Hateland (13 page)

    Ray's release from prison coincided with my birthday, so to celebrate we went up the West End to a bar called Sound and Vision. Banks of TV screens showing music videos covered the walls. A group of men from east London started behaving in a liberty-taking way, making snide comments about south London and jostling us as we walked past them to the toilets. They seemed to know the doormen, so must have assumed unwisely they could get away with their provocation. We played pool. One of the men walked past and deliberately knocked Del Boy into Benny. I didn't say anything. I just hit the man across the head with a pool cue, then proceeded to whack his mates too.

    Both sides started throwing pool balls at one another. TV screens were getting smashed. The doormen came to the East Enders' aid, but we beat them back. We left the bar at our leisure and jumped on the nearest tube back to south London. The only place we could find open that would let us in was a tacky bar-cum-club in Vauxhall, frequented by gays and drug dealers.

    As we stood at the bar waiting to be served, Adolf said to me, 'That bloke keeps smiling at me.' I looked across to see a man on his own at the other side of the bar. He was a bit older than us, and looked like he might have had one or two gay relationships in the past.

    The handsome stranger smiled at me too. I told Adolf to ignore him. Adolf said if the man continued to smile at him, and therefore assume he too was gay, then he was going to bash him. I said, without wishing to appear too liberal, that, as it was a sort of gay venue, then it wasn't entirely unreasonable for a gay man to assume that perhaps other male customers might also be so inclined. A few minutes later, the man was on the floor, bleeding from the. head, the remains of a light-ale bottle, all around him.

    For the second time that evening, a full-scale brawl erupted. Tables, chairs, glasses and customers flew around the room. The fight spilled out of the club and onto the street. Eventually, our opponents, in less than gay mood, just stood in the doorway, preventing our re-entry. We stood in the road, exchanged a few insults and started to walk off up the street. Only then did we realise that Larry wasn't with us. He had to be still inside the club. We turned and ran back down the road. As we reached the club, the doors opened and Larry was launched out onto the pavement. The doors slammed shut.

    One of my friends arrived with a can of petrol. He'd bought it from the nearby garage in Nine Elms Lane. He started dousing the club's doors and windows with the fuel. Those inside could see what was happening. Through the windows, I watched panic breaking out. Screams and shouts accompanied the clambering to find a rear exit. Before the petrol could be ignited, a police car and van came hurtling round the corner. Everyone began to run. A policeman tackled me to the ground before I'd got very far. He said I was under arrest.

    I could see Larry still lying immobile on the pavement where he'd landed. A victorious policeman stood over him, informing him of his rights. I was handcuffed, bundled into the van and told to sit on the floor.

    Various revellers from the club were brought to the van to identify me. Only two of them implicated me as one of those who'd been fighting. Meanwhile, I watched Larry being hauled to his feet by two large police officers. Each time they got him upright, he collapsed again. Eventually, they gave up and carried him to the van, dumping him next to me on the floor. I tried speaking to him, but, between his mumbling and a policeman's telling me to shut up, I didn't get a decipherable response.

    At the station, I was told I was being held on suspicion of attempted arson. Larry, still unable to stand or communicate (apart from the occasional slurred swear-word), was told he was being held for being drunk and disorderly. They tried walking him up and down the custody area to sober him up, but every time they let go of him he collapsed in a heap. They took me to an interview room for questioning. They took Larry to the cells to sleep it off.

    I discovered later that, to be on the safe side, the police had called a doctor, who'd immediately summoned an ambulance for Larry. At the hospital, an X-ray revealed the reason why he couldn't stand up. He'd suffered two broken legs.

    The police interrogated me for a few hours, but I knew I had nothing to fear, because neither my person nor my clothing had come into contact with any petrol. Then the two witnesses who'd been so sure about my identity outside the club failed to appear to make statements. I was released the next day. Larry later received a letter informing him that 'after careful consideration' no further action would be taken against him in respect of the drunk-and-disorderly allegation.

    Effra Terrace in Railton Road, Brixton, had for several years been a source of irritation and anger for many locals, including my mates Ray and Tony, who lived almost opposite. The entire block of flats had been taken over by, according to Ray's description, a group of particularly smelly and offensive red squatters. We clashed occasionally outside Brixton tube station with the ones who sold Marxist propaganda sheets.

    We were therefore delighted to watch the television news one night in March 1984. Police riot squads had moved in to evict the squatters. Later, Ray gave us his own eyewitness account. He said he'd been woken at four in the morning by the sound of shouts, screams and smashing bottles. At first, he'd thought we'd come to visit him.

    It wasn't yet the rioting season - summer - so he got up to see hundreds of police outside. He realised gleefully that the squatters were finally being rehoused. Rampaging youths were hurling bricks and lumps of wood. Ray watched as they overturned a car, erected barricades and set a house on fire. He said if they hadn't been reds, he might have joined in on their side.

    It was great news. However, their eviction would indirectly cause my brother Paul extreme grief a few weeks later.

    I continued to travel home to Codsall now and again to visit my mother and see my old friends. When you've had constant problems with the police in a small community, you end up with a tag you can never shed. The police seem to work on the assumption that only certain people commit certain types of crime. Like at school, it becomes a case of, 'Who else could have done it?' So even on a short trip home to say hello to my mother I could find myself being pulled in for questioning about almost any crime of robbery and violence within a radius of 50 miles. On one occasion, when I myself became a victim of crime, I found the case being investigated as if I were the criminal.

    I was drinking alone one day in a Wolverhampton pub. A well-built man came over to me. He was with a girl I knew from school. I greeted her and she introduced me to her friend. When he heard my surname, he said he knew my older brother Jerry. He added that Jerry was a wanker.

    I haven't spent much time in my life with those of great charm and manners, so I don't expect much in the way of etiquette. However, I do feel, as a point of principle, that when one is meeting strangers for the first time one should - at least in the initial exchange of greetings - try to avoid expressing insultingly derogatory comments about one of that stranger's close family members.

    I said to the cheeky bastard, 'What did you say?'

    He repeated that my brother Jerry was a wanker. He based his contention on the fact that Jerry had left the Hell's Angels. No one wants to upset the Wolverhampton Hell's Angels - especially not Asian potato-pickers - but Jerry had been involved with them, got locked up, come out of prison and moved on.

    I punched my new acquaintance in the face and a fight started. When we were pulled apart, the landlord, who'd seen and heard everything, told the other man to leave. At closing time, I walked out of the pub to get a taxi at the rank directly opposite. As I stepped onto the pavement, I was hit over the head from behind with some sort of heavy weapon, possibly an iron bar. I fell to the floor and covered my face as I was now being kicked about the head.

    The attack stopped and my opponent from earlier walked away.

    I could hear him laughing with his girlfriend. I got to my feet slowly. I was dazed and could feel blood pouring down my neck and back, but I was shaking with temper for having been so easily caught out.

    A rubbish bin stood nearby. I pulled out its metal insert and ran up behind the man. I belted him over the head with it as hard as I could, then I began to kick and punch him. He fell to the ground. I made the mistake of standing directly over him. He forced himself up into my body and I fell backwards, losing my balance. I twisted in an attempt to regain my footing, but ended up falling face-first into the plate-glass window of a clothes shop. The glass shattered and I fell through into the shop itself. The impact knocked me out. Luckily, two nurses on their way to work stopped to give me first aid. They called an ambulance.

    At the hospital, I had 56 stitches put in a wound that went from the top right-hand side of my forehead, across the corner of my eye and onto my cheek. I received a further seven stitches in the wound at the back of my head. As soon as I could focus, I got up and discharged myself. I went home, gave my mother a fright and retired to bed.

    The next day, the police arrived. They hadn't come to bring me grapes and wish me a speedy recovery. They wanted to question me about my 'attempt to burgle' the clothes shop. Fortunately, the two nurses, and a woman who'd been on a passing bus, contacted them. I wasn't troubled further. Apparently, according to the woman on the bus, after I'd fallen through the plate-glass window, my attacker had climbed into the shop after me and kicked me in the head several times as I lay unconscious among the mannequins.

    I went to great lengths to find my attacker. I was hoping, obviously, to make a citizen's arrest, but he left the area before I could bring him to justice.

    I put in a claim to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. I walked into a hearing, which I thought would debate how much cash I was going to get. Instead, I was told I wouldn't get a penny. My 'character and way of life' made me 'unsuitable for compensation'.

    I returned to London and moved out of Deptford. The flat there was beginning to fill up with fugitives from justice. I moved into a tiny flat in Earls Court. It was pretty awful - cramped, noisy and with a neighbour who was insane. Officially, that is, with the certificate to prove it. If somebody knocked on my door, my neighbour would knock on his own for the next ten minutes. Occasionally, he'd knock on my door, too. I'd answer it and he'd just stand there laughing. Day and night he'd march around his flat, or hang out of his window, shouting, 'West five! West five!' I moved to a larger flat in the Putney Bridge end of Fulham.

    My old friend Stan from Codsall came to visit me for a week. Adolf invited us to a BNP meeting on the Euston Road in north London. He said there'd be trouble later with the reds. Members of a group called the 'Red Army Faction' (RAF) would be passing through nearby King's Cross station after a march in south London. The plan was to ambush them.

    The BNP meeting took place in a building called 'The Friends' Meeting House'. I thought at first I'd come to the wrong place, because the noticeboard overflowed with posters for Third World charities and other compassionate causes. I was told the building was actually owned by the pacifist Quakers, who let it be used cheaply by worthy groups. I assumed someone in the BNP hadn't been entirely honest when making the booking.

    At the meeting, Adolf introduced me to Tony Wells, who later became national organiser in the 'reformed' BNP. Adolf said Wells's real surname was Lecomber, but he'd dropped it because he thought it sounded Jewish. Almost a year later, in 1985, Lecomber would become known as 'The Mad Bomber' after an incident involving Adolf.

    After the usual rabble-rousing speeches, about 20 of us waited around for the encounter with the reds. A BNP 'spotter' who was following them from south London rang on a mobile phone to say they'd just got on a train heading for King's Cross.

    Our group headed over to the station. A skinhead with us produced a flare gun and promised to shoot a leading RAF member with it. Flares are designed for use as distress signals or to illuminate targets. If they hit someone, the end result is horrific.

    A flare, unlike a bullet, doesn't smash its way through flesh and bone - it burns its way through.

    There was a real air of menace that day, perhaps generated in part by the bloodlust speeches. Everyone felt something 'big' would happen. Instead of the usual fisticuffs, we thought at least one of the reds would be seriously injured or even killed. There'd been a dramatic fall in the number of people supporting extreme right-wing parties. The feeling was that a 'spectacular' was needed to thrust 'the Movement' under the spotlight again and re-awaken the public's interest. A red being maimed or murdered in such a horrific fashion would fit the bill.

    The spotter phoned to say they'd be at King's Cross in 15 minutes. We went down into the tube station to meet them. The owner of the flare gun loaded it for us all to see, before putting it back in his pocket with a now-we-shall-see look. There must have been about 20 of us down near the ticket barrier as the first reds came up the stairs. As soon as the reds saw us, they tried to turn and go back down the stairs. We advanced towards the barrier, screaming and shouting, 'Fucking red scum! Come on! Come on!' Suddenly, from further down the stairs came a great roar of manly voices. The reds who'd been retreating were pushed back up towards us by the ones following. About 50 reds were now advancing towards us.

    Everyone in our group was shouting 'Stand! Stand!' but most were retreating as they said it. Adolf began shouting at the man with the flare gun, 'Shoot the cunts! Shoot the cunts!'

    But the man just turned and ran. Tony Lecomber was shouting, 'Stand! Stand!', too, but before long he was legging it as well. Only Adolf, Stan, myself and two others remained as the reds began clambering over the barriers to get at us. We looked around, looked at each other and said, 'Fuck this.' We legged it. On the stairs to the street, Adolf stopped and said, 'We'll hold them here.'