Hateland (16 page)

    I'd done that once before in England. Aged 17, I'd made pregnant my girlfriend of three years. She gave birth to a boy, Adrian, but then dumped me. With hindsight, I know she made a wise decision, but at the time I felt heartbroken. I decided to leave the area. I packed a holdall and said goodbye to my mother, not knowing where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there. Saying goodbye to my mother devastated me. I walked the five miles to the M6 motorway in tears. I decided to leave my final destination to fate: I'd stick my thumb out and go wherever the first car to stop was going. That night, I found myself trudging in a blizzard through a run-down area of Glasgow. I slept in a tin workman's hut near the Celtic football ground and in the morning I explored the city. I'd heard unemployment was high in Glasgow, but I didn't think things could be that bad. Then I found a jobcentre that appeared not to have any jobs on its boards. When I enquired at the desk, the clerk started laughing. He called over his colleagues to show them the Englishman who'd come to Glasgow to find work. As he sent me away, he said, 'You're at the wrong end of the motorway, Dick Whittington.' I lived rough in Glasgow for a few days before moving on and doing the same in Edinburgh and then Dundee. After six months, I ended up back in Codsall.

    Billy said he wanted to leave Amsterdam and move on with me. I agreed to let him travel with me, though I felt I'd probably made a mistake. I'd been growing gradually to dislike him. His callous treatment of Angie had accelerated the plunge in his personal ratings. I asked him to tell her about our plans, but he wouldn't, and he forbade me to say anything. He didn't care about her. Her prostitution had kept him fed, clothed and boozed for several months, but now he couldn't even be bothered to say goodbye.

    We packed our stuff and left in the early morning before she returned. I felt guilty, so I left her a note. I kept thinking she'd go completely under when she discovered Billy had left her. He didn't give a toss. He said, 'She's only a whore.' God only knows what happened to the poor girl.

    On the road, our 'friendship' deteriorated further. We couldn't get many lifts and we ran out of money. Billy kept moaning and moaning and moaning, like a whining child. Outside Maastricht, I finally had enough. I told him to stop moaning or fuck off on his own. We had a brief but intense exchange of views, then he pulled a knife on me. He kept jabbing it at me, calling me a wanker and saying, 'Come on, then! Come on, then!'

    I didn't fancy bleeding to death on a deserted road, so I ran away. But Billy shouldn't have jeered as he did, because I wasn't running far. I'd merely spotted something I wanted. I jogged 30 yards to an embankment where out of the ground I pulled up a long, thin, metal rod (which workmen use when taping off trenches). Then I jogged back to my dear, dear friend, whose recent pride in victory was now evacuating rapidly into his underpants.

    Billy seemed transfixed as I bore down upon him. I swung the rod and clubbed him across the head. He fell to the ground. I kicked him in the head and body before taking the knife off him. I was tempted to stab him, if only for Angie, but I thought better of it. I punched him a few more times in the head and just left him there, moaning again, though this time with good reason.

    Blood had spattered over my face, hands and clothes, so I knew I'd now have even greater difficulty hitching a ride. I cleaned myself up in a petrol station before setting off on my own.

    It soon dawned on me that I was never going to establish myself anywhere without money, so I returned reluctantly to London by jumping trains and conning my way onto the ferry

    It was late summer 1985. Nothing much had changed. My friends were going about their unruly business much the same as before. I was told that the police had called at my old address a few times looking for me. But they hadn't bothered searching it. They hadn't even asked too many questions, so I felt they weren't in hot pursuit. Then again, I'd hardly committed the crime of the century. A bottle over the head in Codsall wouldn't be competing with the Great Train Robbery for a place in the annals of crime.

    I got back in time for the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium. This event, televised live and watched by hundreds of millions throughout the world, aimed to raise money for famine victims in Ethiopia. Many of the entertainers taking part had sung on the so-called 'Band Aid' single 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' at the end of 1984. That record sold 3.5 million copies in the UK. I went along with a closet fascist to hear a few bands and to laugh at the outpouring of what I saw as bogus compassion for the Third World.

    For some years, I'd loathed the event's organiser, Bob Geldof, and his band, the Boomtown Prats. My friends and I had seen them as perfumed maggots on the joyfully stinking corpse of punk. Now that the public had tired of buying his crap records - I ranted to myself - Geldof had dreamt up this 'Feed the World' bollocks to boost his diminished status. The idea of all these hugely wealthy, if not multimillionaire, pop stars getting on stage to browbeat poor people into handing over money to 'feed' even poorer people really brought out the Adolf in me. I couldn't believe the gall of these 'musicians', many of whom led lives of extravagant and wasteful luxury, publicly weeping crocodile tears for the poor little black kids going to bed hungry. I felt sure a single restaurant bill from one of these fucks would keep a Bangladeshi village in rice for a decade. Chief phoney Bob Geldof was the sort of person I wished I'd been at school with. I'd have sentenced him to hang long ago.

    Another pop star showing signs of becoming a similar 'Messiah of Compassion' was U2's Bono. In 1985, Bono, unlike fellow Irishman Geldof, could at least say he'd once led a decent band. Sadly, too much time spent with Geldof looked like infecting Bono with the same drooling Jesus complex. My closet fascist friend felt the same way. When the band U2 took to the stage, a man near us began waving an Irish tricolour. My friend told him to take it down. 'Wembley,' said my friend, 'ain't the place for IRA scum to wave their colours.'

    An argument developed between us and the man. My friend grabbed the flag. Inevitably, a fight broke out. The crowd parted to avoid the flying fists. My friend started rolling about on the famous turf, punching 'the red scum', until the security staff intervened. They threw us out, pushing us into the street still clutching the snatched flag.

    Within a few weeks, events occurred which made me and most of my friends wonder again if we should bother staying in England. An incident in the Handsworth district of Birmingham in which young blacks accused the police of racism led to two days of rioting, arson and looting, costing millions of pounds and the lives of two Asian men who died trapped in a burning post office. Around 120 people were injured, two-thirds of them police officers. A total of 437 people were arrested.

    A few days later, so-called 'copycat' riots took place in Dudley, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Moseley in Birmingham and St Paul's in Bristol. It seemed, from our extremist viewpoint, as if our familiar, British way of life might collapse for ever under the weight of all these immigrants trying to take over our country, with no regard for our laws. As we saw it, they would go shopping when the shops were shut and, if the police intervened, they'd petrol-bomb them and accuse them of being 'racist'. We'd have been happy for the government to send in the Paras to carry out another 'Bloody Sunday' on British soil, though this time with black victims. Some of us began to dream of emigrating to a country where the authorities knew how to deal firmly with uppity darkies. South Africa was mentioned for the first time as more than a possible holiday destination.

    I guessed it wouldn't be long before south London joined the list of riot zones. I think the police agreed. There seemed to be a lot more of them on the streets. And the local papers reported more police raids on illegal drinking and drug dens and the like. I wasn't entirely unhappy with this part of the situation. I felt if the police were concentrating on the possibility of major civil disorder, they were hardly likely to devote any resources to hunting me down.

    On 28 September 1985, the police raided a house in Brixton searching for a black man called Michael Groce. They wanted to question him about the illegal possession of a shotgun. During the raid, his mother ended up being shot by a policeman. A few hours later, around 300 youths, most of them black, attacked the local police station with petrol bombs. The shooting of Mrs

    Groce had finally kicked off the riots we'd felt had been waiting to happen.

    We all rang each other with the news. Later on that afternoon, seven of us, including Adolf, Colin, Adrian 'Army Game' and 'Benny the Jew' met up for a drink in Stockwell. Benny lived just around the corner from Ray and Tony's house on the front line. We decided to head over there to see what was happening. Police had cordoned off the area and were stopping non-residents from entering. Resident Benny convinced them to let us all through to go home. As we made our way down the road, we passed some white teenagers who warned us about blacks attacking whites. We relished the thought of a row. Nothing prepared us for the scale of the trouble. Hundreds of people filled the streets - most of them engaged in law-breaking of one kind or another.

    Screams and missiles hurtled towards police cowering behind riot shields that were being tested to the limits of their brick-resisting endurance. Petrol bombs added colour and warmth to the occasion. And, in an early pre-Christmas non-sales rush, mask-wearing bargain-hunters emptied shops of their goods.

    We passed people we felt sure were trying to organise this chaos. I saw white individuals with whistles which they seemed to be using to send signals to other people with whistles. I didn't ask them to show their party cards, but they looked like members of the red rabble we'd encountered countless times before.

    One man stood on a small pair of stepladders. Perhaps he just wanted a better view, but he seemed to me to be watching the police's movements. Then he'd make hand signals - and I don't think he was waving to his mum. I'd seen this before in Northern Ireland, where riots were rarely as 'spontaneous' as they appeared and, once they'd kicked off, were often led and directed by people with a politically motivated agenda. We felt a confrontation in this situation would be unwise. We left the main theatre of riot and headed towards Benny's house.

    At a junction, we heard the sound of hammering. It was coming from the back of a jeweller's shop. We lifted ourselves up onto a wall to have a look. A group of black youths ran off. We climbed down to see what they'd been up to. Instead of using their sledgehammer to tackle the shop's heavily armoured back door, they'd opted for trying to smash a hole through the brickwork.

    Our conversation until that point had been filled with outrage at the 'black criminals' running riot and looting in our cities. Now the thought of getting our hands on a few trays of gold necklaces prompted us to join in. We took turns trying to knock through the wall. Every few minutes, a police siren would wail nearby. We feared they were coming for us. After a while, having made little progress through the reinforced wall, we gave up.

    We spent the rest of the night at Benny's, watching the riot on the news. By midnight, the police had shed their defensive tactics and charged the crowd. The disorder had subsided by 2.30 a.m.

    Next day, a few sporadic clashes occurred, but they dissolved quickly. In all, 43 civilians and 10 police officers had been injured. The police arrested 230 people, half of whom were white, and recorded 724 crimes, including more than 90 burglaries. A photographer later died from injuries sustained during the riot. A few days later, other smaller riots occurred in nearby Peckham and in Toxteth in Liverpool.

    In the days after the riots, some of the local pubs resembled electrical superstores. Cut-price TVs, microwaves and stereos were in abundance. The people who'd looted them didn't give a fuck about politics. We could have bought everything off them wearing Ku Klux Klan robes, and they wouldn't have cared, so long as we paid cash.

    A week or so later, the police organised a public meeting at Brixton Town Hall aimed at trying to heal the damage caused by their shooting of Mrs Cherry Groce. A group of six of us went along. Adolf hoped to contribute to the debate by making a speech about the 'foreigners' burning our cities. He abandoned his plans when we arrived at the town hall.

    It seemed like every red from miles around had descended to chant abuse at the 'fascist' police. Some of the reds were dressed in black, paramilitary-style uniforms with dark glasses. We stood around at the back near the door.

    The audience in the packed hall was being whipped up with a series of chants: 'Murdering fascists', 'No more butchery' and 'Violence is the only solution'. Adolf agreed. He slapped one of the chanting reds hard across the ear with the flat of his hand. The man staggered and swayed as he clutched his head with both hands before falling to his knees.

    Other reds saw the slap. They alerted their comrades and gathered together to launch themselves at us. Fortunately, the fascist police saved us. A phalanx of police moved towards us, effectively forming a line between us and the reds, who surged at us. The police then shoved us out the door. They kept shoving until they'd pushed us outside onto the street. We walked swiftly away as soon as we reached the pavement.

    I read in the papers that the meeting had later collapsed into chaos. The police blamed agitators from eight different left-wing and anarchist groups. They announced they were looking in particular for a woman called 'Liverpool Pat' as one of the chief ringleaders.

    Looking back, I can see how Nazi leaders exploited our hostility to blacks (and 'middle-class reds') and our hooligan willingness to fight all-comers for whatever cause. They used the Brixton riots to fuel our hatred. They knew if they stoked us up we'd react in the only way we knew how - with violence.