Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs (10 page)

Trotter belonged to the Coventry Slaves MC and had also ended up inside as a result of a clash with the Ratae. Along with a few of his club mates, Trotter had travelled to Leicester with several sawn-off shotguns to attempt to retrieve some patches that had been taken from a club member during a brawl. Trotter had been sentenced to three years for aggravated burglary. He was a bit of a nutcase but a fun nutcase and would regularly have the whole wing in stitches.

Although the Pagans partly blamed the Slaves for giving away their location to the Ratae prior to the attack on the George Street clubhouse, Trotter had been on remand at the
time so hadn’t been involved. He and Boone soon bonded, especially when they talked about Trotter’s beloved and pristine Triumph Bonneville 750 motorcycle, a machine almost identical to the one Richard Gere had ridden in the hit film
An Officer and a Gentleman
.

Boone and Trotter would spend hours discussing the curious world of the one percenter, trying but usually failing to come up with a comprehensive answer as to why anyone would risk so much for the sake of a patch, why under certain circumstances otherwise ordinary family men were prepared to kill and maim one another.

The closest they came was the realisation that it wasn’t really to do with the patch or even the actual club at all. Like soldiers in any war, they fought not for their country or even for freedom; they fought for each other. The men in an MC chapter knew each other better than they knew their wives and girlfriends. Their dedication and loyalty knew no bounds. The spilling of blood in the midst of desperate battle made them as close as any blood tie could have done. It was all about the fact that, whatever struggle they were going through, that struggle was always shared.

There was no doubt in Boone’s mind that some of the Pagans would see prison as a turning point, a bridge too far, and leave the club as soon as they got an opportunity, despite the best efforts of those around them to persuade them to do otherwise. But Boone could also see that there would be others, like himself, who felt the death of Rabbi had brought them closer together. And at that moment he knew that the Pagans would be a part of his life until the day he died.

The authorities soon realised that having so many bikers belonging to one gang all in the same prison was something of a ticking time bomb and constituted a serious threat to the safety of the staff. The guards became particularly concerned about the steady stream of burly, tattooed visitors who on more than one occasion were suspected of planning to break one of the inmates out.

Trotter was released after a couple of months and Boone was on his own for a few days before having a new cellmate assigned to him. He didn’t pay too much attention to this newcomer – he was too preoccupied with himself and a forthcoming court appearance. They had talked briefly about the reasons they were being held in custody and while Boone didn’t pay much attention, something about the story the man was telling didn’t make much sense.

Then, a couple of days later, the news came on the radio and there was a story about a man who had been arrested for abusing children. Boone spoke his mind: ‘They shouldn’t arrest him, they should take him outside and fucking shoot him,’ he said. His cellmate shook his head. ‘You say that now, but you’d let him shag your kids for a million pounds.’

And then it suddenly clicked that the story Boone had been told hadn’t made much sense at all. Boone was sharing his cell with a paedophile. ‘You’re a fucking sex case you are.’ The pair stood frozen to the spot for a split second then the cellmate dived for the panic bell. He just managed to hit it when Boone was on him, laying into him with punches and kicks. The attack lasted only a few seconds before the door flew open and a team of prison guards, batons at the ready, stormed in.

Boone curled up into a ball, waiting for the guards to
start pounding him but nothing happened. He peered out from behind his forearms and saw them dragging the paedophile out of the cell.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ asked Boone.

‘You fucker. I lost 200 quid on you,’ said the nearest guard. ‘I bet you’d suss him on the first night. You let me down there. Let me down big time.’

Repeatedly denied bail on the ground that he had fled once and was likely to do so again, Boone spent almost a year on remand, finally being released under a host of restrictions, just in time to read the first reports from the other big biker trial of the year.

In April 1987, the ten members and associates of the Scorpio MC who had been arrested in the Operation Enmesh drug bust stood trial at Plymouth Crown Court. After just two days, the proceedings had to be abandoned after an ‘evil looking’ woman told four of the jurors that their faces would be remembered and they would regret any guilty verdicts.

A police investigation failed to track the woman down and the judge felt he had no option but to order a retrial. Second time round the case proceeded without interruption and all the defendants were convicted. Mark ‘Snoopy’ Dyce was given nine years for conspiracy to supply drugs as well as aggravated burglary. The story was reported widely and made the front page of the
Sunday Times
though, in keeping with the popular misconceptions of the time, the press universally referred to the gang as ‘Hell’s Angels’.

The first Operation Biker trial began just as the Plymouth hearings were coming to an end. Because there were so
many defendants – at least sixty in total – the cases were split up into six different trials, some taking place in Leicester, the others in Northampton.

In June twenty-five members of the Ratae were jailed for their part in the violence, both the attack on the George Street clubhouse and the numerous clashes that had led up to it. The longest sentence was handed out to Scout himself who was given ten years for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm and carrying offensive weapons.

A week later, a further twelve bikers – a mixture of Pagans and Ratae – were sent down and the trial involving the remaining members of the Pagans also came to an end with all but one found guilty and given sentences ranging from six months to five years. Seven Pagans were also convicted of the manslaughter of Rabbi with the longest term of nine years being handed down to Link. Although they had nothing to do with the death of their friend, their adherence to the code of silence meant they were unable to say a single word in their own defence.

Although the two cases represented a massive victory for law enforcement, they made precious little progress when it came to throwing any light on the MC world. The Scorpio had been pursued because they had been causing havoc and selling drugs throughout Cornwall. The fact that they were a biker gang was seen as nothing more than a coincidence, particularly as the club was active in such an isolated area. No one thought to wonder if similar activities were going on with other MCs elsewhere in the country and in the world.

As for the battles between the Pagans and the Ratae, the police were the first to admit that, had it not been for
Rabbi’s death, they would never have found out about the incidents that led up to it. Even having prosecuted the case, they were still mostly in the dark about what had been behind it all.

The case spelt the end for the Ratae who simply fell apart once Scout was out of the picture. The Pagans, on the other hand, rode out the storm and looked forward to the day they would all be back together again.

Motorcycle clubs in the USA had long held rallies and festivals as a way of earning extra income and by the mid-eighties the idea was taking hold in the UK. Some clubs, the Road Rats in particular, refused to go down such a route fearing it would force them to present a false public relations image for the sake of profit.

The Hell’s Angels had no such qualms. Since 1979 they had staged a Custom Bike show in Kent, which from humble beginnings grew rapidly to become one of the largest festivals of its kind. The Angels also occasionally hosted a Crazy Daze weekend. Both events earned tens of thousands of pounds for the club, a significant proportion of which was passed on to local charities.

Eager to get in on the act, the Wolf Outlaws from Gloucestershire approached the owners of the former Royal Air Force base at Long Marston and requested permission to stage an event of their own. They hoped to cash in by offering punters a unique opportunity to ride their bikes flat out, either alone or racing against another rider, down the main runway which was as straight as an arrow and almost a mile long.

The only obstacle in the way of their plans was that Long Marston was in Warwickshire, not Gloucestershire, so the Wolf Outlaws approached their friends the Pagans to get permission to hold the event there. At that time, with all the
Operation Biker court cases at an end, the ranks of the Pagans were so decimated that they were barely able to exert control over their territory and couldn’t have objected even if they had wanted to. Knowing that the Wolf Outlaws would happily let them co-host the event in the future, the Pagans gave permission for the show to go ahead on what was effectively their turf.

The first Long Marston festival took place in August 1987 and, although relatively small and not particularly well organised, it was a massive success. Among the many attendees were dozens of members of the Kent chapter of the Hell’s Angels. They were hugely impressed with what they saw, so impressed in fact that they decided to completely take over the event and run it themselves the following year.

The Wolf Outlaws were far too small to take the Angels on and with most of the Pagans still behind bars, the Warwickshire club were in no position to challenge them either. By the time the Pagans were back to any kind of strength, the show was firmly linked to the Hell’s Angels and had been renamed the Bulldog Bash.

Over the course of the next two decades the Bash would go on to become one of the biggest and most lucrative biker events in Europe, attracting up to 50,000 visitors from all over the world and earning millions of pounds in profits for its hosts. The Wolf Outlaws and the Pagans were understandably peeved about the lost business opportunity, not to mention the annual invasion into their territory. And as the years went by and the festival became ever more successful, that seed of resentment grew and grew until it ultimately reached the point where it would cost the Hell’s Angels the life of one of their own.

The first Pagans to emerge from prison – those that had received time off for good behaviour or had spent the longest on remand – were back on the road during the early spring of 1988. In their absence the club had limped along with a single full member and a couple of prospects and should by all rights have been shut down, but as soon as there were six full patches around, the Pagans were finally able to behave like a real MC again. With more than a dozen members still behind bars, the main priority for all those who had regained their liberty was to get their hands on as much cash as possible.

All MCs require a constant flow of income in order to meet the costs of running the club and the Pagans were typical in terms of how they went about achieving this. A small but steady stream of cash came from membership dues which averaged around twenty five pounds per month for each biker, but which those in prison were exempt from having to pay.

More cash came in the form of fines which the Pagan officers imposed on members who breached rules such as missing a mandatory run, turning up late for church, having their bike off the road during riding season or losing a set of patches. Fines typically ran from five pounds up to several hundred pounds a time and would often produce more monthly income than all the membership dues combined. The amount of the fine varied according to the offence but also in line with whatever the particular member was thought to be able to afford. The richer you were, the more you paid.

Much of this money – known as ‘central funds’ – was then invested into legitimate enterprises, often involving the
purchase of second-hand cars and bikes which, thanks to the high levels of mechanical expertise among the membership, could be bought on the cheap, fixed up and sold at a significant profit. The Pagans even opened up their own custom shop, building dream machines to order for members of the public, many of who were so delighted with their purchases that they wrote letters of commendation to the firm.

If a member came up with a good business or money-making idea, they could bring it up at church and apply for a loan from central funds to help them pursue it. Many MC members set themselves up as mobile mechanics, driving around to assist other motorists using vehicles and tools paid for by their clubs. If the business became successful, a percentage of the profits would be returned to the club. If it failed the member would still have to pay back the original amount plus interest so the club was always in a win-win situation.

Rather like terrorist cells, this organisational structure is one of the reasons the police all over the world find it so difficult to clamp down on the clubs. If a member happened to come across an opportunity to invest in, say, a major drug shipment, he might do so using central funds. Thereafter, even if he is caught red-handed, it is almost impossible to tie his crime directly to the club. If he succeeds, the club profits from the drug trade while retaining plausible deniability about the details of that business.

This is particularly true of the larger clubs when contacts made between members from different countries can help facilitate the movement of drugs, weapons and other contraband across international borders.