Bikes out on Harris Promenade

Former Detective Chief Inspector and MLC Dudley Butt turns the clock back 50 years to a time when he was a constable and he and his colleagues were attacked by TT fans.

The 1970 TT was one of darkness, fantastic weather and for some policemen a few exciting nights.

The darkness was that this TT was marred by six deaths in the racing, the most there had been at that time, which led to a furore in the UK press, and there were also several deaths amongst visiting fans.

The fantastic weather was on a par with the heatwave of TT 2018 - for the most part.

And the exciting nights - which were only exciting if you survived them - were what became known in the Isle of Man Constabulary as the Rendezvous Riots.

With the glorious weather, the crowds were out in force in Douglas, reluctant to go to bed and making the most of the hotels and bars, which were packed.

The very hot weather was also a factor in the death of top Spanish rider Santiago Herrero who died during the 250cc race while holding a top-three position. He was rumoured to have lost control on melting tar at the 13th Milestone.

Many will remember the fun and games in the Bushy’s area of the 90s, which were a fantastic experience, and mostly good natured.

In 1970 things were a little different. Most of the bikers who came for the TT were working lads, perhaps their bike was their sole means of transport.

Not for them the £10,000 bikes and £1,000 leathers, or even helmets. Not for them the middle-class lifestyle with biking as a hobby.

In those days things were a lot more rough and ready. Mixed into the crowd were also a few Hells Angels type biker gangs, not a great problem, but a nuisance when things finally kicked off. Not to mention the locals…

The area at Greensills Corner - the Rendezvous Cafe - and in front of the Sefton Hotel was in 1970 open, often used for car parking, and in TT week was the focus of the bikers. That is where they congregated in their thousands, the Bushy’s of the day.

Most of practice week was good natured, but there was a simmering build up to Mad Sunday as the hot weather in the evenings kept the crowds out until the early hours.


On Mad Sunday evening, I was on duty in the Rendezvous area, with about five other colleagues, keeping an eye on the huge crowd.

With me were Laurie Howland, Cliff Gelling, Paddy (Heaton) Corlett and Dicky Duke. There were a couple of other officers in the area who later became involved.

The crowd filled the whole area, until there was only a narrow passageway for vehicles to use the promenade, and this became the sole domain of motorcyclists who raced through to entertain the crowd, a few with wheelies, not so common in those days, but many putting their steel toes boots on the ground raising streams of sparks. For some reason that delighted the crowd most.

Then even that narrow path became blocked.

So,to clear the way, along came Constable Bert Cowley, (now a senior lawyer in Canada) driving the ONLY police car in Douglas, our new Ford Corsair. He drove through the crowd, trying to clear a way through. Then the trouble started.

While driving through, the Corsair hit a motorbike, which tipped onto two more bikes, domino style, and knocked them over.

The crowd nearby went berserk and attacked the Corsair, trying to jump on it, kicking it and pummelling the roof and Bert had to make as hasty a retreat as possible, north up the Promenade. Then the crowd began to attack us.

We had a while of hand-to-hand fighting with some groups, and bottles and glasses were being thrown at us. Arrests were not possible as we were so outnumbered and hemmed in.

Laurie Howland, alongside me, had his white helmet crushed, but it did enough to save him from injury.

We didn’t carry radios those days, but someone must have called for help, probably Bert in the Corsair, and eventually we got some reinforcements.

The main fighting subsided into smaller skirmishes and we spent the next couple of hours trying to keep control and disperse the crowd - but they didn’t move, and we didn’t have enough staff to actually make arrests.

Later on when the crowd had gone, Laurie and I went to the hospital and ended up in the ambulance station having a cup of tea, Laurie with his totally crushed helmet, and we watched a bit of the World Cup in Mexico on a tiny black and white TV.

But I remember sitting there, totally exhilarated, obviously full of adrenaline, as we recounted all the things that had happened to us.

Monday turned out to be even more tumultuous. The crowd was much bigger.

The locals had heard about Sunday and turned out in numbers to watch. This time we had more troops on the ground ready for trouble. And trouble there was.

Once again we were attacked - possibly triggered by a sergeant who stopped a noisy bike - and stuck his night stick up the exhaust to see if their were any baffles in the silencer.

There were a group sitting on the Promenade wall throwing bottles at us, and some were sharpening pennies on the wall- the old 1d - we were still pre-decimal - and winging them at us. I got hit by a couple but no damage was done.

At one stage one of our police inspectors, Frank Cannell, was attacked with a bottle and I think Constable Geoff Kneale and Laurie Howland intervened to save him from injury.

My most memorable action that night was that I saw the owner of the Argyle Hotel, next to the Sefton, Mr Critchley, in his doorway trying to stop four men coming into his hotel. He was actually ’boxing’ them, on his own.

I got through the crowd and joined him and we had to fight the lads. Mr Critchley, still in ’boxing’ mode, me just trying to restrain them. It turned out the four lads were steelworkers from Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

We were joined by PC Tony Quirk after a few minutes and got them under control. When the police van came to the front of the Rendezvous for us to take the men away, it was attacked and nearly turned over.

Those lads from Doncaster were decent, they just got carried away.

That was the nature of those nights, excitement, drink, and I learned a lot of lessons about how to handle potentially aggressive crowds. On both nights the crowd reacted to police actions, which some of them perceived to be aggression on our part.

Those lessons I used in controlling the huge crowds in the Bushy’s area 20-plus years later, when we had no trouble at all - apart from the odd local lad kicking off.

Once again, when the crowd dispersed on the Monday night, Laurie and I, still full of adrenaline, again headed to the Noble’s ambulance ’boiler house’ for a cup of tea, a calm down and to watch a bit of World Cup football from Mexico.

Anyone who remembers Laurie will know there is no better person to have alongside you when trouble kicks off. Those of us who were there on the Sunday night later received a rare Chief Constable’s Commendation for our actions that night. Sadly there are not many of us left who experienced those events.

The crowds thinned the next few nights and we had little further trouble. Lessons were learned on all sides.

Later that week, the night before the Senior Race, I recognised a young Irish lad in the Rendezvous area and had a lovely chat with him about bikes and racing.

He was Brian Steenson, and in the Senior he crashed at the Mountain Box and died a few days later.

I think the weather turned at the end of the week and the Senior was postponed until the Saturday and Agostini did the Junior/Senior double, winning both races by about five minutes.

That night, I was on nights and the Lake Road mortuary was so full of bodies, including another rider killed that day, John Weatherall from Malta, that I was tasked with taking a couple of bodies to the mortuary at Ramsey to make room for them all at Lake Road.
A lonely trip on my own over the mountain in a van with two people who had sadly lost their lives in that memorable TT of 1970.

Exhilarating, exciting, yes, but always a dark side.