Hateland (10 page)

    If the bastards thought I was an animal, then I'd behave like one. I pissed on the floor and in the morning, when they gave me some sort of slop for breakfast, I threw all my food at the walls. I've always avoided eating in police stations, because I believe the custodians almost certainly spit in your food. Later on, I spat in the face of my female probation officer after I heard her too describing me as 'an animal'.

    The courts had closed for the festive season, so they convened a special magistrates' sitting just for me in the police-station foyer. The police led me out, still handcuffed. My right hand was three times its normal size, because the stitches had burst and the wounds had become inflamed. The swelling caused the cuffs to rub in a way which made my wrist bleed.

    The prosecutor told the court that, because of the seriousness of the allegation, I shouldn't be granted bail. The magistrates agreed. They remanded me in custody to Winson Green Prison in Birmingham.

    At 'The Green', as it's known, I was put in a cell with a middle-aged man who'd run over a traffic warden as she'd issued him a parking ticket. He'd never been in trouble before and was shocked to find himself in prison. He told everyone who'd listen, 'I'm not a criminal. I never saw her, honestly' In the evenings, this man had the job of pushing the tea urn around. By the time he reached the end of the landing, the urn would be covered with made-up 'parking tickets'.

    After three weeks of mind-numbing boredom in a filthy cell with this man and a credit-card fraudster, I applied for bail. This was granted, with several strict conditions, one of which was that I wasn't allowed to enter the county of Staffordshire, unless to attend court. I had to live at my brother Paul's address in Clapham, south London, where he'd moved after separating from his 'wife'.

    As I awaited my trial, I began spending a lot of time with Paul, Adolf and a group of friends he'd grown up with. They came mostly from Brixton and Stockwell, from sprawling council estates with nicknames like 'Crack City', 'The Bronx' and 'Broadmoor 2'. Violence, or the threat of it, was a fact of everyday life. Every pub and estate had its own gang - and we managed to fall out with almost every one of them. One pub landlord nicknamed us 'the fire practice', because we caused alarm and forced everyone to leave in a hurry.

    Apart from Adolf, there was 'Benny the Jew', Ray, Tony, Colin, Larry 'The Slash', Del Boy and Adrian 'Army Game'. Nearly all had been skinheads together in the '70s, staunch supporters of the National Front, British Movement and other far-right groups. Some had been brought up on estates in which as 'whites' they'd been in a minority. This fact hadn't helped them develop much understanding of, or tolerance for, the other ethnic minorities. Several said they'd always felt like foreigners in their own land. Every perceived 'slight' against them on their home turf was that little bit more painful and made them that little bit more resentful.

    Our drinking base was The Royal Oak pub, opposite Stockwell tube station. A drink was always 'a full session', peppered with arguments, mischief or violence. Adolf, perhaps remembering the origins in the Munich beerhalls of Hider's rise to power, took it upon himself to act as our political mentor. He saw his role as raising our fascist consciousness in preparation for the coming race war.

    'Benny the Jew' (as Adolf, especially, liked to call him) had in fact been christened 'Maurice'. However, Adolf thought 'Maurice' sounded 'kikey' ('Maurice, shmorrish. Oy vay, oy vay.'). He was about 5 ft 9 in., had cropped hair and was fairly stocky, although Adolf insisted he was fat. He and Adolf were often at each other's throats. They'd end up brawling, rolling around at our feet while we continued drinking.

    Ray and Tony were two brothers who lived in Railton Road, Brixton, known locally as 'the Front Line'. Ray, the elder of the two, was three years younger than me, 5 ft 9 in. and lean. His younger brother, Tony, was of similar height and build, but somewhat quieter than Ray, who tended to drink heavily and never shirk from violence.

    Colin was short, about 5 ft 6 in., stocky with cropped ginger hair. He didn't have a violent manner. He could usually be found singing Frank Sinatra or Max Bygraves songs at the top of his voice while disorder raged around us. He was also in his early 20s. Despite his apparent unwillingness to cause trouble, he had no qualms about ending it quickly with a knife, bottle or whatever came close to hand.

    Larry 'The Slash' was probably the meekest among us. He was about 5 ft 9 in. and thin almost to the point of frailty. He always wore a cream-coloured 'flasher'-type mac. His 'Slash' nickname came from a deep-red, angry scar which started at the bottom of his ear, ran along his jawline and tapered off under his chin. He picked it up one night down the Old Kent Road after Adolf got into a dispute with a black man. Unknown to Adolf and the others, the man was attending a party nearby. Around 20 of his armed friends then joined the dispute. A serious fight ensued and Larry was slashed with a craft knife. Nobody else was injured. The police arrived and both sides fled.

    Del Boy was the oldest. He was well into his 20s. I don't know if he got his nickname from the small-time, south-London wheeler-dealer of the same name in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses, or whether that fictional character was based on him. He was an electrician by trade, but dabbled in everything from greyhound racing to drug smuggling, although he was never very successful at anything illegal. Everybody who saw him thought he was a policeman. He had an air of authority about him, perhaps because he always wore a suit. He also had short, black hair, neatly parted at the side, and a well-trimmed moustache.

    One Saturday afternoon, I watched as he and Adolf bought a 'champion' greyhound in a Clapham pub. I say 'champion' because that's the word its owner used before selling it to the drunken duo for a few hundred pounds. Adolf and Del Boy used to train the dog in the local park for its debut race with them as owners. On the big night, we all made our way to the track in south London. Just before the race, Del Boy gave the dog a substance which he described as 'rocket fuel'.

    The traps opened and the dogs sprinted out. Del Boy and Adolf's dog took the lead. We all jumped up and down, screaming encouragement. Adolf was shouting 'I told you so' at the non-believers and sceptics whose mockery he'd been shrugging off for weeks. The dog led the pack as the first bend approached. Our screams got louder with every second. The scent of victory filled the air, only to dissipate suddenly as the hound not only failed to turn, but failed even to acknowledge a turn might be necessary.

    Without slowing down, it rocketed head first into an advertising hoarding. We could hear the crunch from where we stood. Badly injured, the dog never raced again. I next saw it being walked as a pet in the same park where it had trained. Adolf had given it away to a pensioner on his estate.

    The other regular face in our circle was a teenager from Battersea called Adrian. He was broad, about 6 ft, with cropped fair hair. We called him 'Army Game' because of his obsession with all things military. The first night I met him he invited me and Colin back to what he said was 'his' flat in Battersea Bridge Road. We'd wanted to continue our drinking session after the pub. Adrian claimed his flat was full of beer.

    We arrived by cab. As we climbed the steps to a three-storey townhouse, Adrian put his finger to his lips and slurred drunkenly, 'Wait here.' He went into the house and emerged a few minutes later with a set of keys. He said they belonged to his flat downstairs. I couldn't believe what we found when we walked in. One room contained cases and cases of Carlsberg lager. 'Help yourself, lads,' said Adrian, 'I'll put on some music.' He claimed the lager had been given to him by his father, who worked for Carlsberg.

    He said we could drink as much as we wanted. He showed us a room full of new promotional Carlsberg clothing and electrical goods (such as a stereo and a TV). Some personal items were scattered around. Adrian said these had been left: by the previous tenant. He said, 'Take what you want.' We raised our cans to his father and then spent the night drinking, trying on the promotional clothing and packing anything we liked into the previous tenant's suitcases. We got everything ready for carting off the next day.

    In the early hours, someone banged on the door. I opened it to be faced by a West Indian man in his 50s wearing a dressing gown. He began screaming about the loud music. Before I had a chance to say anything, he said, 'Keep the noise down - or else.'

    'Or else fucking what?' shouted Adrian over my shoulder. 'Or else fucking what?' I told the guy to fuck off and slammed the door. He shouted through the letterbox, 'I'll be back, you wankers, with my sons, and we'll see who'll fuck off then.'

    We flung the door open and ran out, but he'd already disappeared. Around seven, we'd all lapsed into a drunken slumber. I heard someone putting a key in the lock. Then the letterbox clattered. I made my way on my hands and knees to the front room. I said, 'Colin! Colin! There's somebody at the front door. I think it's the black geezer and his sons.'

    I picked up a knife, Colin a weightlifting bar. We walked to the front door and I shouted, 'Who is it? Who the fuck are you?'

    A man's voice replied, 'Why can't I open the door? Who are you?'

    Adrian had double-locked the door from the inside. I opened it. A well-dressed man, aged about 30, stood there.

    I said, 'What do you want?'

    'What do I want?' he said. 'What the hell do you want? This is my flat. And that shirt he's wearing is my bloody shirt.'

    I looked at Colin, who still looked pitifully pissed. I said to the man, 'Give me five, mate.' I closed the door. The flat didn't look good. Cans, clothing and records were strewn everywhere. In the hallway, the stereo - speakers tied to it - had been put alongside the suitcases of clothes. Everything stood ready for transportation. In the bedroom, we found Adrian lying on his back, the nearby duvet covered in vomit. We tried rousing him, but he remained dead to the world. In the end, we decided to leave him. It was, after all, 'his' flat. We slipped out the back and hailed a cab.

    Later that day, Adrian arrived at Colin's carrying a suitcase. His own suitcase. He'd left 'his' flat - and the house he shared with his dad. Apparently, the flat belonged to Carlsberg, for whom Adrian's father worked. A salesman currently occupied it. He'd gone away for the weekend, leaving the keys for safe-keeping with Adrian's father, who lived with his son in the company house above.

    With the double-lock off, the salesman had been able to enter the flat after we'd left. He'd found the comatose Adrian, recognised him as the paralytic progeny of his work colleague upstairs and called dad down. The two managed to rouse Adrian. His furious father helped him upstairs.

    About an hour later, the salesman knocked on Adrian's father's door. He was bleeding from the nose. He said someone had knocked on the flat's door. He'd opened it - and three well-built black youths had set upon him. They'd accused him of bad-mouthing their father and beat the shit out of him before leaving.

    Alongside these drunken japes, Adolf made sure we never lost sight of the way 'our country' was being plundered by 'foreign invaders'. In fact, most members of our little group had at least one Irish parent. Some of us had two. So we probably weren't best qualified to represent British bulldog nationalism. That didn't stop Adolf enlisting us for 'the Movement'. For him, the most important facts were that we were white, working class and spoke with an English accent, albeit in my case with a regrettable regional variation.

    None of us really bought into Adolf's fascist politics. But all of lis bought into the widespread white, working-class sense of resentment of immigrants (especially non-white immigrants) and, in particular, of the perks we felt they enjoyed at the expense of 'the natives'. Adolf's sister had been born and bred in Lambeth. She was engaged to a man who'd also been born and bred in Lambeth. They'd applied for housing to the local authority, but were told they'd have to sit on a waiting list for at least five years. Yet they could see whole estates of council houses being filled with immigrants. It wasn't a figment of their racist imaginations. They used to say that every plane flying into England over Lambeth en route to Heathrow put them a few hundred places further down the housing list.

    Foreigners could swiftly achieve higher priority over natives, because of what we regarded as the unjust way in which councils allocated public housing. Foreigners from alien cultures with no blood links to this country could arrive at Heathrow, be deemed 'homeless' (and therefore in greater and more urgent 'need' than natives) and shoot to the top of the queue. We felt strongly that these Third World shit-bins (as Adolf called them) should not have been immediately given the same rights to equal treatment as natives. Adolf's view, which we shared, was that if the government wanted to give them a home, and make them feel at home, it should have built a few tin-shacks or mud-huts for them on Hackney Marshes and let them shit in a big hole. Instead, as Adolf said, the Labour Government and all those lefty councils seemed to hand the best houses and flats to the wandering tribesmen of the Kalahari. It seemed so unjust. And that sense of perceived injustice bred resentment, frustration and, ultimately, hatred. Many white working-class people also felt they couldn't protest without being labelled 'racist'. Only extreme right-wing groups seemed willing to articulate their grievances and anger.

    That spring, south London was simmering. You could feel the tension. It reminded me of Northern Ireland during the hunger strikes. I knew the simmering anger would soon boil over into violence. The police patrolling Brixton were just like the British Army patrolling Northern Ireland. It seemed like the men on the ground had their hands tied by politicians. The ordinary police seemed reluctant to enforce the law, particularly in the face of aggressive blacks, partly because doing so just wasn't worth the hassle and partly because their main aim was to survive their 'tour of duty' (which meant avoiding confrontation at all costs).