Skrewdriver — ‘Voice of Britain’ 7″
Maintaining their momentum, Skrewdriver followed ‘White Power’ with the ‘Voice of Britain’ 7″, also released on White Noise Records (catalogue number WN 2).11 Better produced than ‘White Power,’ the new single featured two fast and furious punk songs, which are immediate, very listenable, catchy and memorable. Ian Stuart thought the tunes were an improvement on ‘White Power.’ The slogan ‘Voice of Britain’ may have been inspired by the British Movement journal British Patriot which described itself as the ‘Voice of Britain.’ Lyrically, ‘Voice of Britain’ starts by lamenting the decline of Britain, a country no longer fit for heroes:
It’s a time when our old people cannot walk the streets alone
Fought for this nation is this all they get back?
Risked their lives for Britain, but now Britain belongs to aliens
’Bout time that the British went and took their Britain back
The original lyrics to the last verse, deemed too hostile towards the Jews and too sympathetic towards Hitler and the Third Reich, were rewritten to spare the blushes of the National Front. The original lyrics to the last verse were as follows:
Now we have a go at the outlaw state of Israeli
And all the Jewish Zionists that like to keep us quiet,
Start a war with Germany, and gave away our Empire
Remember Adolf Hitler, remember Crystal Night
Ian Stuart refused to recognise the state of Israel, remarking in one interview: ‘There is no such place. I only recognise Palestine…’22 Yes, he disliked, even hated the Jews. He was convinced that the Jews controlled the world banking systems and the news media. As if repeating Hitler who famously wrote that war in 1939 was ‘instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish origin or working for Jewish interests,’33 Stuart accused the Jews of starting a war with Germany for financial gain and also of unleashing the ‘wind of change’ that numbered the days of the British Empire in the wake of the Second World War. Lastly, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Stuart, who had started political life as a patriot with a particular dislike for mass immigration and communism, had ‘converted’ to National Socialism whose central tenets were racism and anti-Semitism. Many years would pass before Stuart finally and publicly admitted that he greatly admired Hitler because of ‘his massive commitment to the cause and his refusal to water down his policies in the face of massive Jewish-controlled hostility.’44
Crystal Night refers to the night of 9–10 November 1933 when the Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property, including businesses, synagogues, schools and Jewish cemeteries. Many Jews were arrested and placed in concentration camps. Some were killed. The pretext for the coordinated attack, or pogrom as some commentators have suggested, was the assassination in Paris of a German diplomat by a German-born Polish Jew.
The rewritten watered-down lyrics of the last verse which are captured for posterity on vinyl read:
Now we’ll have a go at the TV and the papers
And all the media Zionists that like to keep us quiet
Trying to bleed our country, they’re the leeches of the nation
We won’t give up quickly, we’re going to stand and fight
The B-side, the heartfelt ‘Sick Society,’ was inspired by the murder of Albert Mariner in May 1983, as Ian Stuart explains:
Albert Mariner, who was a pensioner from East London and a National Front member, attended a legal election meeting in Tottenham. The meeting was attacked by a mob of Blacks, who were wound up by the Labour Party, including the mayor, and they bricked the Nationalist demonstrators. One brick hit Mr. Mariner on the head and he died early the next morning in hospital. The authorities refused to hold an inquiry and said he died of natural causes, which, of course, is absolute rubbish. The song is about his life, and his death, and about why they refused to hold an inquiry.
Albert Mariner actually died at home, after being released from hospital. The NF circulated press statements to all major newspapers and agencies, but nothing appeared in print. The NF claimed the police launched a cover-up operation rather than face the prospect of ‘having to arrest Blacks for his murder and damaging community relations.’ Furthermore, NF demands for a public inquiry into the murder of Albert Mariner were refused. Issue 48 of National Front News carried the headline ‘Police and media hush up this man’s murder!’ with a picture of Albert Mariner. NF News also highlighted: ‘After the anti-NF rioter Kevin Gately died as a result of a blow to the head during the Red Lion Square riot of 1974 a Judicial Public Enquiry was conducted by Lord Scarman. After the anti-NF rioter Blair Peach died as a result of a blow to the head during the Southall riot of 1979 the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee conducted a review of the working of the Public Order Act.’
The NF continued to campaign for a public inquiry into the murder of Albert Mariner, but it all came to nothing, despite united support from all the leading right-wing parties. Nevertheless, for many, the words of ‘Sick Society’ would continue to serve as a ‘fitting and moving tribute to this martyr to British Freedom.’ National Front News even quoted one line from ‘Sick Society’ in issue 59: ‘Now look at a sick society is a line from a recent record by the National Front band Skrewdriver and how aptly it describes the lunacy of this country’s laws governing murder and abortion.’
On the back sleeve is a symbol of a worker crucified in the hammer and sickle that had previously been used in RAC News. The symbol is a subversion of Karl Geiss’ poster The Worker in the Reich of the Swastika designed in 1932 which portrays a worker crucified in the swastika. Karl Geiss designed political posters for the German Social Democrat Party.
Like its predecessor ‘White Power,’ ‘Voice of Britain’ sold well and again there was great interest from Europe. Both singles were advertised for sale in National Front News.55 The ‘White Power’ 7″ cost the princely sum of £1.50 plus postage whereas the ‘Voice of Britain’ 7″ was 30 pence cheaper at £1.20 plus postage. It could be said that the re-emergence of Skrewdriver was thanks in large part to the support the band received from the National Front.
Paul from Fife in Scotland bought the Skrewdriver ‘Voice of Britain’ 7″ from the Last Resort shop in London. He had come down to London for the weekend with three friends. One was a punk like him and the other two were skins. ‘Up here in the east of Fife we never had any kind of separation between the punks and skins cos we all knew each other and went to the same gigs,’ explained Paul, who recalls of that rather eventful weekend in London:
The four of us were in the Last Resort shop when Ian Stuart walked in. When Ian saw my T-shirt he said ‘What’s out of order about the flag?’ I should explain that on the way to London we had stopped at some motorway services and I had removed an out-of-order sticker from a door at the services and had it stuck on my bleach-spattered Union Jack T-shirt. I replied, nothing’s wrong with the flag, mate, it’s the country that I am on about. I saw the penny drop in his mind and we kinda connected. We got talking. I knew of Skrewdriver and their political stance as I already had the ‘Back With a Bang’ 12″ and the WP 7″ which I got from a local NF member. Ian ended up shaving the heads of the two skins in the shop and then wanted to do mine, but I had spikes and declined. I bought the ‘Voice of Britain’ 7″ and Ian Stuart signed it ‘Regards Ian Stuart.’ One of the skins I was with bought one as well and got it signed too. I still have that single. It was and still is great. It’s as much about the music as the lyrics, always will be for me.
Later that day, my mates and I were trying to find the right train to get when we managed to get separated. The two skins jumped on a train, the doors closed and they were gone. We waited for the next train and took it to the next stop where we found our mates. One of them had had his ear slashed by a rasta because he had been wearing white laces in his boots. We did not know at that time the significance of red or white laces.
This is White Noise 7″
In early 1984 White Noise Records released a compilation single entitled This is White Noise (catalogue number WN3), featuring songs by Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, the Diehards and ABH. The single was available from the NF shop in Croydon at the cost of £1.50 plus 20p for postage.
The front cover introduced the record-buying public to the Celtic Cross, also known as ‘Odin’s Cross.’ The Celtic Cross is an ancient symbol and like all symbols has many different meanings. Indeed, there is a world of difference between the Celtic Cross as a cultural symbol and the Celtic Cross as a political symbol. New Dawn, the Young National Front paper which replaced Bulldog, described the Celtic Cross as ‘the Ancient Symbol of Europe’ and ‘the symbol of the National Revolution,’ which represents ‘our Race, our Faith, and our Past and our Future.’66 More generally, for many nationalists and skinheads, the Celtic Cross simply represents white power and pride.
The Skrewdriver contribution to this comp was ‘When the Boat Comes In,’77 which was originally titled ‘Nigger, Nigger.’ Ian Stuart may have described this song as a ‘good tune,’ as well as ‘sort of rock-n-roll,’ but the mixing is a real shocker. The lyrics are extreme and direct:
Take no shit from anyone cos Great Britain rules
We fight the communists, cos communists are fools
Try to take our nation and give it to the blacks
We won’t take it anymore, we’re gonna take our nation back
Nigger, nigger, get on that boat
Nigger, nigger, row
Nigger, nigger, get out of here
Nigger, nigger, go, go, go…
They riot on the British streets, they’re burning down our land
But the fools in government put money in their hands
Give them money, give them jobs, ignore the British Whites
We won’t stand and watch our land be taken without a fight
According to Ian Stuart, ‘When the Boat Comes In’ is about ‘the influx of immigrants into this country and the effect it’s had on Britain,’ leaving many white people feeling as though they are second-class citizens in their own country. The song also calls for repatriation of all immigrants, which might even involve ‘a little bloodshed.’88 To justify the forced repatriation of all immigrants, Ian Stuart argued that this would actually prevent greater bloodshed in the future; Ian Stuart was convinced that if the immigrants stayed eventually there would be a race war.
The best cut on this comp comes courtesy of Brutal Attack whose stirring anthem ‘The Return of St. George’ starts with the following declaration of intent ‘I am Saint George and I reclaim my Empire’ and then continues:
What’s this shit about democracy? What the fuck is a free country?
There’s fighting on the streets my country’s killed by riots
But who gets the blame whenever there’s fight?
What’s this shit about democracy? What the fuck is a free country?
They bite the hand that feeds them. They lie, cheat and deceive them
But soon our hands will beat them. Our strength will soon defeat them
We’ll beat them back into the sea. Then England will belong to me!
Oi! For England skinhead
Oi! For England Oi! For English pride
Oi! For England Oi! There’s nowhere to hide!
St. George once again will mount his horse as we reclaim our empire with maximum force.
England must again rule the world. We will never do as we’re told
The time is right. The time to start as I feel the pride return to my heart
The Diehards really did themselves no favours with the barely listenable ‘White Working Class Man.’ The band really should have learnt how to play their chosen instruments of protest before entering the studio! Moreover, the recording studio let them down.99 Lyrically, the song is nothing special, even though White Noise Records claimed it ‘sounds like Jimmy Pursey before he sold out.’ There is talk of the social divide, exploitation of workers, and working-class pride:
Go to work every day
Working hard for an honest week’s pay
Wife and kids ain’t got enough
Problems in my head and I’m feeling rough
Got to work to earn our keep
They fuck us about it’s a dog with a sheep
Life with no legend, life with no fun
We must keep our pace it’s got to be done
Day by day passes by
Always wary of the peering eye
Superstition grinds through my head
Boiling over and going red
It’s getting hot I can’t take no more
I feel myself hitting the floor
Hot Gossip people think they’re cool
Nice big boat and a swimming pool
Spoil yourself by being rich
We’re left rotting in a ditch
The road to freedom, it’s so long
I need the money can’t get along
Forget the sorrow and keep our pride
There is a future for our fighting lives
Hot Gossip were a 1970s British dance troupe which enjoyed wide popularity and success. For those of a certain age, they are best remembered for their raunchy appearances on The Kenny Everett Video Show and the song ‘I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper’ with Sarah Brightman on lead vocal, who went on to become a famous opera singer.
Punk band ABH (an abbreviation for ‘actual bodily harm’) from Lowestoft in Suffolk contributed the mediocre ‘Nerves of Steel’ exposing the ‘Yank invasion of Britain’ as it was termed by White Noise Records:
I look around, what do we see?
A nation once proud and free
Nowadays a Yankee state
Unable to decide your own fate
We are here for our nation
Victory or damnation
It don’t matter how we win
Even murder is no sin
Kentucky Fried Chicken and Coca-Cola
The Yanks are coming, they’re taking over
Reagan’s hands around our neck
It’s our nation he wants to wreck
It doesn’t matter which way you turn
There’s always someone trying to pull you down
A student bastard or a communist
A trendy nigger or a multi-lateralist
This band formed in early 1981 as Stretcher Case, playing Damned cover versions, before changing their name to ABH. The line-up consisted of Peter Chilvers on vocals, Tony Cullingford on drums, Nigel Boulton on bass and Chris Brinton on guitar. Chris was superseded by Steve Curtis, who brought a new and different vibe to the band. They split up late 1982, having played with the likes of Peter and the Test Tube Babies, the Adicts, Last Resort, the Exploited and Chelsea, but reformed early 1983. By the summer of 1984,1010 the band were no more, citing musical differences as one of the main reasons for the split, but they left behind a legacy of two excellent demos of punk bruisers, two tracks on a compilation LP,1111 and that song which appeared on the This is White Noise comp 7″ with nationalist and arguably even racist views. ‘Nerves of Steel’ was definitely not an isolated ‘moment of madness.’ In a letter to Bristol-based fanzine Combat Zone in early 1984, which was printed in 1985, Peter Chilvers wrote about the band’s politics:
If you understand Oi you will understand me when I say what we are about, what we stand for. Basically fuck all, mainly the price of beer and pool going up. Everyone seems to be writing songs protesting about rights for Gay anteaters in Ethiopia. We are just not a protest band like that. Our songs are about us, the people who come to see us and what’s going on around us. I mean, who can take vegetarians seriously? The bleeding CND is a waste of time as well; you can’t uninvent [sic] things! Hippies are really stupid…
However, Peter Chilvers was much more candid when he spoke with Rocking the Reds later that same year1212: ‘Politically speaking we’re a nationalist band and all the band are NF sympathizers to one degree or another. We’ve always been anti-CND, anti-hippy and anti-Red and have always written songs about that.’ The band even wrote a song with the hilarious tongue-in-cheek title of ‘Kill a Hippy Today (And Keep the Bastards Away).’
Many years later, asked about the appearance of ABH on the This is White Noise EP alongside the likes of Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack and whether or not ABH was a white-power band, Peter replied:1313
That kind of happened toward the end. Getting stuff out was always hard and we made that call, probably not the best decision we ever made, but it was a time when the band was cracking up, and well, maybe we thought releasing something would kind of re-focus us, who knows? We all make mistakes I guess. I don’t want to make excuses, we did what we did and I stand by that. […] But in answer to the other part of your question: We defiantly had a foot firmly and squarely in the skinhead camp and we make no apologies for that. Extreme views are a part of that culture but by no means all of it. I cannot give you a breakdown of the political views of all members of the band, but yes we were a British-and-proud-of-it outfit. We wore the Union Jack because we were proud to be British, but Nazis we were not.
William, a skinhead from West London, bought a copy of the This is White Noise single at a Hounslow NF meeting. He was a product of his family, his upbringing and his surroundings. This is his story:
I was born in 1965 in Twickenham, South West London. At the time my parents and I lived in Shepherds Bush, before we moved to Feltham where I basically grew up. We lived in a large cul de sac in Feltham. I wouldn’t call it an estate but it was very large and I think I was so lucky, all the kids played outside and the local community looked after each other and kept an eye on everyone else, life was good; community. London really was the best city in the world then.
Like many other Londoners, my parents moved to Feltham, along with other reasons to get away from the growing immigrant presence and changing face of inner-city London; loss of community. I was made aware of this. My father was a black cab driver and my mother was a housewife to me and my siblings.
Every Saturday was spent in Shepherds Bush with all our family, meeting my father at Taylor’s, the pie and mash shop which was on Hammersmith Broadway, as he would work Saturday mornings and then going to watch Fulham at Craven Cottage. I attended my first game at four and spent every Saturday in the old stand or travelled to most away games unless they were up north, until I was 13 or 14; when my father and all his friends and lifelong Fulham supporters moved their allegiance to Chelsea over a row with the then management, I went with them.
My family on both sides could only be described as ‘good old working-class,’ who worked so hard to give us a better future and to their credit all my family have inherited that work ethic, an inner patriotism, self-respect and decent values that the term should and once stood for. My father was ‘ultra-patriotic,’ he wasn’t anti-semitic in any way and, until the later stages of his life when he voted BNP, wouldn’t entertain the NF or other ‘far right’ parties, but he was just so proud to be English and always told me as a child ‘to be English is the greatest gift you can have and this is the greatest country on Earth,’ a typical Londoner of that time I suppose. He called a spade a spade and now a dying breed as is an English Londoner full stop. In his last few years despite being one of only two English people left in his block of flats in Paddington he would not leave and stayed there until he passed away. It was his home and he wouldn’t or couldn’t leave. I found that sad as he watched all the local pubs close and English people and culture move away; the change in the area once the Eastern Europeans were allowed in was phenomenal to say the least.
Spending my young years surrounded by black cab drivers on the terraces up and down the country, seeing Shepherds Bush change and then Feltham, an avowed white area which borders Hounslow and Southall, areas which have been totally assimilated by Asians and the conflict that then obviously arises, formulated my inner patriotism and yearning to try and defend my country.
Like many teenagers at that time, he got into punk, but soon found his true calling as a nationalist skinhead:
I was in my early teens when I began listening to punk, it was everywhere, and you saw them about and they were so outrageous, your mum would literally make the family cross the road to get round them, something which sounds laughable with today’s fashionista-type punks, mere shadows of their former selves. I loved the Sex Pistols, although they’d disbanded and Sid was dead by the time I got into them. At school there were lots of divisions between those that liked punk, rude boy, skinhead, rock ’n’ roll, mods etc., etc… I gravitated towards the skinheads and a new musical movement called New Breed or Oi! Yes, punk was great, I loved the music, still do, bands like Crisis, the Exploited, GBH and Discharge, but skinhead was edgy and dangerous.
I still remember the first time as a kid at Fulham and Chelsea came over from the Bridge, it was an army, not a football firm, hundreds and hundreds of skinheads and masses of Old Bill around them. I’d never seen anything like it and Fulham had a decent-sized skinhead firm but Chelsea’s was amazing. A few years down the road and I would spend my Saturdays in the Shed at Chelsea or in one of the pubs around the ground, if I wasn’t working.
Also, while I’m not into class, punk seemed to become a very middle-class thing. It was all students and rich kids rebelling against their background for a couple of years, purposely dressing down with absolutely no pride in themselves and preaching CND shit, love, peace and other bollocks which just didn’t relate to myself or friends around me. Oi! at the time was telling it like it really was. The first two Oi! albums and later the Last Resort album were like Bibles to us at the time, literally.
In those days all skinheads were patriotic, right-wing and very racist, that was how it was. I had a crop for a bit at school, but I was still a punk, the clothes, the lot and sometimes spiked hair. I got my hair cropped and started to wear skinhead clothes after I left school at 17 when I moved to a town called Egham, which again is still in the Heathrow area, but a little further out. The area had a massive skinhead firm who took me under their wing and from that day I’ve stayed the same. I joined the Hounslow NF in my early teens. In those days the branch was really militant and active, we were up to something every week and the NF ran the White Noise Club which was the social side of things; we were seen, indoctrinated and used by the NF as political soldiers. It was everything and all-consuming.
I got We Are White Noise from a Hounslow NF meeting. A lot of skins only went to NF meetings to buy the records and badges sold at the end of the meeting. You’d sit there itching for the stall to be put out and then scrum to get your hands on whatever was on offer. The records sold out every week and sold as quickly as they could get them.
Asked what attracted him to the skinhead nationalist music scene best embodied by Skrewdriver, William replied:
Sounds odd but it was always just in me, and RAC seemed to put my thoughts into words. It was such an underground scene and so elite. As I said punk had become a different world with working-class people becoming a bit out of place at the concerts. Punks were spending hours doing their hair in perfect styles and colours and then wearing filthy smelly clothes and saying they had no future, while we worked on building sites and they studied at university — it just didn’t make sense, it had lost its way.
I have always worked, always dressed as best I could and was always fiercely patriotic. My father always polished all our shoes on a Sunday and we had to keep them that way during the week, my family were taught to always wear clean and ironed clothes before going out, maybe not the best clothes but we were always well-presented, things I still do today and make my sons do, things all my friends were brought up on, but things which were totally alien to the punk scene but not the skinhead scene; it seemed to me the nationalist skinhead scene was all about pride, dignity and self-respect, good old-fashioned values of being the best you can.
When you are out and about you not only represent yourself but your family as well; as any skinhead knows, his close friends are as good as family, it was drummed into us that as a skinhead when walking down the street you were not only representing your cult, you were also representing England in all its glory, and I still believe that’s true.
For William, there was a buzz about Skrewdriver that no other band had:
We followed Condemned 84 and the Business all the time and went by or were given the name the Hounslow Mob on dedications on their records, but the word was always when was the next Skrewdriver gig and are you going here or there for this RAC do or that do, the crowd was always basically the same. Condemned 84 and the Business are great bands but were a bit more of just a social thing, while waiting for the real deal. Everything was word-of-mouth and redirection points. Many who set out never made the gigs because of all the obstacles you had to get through to get there. Truly there was nothing like it. In reality RAC is and was everything punk was supposed to be and pretended to be.
Inevitably, the paths of William and Ian Stuart crossed and crossed again and yet they remained strangers, but that was to change:
At first I used to see him at the Last Resort but never spoke to him. Then a member of Skrewdriver Security started seeing a girl from Hounslow and he would pop over for a drink now and again. He spoke at NF meetings and slowly over time, drinking in the same pubs and going to all the same gigs and political events, I got to know him. I remember him as having such a good sense of humour, talking about Neighbours (the Australian soap)! I vividly recall being in a pub with him in King’s Cross and he had everyone in absolute stitches. He was very dry, but very quick-witted: great sense of humour and he loved a bird! I wasn’t a close friend with him and never knew him as well as I now wish I could have. At the time we never realised what we had in our midst, and if anything we all stayed in our own little groups but together and left the foreigners or Northerners to always bunch around him, but we were the London lot and his lot and he always stood with us and came to us in quiet times or when he wanted a bit of respite.
Rock-O-Rama Records
The success of Skrewdriver had caught the attention of West German label Rock-O-Rama Records, run by Herbert Egoldt. Starting in 1980, the label had a history of releasing some of the finest punk and hardcore that Germany and Finland had to offer, such as OHL, Appendix, Riistetyt, Kansan Uutiset, Terveet Kadet, the Bastards, Vaurio and personal favourites the Destrucktions, which was often explicitly anti-nazi. However, of late, the label had started to diversify, releasing an album by German skinhead band the Body Checks and the half-studio, half-live album Send in the Marines by Combat 84. Rock-O-Rama offered Skrewdriver a contract for one album and one single, which was accepted. Rock-O-Rama was in a position to offer better distribution and thus more exposure than White Noise Records. Moreover, and curiously despite the success of the ‘White Power’ and ‘Voice of Britain’ singles, White Noise Records did not have the money to release albums.1414
Indecent Exposure
Growing in confidence and with the set list well-practiced, Indecent Exposure started playing live with a local gig on Hemel College campus. Some five hundred skinheads turned up, which came as no surprise to vocalist Milky: ‘We had our own vibrant scene centred around the Whip and Collar and later the Spotted Bull. We were Hemel and proud of it. We welcomed skinheads from near and far. The Hatfield skins used to come and drink in Hemel because they were getting a lot of shit in their hometown from Red Action.1515 We even had skinheads come down from London. I had people staying at my flat all the time. They were from everywhere!’
The Hemel skins were affectionately called ‘Milky’s Firm.’ Milky remains a charismatic figure. Born and bred on the violent streets of East London, he knew how to look after himself. Boots and fists resolved the problems people had with him, for he readily admits he was not one for talking back then! He never used to drink; one of his friends explained: ‘That way he was always ready to come out of the corner fighting.’ This self-proclaimed boots-and-fists street fighter resorted to the use of a weapon just the once:
I only ever used a weapon once and it was a bat but it was against a semi-pro heavyweight boxer called Gary Collins. Long story but basically he got lairy with my brother in the Spotted Bull in Apsley. I made him and Pete go out and fight. Pete got knocked out. Three of us then pounded the shit out of him and an ambulance took him away or so we thought but he got out around the corner from the Bull and waited out of sight. As we walked by unknowingly he ran across and I caught a big swinging side shot… I was on my knees, didn’t know what day it was but had a broken jaw and spat out four teeth. When I came around I went to the car, collected a bat, went back and had it out with him. I smashed him about 50 times. I thought he was dead. Girls tried to stop me, I battered them with it too. We both went to court. We both said nothing, fair play to him. And no witnesses came forward. Even so both of us got suspended prison sentences for two years. The judge said he knew something had gone on because of our medical records; he had multiple fractures including his skull and I had a broken jaw and dental surgery.
Hemel College was followed by another local gig, supporting the Late Night Lunatics and the Shout, but that was not enough for Indecent Exposure who wanted to play to skinheads. There were few options open to the band as Milky explains: ‘By 1984 nobody was booking Oi! bands. To get a gig to play to a skinhead audience we had to go with people putting them on and that was RAC and Skrewdriver. Besides we were against communism.’ On Wednesday, 16 May, Indecent Exposure played their first RAC gig with the Diehards and Brutal Attack at the Crystal Palace pub, St. Albans, Herts. (The pub was flattened soon after the gig.) David Webster attended the gig but cannot remember much about it because of his alcohol intake. Posty Rob remembers this gig all too well:
When the coach did not turn up at the end of the gig I gave Dave Webster, his girlfriend, Mad Matty Morgan, Nicky Crane, Belsen Bev and Tufty a lift home in my first wife’s car, a black Ford Escort mk1, even though I was well and truly over the limit. The car had a CND sticker in the back window! Well, I got pulled over by the old bill and grilled. Politely, the copper advised me that my car was overloaded, rendering my insurance invalid, and then asked: ‘Do you realise who you have got in the car, sir?’ I replied: ‘Yes, they’re my mates.’ Even though the copper could tell I was drunk and the car was well overloaded, he let us go. I guess he did not want any trouble. I dropped them off south of the river and counted myself fortunate not to get nicked.
In early 1984, ably assisted by Paul Swain on guitar, Indecent Exposure recorded a nine-track demo at Mark Sutherland’s East London studio. However, drummer Sedge Swatton prefers to describe it as a ‘taped rehearsal.’ The demo, which is not dated,1616 was released on their own Index label and literally copied hundreds at a time by Milky’s good friend Billy. Milky was pleased with the demo. The demo confirmed, as one fanzine put it, that ‘Indecent Exposure are the best thing to have happened to Oi! since Garry Bushell took to his heels.’
The songs are tuneful, energetic and infectiously catchy. The lyrics describe what life is all about to a skinhead: bank holiday excursions, being on the dole, patriotism and having fun. Highlights are ‘Bank Holiday,’ ‘Save the Nation’ and ‘England My England,’ which appears to go beyond a comfortable sense of patriotism for a band that was ‘not really into politics,’1717 lashing out against black immigration in the name of the white people of Britain:
No one tries to stop it
As they come over from far and wide
To live inside our country
And take our jobs away
It makes me sick and wonder
If people make up lies
To help these bastards overrun
And watch our country die
England my England
We are white forever
England my England
We must stick together
England my England
I won’t let my country die
England my England
The fight is now or never
They say that we are racist
And we’re all wrong and they’re all right
We hate them and they hate us
And that is why we’re born to fight
They’ll take over the country
They think that we’ll obey
But there ain’t no black in the Union Jack
And that’s the way it will stay
Wherever there is trouble
It’s us who get the blame
It’s us who get pushed around
The story’s always the same
But they ain’t gonna stop me from hating
The cunts who cause the pain
And I won’t stop fuckin’ fighting
’Til Britain’s white again
Curiously, these are not the song’s original lyrics. Milky said of the controversy surrounding the lyrics: ‘The original lyrics were written when we were at war with Argentina. However, we rewrote the lyrics for a version of the song that was recorded for the demo because somebody was trying to change our flag to include the colour black to reflect multicultural Britain. We were patriotic and we were not having any of that. No way. No one was going to change our flag! The original lyrics are on the album version of the song.’ The original lyrics are totally devoid of references to immigration, jobs and skin colour, be it black or white.1818
Indecent Exposure would continue to go from strength to strength.
Skullhead and the murder of Peter Mathewson
Fronted by Kev Turner, skinhead band Skullhead UK formed in March 1984 after the death of Peter Mathewson, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in London. Skullhead UK formed to ‘let everyone know the real circumstances of his death.’ The circumstances are truly horrific. Bulldog, the paper of the Young National Front, reported the race murder as follows:1919 ‘A group of five White youths were ambushed by a gang of forty, mainly Black rastas. They were dragged into a flat where one of the youths, Peter ‘Geordie’ Mathewson (23) was killed. He was stabbed 70 times and acid was poured in his face. John Seymour (17) was stabbed in the body and head. These animals also slashed his face and tried to cut his ear off! He died twice, both times doctors managed to bring him back with a life support machine. Another one of the male youths was stabbed in the back, and a girl was knocked unconscious after being repeatedly smashed over the head with a breeze block.’
Mathewson died on the way to hospital. The others with him managed to escape with their lives. Eddie Stampton could quite easily have been there and explains:
I’d been down the Crown & Cushion pub in Woolwich on the night in question, with a group of friends — John and Paul Burnley and Tony Mear. We were all from South West London. Back then, night buses were few and far between, London not being as heavily populated as it is today. Sometimes you could wait up to two hours for one. For many of us, on leaving the boozer, we had a very long journey back. First an N53 [bus], through Plumstead and SE London to its final destination of the Elephant & Castle, where we would all alight and go our separate ways. My lot would normally get another bus to Stockwell, Battersea or Streatham. The journey was always a mad one — what else could it be with a whole busload of adolescent skinheads high on a mixture of cheap booze and National Socialism? Invariably someone would end up getting a kicking, usually a black or lefty-looking passenger. They did it to us, we did it back.
Anyway, we were all on this packed night bus, Geordie included. Finally reached the Elephant and my group went one way — to our bus stop near the shopping centre, and Geordie’s lot went the other way, up towards the Old Kent Road. The rest is history. Geordie was stabbed by a load of black scum in an ongoing feud that started over him having a Union flag hanging in the window of his flat. The filth stabbed him 70 times that night, threw acid on him and dropped heavy masonry blocks on his head. Also, a pregnant skinhead girl, Jane who was Craney’s girfriend of the time, got stabbed and lost their unborn child. Cultural ‘enrichment’ at its finest. Strangely enough, I had a camera with me that night and had taken loads of pics on the bus. Not one of Geordie came out! See you in Valhalla mate.
Kev Turner said of Peter Mathewson and the media reporting of his murder:2020 ‘He was murdered in a racial attack in London, March 1984. Apart from being my best mate, he was the person who introduced me to Nationalism and what it really meant. He was one of the kindest people I have ever met and everyone who knew him will know what I mean. The way the scum in the media dealt with his murder disgusted me and many others. They refused to recognize it as a racial attack. Instead they said he died in a skinhead gang fight. It made me realize how sick the whole system was (and is) and from that day I have given my all in the struggle to destroy the system. “Murdered by Scum” was written about Peter’s death and from that we have progressed on to other issues. Peter was a warrior in every sense of the word. His loyalty and determination made him popular with everyone who knew him. He will never be forgotten and Skullhead shall be a band always dedicated to his memory. Peter Mathewson: born a skin, died a skin, murdered by scum. It may interest people to know that the scum who murdered Peter got only three years each!’ The lyrics to ‘Murdered by Scum’ are:2121
Six good mates went for a drink one day
Six good mates and some birds they say
Drinking and joking and having some fun
But the fun it ended when all was done
My mate ‘Matches’ died last night
He didn’t even get a chance to fight
The bastards who did it have it all to come
So remember Peter Mathewson, murdered by scum
Four in the morning ready for bed
Tired in the feet and tired in the head
Seven mouthy bastards came looking for a fight
So they chased those bastards into the night
They chased those shitbags up the street
By the time they caught them they made their meet
Fifty kids all tooled to fuck
They had to run, no chance to ruck
Head, neck, heart and as he fell
Acid in his face as well
Geordie, John and Big Dave too
Fell to the blades of the shitbag crew
Skins versus skins the papers said
Was the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard
I only know that when we’re right we’re wrong
So I wrote the truth down in the song
Skullhead UK soon dropped the ‘UK.’ The band did not become active until 1985 when they joined the White Noise Club. The band’s first line-up was Kev Turner on vocals, Micky Johnson on guitar, Paul Hurd on bass and Kev ‘Tweedy’ on drums. In April 1985, bass player Paul Hurd was replaced by Spin Brown who Kev Turner regarded as ‘a very talented songwriter and one of the best bass players going.’
The band recorded a demo in 1985 at a local arts centre with an eight-track studio. Working at the arts centre was a 16-year-old on a training scheme who played in a local anarcho-punk band. Horrified to find himself in the presence of four or five scary skins whose dodgy songs he disapproved of, he kept his mouth tightly shut. No other details are known about this recording, which now seems lost forever. However, some of those who have heard this demo do not rate its musical prowess. Even Kev Turner is dismissive of it: ‘It was so terrible it’s best forgotten about.’
Embracing the DIY spirit of punk, Skullhead organised their first gig. Kev Turner: ‘We performed live for the first time at North Kenton Youth Centre, Newcastle. We hired a hall and played live. It was a waste of time though cos our practice rooms were bigger and sometimes there were more there watching us. I can remember we gave all the takings to Bob Geldof’s Live Aid at the time…’
January 1986 saw the departure of drummer Kev Tweedy and the removal of Micky Johnson, who were replaced by Nick Shaw and Tim Ward respectively.2222 Apart from vocalist Kev Turner, who had been in various bands in the late ’70s, no other member of this Skullhead line-up had played in a band before.
National Front organiser Kev Turner was easily recognisable by the blue boot tattooed on his left cheek, a tattoo he would come to regret in later life:2323 ‘If there’s one thing I’m positive about in life it’s the fact that I regret having that boot tattooed on me face. It was just one of them things that happen. One of them stupid things when I was a bit more thoughtless. I was gutted to tell you the truth. But I thought, “It’s your mistake. Learn to live with it. You’re not an idiot, although you might look like one now.” It ends up hampering your social life. It’s the old story. They take one look and go, “Troublemaker. Headcase.” You go to a pub where you’re unknown and you’ve always got your idiot looking for trouble. They look over, and like, target, straightaway. So you end up fighting. You lose, you get your head kicked in. You win, you go to jail. So what do you do? You get rid of the offending article as quick as fucking possible. It’s taken me all these years to realise that, mind you.’
The Apostles
London-based political band the Apostles were no strangers to controversy. Often associated with the anarcho-punk scene, their first single espoused a message of militant, non-pacifist anarchism and even included a ‘recipe for a simple DIY incendiary device’! In 1984 the band released their fourth single, ‘The Giving of Love Costs Nothing,’ which featured anti-communist and anti-gay lyrics and a short article titled ‘All Skrewed Up.’ The article, while sympathetic towards Skrewdriver and Rock Against Communism, rejected the National Front out of hand:2424
Skrewdriver are still one of my favourite bands… Skrewdriver played many gigs under the Rock Against Communism banner and we very nearly played some of those gigs with them (except that a couple of punks informed me that the gigs had been set up by the National Front, and while I agreed with their aims in putting on these gigs, I didn’t want to be a part of giving money to any political party, so we declined the offer) and while the gigs were a success their reputation as a ‘joke band’ and ‘untouchable’ stayed with them since. Now I don’t pretend to agree with the lyrics to all of their most recent material, including some of the more overtly racialist items on their last two singles, but they do stand shaved head and shoulders above all other bands who in fact were just as right-wing but hadn’t the courage or the timidity to admit it publicly. These cowardly bands include Combat 84, the Cockney Rejects, the Afflicted, Rigor Mortis and Brutal Attack. Skrewdriver have had the courage of their convictions, stuck to their guns and been blacked by the Communist-infiltrated, Zionist-funded music press. Free speech anyone?
The article went on to warn Skrewdriver that they were ‘being used as a political tool of the new right’ and nothing of good would come from trusting a political party, concluding: ‘We can only remain independent of political parties, for music/art and party politics do not mix and when such a marriage is attempted, the results are either abortive or at least curiosities that are of little artistic value.’ Just as the Apostles had ‘preached,’ Skrewdriver soon realised the mistake they had made by trusting a political party.
The lyrics to ‘Rock Against Communism,’ written by vocalist and lead guitarist Andy Martin and embracing many of the same sentiments found on Skrewdriver’s two singles on White Noise Records, scandalised and alienated many within the anarchist punk fraternity, and that included two members of the band who refused to appear on this single. Even so many doubted the sincerity of the lyrics:2525
Have you noticed how the media refuse to listen to an honest, poor man’s views?
Have you noticed how the television and newspapers are financed by the Jews?
Doesn’t it make you sick? Education for our kids
Is run by four-be-twos and front-wheel skids
On the streets of London the muggers get to work in gangs of five
All these disgusting cowards and ponces make me sad to be alive
Doesn’t it make you sick? Our crime is being white
And British people can’t walk the streets at night
And now the IRA have spread their terrorism to our land
Killing innocent people with sectarian hate I’ll never understand
Doesn’t it make you sick? Is anybody asking why?
The communists laugh while British people die?
Dykes on bikes and feminists and paedophiles and homosexual scum
Combined with commie filth are turning all our land into a slum
Doesn’t it make you sick? Does anybody really care?
The queers spread A.I.D.S. disease everywhere
Communism kills — so — kill communism
The Apostles went on to write and release a plethora of material, but there was no repeat of the social consciousness of ‘Rock Against Communism.’
Skrewdriver — Hail the New Dawn LP
Skrewdriver had pretty much fallen apart by the start of 1984. Bass player Mark French said of his decision to leave the band:2626 ‘I had always wanted to join the Army and songs like ‘Smash the IRA’ sort of gave me the push to go and do it. About that time the band split anyway, the drummer had enough of the hassle we was getting, the guitarist fell in love, and we couldn’t get gigs and it all seemed to be grinding to a halt. I always knew Ian would carry on because he was Skrewdriver and there was always budding musicians waiting to fill the gaps. We’d done our bit and it seemed time to make way for the next generation.’
Ian Stuart continued on, recording a new album with a new line-up. Released in the summer of 1984, Hail the New Dawn became the first of many Skrewdriver releases on Rock-O-Rama Records (catalogue number RRR 46). In a deal with Rock-O-Rama Records, and potentially a very profitable one, White Noise became the sole UK distributor of the Hail the New Dawn LP and the subsequent ‘Invasion’ 7″.
The line-up for Hail the New Dawn was Ian Stuart on vocals, Adam Douglas on guitar, Murray Holmes on bass and Mark Sutherland on drums. Stuart had met the Australian Adam Douglas at the Last Resort shop. Adam Douglas said of joining the band:2727
Well I was on a train coming back from the Crown and Cushion, and a couple of mates said they heard Lester and Frenchy were leaving the band. So I went to the Last Resort shop next day and Ian was sitting there. So I said: ‘Do you need a guitarist?’ Well, I said ‘Do you need a bassist?’ as I changed over to the bass for a while. He said yeah we do. Then a little later, he said: ‘We can’t get a guitarist, would you do that instead’? So I said yeah, I ain’t played it for a while, but yeah all right and that’s how I joined Skrewdriver.
Murray Holmes, a fellow Australian who had played previously with the nationalist skinhead band Quick and the Dead, was invited to join Skrewdriver. Holmes said of this:2828
I returned back to London in 1984. Two weeks before I was about to leave I received a letter from Adam Douglas telling me to bring my bass guitar with me because I was to play with Skrewdriver. I knew Adam very well when he was in Perth as he was a follower of Quick and the Dead. Although he hung around with Mods in Perth, he frequented the Quick and the Dead gigs. I arrived in London and stayed around the corner from Ian’s bedsit at the Ferndale hotel. Adam greeted me at Victoria train station telling me Ian was in jail in Germany and would be back in London in a couple of days. Somehow Ian was arrested at a Free Rudolf Hess march. A couple of days passed and I got a knock on my door, then Ian was down in the street. He had arrived back from Europe and his first words were ‘welcome to the band.’
The very next day Holmes, Stuart and Douglas went to meet Sutherland at his studio to begin recording. Holmes described Sutherland as a ‘great bloke, helpful, polite and full of enthusiasm.’ They had much in common: both had the same day job as refrigeration technicians. Sutherland was now on drums. Stuart had persuaded Sutherland, who had been standing in for the increasingly unreliable Geoff Williams, to join the band on a more permanent basis. Sutherland may not have been a skinhead, but he did have a very respectable rock pedigree.
The production and sound quality on Hail the New Dawn is, to put it kindly, very poor. Some songs, not many though, have a certain rough charm. Ian Stuart even admitted that he only liked ‘just under half the songs on the album.’ Most songs could be described as punk, but there are two or three which are more rock-oriented.
Compared to the covers of the two singles which preceded Hail the New Dawn, the front cover of this album, a drawing of a Viking shore raid by Nicky Crane, is disappointing.2929 Perhaps it would have been better to have gone with the first idea suggested by Ian Stuart of a photo of the ‘battle of Lewisham,’ August 1977, showing the National Front battling opponents, mainly drawn from the left and far left. After the NF march, the police attempted to clear the local area of the counter-demonstrators, which erupted into violence and rioting ensued. Such was the ferocity of the violence that it was the first time the police used riot shields on the mainland. Over two hundred people were arrested. None were from the NF. Indeed, the Daily Express stated, ‘We have no time or sympathy for the Front… All the same, the Front does not go in for violent attacks on the police or on authority.’ Over one hundred people, including 55 police officers, were injured. Both the NF and the Left, who accused the police of protecting the NF, claimed Lewisham as a victory.
The lyrics to ‘Hail the New Dawn’ were inspired (or stolen in part if you prefer) from the British Union of Fascists’ Anthem, which was actually sung to the music of the ‘Horst-Wessel-Lied,’ the anthem of the Nazi Party:
Comrades: the voices of the dead battalions
Of those who fell that Britain might be great
Join in our song, for they still march in spirit with us
And urge us on to gain the Union state!
We’re of their blood, and spirit of their spirit
Sprung from that soil for whose dear sake they bled
Against vested powers, Red Front, and massed ranks of reaction
We lead the fight for freedom and for bread!
The streets are still, the final struggle’s ended;
Flushed with the fight we proudly hail the dawn!
See, over all the streets the Union banners waving —
Triumphant standards of our race reborn!
The Red Front was the paramilitary wing of the Communist Party of Germany, which, throughout the 1920s, clashed violently with the Sturmabteilung of the Nazi Party [often called the ‘brownshirts’] in the streets and in the beer halls across Germany, until it was banned in 1933 when Hitler came to power.
‘Our Pride Is Our Loyalty,’ the catchy second track on the album, is Ian Stuart’s statement of what he believes in: ‘pride and loyalty in the ideal of the White race.’ The survival of the white race became his duty. The last verse is worthy of note: For the blood and soil of the lands they toiled.
The concept of ‘Blood and Soil’ (in German Blut und Boden) is normally associated with the Nazi Party and in particular Walter Darré, but is in fact age-old. Simply put, the concept established a mystical connection between a tribe, a people or a nation (blood) and the land (soil) that it occupies and cultivates. Indeed, the peasants were regarded as the very life-blood of the nation. ‘According to this rural ideology, a long tradition of settlement and inheritance patterns had shaped the German people. Germans had entered history as peasants and had always despised urban areas. This special connection between the German people and the land was regarded as the historical basis for Germany’s survival and the reason for its cultural dominance.’3030 However, Darré gave the concept of blood and soil a new connotation. He wanted ‘blood’ to be understood as ‘race,’ calling the peasantry ‘the life source of the Nordic race.’ This Nordic race of farmers, rooted in the soil which had been handed down from father to son since time immemorial, was thus portrayed as the reverse of the Jew, who was without land and viewed as nomadic. In 1930, the year he joined the Nazi Party, Darré published Neuadel aus Blut und Boden, ‘A new Nobility from Blood and Soil,’ which argued that the Germans should create a new ruling class that was rooted in the agrarian community, a return to the ‘authentic nobility in the old Teutonic sense.’ Winning over the peasants to the Nazi cause, Darré became an important party figure, holding major offices, and ‘Blood and Soil’ became one of the pillars of Nazi ideology.
‘Before the Night Falls’ protests against immigration and warns that ‘something has got to be done before it’s too late’:
They come here to this country from the jungles and from trees
The traitors in the parliament give them a better deal
Spend the nation’s money, to cater to their needs
They all accept our charity, then bite the hand that feeds
Before the night falls heed the White call
Before the night falls when the reaper calls you
The song then goes on to question if England actually fought on the right side during the two World Wars:
Our forefathers fought in two world wars, they thought to keep us free
But I’m not sure that in those wars, who was our enemy
The Zionists own the media, and they’re known for telling lies
And I could see, that it could be, we fought on the wrong side
Nicky Crane wrote the lyrics to the next track, ‘Justice,’ based on personal experience as Ian Stuart explained:3131 ‘The lyrics are about Nicky’s case, when he was sent to jail for four years for leading a British Movement gang who were retaliating for attacks by blacks upon themselves. Of course, the way ‘justice’ is in this country, they got the blame and they got sent to jail. But, although Nicky wrote the lyrics, the words apply to virtually all Nationalist political prisoners around the world.’
Another good friend by the name of Matty Morgan penned the lyrics to ‘Race and Nation.’ He was one of the British Movement gang jailed with Nicky Crane for ‘fighting for the land he loved.’ ‘Flying the Flag’ is an angry rant, which denounces the reds, capitalism as well as the media for spreading lies, describing Britain as ‘the dustbin of the world,’ while simultaneously a celebration of the flag most skinheads fly. Ian Stuart had this to say about skinheads and flags:3232 ‘Most skinheads love flying the flag, far more than any other cult about. Most have the flag on a badge, or a jacket, or tattooed on their arm — and flying the flag certainly means fighting Reds because Reds are totally against our flag.’
Lyrically, ‘If There’s a Riot,’ the last track on side one, takes up from where ‘Flying the Flag’ left off. Ian Stuart described the lyrics as follows:3333 ‘Another attack on the media because, should there ever be a fight anywhere near where a skinhead concert is taking place, it’s obvious the skinheads will get the blame even if they’re not involved.’
Side two starts with ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me,’ a cover version of the classic and seductive song from the 1972 film Cabaret by Bob Fosse. In the film version, ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ is sung by a teenager dressed in the uniform of the Hitler Youth. The song paints images of the beauty of nature, tied with the glorious destiny of a strong and proud Fatherland. For Ian Stuart, this song ‘signifies the beauty of Europe,’ which is also the theme of the next track up, ‘Europe Awake.’ Ian Stuart strongly believed in a ‘Europe of the peoples’ and hoped that Europe will awake and ‘create a power bloc which can put policies into practise without fear of intervention by the Soviet bloc or the USA.’ ‘Soldier of Fortune’ takes the shady world of the mercenary as its specialist subject. According to Ian Stuart:3434 ‘Mercenaries get a lot of stick but, having read the magazine Soldier of Fortune, I think that, whatever they call themselves, many mercenaries are not merely ‘soldiers of fortune.’ I think many don’t become mercenaries for profit but for reasons of ideology. Lots of them are anti-Communist and fight as such. They go and fight against communist-backed guerrillas and that song is for them. But it’s also for all those soldiers from regular armies that have ever died fighting against communism. It’s about soldiers wanting freedom for their own people.’
‘Skrew You’ attacks the music press, although it was originally written with Gary Bushell in mind, as Ian Stuart explained:3535 ‘Apart from the heavy metal writers, most of whom have got no interest in politics whatsoever or in fact probably are more politically aligned to us than they are to the Communist Party, all the ‘hip’ new wave writers are complete filth. They’ve been through art college and all that rubbish and go and support all the left-wing causes in the world.’
‘Pennies From Heaven,’ not to be confused with the Bing Crosby song of the same name, recounts the runaround of signing on the dole:
Walking ’round the streets, one place to another
I feel like I lost out on a will
No you don’t come here
Yes you’ve got to go there as well
Wait here a minute, but I’ve been here three hours
My legs are aching cos the seats have all gone
Hey you over there, there’s a cubicle spare
So come on, so come on
‘Power From Profit’ is a damning indictment of the ‘way in which multi-nationals and big business gain power though money.’ Some might even be tempted to call that way capitalism, which would certainly place Ian Stuart on the side of the downtrodden working man. Ian Stuart expanded: ‘In this country, the way to gain power is by having a lot of money. That’s how these multi-nationals get such a say in the running of the British economy, by making huge profits out of people. It doesn’t matter if you are an honest bloke who works hard in this country, you still don’t have a say. The people who have a say are the ones with a lot of money.’
The last track on this album, ‘Free My Land,’ regarded by many as one of Skrewdriver’s finest, is a slow rock ballad. The message was clear and direct: The British people want their country back from the communists, the capitalists, the immigrants, as well as the Jews running it.
Hail the New Dawn was made available through the National Front shop. Nationalism Today, the National Front magazine, reviewed the album and said: ‘It is the idealistic dreams and aspirations of Skrewdriver that makes the band hated by the rock music establishment.’ Steve Sargent helped to spread the word in his own way: ‘When Hail the New Dawn came out I collected a dozen copies from ‘Newham Mick’ who was one of the regular NF paper sellers at Brick Lane on a Sunday. Again I played and played and played it. Coupled with local lads having the album off me, constantly cassette tapes of it were being recorded and passed around.’
Hard on the heels of the Hail the New Dawn LP Rock-O-Rama Records released the excellent two-track ‘Invasion’ 7″ (catalogue number RRR 47), which was also stocked by the National Front shop. Some copies come with a picture sleeve with the same motif that appeared on the back sleeve of the ‘White Power’ 7″.3636 As for the lyrics, ‘Invasion’ condemns the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, though Ian Stuart was quick to point out:3737 ‘Not that I particularly like Afghans, but it’s their country and they’re quite entitled to defend it against communist invasion.’
‘Invasion’ is backed with ‘On the Streets,’ a song about police harassment of skinheads, detached and uncaring politicians, and the media’s negative stereotyping of skinheads, with The Sun newspaper singled out for mention.3838 Ian Stuart complained bitterly:3939
Basically skinheads are an easy nicking as far as the police are concerned. They can nick a skinhead and no one is going to stand up for him like they would for a black. There are no left-wing lawyers or Labour politicians to stand up for a skinhead. Then, when a skinhead goes to court, the jury, believing all the lies they read about skinheads in the papers, automatically find him guilty. He’s got no chance. The song is about the police being a gang on our streets, which, when it comes down to it, is what they are.
The last verse of ‘On the Streets’ tries to reassure that not all skinheads share their media stereotype:
People seem to think, if it’s in The Sun, they’ve got to believe it
Try to tar everybody with the same brush
Remember, birds of a feather, don’t always flock together these days
So don’t get carried away by the sight of us
Indeed, many on the right were still wary of skinheads. Later that year, Ian Stuart was moved to defend NF skinheads against a derogatory article which had actually appeared in a right-wing publication. He wrote to the National Front magazine Nationalism Today:4040
I am writing to you in the hope that you will print my reply to a certain article by Ivan somebody or other, which was printed in a recent edition of a magazine called Spearhead. I checked that the magazine was not another left-wing smear mag and found that it was printed by a small group of conservatives called the British National Party. In the article it was suggested that a lot of NF Skinheads sniff glue. I have been a Skinhead for a long time and have also been involved with the NF for five years, and in that time have only met one Skinhead who associated himself with the Front who actually sniffed glue. In my opinion this is a completely disgusting habit and should be stamped out. It is also well known that most people who sniff glue are not Skinheads and are most definitely not associated with the NF.
It does, however, seem to me that the officials of the B.N.P. occasionally partake in a glue bag or two because they always seem to be suffering from double or treble vision when they describe how many people attend their meetings and marches.
Anyway, the ‘Invasion’ 7″ sold out quickly and was not kept in print by Rock-O-Rama Records. Arguably, the reason for this was financial; sales of singles generate very little profit.
The band, however, soon had a vacancy to fill when the Australian bass player Murray Holmes, who was in Britain on holiday, had to return home, remarking:4141 ‘My three-month stay in London was coming to an end as I had to return to Australia to continue running my refrigeration business. Our winter was over and summer was nearing so I knew I would be busy. My wife had to return to her job as she had taken three months off work to be with me. It was a sad day leaving the UK especially the 23-hour flight home. I listened all the way back to Australia Skrewdriver on a miniature cassette player. I was so depressed to leave but we had to return to work.’
During his three months with Skrewdriver Holmes played one gig on Saturday, 11 August, which was Ian Stuart’s birthday:4242
We only played one live concert in an old church south of the Vauxhall Bridge. I was never sure where it was as I picked up Ian and a few other skinheads in my old London cab. Ian gave me the directions as I didn’t know where the concert was. It was the usual: pre-sold tickets and the NF at the tube stations directing the punters where to go. A great night with plenty of some Dutch beer in rusty tin cans. It tasted okay until the next morning. It had some laxative effect… the beer was some cheap shit the NF acquired and it was the only thing you could drink at the venue. No other choice.
Brutal Attack played their five songs over and over again as they had just reformed and that’s all they could play. Ian sang well and there were minimal mistakes by everyone as we had to do 30-odd songs in about two weeks.
The police made their presence felt by patrolling around the streets of the church. The night went without any incidents. The night started as quick as it ended… One minute the hall was full as everyone arrived the same time and I guess everyone left the same time to catch the last tube train. It wasn’t what it was like in Perth where everyone used to hang around after we played and had more drinks and went on to another pub.
To replace Holmes, Skrewdriver recruited Steve J. Drakos (a.k.a. Stiv Jena, Steve Roba, Steve Roda and Steve A), a skinhead from Bologna in Italy. He had played guitar in Bologna Oi band Nabat, appearing on the band’s first two releases: ‘Scenderemo Nelle Strade’ 7″ (1982) and ‘Laida Bologna’ 7″ (recorded October 1983, released 1984). Steve J. Drakos said of joining Skrewdriver:
After ending my experience with my previous band Nabat, in the summer of 1984 I moved to London. One day I was walking down the King’s Road with a couple of friends when I saw a huge gathering of very tough-looking skinheads. As I was a skinhead myself I started talking to them, against the advice of my terrified friends: the ‘evil’ Englishmen were very curious to speak with an Italian nationalist skinhead and among them was Ian Stuart. We became friends, went to the same pubs and gigs, and after a few weeks some of us were living in the same hotel near King’s Cross station (the Ferndale Hotel which is also visible in the Sex Pistols’ film The Great Rock N Roll Swindle). Skrewdriver’s line-up was still the one of the album Hail the New Dawn, but a few weeks later they were left without a bassist, so I told Ian about my quite good skills as a musician and he booked me for an audition. I played that audition real well with my used Washburn bass (the one that you can see in the live photos of that period and which I still keep in my house today). During the audition Ian said to the others something like ‘We had to go to Italy to find a great bassist’ and so I was officially in the new line-up. I had been in England only one time, the year before, in August 1983 for a holiday.
Paul Swain, who had once played with the Oi! band the 4-Skins, was also recruited as a rhythm guitarist to boost the live sound. Paul Swain said of joining Skrewdriver: ‘Well, I think they’re a good band and I believe in the things they’re trying to say. That’s the main reason anyway.’4343 Holmes, who had met Paul Swain before leaving the UK, described him as a ‘quiet sort of bloke.’ Colin H. knew Paul Swain, having spoken to him a number of times at gigs. He remembers Paul well, nicknaming him ‘pervert’ because ‘he had a thing about women’s feet and was always looking at women’s feet.’
RAC printed and published a Skrewdriver songbook with lyrics to the ‘White Power’ 7″, ‘Voice of Britain’ 7″ and Hail the New Dawn LP. The introduction, written by Ian Stuart, is revealing:
These lyrics reflect my hopes for the white race in the future. Until the white people throughout the world awaken, these lyrics will remain as lyrics, and hopes, but eventually I believe that the situations forced upon white people, will bring about an awakening, the likes of which has never seen before. Our people have been used as pawns by the capitalists, and put false hopes in the communists, for far too long. I believe that the white man will arise and take back all that has been taken away from him. Taken, not by force, but by typical semitic deception. No longer will weaklings rule the white man by lies and deceit, but the warrior will make his comeback, and rule by strength, honesty and love for his race. It’s up to you to make these lyrics come true. For too long it has been the few fighting for the survival of the white race. We have to become a mass movement to smash the twin tyrannies of Capitalism and Communism. Go out and join a Nationalist party in whatever country you come from and help bring about the White National Revolution. White Man awake.
The songbook also contained lyrics to two other songs that had not yet appeared on vinyl. The first is ‘If You’re White’:
Read the papers, watch T.V., hear the media lie to me
On the radio in the news, you’re all wrong except for the Jews
Doesn’t matter who loses face, if it’s against the chosen race
If you’re white, they’ll say you’re bad, they must think that we’re all mad
If you’re white, you’re all right
If you’re white, today
If you’re white, you’re all right
If you’re white, okay
They ban our marches, squash our rights, we’ll resist with all our might
There seems to be a moral lack, marches allowed for reds and blacks
They started riots, raised all hell, when thirteen black men burnt themselves
Had their marches, told their lies, when another black committed suicide
Well it’s our country, let’s take it back, give the race act men the sack
For the cause some go to jail, and this must mean that we must never fail
They’ll try and make you feel ashamed for everything our race is blamed
They’ll try and tell you day is night, but don’t forget that white is right