could kind of go either way. But

739
00:35:12,130 --> 00:35:14,460
Speaker 2: then there was like, what, Hellstein or something?

740
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:18,819
Speaker 1: Oh, Heseltine. Yeah, that's a fucked up name. Yeah. Yeah,

741
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:22,219
Speaker 1: Van Hoogstraten. Even though he derided Rockman as being a

742
00:35:22,300 --> 00:35:25,580
Speaker 1: minor landlord, Hoogstraten admitted, That might have been one of

743
00:35:25,620 --> 00:35:27,580
Speaker 1: the tricks I picked up from him, actually. It would

744
00:35:27,620 --> 00:35:29,859
Speaker 1: have probably been accidental to start with, but once you

745
00:35:29,890 --> 00:35:32,510
Speaker 1: started getting complaints about the black people from your white tenants,

746
00:35:32,550 --> 00:35:34,710
Speaker 1: you'd turn it to your advantage. I used to bring

747
00:35:34,770 --> 00:35:35,770
Speaker 1: in the tenants from hell.

748
00:35:36,330 --> 00:35:36,529
Speaker 2: Right?

749
00:35:36,830 --> 00:35:39,129
Speaker 1: So they're all doing this, you know?

750
00:35:39,150 --> 00:35:43,350
Speaker 2: I mean, I know they're not like... I mean, I'm

751
00:35:43,410 --> 00:35:46,649
Speaker 2: sure some of them are like really bigoted racists, but like... Oh, yeah.

752
00:35:47,030 --> 00:35:48,770
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go to bat for any of them.

753
00:35:48,950 --> 00:35:54,570
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like... Does it really matter? They still suck

754
00:35:54,690 --> 00:35:55,210
Speaker 2: so much.

755
00:35:55,630 --> 00:35:58,450
Speaker 1: And I think that there's I don't know if I'd

756
00:35:58,489 --> 00:36:02,469
Speaker 1: say it's worse, but it's certainly a different equivalent kind

757
00:36:02,510 --> 00:36:05,110
Speaker 1: of evil to not personally be bigoted yourself, but to

758
00:36:05,150 --> 00:36:08,330
Speaker 1: be very happy to use bigotry for your own profit.

759
00:36:08,780 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like necessarily nihilistic, but like it's it's

760
00:36:13,100 --> 00:36:18,140
Speaker 2: there's just being so profit oriented and the I don't know.

761
00:36:18,930 --> 00:36:19,720
Speaker 2: Makes me sad.

762
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 1: To that end, too, again, and this is why I

763
00:36:23,380 --> 00:36:26,100
Speaker 1: actually do have a lot more sympathy and consider him

764
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:29,010
Speaker 1: not as bad a person as these other larger slumlords

765
00:36:29,050 --> 00:36:32,029
Speaker 1: who are sometimes cribbing off of him because there is

766
00:36:32,070 --> 00:36:35,270
Speaker 1: some excuse in his backstory to be a nihilist about things.

767
00:36:35,370 --> 00:36:35,790
Speaker 2: Yeah.

768
00:36:36,130 --> 00:36:36,490
Speaker 1: Right?

769
00:36:37,270 --> 00:36:39,430
Speaker 2: Like, this is a, it's hard not to be a, like,

770
00:36:39,650 --> 00:36:42,470
Speaker 2: completely fucked up and broken person after.

771
00:36:42,550 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 1: You can imagine complaining to this guy about his tactics

772
00:36:45,219 --> 00:36:46,739
Speaker 1: not being, like, fair or ethical. He'd be like, what

773
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:47,700
Speaker 1: the fuck are you talking about?

774
00:36:47,980 --> 00:36:48,580
Speaker 2: Yeah.

775
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:49,980
Speaker 1: Like, do you know what I've been through?

776
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:51,300
Speaker 2: He'd be like, look around.

777
00:36:52,100 --> 00:36:54,380
Speaker 1: Like, the world's built by monsters, man. I don't know

778
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:55,100
Speaker 1: what you want from me.

779
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:55,660
Speaker 2: Yeah.

780
00:36:56,219 --> 00:36:59,819
Speaker 1: Um. By the start of the swingin' 60s, Peter Rockman

781
00:36:59,860 --> 00:37:02,770
Speaker 1: was wealthy. He owned six luxury cars and had a

782
00:37:02,790 --> 00:37:05,489
Speaker 1: string of mistresses, several of whom wound up famous. Two

783
00:37:05,510 --> 00:37:08,970
Speaker 1: of his mistresses were Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies,

784
00:37:09,070 --> 00:37:11,990
Speaker 1: who would gain notoriety for their dalliances with other prominent

785
00:37:12,050 --> 00:37:15,580
Speaker 1: Britons in politics. He started dating Mandy when he was

786
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:19,460
Speaker 1: around 40 and she was 16, which is incredibly gross.

787
00:37:19,900 --> 00:37:24,510
Speaker 1: This was legal! Don't care. But it is pretty gross.

788
00:37:24,910 --> 00:37:27,090
Speaker 1: It's not great. That's a bad age gap.

789
00:37:27,910 --> 00:37:29,810
Speaker 2: He couldn't have stopped at the, like, I got my

790
00:37:29,870 --> 00:37:31,720
Speaker 2: Nazi cars. I got seven of them.

791
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:32,240
Speaker 3: No, no.

792
00:37:32,469 --> 00:37:34,420
Speaker 1: Of course, he's going to date a teenager as soon

793
00:37:34,460 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 1: as he gets money. God. It's from Mandy that we

794
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 1: get some of our most sympathetic accounts of Peter. She

795
00:37:43,140 --> 00:37:47,840
Speaker 1: described him as being, like, just having constant nightmares. Regularly,

796
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:50,020
Speaker 1: he would wake up with night terrors, screaming for his

797
00:37:50,070 --> 00:37:53,330
Speaker 1: mother in his sleep. She also described him bathing multiple

798
00:37:53,350 --> 00:37:56,610
Speaker 1: times a day and slathering himself with huge amounts of cologne,

799
00:37:56,650 --> 00:37:58,290
Speaker 1: which is, again, a holdover from his time in the camp.

800
00:37:58,310 --> 00:38:01,770
Speaker 1: He was terrified of having bad hygiene. I think because

801
00:38:01,790 --> 00:38:03,810
Speaker 1: it had been out of his control for such a

802
00:38:03,830 --> 00:38:07,460
Speaker 1: long period of time. She describes their time together as

803
00:38:07,620 --> 00:38:10,360
Speaker 1: two happy years in which he gave me a mink coat,

804
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:14,170
Speaker 1: three mink jackets, a Persian lamb jacket, three diamond brooches,

805
00:38:14,510 --> 00:38:16,870
Speaker 1: two pairs of diamond and ruby earrings, a big gold

806
00:38:16,910 --> 00:38:19,850
Speaker 1: diamond and ruby watch, two diamond rings, and a jaguar.

807
00:38:20,130 --> 00:38:22,590
Speaker 1: For my 18th birthday, he gave me a thousand pounds

808
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: in cash. My 18th birthday.

809
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:30,980
Speaker 2: Was there anything else or was it just the gifts?

810
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:33,919
Speaker 1: I think it was just the gifts. That's a lot

811
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 1: of gifts for two years. I'll be honest.

812
00:38:36,420 --> 00:38:37,540
Speaker 2: That's true. That's fair.

813
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 1: You can see where the money he's fleecing from these

814
00:38:40,520 --> 00:38:41,500
Speaker 1: immigrants is going.

815
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:43,739
Speaker 2: Did he ever say anything nice?

816
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:49,250
Speaker 1: He must have. She spoke very highly of him for

817
00:38:49,430 --> 00:38:53,930
Speaker 1: decades or years at least after his death, right? Although,

818
00:38:53,969 --> 00:38:56,310
Speaker 1: that said, I wouldn't want that to be the only

819
00:38:56,390 --> 00:39:00,050
Speaker 1: picture of their relationship I give. A 1963 Time article

820
00:39:00,170 --> 00:39:04,009
Speaker 1: profile on Rockman also noted, in October of 1960, he

821
00:39:04,030 --> 00:39:06,379
Speaker 1: set up Mandy Rice Davies in a West End apartment

822
00:39:06,420 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: complete with a two-way bedroom mirror and tape recorder beneath

823
00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:15,690
Speaker 1: the bed. Cool. He told her the two-way mirror had

824
00:39:15,710 --> 00:39:18,180
Speaker 1: been there when he bought the place. I don't think

825
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:22,180
Speaker 1: any slums had two-way mirrors in them when you bought... Like,

826
00:39:22,219 --> 00:39:26,210
Speaker 1: that is an install. You had that put in, Peter.

827
00:39:26,310 --> 00:39:27,890
Speaker 3: That's disgusting, my guy.

828
00:39:28,270 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: Who's running into a two-way mirror in a residential apartment

829
00:39:32,340 --> 00:39:36,399
Speaker 1: ever right pervert i'm sure someone has but.

830
00:39:36,340 --> 00:39:40,060
Speaker 2: It's weird he's lost definitely lost the last of my

831
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 2: sympathies that pedophile child porn.

832
00:39:44,820 --> 00:39:49,819
Speaker 1: Yeah that's pretty upsetting Rockman was also married in 1959

833
00:39:49,820 --> 00:39:52,460
Speaker 1: he's cheating on his wife with this girl to a

834
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 1: woman named Audrey O'Donnell who does not seem to have

835
00:39:54,980 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: been shocked by his constant infidelity she may have been

836
00:39:57,580 --> 00:40:00,100
Speaker 1: this may have been an arrangement they had like where

837
00:40:00,500 --> 00:40:03,460
Speaker 1: she gets you know stuff and he's just gonna fuck

838
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:08,100
Speaker 1: around I don't know yeah how progressive things were going

839
00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:12,440
Speaker 1: well for Peter until November of 1962 and I'll talk

840
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:15,900
Speaker 1: about what happens next but first how about some ads

841
00:40:23,110 --> 00:40:28,660
Speaker 1: And we're back. So in November 1962, Peter goes out

842
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:31,360
Speaker 1: gambling at a London casino. He was a regular attendee

843
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:34,020
Speaker 1: of the Mayfair Casino. I've talked about the Mayfair set

844
00:40:34,140 --> 00:40:37,330
Speaker 1: and its founder on previous episodes here. So he's kind

845
00:40:37,350 --> 00:40:40,770
Speaker 1: of part of that clique, or at least he shows

846
00:40:40,910 --> 00:40:43,310
Speaker 1: up at some of those same events and parties. And

847
00:40:43,330 --> 00:40:45,790
Speaker 1: he's out gambling at a casino when he starts to

848
00:40:45,810 --> 00:40:48,200
Speaker 1: feel sick and he decides to drive home. And I'll

849
00:40:48,219 --> 00:40:51,880
Speaker 1: let Carol Phillips describe what happened next. The bald, corpulent

850
00:40:51,900 --> 00:40:53,819
Speaker 1: man pulled off to the side of the road and,

851
00:40:53,950 --> 00:40:56,509
Speaker 1: sweating heavily, spent some time doubled over the steering wheel.

852
00:40:56,870 --> 00:40:59,090
Speaker 1: After a short while, Rockman felt well enough to complete

853
00:40:59,150 --> 00:41:01,810
Speaker 1: his journey. Once he reached his mock Georgian mansion on

854
00:41:01,910 --> 00:41:05,210
Speaker 1: fashionable Winnington Road, he took to his bed. At 9.45

855
00:41:05,210 --> 00:41:07,970
Speaker 1: the next morning, after a fitful, uncomfortable night, Rockman suffered

856
00:41:08,010 --> 00:41:10,690
Speaker 1: a heart attack and his wife, Audrey, called for an ambulance.

857
00:41:11,090 --> 00:41:14,799
Speaker 1: Rockman was admitted to the Edgeware General Hospital at 4.45 p.m.

858
00:41:15,110 --> 00:41:17,500
Speaker 1: He suffered a second, this time fatal, heart attack. He

859
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:21,569
Speaker 1: was 43 years old. So he's dead now! But this

860
00:41:21,630 --> 00:41:24,590
Speaker 1: is kind of when the Rockman story gets started in public.

861
00:41:24,670 --> 00:41:28,779
Speaker 1: He had no public profile in the news, in higher society.

862
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:32,240
Speaker 1: Outside of the slums, no one really knew who Peter

863
00:41:32,300 --> 00:41:35,620
Speaker 1: Rockman was. Outside of the slums and the slumlord community, right?

864
00:41:36,820 --> 00:41:42,049
Speaker 1: The slumlord community. Yeah, the slumlord community. Peter's death is

865
00:41:42,110 --> 00:41:46,780
Speaker 1: actually what makes him famous. And again- His shadiest tactics

866
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 1: were pretty well known by people on the street by

867
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 1: this point. And I assume a lot of journalists knew

868
00:41:51,390 --> 00:41:54,890
Speaker 1: about them too. I want to say journalists aren't not

869
00:41:54,969 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: reporting on him just because his victims are mostly non-white.

870
00:41:58,420 --> 00:42:01,820
Speaker 1: They're also not reporting on him because Britain has very

871
00:42:01,900 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 1: strong libel laws. And you really don't want to report

872
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:07,090
Speaker 1: about the shady behavior of a living rich man if

873
00:42:07,130 --> 00:42:09,250
Speaker 1: you can avoid it because you can get in a

874
00:42:09,310 --> 00:42:10,970
Speaker 1: lot of trouble over there, right?

875
00:42:11,130 --> 00:42:12,250
Speaker 3: But he's dead.

876
00:42:12,710 --> 00:42:14,770
Speaker 1: But he's dead now, so you can write about him.

877
00:42:15,010 --> 00:42:18,359
Speaker 1: Who's going to fucking sue you, right? And also, this

878
00:42:18,420 --> 00:42:21,960
Speaker 1: is key, all of these tactics that he's doing, as

879
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: I've talked about, his shadier and even wealthier landlord peers

880
00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:27,680
Speaker 1: are doing, often on a larger scale. But those guys

881
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:30,290
Speaker 1: are rich and in many cases like members of the nobility.

882
00:42:30,550 --> 00:42:30,850
Speaker 2: And not dead.

883
00:42:30,870 --> 00:42:32,069
Speaker 1: So you can't write about them.

884
00:42:32,090 --> 00:42:32,669
Speaker 2: And not dead.

885
00:42:32,690 --> 00:42:34,310
Speaker 1: They're going to sue the fuck out of you. This

886
00:42:34,370 --> 00:42:37,150
Speaker 1: guy's dead now. So we can write about the problems

887
00:42:37,310 --> 00:42:40,230
Speaker 1: in like the rental market in London and these shady

888
00:42:40,270 --> 00:42:43,390
Speaker 1: slumlord tactics and blame it all on this guy. Even

889
00:42:43,430 --> 00:42:47,020
Speaker 1: though he was like maybe 15 to 20% of the problem,

890
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: maybe a little more, right? We can pin it all

891
00:42:49,739 --> 00:42:50,000
Speaker 1: on him.

892
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 2: Let's blame it all on the Jewish guy.

893
00:42:51,940 --> 00:42:54,879
Speaker 1: Let's blame it all on the dead Jewish refugee, right?

894
00:42:54,900 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 2: Yeah.

895
00:42:55,760 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what the London press is going to do.

896
00:42:58,860 --> 00:43:01,469
Speaker 3: The bald, what did they describe him as? The bald?

897
00:43:01,770 --> 00:43:03,170
Speaker 1: Bald and corpulent.

898
00:43:03,310 --> 00:43:04,029
Speaker 2: Corpulent.

899
00:43:04,510 --> 00:43:05,050
Speaker 1: Corpulent.

900
00:43:05,410 --> 00:43:06,090
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ.

901
00:43:06,230 --> 00:43:06,790
Speaker 1: Great word.

902
00:43:06,890 --> 00:43:08,310
Speaker 3: Great word, yeah, but.

903
00:43:08,730 --> 00:43:12,029
Speaker 1: So now that Rockman's dead, he can't sue anybody. And

904
00:43:12,070 --> 00:43:14,290
Speaker 1: this presents an opportunity for the press to report on

905
00:43:14,350 --> 00:43:18,879
Speaker 1: his tactics safely. On July 14th, 1963, a magazine called

906
00:43:18,900 --> 00:43:22,299
Speaker 1: the Sunday People published an expose on Rockman. The New

907
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:25,190
Speaker 1: York Times view of books describes it this way. The

908
00:43:25,210 --> 00:43:28,230
Speaker 1: paper identified Rockman as a central figure in an empire

909
00:43:28,310 --> 00:43:32,879
Speaker 1: based on vice, drugs, violence, and blackmail, extortion, and slum landlordism,

910
00:43:33,140 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: the likes of which this country has never seen and

911
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:38,060
Speaker 1: let us hope it never will again. With no fear

912
00:43:38,100 --> 00:43:40,180
Speaker 1: of a libel suit from a dead man, other newspapers

913
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:43,020
Speaker 1: followed and targeted Rockman, although there were plenty of examples

914
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:45,799
Speaker 1: of unscrupulous landlords at work in London. The day after

915
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:48,509
Speaker 1: the Sunday People Splash, the BBC broadcast an episode of

916
00:43:48,550 --> 00:43:52,330
Speaker 1: its flagship investigative program, Panorama, that depicted Rockman as a

917
00:43:52,350 --> 00:43:55,819
Speaker 1: degenerate racketeer in tinted glasses. with a cigar in his

918
00:43:55,880 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 1: mouth and a roll of banknotes in his pocket.

919
00:43:58,940 --> 00:44:00,540
Speaker 2: They're making him look cool now, too?

920
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:03,580
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're making him look kind of cool. This is

921
00:44:03,600 --> 00:44:07,340
Speaker 1: one of the things that's happening in this story, and

922
00:44:07,420 --> 00:44:08,879
Speaker 1: Roots Book does a good job of talking about this.

923
00:44:08,940 --> 00:44:11,400
Speaker 1: This is also kind of the birth of investigative journalism

924
00:44:11,820 --> 00:44:15,920
Speaker 1: in the UK. That had been considered kind of gross.

925
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:18,520
Speaker 1: Journalists weren't supposed to do that sort of work, right?

926
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:22,230
Speaker 1: That's not respectable journalism. And that's changing. And Rockman is

927
00:44:22,450 --> 00:44:25,020
Speaker 1: like one of, some would say the first really big story.

928
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:28,610
Speaker 1: that investigative journalists start sinking their teeth into. This and

929
00:44:28,660 --> 00:44:31,089
Speaker 1: something that happens around this that we're about to get to.

930
00:44:31,450 --> 00:44:33,290
Speaker 1: So this is actually a really important story in the

931
00:44:33,330 --> 00:44:39,610
Speaker 1: history of British journalism as a profession, right? British journalism

932
00:44:39,630 --> 00:44:41,609
Speaker 1: and American journalism have very different histories in a lot

933
00:44:41,630 --> 00:44:44,350
Speaker 1: of ways because they don't have the First Amendment, right?

934
00:44:44,690 --> 00:44:47,110
Speaker 1: They have strong libel laws. You can say a lot

935
00:44:47,150 --> 00:44:49,770
Speaker 1: of shit in the United States and not get sued.

936
00:44:50,370 --> 00:44:51,870
Speaker 1: Both of our jobs rely on that.

937
00:44:51,890 --> 00:44:52,890
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank God.

938
00:44:53,950 --> 00:44:58,230
Speaker 1: Thank God. So the BBC reported that in order to

939
00:44:58,290 --> 00:45:01,290
Speaker 1: extract maximum profit from his houses, Rockman would not hesitate

940
00:45:01,330 --> 00:45:03,589
Speaker 1: to put in the Schwartzers as those in the real

941
00:45:03,630 --> 00:45:06,210
Speaker 1: estate world commonly termed the practice of letting their properties

942
00:45:06,250 --> 00:45:08,470
Speaker 1: to black people so that rent-controlled white tenants would feel

943
00:45:08,510 --> 00:45:11,260
Speaker 1: they had little choice but to leave. Panorama reported that

944
00:45:11,340 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 1: if this didn't work, Rockman would pay Caribbean tenants to

945
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:16,239
Speaker 1: play deafening music at all times of the day and night.

946
00:45:16,620 --> 00:45:19,300
Speaker 1: The BBC also reported claims that Rockman hired black hoodlums

947
00:45:19,340 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: to intimidate white tenants or conversely, white hoodlums to harass

948
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 1: black tenants. And if these tactics failed... Rackman would employ

949
00:45:25,460 --> 00:45:28,300
Speaker 1: thugs with Alsatian dogs to wrench doors off their hinges,

950
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:30,900
Speaker 1: remove roof tiles, and rip up floorboards in order to

951
00:45:30,940 --> 00:45:33,529
Speaker 1: terrify those who he wished to evict. A lot of

952
00:45:33,570 --> 00:45:35,930
Speaker 1: that's true, as we've discussed. Some of it's also lies,

953
00:45:36,030 --> 00:45:39,029
Speaker 1: because people are just saying shit, right, too, when they,

954
00:45:39,310 --> 00:45:41,830
Speaker 1: you know, you're going around and, like, talking to people

955
00:45:41,870 --> 00:45:43,930
Speaker 1: who are, like, living in the slums, including people who

956
00:45:43,950 --> 00:45:46,910
Speaker 1: had worked as, like, toughs for Rackman. They're not necessarily

957
00:45:46,969 --> 00:45:49,209
Speaker 1: telling you the whole truth, right? Yeah. In part because

958
00:45:49,250 --> 00:45:50,630
Speaker 1: they're often criminals, right? Yeah.

959
00:45:51,380 --> 00:45:53,910
Speaker 2: It's an Alsatian. What is an Alsatian?

960
00:45:53,930 --> 00:45:55,730
Speaker 1: Big old dog. Big fucking dog.

961
00:45:55,750 --> 00:45:57,549
Speaker 2: Is that like Alsace Lorraine?

962
00:45:57,730 --> 00:46:01,730
Speaker 1: I believe that's where they came from originally. You wouldn't

963
00:46:01,770 --> 00:46:05,589
Speaker 1: want an Alsatian to be pissed at you. They're pretty

964
00:46:05,830 --> 00:46:06,650
Speaker 1: big animals.

965
00:46:06,930 --> 00:46:07,069
Speaker 2: Yeah.

966
00:46:08,630 --> 00:46:11,790
Speaker 1: So Rockman becomes a boogeyman in the media after this,

967
00:46:11,810 --> 00:46:14,710
Speaker 1: and he remains a top story for days until the

968
00:46:14,850 --> 00:46:18,070
Speaker 1: bigger one breaks on July 22nd. And he's going to

969
00:46:18,090 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 1: be very much tied up in this one, the Profumo affair.

970
00:46:21,660 --> 00:46:23,780
Speaker 1: And this is one of the other like big stories

971
00:46:23,820 --> 00:46:25,219
Speaker 1: that is kind of like they're at the birth of

972
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:28,739
Speaker 1: British investigative journalism. This is the gist of the Profumo affair.

973
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:31,290
Speaker 1: The war minister at the time is a guy named

974
00:46:31,370 --> 00:46:34,850
Speaker 1: John Profumo. He had slept with Christine Keeler, who had

975
00:46:34,890 --> 00:46:39,800
Speaker 1: also dated Rockman, right? He is married to someone else, right?

976
00:46:40,540 --> 00:46:43,140
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to do this, especially in the 60s, right?

977
00:46:44,070 --> 00:46:45,730
Speaker 1: The fact that he had had an affair was a

978
00:46:45,810 --> 00:46:48,610
Speaker 1: scandal for the Macmillan government on its own. And it

979
00:46:48,650 --> 00:46:50,930
Speaker 1: actually helps the Profumo affair. It's such a, this tells

980
00:46:50,950 --> 00:46:53,030
Speaker 1: you how different politics were. The fact that the fucking

981
00:46:53,090 --> 00:46:56,690
Speaker 1: war minister is having an affair with some like socialite

982
00:46:57,030 --> 00:46:59,089
Speaker 1: is such a big deal that it helps lead to

983
00:46:59,110 --> 00:47:02,350
Speaker 1: the conservative prime minister's resignation later that year. It helps

984
00:47:02,430 --> 00:47:03,549
Speaker 1: bring down the government.

985
00:47:04,219 --> 00:47:04,509
Speaker 3: Wow.

986
00:47:04,660 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: That's how big a deal, like one dude in the

987
00:47:07,739 --> 00:47:09,620
Speaker 1: administration sleeping around could be.

988
00:47:09,860 --> 00:47:12,719
Speaker 2: Okay. We got a, Of all the things that feel

989
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:17,030
Speaker 2: very similar to today, that is a big divergence.

990
00:47:17,450 --> 00:47:19,790
Speaker 1: That's a real big difference. We're in a different place.

991
00:47:19,830 --> 00:47:21,590
Speaker 1: We just blast past that shit these days.

992
00:47:22,050 --> 00:47:22,290
Speaker 3: Yeah.

993
00:47:23,270 --> 00:47:26,810
Speaker 2: They're like, oh God, that's like a, that's a not

994
00:47:26,850 --> 00:47:28,380
Speaker 2: even front page anymore.

995
00:47:28,410 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: No, could you imagine? Like, I don't even know if

996
00:47:30,180 --> 00:47:32,839
Speaker 1: you'd get a Times reporter on that story these days. What,

997
00:47:32,880 --> 00:47:34,880
Speaker 1: Pete Hegg says having an affair? Who gives a shit?

998
00:47:35,060 --> 00:47:37,940
Speaker 1: I'm sure they report on it, but it wouldn't change anything, right? Yeah.

999
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:40,540
Speaker 2: You can't even talk about the global conflicts.

1000
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:44,880
Speaker 1: No, no. Now, because this was a huge story and

1001
00:47:44,980 --> 00:47:47,010
Speaker 1: one the press could report on without being sued, they

1002
00:47:47,050 --> 00:47:49,049
Speaker 1: dove into it with as much fervor as they dug

1003
00:47:49,090 --> 00:47:52,150
Speaker 1: into Rockman. They started finding more, like that a Soviet

1004
00:47:52,210 --> 00:47:55,890
Speaker 1: naval attache and spy named Yevgeny Ivanov had also slept

1005
00:47:55,930 --> 00:47:59,260
Speaker 1: with Keillor. This lady had a fascinating life. She was really,

1006
00:47:59,540 --> 00:48:02,660
Speaker 1: if you were anyone in London, you spent some time

1007
00:48:02,700 --> 00:48:03,520
Speaker 1: dating this lady.

1008
00:48:03,540 --> 00:48:04,880
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.

1009
00:48:05,700 --> 00:48:09,330
Speaker 1: So because... Keillor had slept with this Soviet spy and

1010
00:48:09,370 --> 00:48:12,069
Speaker 1: she'd also met and slept with Profumo. And she had

1011
00:48:12,150 --> 00:48:15,049
Speaker 1: it comes out that she she'd met both Profumo and

1012
00:48:15,210 --> 00:48:19,029
Speaker 1: Ivanov through an osteopath named Stephen Ward. This guy, Stephen Ward,

1013
00:48:19,050 --> 00:48:22,310
Speaker 1: gets accused of basically being a pimp to the powerful. Right.

1014
00:48:22,330 --> 00:48:23,510
Speaker 1: That's not really fair.

1015
00:48:23,590 --> 00:48:27,469
Speaker 3: This was a big story with Prince Philip.

1016
00:48:28,260 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is one of the first times

1017
00:48:30,180 --> 00:48:32,700
Speaker 1: old Philly gets on the map.

1018
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:37,770
Speaker 3: They even covered this on the Netflix The Crown. It's

1019
00:48:37,870 --> 00:48:38,570
Speaker 3: a big deal.

1020
00:48:38,610 --> 00:48:43,810
Speaker 1: This is a huge deal. And Rockman is not really

1021
00:48:43,910 --> 00:48:46,870
Speaker 1: deeply tied. He just happened to sleep with one of

1022
00:48:46,910 --> 00:48:50,340
Speaker 1: the same women who sleeps with Profumo, right? But because

1023
00:48:50,380 --> 00:48:54,420
Speaker 1: his name is involved, this winds up giving extra. And

1024
00:48:54,440 --> 00:48:56,940
Speaker 1: it also, the people in power who are endangered by

1025
00:48:56,960 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: this are like, we really want to draw as much

1026
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 1: attention to the Rockman parts of the story and to

1027
00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: Stephen Ward as possible. And again, I don't think Ward

1028
00:49:05,580 --> 00:49:09,330
Speaker 1: is really a pimp to the powerful, right? But his

1029
00:49:09,410 --> 00:49:11,730
Speaker 1: name gets drug through the mud so much that he

1030
00:49:11,750 --> 00:49:14,790
Speaker 1: commits suicide over all of this. And the press finds

1031
00:49:14,890 --> 00:49:17,450
Speaker 1: out that Ward had lived in a home owned by

1032
00:49:17,950 --> 00:49:18,870
Speaker 1: Peter Rockman.

1033
00:49:19,330 --> 00:49:19,489
Speaker 2: So.

1034
00:49:20,820 --> 00:49:24,060
Speaker 1: that's going to bring Rockman back into the news. Per

1035
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:27,360
Speaker 1: that New York Review of Books article, quote, that Rockman's

1036
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:30,060
Speaker 1: portfolio also included a good many slum properties in the

1037
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: Notting Hill area of West London, flats that were often

1038
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:35,560
Speaker 1: rented out to white prostitutes and recently arrived West Indians

1039
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:38,320
Speaker 1: further piqued the press's interest. And it soon became apparent

1040
00:49:38,340 --> 00:49:40,549
Speaker 1: that Rockman was involved in other ways. He, too, had

1041
00:49:40,590 --> 00:49:43,060
Speaker 1: slept with Keillor, introduced by Ward, and Rice Davies had

1042
00:49:43,100 --> 00:49:45,340
Speaker 1: been Rockman's mistress for a time, installed at one of

1043
00:49:45,380 --> 00:49:48,340
Speaker 1: his properties. Unable to defend himself from beyond the grave,

1044
00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:51,600
Speaker 1: Rockman was depicted as a sleazy foreigner and a sexual opportunist,

1045
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 1: a ruthless man whose only interest lay in turning a

1046
00:49:54,080 --> 00:49:56,400
Speaker 1: profit and whose eagerness to rent to blacks and prostitutes

1047
00:49:56,700 --> 00:49:59,310
Speaker 1: had undermined the lives of decent white people. To cap

1048
00:49:59,350 --> 00:50:01,230
Speaker 1: it all, he was a stateless Jew who had been

1049
00:50:01,250 --> 00:50:02,750
Speaker 1: denied British citizenship.

1050
00:50:03,110 --> 00:50:03,360
Speaker 2: Oh, my God.

1051
00:50:03,530 --> 00:50:05,430
Speaker 1: And pieces of that are true. He is pretty ruthless,

1052
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:08,940
Speaker 1: you know? But also, he's not undermining the lives of

1053
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:11,360
Speaker 1: decent white people as much as he is, like, fucking

1054
00:50:11,460 --> 00:50:12,360
Speaker 1: over everybody.

1055
00:50:12,380 --> 00:50:17,000
Speaker 3: A stateless Jew. It's like, um... You had to go there.

1056
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:18,180
Speaker 3: You had to go there.

1057
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:22,870
Speaker 1: Oh, God, yeah. Of course they did. It's the 60s.

1058
00:50:22,969 --> 00:50:25,670
Speaker 3: They're like, oh, what if we just sprinkle some anti-Semitism

1059
00:50:25,750 --> 00:50:25,989
Speaker 3: on top?

1060
00:50:26,030 --> 00:50:29,110
Speaker 1: You have to assume of like the over 40 population

1061
00:50:29,150 --> 00:50:32,580
Speaker 1: who are in politics and journalism. A not insignificant number

1062
00:50:32,620 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 1: of them would have gone Nazi if things had been

1063
00:50:34,660 --> 00:50:36,090
Speaker 1: a little different in that war.

1064
00:50:36,110 --> 00:50:36,430
Speaker 3: Yeah, 100%.

1065
00:50:36,430 --> 00:50:38,130
Speaker 1: But it's like, this guy's- This would have been the

1066
00:50:38,150 --> 00:50:38,649
Speaker 1: same here.

1067
00:50:38,670 --> 00:50:41,730
Speaker 3: This guy sucks so bad. Why you gotta sprinkle the

1068
00:50:41,810 --> 00:50:43,240
Speaker 3: anti-Semitism on top?

1069
00:50:43,260 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 1: You don't need to be racist.

1070
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 3: There's so many other things.

1071
00:50:46,460 --> 00:50:48,600
Speaker 1: Well, he was a dick. He was a piece of shit.

1072
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:50,220
Speaker 3: Don't be anti-Semitic.

1073
00:50:50,380 --> 00:50:52,259
Speaker 1: But that's the thing that like pisses me off. Cause I,

1074
00:50:52,620 --> 00:50:54,930
Speaker 1: you know, he is a bastard and I'm, but he's

1075
00:50:54,950 --> 00:50:57,870
Speaker 1: not the main bastard of these episodes. Like the British

1076
00:50:57,989 --> 00:51:01,049
Speaker 1: power structure is the main bastard of these episodes.

1077
00:51:01,190 --> 00:51:03,029
Speaker 2: I'm listening to this and I'm like rolling my eyes

1078
00:51:03,130 --> 00:51:05,090
Speaker 2: at their, at their like pinning this on him. And

1079
00:51:05,110 --> 00:51:07,799
Speaker 2: I'm like, but I can't feel like, I don't want

1080
00:51:07,820 --> 00:51:12,900
Speaker 2: to feel bad for this guy. Like he sucks ass. Yeah.

1081
00:51:13,380 --> 00:51:16,020
Speaker 1: And he's dead. It's complicated. And he's dead, so of

1082
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:17,850
Speaker 1: course they're going to blame everything on him.

1083
00:51:17,860 --> 00:51:24,060
Speaker 2: He totally also... It seems like he also built this world.

1084
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:28,609
Speaker 2: He totally would do the same thing if somebody else

1085
00:51:28,650 --> 00:51:32,350
Speaker 2: had kicked it first. He'd be like, oh, well, I

1086
00:51:32,370 --> 00:51:33,910
Speaker 2: get to stay out of the press by blaming it

1087
00:51:33,969 --> 00:51:34,670
Speaker 2: all on this person.

1088
00:51:34,710 --> 00:51:37,330
Speaker 1: Yeah, he would have been happy to throw the blame

1089
00:51:37,390 --> 00:51:39,109
Speaker 1: on someone else if he'd had the opportunity. I don't

1090
00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:40,779
Speaker 1: know that he would have, because as much as he

1091
00:51:40,820 --> 00:51:44,440
Speaker 1: is a part of the state of affairs and London housing...

1092
00:51:44,570 --> 00:51:47,170
Speaker 1: and also like the racial conflict that existed in London.

1093
00:51:47,350 --> 00:51:49,589
Speaker 1: He has a big impact on all those things. He's

1094
00:51:49,630 --> 00:51:52,569
Speaker 1: not part of the upper crust. He is not, he might,

1095
00:51:52,910 --> 00:51:54,890
Speaker 1: he might get to like gamble and party with some

1096
00:51:54,950 --> 00:51:57,739
Speaker 1: high society guys when they're slumming it, but he is

1097
00:51:57,780 --> 00:52:00,899
Speaker 1: not a respectable man at any point in his life.

1098
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:01,279
Speaker 3: Right.

1099
00:52:01,300 --> 00:52:04,359
Speaker 1: Because it's a stateless Jew, right? Like that, like that,

1100
00:52:04,420 --> 00:52:06,460
Speaker 1: that that's the reality of the situation, you know?

1101
00:52:06,840 --> 00:52:07,060
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1102
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: Um, So Keillor and Rice Davis talk to the press.

1103
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 1: I mean, how could they not? It's the biggest story

1104
00:52:13,219 --> 00:52:15,279
Speaker 1: in the country for a shocking amount of time. They

1105
00:52:15,300 --> 00:52:18,650
Speaker 1: wind up providing anecdotes about Rockman that fuel an expanding

1106
00:52:18,710 --> 00:52:22,470
Speaker 1: series of articles. And these articles report both true stories

1107
00:52:22,530 --> 00:52:26,910
Speaker 1: of Rockman's behavior and absolute fantasies. And because I think

1108
00:52:26,950 --> 00:52:28,739
Speaker 1: there are some journalists who want to and try to

1109
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:31,700
Speaker 1: report on some of the other sleazy landlords, but it's

1110
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:35,299
Speaker 1: really dangerous to do that, right? But it's very safe

1111
00:52:35,320 --> 00:52:38,779
Speaker 1: to keep churning out Rockman content. Rockman was turned from

1112
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:42,680
Speaker 1: a relatively middling, if influential, slumlord to the demon responsible

1113
00:52:42,719 --> 00:52:46,860
Speaker 1: for all of London's housing and race-related woes. Carol Phillips

1114
00:52:46,900 --> 00:52:49,279
Speaker 1: provides a great example of this in a quote Ian

1115
00:52:49,380 --> 00:52:53,170
Speaker 1: Fleming's wife Anne gave the Evening Standard in July of 1963.

1116
00:52:53,170 --> 00:52:55,930
Speaker 1: This is after the story breaks about him. I was

1117
00:52:55,969 --> 00:52:58,490
Speaker 1: reminded that I had seen him driving a Rolls Bentley,

1118
00:52:58,590 --> 00:53:00,990
Speaker 1: and he'd slowed down to greet a friend. I shouted,

1119
00:53:01,230 --> 00:53:03,920
Speaker 1: it's one of Ian's villains, straight out of Bond. It

1120
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 1: was certainly one of the most evil faces I have

1121
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:08,670
Speaker 1: ever seen. I don't know that I think she's telling

1122
00:53:08,690 --> 00:53:10,650
Speaker 1: the truth. I think Ian Fleming's wife might have just

1123
00:53:10,670 --> 00:53:13,480
Speaker 1: been a liar. But here's a picture of him. I mean,

1124
00:53:13,500 --> 00:53:16,340
Speaker 1: he just kind of looks like a bald kind of

1125
00:53:16,380 --> 00:53:17,220
Speaker 1: heavyset dude.

1126
00:53:17,260 --> 00:53:17,840
Speaker 3: He's a guy.

1127
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:21,670
Speaker 1: He's a guy. There are definitely some Bond villains who

1128
00:53:21,710 --> 00:53:24,070
Speaker 1: are bald heavyset dudes, I guess.

1129
00:53:25,310 --> 00:53:26,640
Speaker 2: He looks like he could be like a.

1130
00:53:28,190 --> 00:53:30,350
Speaker 2: Indie film director He looks.

1131
00:53:30,230 --> 00:53:32,310
Speaker 1: Like he could also be an indie film director He

1132
00:53:32,350 --> 00:53:36,170
Speaker 1: could be a sleazy producer Definitely not a Bond villain

1133
00:53:36,210 --> 00:53:38,390
Speaker 1: Not a Bond villain That's.

1134
00:53:38,270 --> 00:53:41,900
Speaker 2: A I don't know if it's more anti-semitism creeping in

1135
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:43,219
Speaker 2: Or something.

1136
00:53:44,360 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 1: He just kind of looks like a businessman Right? He's

1137
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:49,779
Speaker 1: just like a bald white dude in a suit He

1138
00:53:49,820 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 1: just looks like a business guy.

1139
00:53:51,620 --> 00:53:54,609
Speaker 3: He looks like Steve Higgins I don't.

1140
00:53:54,530 --> 00:53:56,620
Speaker 1: Know who that is Sophie Me neither He's.

1141
00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:58,580
Speaker 3: The announcer from The Tonight Show.

1142
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:02,419
Speaker 2: Okay. I feel like he looks like My Dinner with Andre.

1143
00:54:02,660 --> 00:54:04,700
Speaker 1: He does look a little like, yeah, My Dinner with Andre.

1144
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:05,839
Speaker 2: I forget his name. It's Andre, right?

1145
00:54:05,860 --> 00:54:07,819
Speaker 1: He looks a little like roughly a third of the

1146
00:54:07,860 --> 00:54:10,150
Speaker 1: doctors I've ever had. He just looks like Steve Higgins. Yeah,

1147
00:54:10,170 --> 00:54:12,270
Speaker 1: kind of an overweight, middle-aged, balding guy.

1148
00:54:12,290 --> 00:54:13,650
Speaker 3: He just looks like a normal guy.

1149
00:54:13,670 --> 00:54:18,149
Speaker 1: Like Steve Higgins. He doesn't actually look that much like

1150
00:54:18,190 --> 00:54:19,250
Speaker 1: a Bond villain, really.

1151
00:54:19,370 --> 00:54:21,190
Speaker 2: But he was a sexual icon. Yeah.

1152
00:54:21,780 --> 00:54:24,840
Speaker 1: But he was a sexual Tyrannosaurus, according to one of

1153
00:54:24,880 --> 00:54:27,940
Speaker 1: his biographers, who we should probably look into a little more.

1154
00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:30,319
Speaker 2: And he was bald and corpulent. Wait, wait, is that

1155
00:54:30,340 --> 00:54:30,800
Speaker 2: a quote?

1156
00:54:31,420 --> 00:54:33,430
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no. I stole that from the

1157
00:54:33,469 --> 00:54:37,150
Speaker 1: movie Predator. I steal a lot from the movie Predator.

1158
00:54:37,170 --> 00:54:39,850
Speaker 1: I've seen that a lot. When stories from former tenants

1159
00:54:39,910 --> 00:54:42,529
Speaker 1: and people claiming to be tenants ran out, as Neil

1160
00:54:42,550 --> 00:54:45,810
Speaker 1: Root writes, quote, reporters very briefly rented rooms in a

1161
00:54:45,870 --> 00:54:48,469
Speaker 1: former Rockman property so they could write the headline, I

1162
00:54:48,750 --> 00:54:52,150
Speaker 1: lived in a slum. Many contemporary articles used language to

1163
00:54:52,190 --> 00:54:54,730
Speaker 1: describe Peter that made him sound, yes, like a Bond villain,

1164
00:54:54,989 --> 00:54:58,989
Speaker 1: but also subtly anti-Semitic. Here's a segment from a Contemporary

1165
00:54:59,070 --> 00:55:02,339
Speaker 1: Time article. Always on the lookout for girls for his

1166
00:55:02,420 --> 00:55:06,020
Speaker 1: personal use, Rockman frequently visited the several nightclubs he owned

1167
00:55:06,260 --> 00:55:08,620
Speaker 1: and would sit in a corner like a satanic Kewpie,

1168
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:11,880
Speaker 1: cigar in his mouth, diamonds on his pudgy fingers, a

1169
00:55:11,940 --> 00:55:15,510
Speaker 1: blonde juvenile obediently at his side, and a bodyguard in

1170
00:55:15,530 --> 00:55:16,279
Speaker 1: the background.

1171
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:19,110
Speaker 3: Why do they gotta body shame his fingers?

1172
00:55:19,620 --> 00:55:20,400
Speaker 2: Can I? Yeah.

1173
00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:23,960
Speaker 1: That seems unnecessary. Yeah, they really, every one of these

1174
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: articles will talk about him being fat.

1175
00:55:26,219 --> 00:55:28,759
Speaker 3: Every article is like, by the way, this guy, he

1176
00:55:29,900 --> 00:55:32,759
Speaker 3: didn't have the makings of a varsity athlete. Sorry, not

1177
00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:33,360
Speaker 3: this guy.

1178
00:55:33,719 --> 00:55:34,860
Speaker 2: Except in the gulag.

1179
00:55:34,900 --> 00:55:36,900
Speaker 1: Are you going to tell me the ruling class of

1180
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:40,660
Speaker 1: England isn't also a bunch of balding, overweight guys with

1181
00:55:40,739 --> 00:55:43,660
Speaker 1: diamonds hanging out with teenage girls in nightclubs?

1182
00:55:43,700 --> 00:55:45,540
Speaker 2: Please. Really? Really.

1183
00:55:45,780 --> 00:55:46,260
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1184
00:55:46,450 --> 00:55:47,489
Speaker 1: Wait, wait.

1185
00:55:48,370 --> 00:55:51,230
Speaker 2: What is it? Okay. What is a satanic Kewpie?

1186
00:55:51,250 --> 00:55:54,290
Speaker 1: I think it's a, I mean, it's kind of a doll.

1187
00:55:54,330 --> 00:55:56,150
Speaker 1: Like a Kewpie doll is a type of doll.

1188
00:55:56,370 --> 00:55:58,290
Speaker 2: Yeah. Is it like the mayonnaise?

1189
00:55:59,190 --> 00:56:01,880
Speaker 1: No. I mean, yeah. Kewpie mayonnaise. It may, it may

1190
00:56:01,890 --> 00:56:04,280
Speaker 1: have a similar name, but yeah. Kewpie is like a doll.

1191
00:56:04,300 --> 00:56:05,759
Speaker 2: It's like a little cartoon.

1192
00:56:05,820 --> 00:56:06,620
Speaker 1: Baby Cupid.

1193
00:56:06,680 --> 00:56:06,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1194
00:56:06,980 --> 00:56:10,740
Speaker 1: A little, like she's saying he looks like a creepy

1195
00:56:11,219 --> 00:56:12,700
Speaker 1: demonic cherub. Right.

1196
00:56:13,770 --> 00:56:14,930
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.

1197
00:56:14,989 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 3: They're calling him Jimbo from Boss Baby. He's Jimbo from

1198
00:56:19,380 --> 00:56:20,460
Speaker 3: Boss Baby.

1199
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:25,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like you could write a very similar description about

1200
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:26,040
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill.

1201
00:56:26,660 --> 00:56:31,750
Speaker 3: Right, right. Bold and corpulent and definitely satanic.

1202
00:56:32,550 --> 00:56:33,790
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely satanic.

1203
00:56:34,390 --> 00:56:38,310
Speaker 3: Definitely satanic and very, very, very, very racist.

1204
00:56:38,330 --> 00:56:40,410
Speaker 1: Much drunker. I will say I have never heard any

1205
00:56:40,489 --> 00:56:43,250
Speaker 1: allegations that Rockman was as hard a drinker as Churchill.

1206
00:56:43,489 --> 00:56:44,250
Speaker 1: No one was.

1207
00:56:44,350 --> 00:56:44,770
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1208
00:56:44,950 --> 00:56:45,879
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1209
00:56:46,050 --> 00:56:49,460
Speaker 1: It's often suggested credibly that part of why Rockman stories

1210
00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:52,160
Speaker 1: went so viral is that the rich and powerful, other

1211
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:55,100
Speaker 1: people who might have been implicated in like the expanding

1212
00:56:55,140 --> 00:57:00,850
Speaker 1: Profumo scandal and similar scandals, Much preferred to see reporters

1213
00:57:01,030 --> 00:57:04,989
Speaker 1: clustering around a dead foreign landlord, right? That was to

1214
00:57:05,030 --> 00:57:07,800
Speaker 1: the benefit of a lot of people in power. One

1215
00:57:07,820 --> 00:57:10,420
Speaker 1: of the political figures who took advantage of the situation

1216
00:57:10,460 --> 00:57:13,700
Speaker 1: was labor politician Harold Wilson, who in Root's words was

1217
00:57:13,840 --> 00:57:19,100
Speaker 1: desperate to further wound McMillan's conservative government, right? That he sees, oh,

1218
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:21,930
Speaker 1: this is going to bring down this government. And if

1219
00:57:21,990 --> 00:57:24,830
Speaker 1: I really keep hammering on this landlord in my speeches

1220
00:57:24,870 --> 00:57:27,630
Speaker 1: to parliament— This can bring my party into power, right?

1221
00:57:27,670 --> 00:57:29,450
Speaker 1: Like I can make a lot of hay out of this.

1222
00:57:30,170 --> 00:57:33,070
Speaker 1: In a 1964 parliamentary debate on housing, he coined the

1223
00:57:33,110 --> 00:57:35,770
Speaker 1: term Rockmanism. That's where it comes from. It's from a

1224
00:57:36,010 --> 00:57:38,950
Speaker 1: speech that Harold Wilson gives in parliament. And he describes

1225
00:57:39,030 --> 00:57:43,310
Speaker 1: Rockmanism as a disease infecting British society. Wilson's goal was

1226
00:57:43,350 --> 00:57:46,630
Speaker 1: to win the 1964 general election, and his party did.

1227
00:57:47,010 --> 00:57:49,570
Speaker 1: This had a number of positive outcomes, including the Rent

1228
00:57:49,730 --> 00:57:53,860
Speaker 1: Act of 1965, which did give tenants more protection, and

1229
00:57:53,890 --> 00:57:57,400
Speaker 1: the Race Relations Act of 1965, which made it illegal

1230
00:57:57,440 --> 00:58:01,700
Speaker 1: to discriminate racially in housing. That might actually count as

1231
00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:05,140
Speaker 1: a positive legacy for Rockman, although he surely intended none

1232
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:08,610
Speaker 1: of it. But it isn't his only legacy. In my research,

1233
00:58:08,730 --> 00:58:12,350
Speaker 1: I came across an article on rogue landlords for the BNPs,

1234
00:58:12,410 --> 00:58:15,750
Speaker 1: the British National Party's modern website. And this is the

1235
00:58:15,810 --> 00:58:19,670
Speaker 1: British fascist party today too, right? They're still around. And

1236
00:58:19,690 --> 00:58:23,310
Speaker 1: they have an article in their modern website about rogue landlords.

1237
00:58:23,770 --> 00:58:25,890
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from it. Rogue landlords

1238
00:58:25,930 --> 00:58:28,550
Speaker 1: have existed in London for a long time. In the

1239
00:58:28,850 --> 00:58:32,010
Speaker 1: 1950s and early 1960s, Peter Rockman was notorious for his

1240
00:58:32,090 --> 00:58:35,970
Speaker 1: brutal treatment of tenants. However, later in that article, it

1241
00:58:36,010 --> 00:58:39,110
Speaker 1: becomes clear why Rockman is really on the BNP's mind.

1242
00:58:39,510 --> 00:58:42,950
Speaker 1: They list as two of their suggestions for destroying rogue landlords,

1243
00:58:43,290 --> 00:58:48,020
Speaker 1: deport illegal immigrants and no amnesty for illegal immigrants, which

1244
00:58:48,040 --> 00:58:51,419
Speaker 1: makes it clear what they saw as Rockman's actual crime, right?

1245
00:58:51,500 --> 00:58:54,480
Speaker 1: That he was giving non-white people a place to live

1246
00:58:54,520 --> 00:58:55,520
Speaker 1: in London, you know?

1247
00:58:55,620 --> 00:58:55,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1248
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,090
Speaker 1: I found an article by Jules Birch, a PhD from

1249
00:58:59,110 --> 00:59:01,350
Speaker 1: the University of Bristol, who was an expert on housing.

1250
00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 1: And he notes this about the long-term impact of the

1251
00:59:04,780 --> 00:59:07,670
Speaker 1: changes to British renter policy pushed in the wake of

1252
00:59:07,750 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 1: Rockman's post-mortem brush with fame, right? This is him talking

1253
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:16,240
Speaker 1: about what actually, on paper, the Rent Act and the

1254
00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:19,790
Speaker 1: Race Relations Act were supposed to remove racism from housing

1255
00:59:19,830 --> 00:59:24,010
Speaker 1: decisions and protect renters. It doesn't quite work that well.

1256
00:59:24,110 --> 00:59:28,270
Speaker 1: And here's Birch, quote, Only harassment and illegal eviction were

1257
00:59:28,310 --> 00:59:31,530
Speaker 1: made criminal offenses, and those convicted of them were mainly

1258
00:59:31,630 --> 00:59:35,310
Speaker 1: resident and often immigrant landlords. Rockmanism in the sense of

1259
00:59:35,370 --> 00:59:39,890
Speaker 1: financial exploitation by large commercial landlords continued untouched. The new

1260
00:59:39,950 --> 00:59:42,190
Speaker 1: system of rent regulation was seen as a response to

1261
00:59:42,210 --> 00:59:45,850
Speaker 1: the perceived failures of both rent control and decontrol. Fair

1262
00:59:45,950 --> 00:59:48,150
Speaker 1: rents were meant to be what they said and were

1263
00:59:48,210 --> 00:59:51,189
Speaker 1: often much higher than the controlled rents of the past, right?

1264
00:59:51,730 --> 00:59:57,590
Speaker 1: So these restrictions don't like, It's another one of these

1265
00:59:57,610 --> 01:00:00,530
Speaker 1: cases in which there's a hole left in these laws

1266
01:00:00,630 --> 01:00:03,070
Speaker 1: wide enough to drive a truck through. And the end

1267
01:00:03,140 --> 01:00:08,360
Speaker 1: result is that, yeah, some non-white immigrant landlords get punished

1268
01:00:08,460 --> 01:00:12,160
Speaker 1: for sleazy behavior, but the big corporate landlords, including the

1269
01:00:12,200 --> 01:00:15,120
Speaker 1: guys we've heard from earlier who definitely took some of

1270
01:00:15,160 --> 01:00:18,740
Speaker 1: their influence from Rockman, they don't get up in any trouble.

1271
01:00:19,040 --> 01:00:21,620
Speaker 1: And in fact, they're able to charge higher rents because

1272
01:00:21,660 --> 01:00:27,180
Speaker 1: controlled rents go away, right? So it doesn't, necessarily fix things.

1273
01:00:28,020 --> 01:00:30,100
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue with that quote from Birch's article.

1274
01:00:30,460 --> 01:00:32,590
Speaker 1: The restrictions that did apply proved all too easy to

1275
01:00:32,650 --> 01:00:35,470
Speaker 1: avoid for landlords clued into evasion techniques and with access

1276
01:00:35,490 --> 01:00:38,230
Speaker 1: to professional advice. Where that did not work, landlords could

1277
01:00:38,270 --> 01:00:41,230
Speaker 1: simply exploit the power imbalance with tenants by persuading them

1278
01:00:41,290 --> 01:00:44,180
Speaker 1: to sign up for tenancies exempt from the legislation. A

1279
01:00:44,260 --> 01:00:47,880
Speaker 1: rickety table and chairs became a furnished tenancy in the 1960s,

1280
01:00:48,180 --> 01:00:50,320
Speaker 1: and a clause in the lease offering breakfast turned a

1281
01:00:50,380 --> 01:00:53,970
Speaker 1: furnished tenancy into a holiday let in the 1970s. By

1282
01:00:53,990 --> 01:00:58,030
Speaker 1: the early 1970s, a conservative MP was complaining about legal rockmanism,

1283
01:00:58,390 --> 01:01:01,120
Speaker 1: a technique used by commercial landlords to raise rent levels

1284
01:01:01,160 --> 01:01:04,060
Speaker 1: and therefore the mortgageable value of entire blocks of flats.

1285
01:01:04,500 --> 01:01:08,040
Speaker 1: Rent officers determined fair rents by deducting scarcity value from

1286
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:10,620
Speaker 1: the market rent for the accommodation, but the system was

1287
01:01:10,700 --> 01:01:13,860
Speaker 1: open to manipulation. For example, a landlord and tenant could

1288
01:01:13,880 --> 01:01:16,440
Speaker 1: apply jointly for a new rent to be registered. If

1289
01:01:16,540 --> 01:01:18,760
Speaker 1: no tenant willing to pay a higher rent could be found,

1290
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:21,410
Speaker 1: then a landlord might make it a condition of offering

1291
01:01:21,450 --> 01:01:23,720
Speaker 1: a tenancy in the first place. Once the higher rent

1292
01:01:23,740 --> 01:01:25,890
Speaker 1: was established for one property, it could be used as

1293
01:01:25,910 --> 01:01:28,430
Speaker 1: the norm for all of the others in the block, right?

1294
01:01:29,930 --> 01:01:33,310
Speaker 1: Nothing deals with the central problem, which is that sleazy

1295
01:01:33,370 --> 01:01:36,490
Speaker 1: landlords are fucking over the poor, right? That does not

1296
01:01:36,530 --> 01:01:38,470
Speaker 1: get fixed at all as a result of the blow

1297
01:01:38,550 --> 01:01:41,300
Speaker 1: up over Rockmanism, because it's not in anyone powerful's interest

1298
01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:41,820
Speaker 1: to do that.

1299
01:01:42,820 --> 01:01:47,540
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's just like levels of financial engineering going into it.

1300
01:01:47,640 --> 01:01:49,090
Speaker 2: It's just Disgusting.

1301
01:01:49,640 --> 01:01:51,459
Speaker 1: And you're kind of making it so that in order

1302
01:01:51,520 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: to really be a rockmanist landlord, I guess, you have

1303
01:01:55,300 --> 01:01:58,940
Speaker 1: to be a big company now, right? Because it's harder

1304
01:01:58,960 --> 01:02:01,420
Speaker 1: for the small guys to be sleazy, but easier for

1305
01:02:01,440 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 1: the big ones to be sleazy, which contributes to the

1306
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:09,310
Speaker 1: consolidation of these big rental empires, right? And this brings

1307
01:02:09,370 --> 01:02:10,950
Speaker 1: us at least some of the way to the situation

1308
01:02:10,990 --> 01:02:14,030
Speaker 1: our British friends enjoy today. Remember how I noted that

1309
01:02:14,090 --> 01:02:16,270
Speaker 1: after World War II, England had a shortage of roughly

1310
01:02:16,270 --> 01:02:20,930
Speaker 1: 750,000 homes? That's pretty bad, right? You want to guess

1311
01:02:20,970 --> 01:02:22,780
Speaker 1: how many homes the UK is short today?

1312
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:24,720
Speaker 2: I don't know if I do.

1313
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:29,940
Speaker 1: Housing charity Shelter estimates the United Kingdom is short a

1314
01:02:29,980 --> 01:02:34,050
Speaker 1: whopping 1 million homes right now. And while this is

1315
01:02:34,290 --> 01:02:37,350
Speaker 1: in some ways a worse crisis than the post-war.

1316
01:02:37,010 --> 01:02:37,530
Speaker 3: One, right?

1317
01:02:38,510 --> 01:02:39,550
Speaker 2: Look how far we've come.

1318
01:02:40,010 --> 01:02:42,430
Speaker 1: Look how far we've come. And as bad as this is,

1319
01:02:42,570 --> 01:02:45,670
Speaker 1: Britain today is also, per The Independent, quote, building fewer

1320
01:02:45,730 --> 01:02:48,150
Speaker 1: homes than at any time since the First World War.

1321
01:02:48,510 --> 01:02:50,470
Speaker 1: We were told by a number of housing officers that

1322
01:02:50,490 --> 01:02:53,570
Speaker 1: local authorities dare not inspect many establishments for fear that

1323
01:02:53,610 --> 01:02:56,590
Speaker 1: they will have to rehouse those inside. They have nowhere

1324
01:02:56,640 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 1: to rehouse anyone. We asked every council in the UK

1325
01:02:59,460 --> 01:03:02,620
Speaker 1: how many landlords they had prosecuted. The answer was, on average,

1326
01:03:02,680 --> 01:03:05,740
Speaker 1: fewer than two landlords in three years. Far from showing

1327
01:03:05,760 --> 01:03:08,600
Speaker 1: that standards are rising, it reveals an unregulated market in

1328
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:11,600
Speaker 1: which bad landlords operate as they wish. The government's own

1329
01:03:11,680 --> 01:03:14,280
Speaker 1: figures reveal that 40% of all housing in the private

1330
01:03:14,320 --> 01:03:18,470
Speaker 1: rental sector is in poor condition. And, yeah.

1331
01:03:19,530 --> 01:03:21,470
Speaker 2: This just, like, makes me so mad.

1332
01:03:21,530 --> 01:03:22,990
Speaker 1: It's really, really frustrating.

1333
01:03:23,010 --> 01:03:27,080
Speaker 2: I've done stories about, like, low-income housing tax credits and

1334
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:29,740
Speaker 2: stuff in the U.S., and it's just like, God, this

1335
01:03:29,840 --> 01:03:33,850
Speaker 2: is everywhere. Yeah. And you just create systems that funnel

1336
01:03:33,870 --> 01:03:37,440
Speaker 2: the poorest people to the shittiest fucking places and then

1337
01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:38,780
Speaker 2: you stick them there forever.

1338
01:03:38,800 --> 01:03:41,540
Speaker 1: Because no one making any of these decisions about what

1339
01:03:41,560 --> 01:03:44,840
Speaker 1: rental law should look like gives a single solitary fuck

1340
01:03:44,880 --> 01:03:47,500
Speaker 1: about these people. They're not donating to your campaign. They

1341
01:03:47,540 --> 01:03:50,660
Speaker 1: may not be voting, right? Why do you give a fuck, right?

1342
01:03:51,280 --> 01:03:53,180
Speaker 1: And if they are voting, you can just pass some

1343
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:54,910
Speaker 1: law and be like, look, we helped the problem and

1344
01:03:54,970 --> 01:03:56,130
Speaker 1: not do a goddamn thing.

1345
01:03:56,170 --> 01:03:58,230
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a million different things they could do to

1346
01:03:58,270 --> 01:04:01,500
Speaker 2: just make it– Yeah. It's like a window dressing for

1347
01:04:02,080 --> 01:04:05,160
Speaker 2: the war. Yeah. Just the worst thing for people's livelihood,

1348
01:04:05,300 --> 01:04:05,590
Speaker 2: you know?

1349
01:04:05,640 --> 01:04:05,860
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1350
01:04:06,030 --> 01:04:06,240
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1351
01:04:06,340 --> 01:04:11,410
Speaker 1: It's, it's pretty infuriating. Um, and yeah, I don't know. That's, uh, that's,

1352
01:04:11,530 --> 01:04:14,390
Speaker 1: that's the Rockman stories, right? You know, it, it, it's,

1353
01:04:15,330 --> 01:04:18,490
Speaker 1: it's the thing where he's, he's a bastard, but he's

1354
01:04:18,530 --> 01:04:21,410
Speaker 1: not the main bastard. Everything he did bad and good

1355
01:04:21,470 --> 01:04:23,850
Speaker 1: was the result of holes in the law or outright

1356
01:04:23,930 --> 01:04:27,940
Speaker 1: carelessness by British lawmakers. who after generations of imperial violence

1357
01:04:28,080 --> 01:04:30,880
Speaker 1: welcomed hundreds of thousands of non-white people into the country

1358
01:04:31,140 --> 01:04:33,340
Speaker 1: without making sure they had a place to host them.

1359
01:04:33,800 --> 01:04:36,420
Speaker 1: Many of those same lawmakers and their successors then used

1360
01:04:36,460 --> 01:04:38,900
Speaker 1: the racial animus this all caused to build their own

1361
01:04:38,960 --> 01:04:42,580
Speaker 1: political power, and they're still doing it today. Rockman's main

1362
01:04:42,620 --> 01:04:44,500
Speaker 1: role in all of this was both as an innovative

1363
01:04:44,540 --> 01:04:48,090
Speaker 1: slumlord and, more than anything, as a dead scapegoat, a

1364
01:04:48,150 --> 01:04:50,450
Speaker 1: foreign Jew who could be blamed for all of England's

1365
01:04:50,470 --> 01:04:53,070
Speaker 1: housing problems while the guilty parties floated away in a

1366
01:04:53,110 --> 01:04:57,500
Speaker 1: river of money, which they're still doing today. Anyway, cool.

1367
01:04:57,920 --> 01:04:59,200
Speaker 3: That's the story.

1368
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:01,060
Speaker 2: Oh, my God.

1369
01:05:01,220 --> 01:05:01,570
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1370
01:05:03,930 --> 01:05:08,070
Speaker 2: There's so many fascinating elements from just, I'm still stuck

1371
01:05:08,110 --> 01:05:11,920
Speaker 2: on this idea of, like, how people were taken down

1372
01:05:11,960 --> 01:05:14,780
Speaker 2: in politics and how much slower the news moved.

1373
01:05:15,020 --> 01:05:15,460
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.

1374
01:05:15,960 --> 01:05:16,980
Speaker 2: But then also.

1375
01:05:17,300 --> 01:05:20,340
Speaker 3: And that investigative journalists were considered bad.

1376
01:05:20,360 --> 01:05:21,660
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's nasty.

1377
01:05:21,700 --> 01:05:24,200
Speaker 1: Well, he was considered kind of like, kind of trashy.

1378
01:05:24,580 --> 01:05:26,680
Speaker 3: It kind of feels like the way that we think

1379
01:05:26,740 --> 01:05:28,480
Speaker 3: of like paparazzi these days.

1380
01:05:29,540 --> 01:05:32,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took some time. I mean, and again, Britain,

1381
01:05:32,930 --> 01:05:34,570
Speaker 1: Great Britain has produced some of the best and great

1382
01:05:34,770 --> 01:05:36,850
Speaker 1: investigative journalists in the world. But like, this is the

1383
01:05:36,890 --> 01:05:38,030
Speaker 1: period of time in which.

1384
01:05:37,810 --> 01:05:39,790
Speaker 3: That's becoming a thing. Jake Hanrahan, I'm wearing a popular

1385
01:05:39,810 --> 01:05:40,910
Speaker 3: front shirt right now.

1386
01:05:41,430 --> 01:05:41,850
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.

1387
01:05:42,670 --> 01:05:47,360
Speaker 1: Um... But yeah, it's not necessarily the most auspicious initial

1388
01:05:47,500 --> 01:05:48,900
Speaker 1: outing for some of that stuff.

1389
01:05:49,410 --> 01:05:55,010
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. I don't know. I feel like my sympathies

1390
01:05:55,070 --> 01:05:58,170
Speaker 2: really fell off after the pedophile part.

1391
01:05:58,190 --> 01:06:01,590
Speaker 1: That'll do it. I don't know. For me, it was

1392
01:06:01,720 --> 01:06:04,620
Speaker 1: after he knocked out the windows of that elderly couple

1393
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:06,320
Speaker 1: in the dead of winter.

1394
01:06:06,340 --> 01:06:08,280
Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong. He was losing me a lot

1395
01:06:08,340 --> 01:06:09,060
Speaker 2: before that.

1396
01:06:09,100 --> 01:06:10,660
Speaker 1: He was losing me a lot before that.

1397
01:06:11,660 --> 01:06:11,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1398
01:06:12,140 --> 01:06:12,440
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1399
01:06:12,700 --> 01:06:14,919
Speaker 2: That was just like the, like, all right, we're.

1400
01:06:15,160 --> 01:06:15,760
Speaker 1: That was the fight.

1401
01:06:15,780 --> 01:06:17,000
Speaker 3: That was the, that was the.

1402
01:06:17,120 --> 01:06:17,560
Speaker 1: Oh, okay.

1403
01:06:17,740 --> 01:06:18,000
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1404
01:06:18,120 --> 01:06:18,860
Speaker 3: All right.

1405
01:06:19,380 --> 01:06:21,220
Speaker 1: It was, yeah, for me, it was just one of those, like,

1406
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:23,050
Speaker 1: as I'm reading this, I'm like, okay, well, there's gotta

1407
01:06:23,070 --> 01:06:26,410
Speaker 1: be a teenage girl somewhere in this story. You're talking

1408
01:06:26,550 --> 01:06:30,310
Speaker 1: about like a sleazy landlord who owns nightclubs in the sixties.

1409
01:06:30,330 --> 01:06:32,710
Speaker 1: There's gotta be a 16 year old somewhere in here.

1410
01:06:32,910 --> 01:06:35,950
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, he's, he's sleeping with all the, his

1411
01:06:36,300 --> 01:06:38,540
Speaker 2: prostitute clients. I'm like, oh, we're.

1412
01:06:39,640 --> 01:06:39,780
Speaker 3: Yep.

1413
01:06:39,970 --> 01:06:44,870
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not going to end well. It's not.

1414
01:06:44,990 --> 01:06:48,710
Speaker 1: It hasn't. It's still pretty bad over there. But you

1415
01:06:48,750 --> 01:06:52,710
Speaker 1: know where it's not bad is in your pluggables. You

1416
01:06:52,750 --> 01:06:54,530
Speaker 1: want to plug them at the end of this episode?

1417
01:06:54,970 --> 01:07:04,750
Speaker 2: Yeah, lastweekinhell.substack.com Go read about I talk about other Slumlord-like

1418
01:07:04,830 --> 01:07:08,960
Speaker 2: people sometimes and other bad things and then all the

1419
01:07:09,000 --> 01:07:12,200
Speaker 2: news happenings in Portland and beyond. And then I am

1420
01:07:12,680 --> 01:07:14,360
Speaker 2: at Kevin H. Foster on socials.

1421
01:07:15,440 --> 01:07:20,280
Speaker 1: Excellent. All right, everybody find Kevin, uh, on socials and

1422
01:07:20,460 --> 01:07:22,900
Speaker 1: check out his writing and check out his work on.

1423
01:07:22,940 --> 01:07:26,400
Speaker 1: It could happen here. Um, and check out us.

1424
01:07:26,980 --> 01:07:29,410
Speaker 3: And our newest cool zone media show.

1425
01:07:30,680 --> 01:07:31,460
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, right.

1426
01:07:31,480 --> 01:07:34,340
Speaker 1: We do have a new show. That's right, Sophie. It's

1427
01:07:34,500 --> 01:07:35,400
Speaker 1: also an old show.

1428
01:07:35,980 --> 01:07:36,200
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1429
01:07:36,440 --> 01:07:40,500
Speaker 1: Knowledge Fight Country, hosted by the great Dan Friesen. We're

1430
01:07:40,740 --> 01:07:45,200
Speaker 1: just kind of iterating on his great show, Knowledge Fight,

1431
01:07:45,480 --> 01:07:48,600
Speaker 1: widening the spectrum of topics a little bit from just

1432
01:07:48,700 --> 01:07:51,640
Speaker 1: Alex Jones to some other figures in the far-right fever swamps.

1433
01:07:52,160 --> 01:07:54,780
Speaker 1: But it's the same great research from Dan that you're

1434
01:07:54,840 --> 01:07:57,590
Speaker 1: used to, and we'll have a host of new guests

1435
01:07:57,650 --> 01:07:59,890
Speaker 1: in there. But very excited for me to get a

1436
01:07:59,910 --> 01:08:02,650
Speaker 1: chance to check that out. I know Dan's excited.

1437
01:08:03,010 --> 01:08:05,950
Speaker 3: A rotating group of guests. In the first month, the

1438
01:08:05,990 --> 01:08:08,730
Speaker 3: guest is the great Molly Conker from Weird Little Guys.

1439
01:08:09,390 --> 01:08:12,190
Speaker 1: That's right. Two great tastes that taste great together.

1440
01:08:12,210 --> 01:08:14,910
Speaker 3: And the theme song is a banger from DJ Anarchy.

1441
01:08:15,030 --> 01:08:15,690
Speaker 3: I just got it.

1442
01:08:15,690 --> 01:08:17,650
Speaker 1: Danarchy. Danarchy, Sophie.

1443
01:08:17,810 --> 01:08:19,850
Speaker 3: Sorry. Sorry. I'm not good at things.

1444
01:08:19,890 --> 01:08:24,310
Speaker 2: How does it compare to the Tariff song?

1445
01:08:24,550 --> 01:08:26,410
Speaker 1: Oh, nothing compares to the Tariff song.

1446
01:08:26,990 --> 01:08:27,210
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1447
01:08:27,450 --> 01:08:29,809
Speaker 3: Oh, that was alarming that we did that in sync.

1448
01:08:30,150 --> 01:08:31,450
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

1449
01:08:33,510 --> 01:08:36,759
Speaker 2: You got to talk about the clash knockoff song during

1450
01:08:36,800 --> 01:08:40,339
Speaker 2: the British landlord episode. I mean, we can't, we can't not.

1451
01:08:40,680 --> 01:08:41,420
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

1452
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:42,280
Speaker 3: Anyways.

1453
01:08:43,120 --> 01:08:43,340
Speaker 2: All right.

1454
01:08:43,360 --> 01:08:45,019
Speaker 1: Well, that's, that's gotta be, that's gotta be it for

1455
01:08:45,060 --> 01:08:48,900
Speaker 1: us here today. Behind the bastards. Until next time. I

1456
01:08:49,380 --> 01:08:53,770
Speaker 1: don't know. Don't, Be a slumlord?

1457
01:08:53,930 --> 01:08:55,370
Speaker 3: Don't be a slumlord. Touch grass.

1458
01:08:55,490 --> 01:08:56,550
Speaker 1: I don't know what else to tell you.

1459
01:08:57,250 --> 01:08:58,250
Speaker 3: Unless you're allergic.

1460
01:08:58,270 --> 01:08:59,370
Speaker 1: Just try not to be a slumlord.

1461
01:08:59,740 --> 01:09:00,520
Speaker 3: Wear sunscreen.

1462
01:09:01,380 --> 01:09:02,720
Speaker 2: Sunscreen. Good, good tip.

1463
01:09:02,920 --> 01:09:05,780
Speaker 1: Yeah, wear sunscreen. Don't be a slumlord. Eat a lot

1464
01:09:05,870 --> 01:09:06,290
Speaker 1: of fiber.

1465
01:09:09,390 --> 01:09:11,910
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

1466
01:09:12,110 --> 01:09:15,840
Speaker 3: For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

1467
01:09:16,240 --> 01:09:18,880
Speaker 3: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1468
01:09:19,040 --> 01:09:22,540
Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of

1469
01:09:22,580 --> 01:09:25,320
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every

1470
01:09:25,380 --> 01:09:28,030
Speaker 3: Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you

1471
01:09:28,070 --> 01:09:31,530
Speaker 3: don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog,

1472
01:09:31,590 --> 01:09:35,490
Speaker 3: continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at

1473
01:09:35,550 --> 01:09:40,230
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.