Hateland (31 page)

    When Gary had finished, he came to stand at the back with me. Now we waited to swear an oath of allegiance. As the next candidate started to be questioned, one of the Klansmen at the side of the table stepped forward and said sternly, 'Could every non-Klan member leave the room immediately.'

    I looked at Gary and looked at the bag, but before I could say anything the Klansman added, 'There's no need to take your stuff. This will only take a moment.'

    Once we'd all left the room, a Klansman slammed the door shut. Gary and I moved away from the other recruits. Gary whispered, 'I think they've sussed us.'

    'Me too,' I said. 'What d'you want to do?'

    'Let's get out of here.'

    We walked out of the suite into the main corridor. The lift stood about 50 yards away. We decided against using it, and headed instead for the stairs. As we got there, the door to the Klan's suite burst open. I turned to see hooded figures running into the corridor. Raised voices shouted, 'Where've they gone?' Then someone screamed, 'There they are!'

    Gary looked at me, laughed and said, 'Remember, Bernie. No trouble. Let's get out of here.'

    We ran down the stairs. Soon, we could hear the Klansmen jumping down behind us. When we reached the bottom, we burst through a fire door into the packed reception. Everyone stopped to look at us. We composed ourselves and walked towards the main exit.

    As we reached the door, the pursuing Klansmen, some still wearing their bedsheets, raced into the reception area. Several women started screaming. One of the Klansmen shouted, 'Back, back.' They all turned and disappeared back up the stairwell. Those without bedsheets covered their faces with their hands.

    Gary and I jogged and laughed all the way back to the hotel just in time to see England beat Spain on penalties. I felt good about what I'd done. I felt embarrassed to think I might once have joined the Klan for real.

    In one Klan newsletter, I'd seen Nige's 'Klavern' described as 'the biggest and best in the Midlands'. I had difficulty imagining the smallest and worst.

    The next day, Gary rang Nige in the hope of getting a quote, but received only threats. Nige said, 'We've got a top ten of people on our hit list and you've made it. We'll get you.' Gary told me that Nige had also threatened me.

    I didn't like what I heard. I don't like being threatened, particularly by sad deviants who hide under bedsheets. So I rang the Grand Kleagle myself.

    Nige sounded surprised to hear me. I said, 'Have you been threatening me?' He didn't answer my question. I asked him if he wanted to meet to sort things out man to man. Again, he didn't answer my question. Instead, he began mouthing off about our use of covert recording equipment, which he said was illegal and for which he was going to report us. He ignored my offer of a 'straightener' (that is, a bare-knuckle fight).

    I admit that at this point I did get a bit frustrated. I said I was going to arrive unannounced at his council house and stove his head in. I may also have given him the impression I was going to lynch him with his bedsheet and stick a burning cross up his arse. I thought he'd hurl similar abuse at me. I was therefore a little surprised when he started bleating about his girlfriend and their little baby. He said if I was threatening him, then I was threatening them, and he was therefore going to ring the police.

    I almost laughed. The leader of a group which intimidates,

    threatens and attacks innocent people wanted to run to the police because someone had spoken harshly to him on the phone. I called him 'a fucking tart' and replaced the receiver.

     A week later the News of the World printed the story under the headline, 'WE EXPOSE EVIL KLAN'.

  The hoods and robes are chillingly familiar. Menacing symbols of hatred and fear. Of burnings, beatings and brutal murder.

    This is a meeting of the dreaded Ku Klux Klan. A gathering of evil racists hell-bent on wiping what they call 'coloureds' off the face of the earth. Our exclusive picture of these white supremacist devils at 'prayer' comes moments after they initiated a killer into their ranks.

    It was taken secretly at a Klan conclave in Birmingham. Not Birmingham, Alabama, in the racial hotbed of America's Deep South where the Klan has traditionally struck terror into black communities.

      But Birmingham, England.

      For today we reveal how this vile sect has:

      GAINED a strong foothold in our country with IRA-style small cells growing nationwide;

      SPREAD its tentacles to school gates as it searches for new, impressionable members;

      JOINED forces with the violent and fiercely racist Nazi group Combat 18 and

      SET UP a secret military camp to train members for racist attacks.

    We also UNMASK one of the beasts who leads the British Ku Klux Klan, a smiling thug who lives in a housing estate among West Indians and Asians.

     A thug whose first words to the News of the World's undercover reporter were, 'Join the Klan and help us rid Britain of "niggers".'

    Our painstaking and dangerous investigation in which our reporter was initiated into the KKK penetrates the very core of the feared sect which guards itself night and day against discovery.

The details were spread over two pages, including grainy pictures from the ceremony and a photo of Nige without his bedsheet. I was pleased the story had been given such a good spread, but I felt a bit uncomfortable, because indirectly the article boosted the morons. It took them as a serious threat, rather than the ridiculous halfwits I knew them to be. The article ended with the words:

Their leader, who bounces at a nightclub in Willenhall, is known to West Midlands police.

    The thug, who bragged he would never be exposed, made death threats when our reporter contacted him yesterday.

    'We've got a top ten of people on our hit list and you've made it,' he yelled. 'We'll get you.'

     Now we are making our dossier of evidence on him and his Ku Klux Klan henchmen available to the police. Last night Gerry Gable, editor of international anti-fascist magazine Searchlight , praised our investigation.

    'The KKK are active everywhere,' he warned. 'If anybody thinks the Klan is a joke, a political fancy-dress party, they should look at their criminal records. People should be very worried.'

The article, and the footage of the ceremony broadcast on the television news, caused a commotion, particularly in the Midlands. Police chiefs, bishops and talk-show hosts all had something to say. MPs even raised the matter in the House of Commons.

    A few days later, a plain, brown envelope arrived at my mother's address in the Midlands. I'd never lived there. I was living 150 miles away. Inside was a calling card from the British Knights of the Ku Klux Klan with the words 'Always Watching'. I was furious. As far as I was concerned, these pricks were threatening my elderly mother by letting me know they knew where she lived.

    I rang Grand Kleagle Nige again, but his number was now unobtainable. I considered dropping in on him, but I couldn't be sure he'd be there. One news report had said he'd gone into hiding. And I didn't want to have to pass on a message through his girlfriend and baby daughter.

    I rang Adolf. He had numerous contacts within the far-right and I wanted him to pass on a message. Adolf wasn't pleased to hear I'd helped turn over a part of 'the Movement' for ZOG's press. He thought I deserved some grief, but he didn't like the idea of my mother being threatened. I asked him to let it be known that I wanted a straightener with the bastard who'd sent the calling card. I'd go to a place of his choice and I'd go alone.

    Adolf rang me a few days later. He said the response hadn't been favourable. He'd spoken to a senior Klansman in Birmingham who was in denial. I sent a written offer of a straightener to the British Knights of the Ku Klux Klan's PO box in America. I told them to publish it in their 'rag'.

     A few months later, a genuine rag landed on my doormat. It was a magazine which looked like it had been knocked out on granddad's typewriter, then photocopied at the local newsagent's. The Klan had sent me a copy of their members' and supporters' newsletter, Always Watching.

    My face glared out from the cover. They'd used my passport photo to decorate an article headlined, 'WE EXPOSE EVIL REPORTER SCUM!'. The article, written by 'the Imperial Wizard', was riddled with simple spelling mistakes:

The picture on the right is of a sick freelance reporter who goes under the name of 'PATRICK BERNARD O'MAHONEY'. Mahoney along with sidekick News of the World reporter Gary Jones who also goes under the name of Arther Owen tried to pass themselves off as Klan Kandidates at a Klavern meeting in Birmingham.

     However they did not get as far as they make out in their fairy story article about us in the News of the World and they were NOT initiated into our Order.

    It was thanks to quick thinking of our Security Staff who spoted the ilegal recording equipment and they were then quickly expelled from the Klavern.

    Cowardly Mahoney made death threats on my Grand Kleagle and his family by telephone which encluded my

    Grand Kleagles baby daughter. Of course the police are now involved on a local level to monitor any futher threats made on the Grand Kleagle, his family and any other of our members. Together with this I have installed Nighthawks to keep watch over the Grand Kleagle and his family.

    If you do make a move Mahoney we will be waiting for you, you gutless cowardly scum.

    It is unfair to envolve the Grand Kleagles ex-girlfriend and baby daughter as they have been apart now for some time.

The Imperial Wizard said I'd already tried to infiltrate other Klan groups. Indeed, he'd be putting my name on the Internet to warn other comrades of 'theses gutter-sniper's':

     So Mahoney I would not bother trying to join any other groups as the game is up my son. You will have to find another way of earning your 'Thirty Pieces of Silver'. 

This reference to my 'thirty pieces of silver' showed me they knew I'd once genuinely been a part of 'the Movement'. They saw me now as a Judas, a betrayer - as indeed did Adolf - not just a reporter who'd done the dirty on them.

    The article attacked Labour MPs who'd threatened to jail Klan members. Apparently, Gary Jones and I were the real criminals deserving imprisonment, because we'd used recording equipment illegally and allegedly threatened to kill a woman and her baby.

    The Klan article continued:

Next the 'Bishop' of Aston joined the band-wagon by saying 'that it's sad to see that there are these evil men in society who wish to destroy the multi-blended faiths that we enjoy in Birmingham.' Well Bishop I sugest you read your Bible mate. It makes it quite clear about the dangers of race-mixing.

    Also Bishop what about the Evil Reporters that made death threats on a baby, is it because she is white that you are not botherd about her well-being? You make me sick.

    'They profess they know God, but deny him by their works' - Holy Bible.

    The truth is if anybody understands the cultural needs of the ethnics groups, then it is the Klan and National Socialism. We preach racial love, NOT racial hatred. It is the above MP's and so-called church leaders that are trying to destroy all races by their policy of forced race-mixing. It is the un-Godly race-mixing that we hate and NOT the colour of a persons skin.

The Imperial Wizard then thanked the News of the World for 'the free advert', claiming to have gained more members and hundreds of enquiries as a result. He finished with an effusion of thanks worthy of an Oscar ceremony:

Once again I would like to thank the Grand Dragon, Grand Klaliff, Grand Kludd, the Grand Kleagle, Grand Knighthawk and Great Nighthawk and the Exalted Cyclops (Hinckly Klavern) who have been fantastic in their help and supportive actions in concern to the above.

He ended his rant with a supposed quote from 'Adolph' Hider: 'That which does not destroy us, makes us stronger.'

     I turned to the rag's letters page to see if they'd printed my letter offering a straightener. They hadn't. However, they'd printed several letters slagging off the News of the World as the Jews of the World. I had the impression the letters had been written by the same person. Surprisingly, one of them gave a faint nod to multiculturalism:

Dear Sir,

I have read the very biased News of the World Article.

As a Pakistani Muslim and someone who knows you from my school day's, I just Know that what Gary Jones has printed about you is just not true.

I always knew your views and had respect for them as you did for mine.

However I am sure that your brothers and mine share the same fight against Zionism, Capitalism and Communism.

   Mr M.

     At the back of the newsletter, which had devoted so much space to my supposed threats, the Imperial Wizard reprinted an article from Northern Ireland's Sunday Life newspaper. It had been sent in by 'Our Ulster Klan Comrades'. The billy-boy bully boys had sent hatemail to a local anti-racism campaigner. The envelope had contained a poster showing a bedsheet-wearing Klansman with the printed words, 'Ku Klux Klan - Closer Than You Think'. They'd handwritten the words, 'Now in Ulster'. I was reminded of the words of Gavin, my Asian mate from Raquels: 'They don't mind giving it, but when you give it them back they don't want to know.'

CHAPTER 15