Hateland (23 page)

    That evening, a team of grim-faced screws burst into our cell. These were rubber-gloved men on a mission. They ordered us to strip, then dug determinedly into our arse-furrows for hidden treasure. They combed our clothes and possessions meticulously. They could have been panning for gold, so intense and concentrated were their faces. I kept saying, 'What's all this about?'

    The chief screw would only say, 'You know, O'Mahoney. You know.'

    The following morning, they came for us at work. They searched the workroom with painful meticulousness. Again, they left frustrated. The chief screw assured me, 'We'll find it in the end, O'Mahoney. Don't worry.' I told him I resented his insinuation I might be involved in something illegal.

    We put another note in the mailbox. It said the gear being sold by those two evil slags O'Mahoney and Mac was so bad there was going to be trouble.

    The next day, they wouldn't let us go to work. We asked why. They said, 'You're being transferred to Stafford.' These sorts of little victories helped make prison life bearable.

    I stayed at Stafford until the end of my sentence. I was finally released in July 1986, having endured several months of industrial action by the Prison Officers' Association. Lock-up for 23 hours a day, no work, no visits and delayed mail provoked a major riot during my time there. A large minority of prisoners destroyed everything destroyable in their cells, burnt down the canteen, took to the roof and hurled tiles onto the street. But not me: I stayed out of it. I didn't fancy jeopardising my impending freedom.

    On the day of my release, the screws took me to the reception area. I had to strip off my prison clothing and put it in a laundry bag. Then they ordered me to shower. As I stood there naked, a screw handed me a cardboard box containing the clothes I'd arrived in.

    Naturally, they hadn't been washed, aired or folded. However, I still felt good putting on my own clothes, even if they stank of prison and made me look like a vagrant. A screw called out my name. I began my walk to freedom. I stood in front of the inner gate. The screw opened it and I stepped out onto the pavement, a free man determined to make a new start.

    I went to live with Debra in Basildon. Both of us wanted to settle down and live a normal life. I felt I'd endured enough trouble to last a lifetime.

    But within a few days I'd arranged to meet my old friends in south London. Adolf, Del Boy, Larry 'The Slash', 'Benny the Jew', Ray and his brother Tony were there to greet me. I asked where Adrian 'Army Game' and Colin were. I was told they'd tried joining the French Foreign Legion. 'That lasted about three weeks,' said Adolf. 'Now they've gone to live in Canada.'

    Everyone wanted to know about South Africa. They treated me like a white knight returning from the crusades. I felt uncomfortable. Adolf, in particular, seemed to think I'd struck some sort of blow for the Aryan race. He chose to regard my forced departure as being the result of my being too right-wing. He doubted whether the Boers could maintain white rule for much longer if they continued to expel decent Nazis like myself.

    Adolf also told me the story behind the bomb in Clapham High Street that had injured him while we were in South Africa. He said the police believed that Tony Lecomber's plan had been to bomb the headquarters of the far-left WRP as a response to the Tottenham riots and the hacking to death of PC Keith Blakelock. Lecomber had packed explosives and nails into a biscuit-tin. The device was being transported on his car's back seat when it exploded 200 yards from its destination. The police thought a radio signal from a nearby West-Indian-owned cab office had detonated it.

    Adolf escaped prosecution. The police accepted his claim that he'd known nothing about the bomb. They believed him when he said he'd just accepted a lift from a friend.

    A few months later, in November 1986, future BNP 'national organiser' Lecomber stood trial at the Old Bailey charged with making an explosive device intending to endanger life. However, the jury believed his defence that he'd only been 'experimenting' with bomb-making as a hobby and had not built the bomb for any political use.

    The judge could only sentence him on the lesser charges. He got three years' imprisonment for possessing the contents of the biscuit-tin (and ten home-made grenades, seven detonators and two petrol bombs).

    By the end of the evening, I was so drunk I had to be helped to Liverpool Street Station by my friends. They put me on a train. I don't think it was the right one, because I woke up in Clacton early next morning. Debra, though unamused, seemed pleased I hadn't got into any trouble.

    I did my best to settle down into a 'normal' life. I couldn't find work locally, so I ended up driving tipper lorries for a south London firm. I had to leave the house at 4.30 a.m. to catch the train. I never got home before seven in the evening.

    We lived in a block of flats in the roughest part of Basildon, on a housing estate known as 'Alcatraz'. It got its nickname from the maze of alleyways connecting the cramped, Legoland-type flats and houses. One of our female neighbours would hold a party whenever she found a new boyfriend. So I could rely on my sleep being disturbed at least three times a week. The barking of her dog would accompany the pounding music. Revellers would urinate, fornicate, vomit and argue on the stairs outside my front door.

    One night, I reached the end of my short tether. Around two in the morning, the sound of a screaming row tore me out of my sleep. I put on a pair of boxer shorts and opened the front door. My neighbour and her latest boyfriend stood in the stairwell exchanging unpleasantries. I walked the few paces over to them and said to the boyfriend, 'I'm not having a debate about it, mate. I get up in two hours. Fuck off or I'll kill you.'

    He just grinned at me moronically. The alcohol fumes from both of them could have put me over the drink-driving limit. I'd had enough. Bang. I chinned him. He flew backwards down the stairs. His girlfriend started screaming. I told her to shut up, closed my door and went back to bed.

    A short time later, someone started banging loudly on my front door. I got up again. I thought, 'If it's the boyfriend, he's going over the balcony.' I opened the door to be faced by a policeman. Several other officers stood in the background with dogs. Alsatian dogs, that is, not my noisy neighbour and her female friends.

    I could see my neighbour and her boyfriend, the latter bleeding from facial wounds. As soon as he saw me, he shouted, 'That's the cunt! Arrest him!' The officer said he wanted to question me about an alleged assault and threats to kill.

    I said, 'For fuck's sake, mate. Unlike most of the fuckers round here, I work for a living. I'm up in less than two hours. How can I not react when these people are pissing, puking, fucking and fighting on my doorstep all night?'

    The policeman looked at me in my boxers, then looked at the drunken boyfriend - who'd now begun screaming obscenities - and told me to go to bed.

    My neighbour found herself a new boyfriend. The partying continued. In the end, I broke into her flat one day when she was out. I smashed her stereo to bits, stamped on all her tapes and tried to hurl her snarling dog over the balcony. However, the hound sensed my hostile intentions. It scampered round the flat, bared its teeth whenever I got near and stayed just out of my grasp. I was making too much noise. To avoid being caught, I abandoned my mission. The dog lived to bark another day, but my neighbour became quieter.

    During the week, I had no time for anything other than working, eating and sleeping. On Saturdays, I'd start work at the same time, but finish at lunch-time. Then I'd allow myself a few beers with my friends in south London.

    Within a few months, Adrian and Colin had returned from Canada. They declared the country to be 'full of Jews' and therefore, in their opinion, unfit to live in. With everyone back home, the 'few beers' on Saturday afternoons soon turned into full sessions, complete with inevitable bar-room brawls.

    One day, my eldest brother, Jerry, rang to tell me his mother-in-law had shot her husband. I suppose I should have been surprised, but years of drama connected to our family had deadened my shock-sensors. Jerry said it had 'come out' that his wife had been abused by her father. The mother had picked up a shotgun and chased her husband through the house. He'd locked himself in the downstairs bathroom, but she'd fired through the door, then run outside, pushed the barrel through the small, open window and fired again. Pellets had hit the man in his foot and head, but Jerry said his injuries weren't life-threatening.

    'They will be when we catch him,' I said. I told Jerry I'd bring up a few lads to sort out the 'child abuser' while his wife sat in custody. I don't know why I took everything so personally. I shouldn't have wanted to stick my nose in, because I didn't even know the family. I'd met Jerry's wife briefly, but not her parents. I suppose stories of abused children always trigger extreme reactions in me. I rang my friends. Only Ray, Benny, Adrian and Colin were available at such short notice. After a drinking session, we decided to steal a car and drive up to the Midlands.

    Adrian spotted an old Morris Traveller parked in a Clapham street. He opened the door and soon got the engine turning, but the car wouldn't start. It needed petrol. We walked to the nearest garage and bought a can. We delegated Benny to put it in the tank, while we stayed at the garage. We didn't want nosy neighbours alerted by a group of dodgy-looking men standing around a car late at night.

    When Benny returned, Adrian said he'd start the car, then pick us up. He arrived back on foot a short while later. He swore at Benny, 'You fucking dickhead. You've filled up the wrong car.' We bought another can of petrol. Eventually, we got going.

    It was almost daylight when we drove into Wolverhampton. We drove to our target's home. Nobody was in. A bottle was thrown through the glass pane in the front door. Then we drove to a large industrial estate where he ran a firm that hired out heavy-lifting cranes. We thought the 'nonce' might be hiding out there.

    It was Sunday morning, so the estate was empty. We booted down his warehouse door. After a brief search, we established he wasn't there. We doused the warehouse and a few cranes with petrol, then set them alight. We sped away, satisfied with our act of vigilante justice.

    Later that afternoon, we arrived back in London. We heard our other friends had gone to some sort of fete on Clapham Common. Most of us thought we ought to avoid the area as we'd stolen the car there. But Adrian said he'd drive carefully and abandon the car discreetly within easy walking distance of the beer tent. 'Relax,' said Adrian. 'No one'll notice us.'

    He drove through Stockwell and up the Clapham Road. Then I spotted the beer tent on the Common. I said to Adrian, 'Just find somewhere off the main road, mate.'

    At that, he swerved the car sharply with a tyre-screech, mounted the pavement with a bone-jarring bump and drove straight across the grass of the Common, scattering bystanders, before parking outside the tent's packed entrance. We all jumped out, shocked but laughing. Amid shouting and swearing from some of those who'd almost been mown down, we disappeared into the crowd.

    My brother Jerry's mother-in-law got five years' imprisonment when her case came to trial. That didn't shock me. What did shock me, and my brother, was the true reason she'd shot her husband. Apparently, he'd been having an affair with his secretary. The 'child abuse' story had been invented by the mother, and her daughter had backed her up. My brother got divorced shortly afterwards.

    Despite events such as this, I had actually become more responsible. The demands of work meant I had less time to get into trouble. And Debra was pregnant. In June 1987, she gave birth to our son, Vinney. We'd both wanted children and were both extremely happy. Vinney gave meaning to the long hours I worked.

    His arrival also caused me to look more critically at my life and to reflect more on my behaviour. I suppose I started seeing everyone as someone's son or daughter. Previously, my people-hating attitude wouldn't allow such a fact to register. Now I could imagine the pain and anguish parents would feel if their loved ones fell victim to violence from me and my friends. Not that the beast was tamed. There are no overnight conversions to decent living. I could still feel within me that short-fuse anger and potential for violence. I just started trying a bit harder to keep a lid on myself.

    Adolf rang me early one morning in mid-August 1987. He asked me if I wanted to go to the funeral. I said, 'Whose funeral? Who's died?'

    He began ranting. 'Died? Died? Who's fucking died? Are you telling me you don't know?'

    'I'm sorry, mate. I really don't know.'

    'Rudolph Hess! Rudolph Hess has been murdered by ZOG!'

    I had in fact heard on the news that Hitler's former deputy had committed suicide in his Berlin prison. I said, 'Oh yeah, I heard on the news he'd died.'

    'No doubt you heard he'd "died" on Jewish TV. He didn't just die. He was murdered by ZOG. I think we should go to his funeral.'

    'Right. It's in Clapham, is it?'

    'Don't provoke me to anger, Bernard. It's in Germany. The Fatherland.' He said we'd have a 'top away-day', meeting fascists from all over the world. He said, 'It's bound to go off with the reds and we can have a bit of a jolly up.'

    I had a few days off, but I didn't fancy spending them at an international neo-Nazi jamboree in Germany. I'd long begun to find the whole scene irrelevant. Only Adolf kept me involved. I told him that, even if I wanted to go, I couldn't afford it. He said I was lazy, useless and just like the others, who'd also turned down the suggested outing. He added that he'd expected better of someone who'd travelled to the other side of the world for the Aryan cause.

    Adolf had a way of making me feel like a spineless and unreliable backslider. Foolishly, I said that if I had the money, I'd go. 'Good!' he screamed. 'I'll pay for everything. Meet me at Victoria Station at ten. Don't worry about the money. Bye.' The line went dead.