Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs (30 page)

The trip was a huge success, but the Brits still struggled to come to terms with the differences between the MC scene in Australia and the rest of the world. Chief among these difficulties was the fact that down under, bikers are known as ‘bikies’. Although the name carries the exact same connotations and strikes fear in the hearts of civilians everywhere, no matter how many times the Midland boys heard or said it, it just sounded … well … incredibly lame.

Then there was the problem of the new world order. While the three big international gangs, the Hell’s Angels, the Bandidos and the Outlaws, all had a presence on the continent, none of them had anything like the level of gravitas they enjoyed elsewhere. Because of this, working out exactly who was friend and who was foe involved a steep learning curve. Clubs like the Rebels, the Finks, the Gypsy Jokers, the Coffin Cheaters and the Comanchero were unknown outside Australia, but virtually all of them had a larger and more powerful presence throughout the country than the Outlaws and other international gangs did.

Still, despite their lower position in the pecking order, spirits were sky high among the Australian Outlaws. It may have been relatively small, but firm power bases in Europe and America gave the club a significant boost. In fact, soon
after receiving their charter, the Outlaws were one of the major MCs invited to attend a meeting in Sydney where a plan was established to reduce the number of motorcycle gangs operating in Australia.

The best way forward, it was decided, would be for the larger clubs to take over the smaller ones, with or without their agreement. By the year 2000, there would be a maximum of six gangs left on the continent – the Hell’s Angels, the Outlaws, the Bandidos, the Rebels, the Black Uhlans and the Nomads. The thinking behind the consolidation was to limit and control the amount of competition for the shrinking dollar in the illicit trading arena such as the drugs market, and to strengthen the financial position of the remaining players. The plan was dubbed the ‘Australia 2000 Pact’.

This biker blueprint for carving up territory amongst the strongest clubs to maximise income was later confirmed in a confidential assessment prepared by the New Zealand police on the activities of the Bandidos and the Highway 61 club and an agreement between Australian motorcycle gangs. ‘This [move] began in America where most motorcycle initiatives appear to begin, and through the reaches of the empire of the strong gangs, such as the Hell’s Angels and Outlaws, spread to Europe through their associated chapters and affiliated groups, and then to other countries of the world,’ the report said. ‘Where minor gang entities exist, they were either to be chartered (taken over) or absorbed by takeover, or eliminated completely, often through extreme violence, [including] homicide through shootings and bombings.’

Although they were not allowed to attend church
meetings or take an active part in club business, the Midland Outlaws were trusted enough to be privy to much of the illicit activity that was going on. It was crystal clear that the manufacture and supply of amphetamines and cannabis were major money earners for the gang, and that illegal weapons were widely available.

In Melbourne they learned that the gang had a contact at VicRoads, the state government agency in charge of vehicle registration and related matters, who could provide them with fake driving licences. For a cost of $2,000 a time, the senior employee would produce photocard licences that contained their photographs combined with fake name and address details.

The gang would use these licences to avoid traffic fines and obtain fraudulent mortgages. They carried them whenever they were engaged in illegal activity. During drunken nights at the clubhouse, the Australians regaled their visitors with tales of shootouts, bombing raids and violent takeovers of smaller gangs, all linked to competition for territory which in turn related to opportunities for profit. The great strength of the club to date was that few of their activities had ever attracted much publicity so they were able to operate without too much harassment from the police.

The final stop of the Midland Outlaws tour involved a visit to the newly established chapter in the Queensland town of Mackay, some 500 miles up the coast from Brisbane. Although a relatively small community with a population of just 75,000, the town had significant strategic importance when it came to controlling the Queensland drug trade. Here the visitors learned of simmering tensions
with a long-established local gang, Odin’s Warriors, though other than a few stand-offs and hand gestures, nothing much took place.

The Midland Outlaws left Australia with an open invitation to return whenever they wanted and firm promises from members of all the chapters they had met there that they would be returning the favour and coming to the UK in the near future. It wasn’t until the end of August (long after the Brits had returned home) that those tensions that had been simmering away in Mackay finally boiled over into an event which came close to replicating the horror of the Milperra Massacre all those years earlier.

It started on a Friday night when twenty Outlaws attacked five Warriors with baseball bats at a Mackay nightclub. In a planned revenge attack, a procession of Warriors on motorcycles converged on the Outlaws clubhouse at three pm the following Sunday. However, the Outlaws had been tipped off and were waiting in ambush, armed with an arsenal that included pump-action shotguns and semi-automatic rifles.

At one stage during the standoff the two sides called a truce to allow an ambulance convoy to collected wounded men lying on the road. Later, pizzas were delivered separately to police and bikie gangs. The battle raged on for more than three hours. As darkness fell, many of the Outlaws fled into surrounding mangroves. Police, reinforced by contingents from Brisbane and Cairns, took the whole of the following day to round them all up.

Two men shot in the head underwent emergency operations on the Sunday night. One would lose the sight in one of his eyes. Another three men were hospitalised with lesser
injuries. In all, fifty-three bikers – including two Bandidos who were visiting the Outlaws at the time – appeared in court on charges connected to the shootout. All refused to cooperate or make any kind of statement, making it impossible for police to proceed with anything other than the most rudimentary charges of affray.

Although police seized dozens of weapons, none of them contained any fingerprints and while more than one hundred spent shells and cartridges were recovered, none of them matched any of the seized weapons. When the case finally came to court, no one was found guilty.

The war in Scandinavia was finally over and both the Bulldog Bash and Kent Custom Shows had been huge successes, bringing in more revenue than ever, but as the summer of 1997 turned to autumn, Britain’s Hell’s Angels were far from happy.

The Midland Outlaws were continuing to grow at a rapid pace. They had patched over four more clubs in the mid-nineties, including the Liverpool-based Rare Breed MC and two Welsh clubs, the Strays and the Henchmen – the latter led by Stuart ‘Dink’ Dawson, a lifelong MC member and consummate politician, who would quickly become hugely influential within the Outlaws.

Expanding beyond their original horizons led the club to rethink their ‘Midlands’ bottom rocker. By 1995 this had changed to ‘England’, a territory previously claimed only by the Hell’s Angels. To make matters worse, several other clubs were now rapidly building empires that threatened to rival their own.

Of particular concern were the Outcasts, a group that had started life in London in 1969 and strived to remain independent ever since. Unusually media-friendly for an MC, they had achieved a certain level of notoriety in 1985 after allowing themselves to be followed by a camera crew from the BBC documentary series
40 Minutes
.

Highlights of the film included numerous scenes of drug taking by the thirty-odd members as well as footage of the club president, Tramp, talking about his attitude towards the practice: ‘As long as the lads are fit they can take as much speed as they want, as much coke as they want. Provided it doesn’t go into their veins. I will not allow any injecting. I’ve lost a lot of good lads to the needle.’

With several members serving prison sentences for crimes of violence and firearms offences, they were not a club to be taken lightly, even if some people saw them as something of a joke. Years after the documentary, a group of advertising executives contacted the Outcasts with a view to using them in a campaign. After visiting in person, the club was rejected as the clients claimed they simply ‘didn’t look like real bikers’.

By the mid-nineties the club had grown considerably and had around 200 members spread throughout nine chapters in London, Essex and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. (Members of this latter chapter were among the bikers who joined forces with the Ratae for the attack on the Pagan clubhouse in Leamington Spa in 1986.)

The Outcasts could see other gangs expanding around them and decided to do the same, approaching a small Hertfordshire MC known as ‘The Lost Tribe’ with a view to making them a prospect chapter before ultimately patching them over. Once news of the plan leaked out, the Hell’s Angels were eager to prevent it. In the summer of 1997 they went to see the Lost Tribe and offered the ‘most suitable’ members the chance to join the Angels instead. At the same time, several Outcasts were invited to join the larger club.

‘It was more like a threat than an invitation,’ one Outcast said later. ‘The Angels had received orders direct from the United States which said that unless they maintained their position as the premier biker gang in the country, they would lose their charter. They made it very clear that if we didn’t join them, they would destroy us.’

Soon afterwards, a total of twenty-two members of the Outcasts and Lost Tribe defected to the enemy. According to the Outcasts, the Angels sweetened the deal with promises of an easy time as prospects, and interest-free loans allowed members to purchase the now mandatory Harley Davidson motorcycles. The Angels claimed that the new recruits simply recognised the superior MC and made the sensible choice.

A meeting was hastily arranged and the Outcasts travelled out to Essex with a view to entering into peaceful, sit-down discussions with the Angels. Instead, they found themselves confronted by the entire Essex chapter, heavily tooled up, and were given a by-now familiar ultimatum – join the Angels or be wiped out.

During the tense proceedings one of the Outcasts, Keith ‘Flipper’ Armstrong, tried to make an objection and was punched to the ground. It wasn’t much of a victory – some years earlier, Flipper had lost a leg while serving with the Royal Irish Regiment and wore a prosthesis. Outnumbered and outgunned, he and the rest of the Outcasts were unable to make a stand. Instead they left to contemplate the Catch-22 offer that had been made to them.

Ultimately, the Outcasts decided to stand up to the might of the Angels by whatever means necessary. In November 1997 two members of the club were arrested in east London
in possession of loaded shotguns, seemingly on their way to confront the Angels. There followed a series of minor clashes between the two gangs and it was clear that it was only a matter of time before things came to a head.

January saw the Outcasts attend the annual Rockers Reunion festival in Battersea, south London, an event that had been trouble free for more than 15 years. The 1,700-strong crowd of rockers, Teddy boys, slick-haired greasers and bikers were in high spirits, drinking and dancing the night away when security guards spotted a tall man in Hell’s Angels colours moving across the dance floor.

The guards turned and saw a group of Outcasts hurrying down the corridor towards a side door. Turning back, they saw there were now about a dozen Angels massing inside the venue, the tall man striding out ahead of them. It was, they said later, like something out of a Wild West movie, with people parting to let them through. In the meantime, outside the Arts Centre, in Theatre Street, Keith ‘Flipper’ Armstrong, was just arriving on his bike.

The Angels attacked ‘like sharks’, going in small groups, kicking and stabbing before retreating and another group taking over. Groups of four or five Angels, armed with knives, axes, baseball bats and clubs, swooped on their victims in wave after wave of attacks. Unarmed bikers equipped with headset microphones helped pick out the targets.

Flipper was top of the list. Five or six Hell’s Angels went at him with iron bars, coshes and at least one knife. All too well aware of the level of hostility between his own club and others, the Outcast was also armed, but so heavily outnumbered that he didn’t stand a chance. He was dragged
from his bike and stabbed repeatedly. He suffered at least four deep wounds to his abdomen and left leg. His lungs were pierced and he was bleeding inside.

Malcolm St Clair – aka ‘Mal’ or ‘The Terminator’ – an Outcast and a giant of a man, went to help his friend but soon became the next victim. He was hit repeatedly with a blunt instrument, most likely a hammer or the side of an axe. St Clair hit back with a knife, but was cornered and stabbed. Grievously wounded, he stumbled to Theatre Street where he was attacked again by two more Angels.

Italian photographer Ramak Fazel who was on his way to take pictures at a rock concert watched in horror as a bearded biker lay into Outcast Malcolm St Clair with an axe. ‘He was bringing his axe up over his head. The victim was lying with his head between his knees.’ Fazel then saw another man pull out a ten-inch knife and continue the attack. ‘The knife was thrust in on both sides. Then they calmly walked away. It was cold-blooded.’