Howard Marks: Cymru’s Finest Anti-Hero
Dennis Howard Marks was born just after the end of the Second World War in Kenfig Hill, a small village within the principal area of Bridgend. A fluent speaker of Cymraeg, Marks impressed at Garw Grammar School in Pontycymer resulting in him gaining a spot at Oxford’s Balliol College. It was in Oxford that Marks would be introduced to the plant that became synonymous with himself, opening a door into a criminal world that you have to see to believe.
Marks started off his cannabis empire as a small-time dealer, selling only to friends and acquaintances. “The first step toward dealing would’ve been enjoying getting stoned and therefore smoking a lot. I started to deal because I couldn’t afford to smoke what I wanted. Back then we thought it would be legal soon anyway. So I started to deal. Which means having more than you can smoke.” He said in a Wales On Sunday interview in 2007. His first of many major forrays into the world of cannabis smuggling happened in 1970, assisting Graham Plinston in getting green from Germany into the UK. Through Plinston, Marks met Mohammed Durrani who offered the chance to sell hashish on a large scale in London. Along with political activist Charlie Radcliffe, Jarvis (no known last name) and Charlie Weatherly, Pakistani hashish was making its way to London, Brighton and Oxford in large quantities. It is reported that in London alone, the four were selling 650 kilos of hash, making a profit of £20,000 (£316,388.51 today counting for inflation). Over time, the four became dissatisfied with Durrani who was taking an 80% cut of the gang’s profits. This resulted in Marks contacting James McCann, a gunrunner for the Provisional IRA to smuggle hash from Kabul to Ireland, where it would make its way to Wales and England via ferry. By 1972, Marks was making £50,000 per shipment (worth £674,679.11 today) and this brought a former friend from Oxford on the scene. MI6’s Hamilton McMillan recruited Marks to work for Secret Intelligence Service due to his links to the Middle East and the IRA. The following year saw his smuggling operation reach the USA, with dope passing through airports within the speakers and other musical equipment of bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis. It was around this time where the British press started reporting on his trade, leading to the many alter aliases Marks had to adopt to keep his operations going. I would be here all day if I were to list all of his operations from his 22 years active in the smuggling business, but put it this way. I haven’t listed deals he did with the Italian Mafia, Japan’s Yazuka and even the CIA. There quite simply isn’t enough time to mention all that the man did.
Despite a hand full of arrests and some time behind bars in the 70s and 80s, Marks largely managed to evade prosecution for an impressive amount of time. This was through his 43 aliases including Marco Polo, Hooward Marks, Albi, Mr Tetley and arguably the most iconic of them all, Mr Nice. Marks mugged off the authorities for years, but it all had to come to an end at some point. Operation Electric was a joint operation with the DEA and Scotland Yard to catch Marks and his affiliates from all around the globe. They tapped his phone for two years, was arrested and extradited him to the USA from his Majorca home in 1988. Marks was sentenced to 25 years, though he only went on to serve seven years. Placed in Indiana’s Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex, Marks remained on good terms with many of the extremely dangerous and violent inmates through his good charm and eccentric nature. He found success as a jailhouse lawyer, securing one overturned conviction for an inmate. He was described as a model prisoner by an officer who was full of praise for the Bridgend boy who helped many inmates pass their GED (American equivalent of GCSE) exams. Well received by officers and inmates alike, he was released from Terre Haute in April 1995. It was his time in prison where he began putting pen to paper on his iconic autobiography, that would put the former most wanted man of Britain into the public eye post-release from the grips of an American prison.
Mr Nice became a worldwide bestseller upon release in 1996, translated into various languages for an audience as worldwide as his former cannabis enterprise. In the same year, Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals released their debut album Fuzzy Logic, seen as many as the best record to emerge from the Cool Cymru cultural movement. Marks’ various passport photos from his smuggling days graced the cover of the album, the tenth track is titled “Hangin’ with Howard Marks” and he went onto work with the band on both “Ice “Hockey Hair and “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck.” Gruff Rhys, lead singer of SFA first met Marks shortly after his release at a gig in Pontypridd, quoting in an interview that that “The weed he smoked would turn most humans to speechless rock.” Actor Rhys Ifans was also present at Pontypridd, even asking Marks if he could play him in a film one day. This eventually came to fruition in the 2010 biopic Mr Nice. Marks himself made it onto the big screen on a few occasions, his cameo in Justin Kerrigan’s Human Traffic is one of the most iconic scenes in Welsh film history. The “Spliff Politics” scene is viewed to be as iconic as John Simm’s “The Milkybars Are On Me” speech or Danny Dyer’s shouts of “Nice One Bruvva!” just goes to show the impression Marks left on viewers to this very day. Howard Marks is as big of a figure of Cool Cymru as Cerys Matthews, Kelly Jones and Nicky Wire are, the man will forever be associated with that era of Welsh history. Only a Valleys boy could be the biggest and most wanted drug smuggler on the planet and still ending up as a complete legend in his homeland.
At the age of 70, Howard Marks passed away in Leeds from an inoperable form of colorectal cancer. The boy who charmed his way into Oxford from a small village in the coal mining areas of the South Wales Valleys, who charmed drug barons and gang members and federal agents from all corners of the planet lived one of the most undeniably insane lives imaginable. Some will always see him as a crook who got lucky by evading prosecution for as long as he did, but many more see a figure who stuck two fingers up to the laws surrounding cannabis legislation by flooding it all around the world. As more and more countries legalise the medical and recreational use of the plant, including the UK (medically) and many states in the USA, the man paved the way for activists from London to Louisiana, Kefing Hill to Kabul, Cardiff to Cologne. Whatever your opinions are on Marks, it is safe to say he will always be Cymru’s finest Anti-Hero.
