CHAPTER SIX

1986

Ian Stuart was soon transferred from Wormwood Scrubs to the comparatively luxurious confines of HMP Wayland in Norfolk. David Webster, who had religiously followed Skrewdriver since the days of the 100 Club, was also doing time in Wayland:

             I had been convicted on a trumped-up charge of being in possession of an offensive weapon whilst waiting for a tube train at Hammersmith to take me home to Shepherds Bush. To say I was shocked on receiving such a sentence was an understatement. It was common knowledge that Ian had been charged with assault on a coloured man. I had done about a month of my sentence when Ian was transferred from the Scrubs to Wayland. In a selfish sort of way I was actually very pleased to see Ian, who was also well-known to all the other skinheads serving time in Wayland. We soon set up a strong friendship. I had spoken to Ian many times previous at gigs and different pubs. But it was during four months of being on the same wing that I got to know Ian more personally.

                  Ian was permitted to have an acoustic guitar in his cell, so it was not uncommon for a few of us inmates to be present in his cell whilst he strummed away and sang songs from the soon-to-be-released Blood and Honour LP. Many fun moments were had during our time behind bars together. I remember one evening when there were four of us congregated in Ian’s cell with the door slightly ajar, there was a knock. It was one of the prison officers asking if he could borrow Ian’s National Front News to read, which Ian was allowed to have in his possession for a limited time. Totally bizarre! Ian’s political views were well-known around the prison, I remember asking him who he viewed as the biggest enemy to Britain, quick as a flash he responded with ‘the Jew.’

                  Being quite a new prison Wayland was much more modernised than any of the London nicks. It was all single cells, fitted with a sink and toilet; our cell doors would be left unlocked for much of the day, so we were permitted more freedom. Quite often I would train with Ian at the gym on the weights, where he would certainly lift more than me. He was also very handy on the punchbag. We would also run around the large perimeter of the prison covering quite a few miles. Ian had the advantage of a flashy pair of trainers whereas I had the standard prison plimsolls. Regardless he was not in my league when it came to running. On my release I went on to run seven London Marathons.

Ian Stuart nicknamed Dave Webster ‘Wild Piggy.’

On Saturday, 22 February, Vicious Rumours, the Diehards, Intensive Care, Condemned 84, Section 5 and Brute Force were billed to play St. Matthew’s Hall, Red Hill, Surrey, which is on the outskirts of London. Brute Force did not play. Posty Rob believes this concert did not take place full stop.

Imprisonment and ‘Europe of the Peoples’

On Thursday, 6 March, The Sun ran a front-page story about Madness rock star Suggs and his ‘close friend who is a Nazi-style thug in jail for a vicious race attack.’ The story was supported by a photo of Suggs and Ian Stuart sitting together in his mother’s house. The publication of the story and the photo came as a complete surprise to Ian Stuart, but weeks before he had desperately beseeched visitor Charlie Sargent to raise awareness of his imprisonment because the NF had failed to make him a cause célèbre. Acting on his own initative, Sargent went and sold the aforementioned photo of Suggs and Ian Stuart to Gary Bushell at The Sun for a figure of £500. Ian Stuart was thankful for the publicity generated and for a £200 share of the money from the sale of the photo, but he was still angry at Sargent and gave him a ‘bloody good rollicking’ on his next visit.¹¹

Rumours still circulate of a photograph in Ian Stuart’s possession of Madness giving the nazi salute in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The story appeared about one week before the release of David Webster from the same prison as Ian Stuart: ‘Anyone that did not know of Ian’s allegiances before certainly knew now! A mob of blacks and other anti-Nazis soon began to gather in one of the corridors, within minutes Ian had a bigger mob. With a mass brawl on the cards, the officers dispersed everyone and it was back to our cells. Yep, there was never a dull moment with Ian Stuart around. I saw a side to him in Wayland I had not seen before. A very comical man at times, a man that was never afraid to state his views, a loyal man to his friends, and yes a very private man when he wanted to be that rarely spoke about his family.’

While in prison, Ian Stuart put pen to paper and wrote an article called ‘Europe of the Peoples,’ setting out the National Front’s alternative to the Common Market, which National Front News published:²²

National Front News no. 76, 1986. The article later appeared in fanzine Blood and Honour no. 3 (not to be confused with the magazine of the same name), circa late 1986 or early 1987.

             Today, Europe is at its lowest ebb. The Common Market creates suspicion and dislike amongst its member countries. This ridiculous situation is dividing a former great area of world importance. If the Common Market was an institution that created closer ties within Europe, it would not be tolerated by the super powers. As it is, both the USA and Soviet Empire must be sitting back, doubled up with laughter as petty squabbles split any aspiring hopes of European Unity. The only spark of hope for Europe (and fear for the super powers) is in the ever increasing number of people flocking to European Nationalist Movements. And the super powers realise that Nationalism is the only threat to their seemingly unbreakable hold over European freedom. Eventually, when Europe as a whole demands freedom, we can start to create a viable alternative to both Big Business and Marxism. When this happens, Europe will be a far better place to live in. Mutual respect, strength, honesty, and pride in the New European Order would be the lessons taught to the future generations. I think that videos of all the multi-racial, drug ridden, Capitalist countries — and appalling suffering of the people in Communist-occupied countries — would be enough to warn people about the true extent of these two evils. In a ‘Europe of the Peoples’ care would be taken to ensure that National Festivals and Patriotic historical events are celebrated. For example, our own St. George’s Day, St. Andrew’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, St. David’s Day would be made National Holidays the same way as the Izerbedevaapt with its ‘No More Brother War’ theme is celebrated in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium. These days would be ones of Patriotism and National Pride. We would have a future in a ‘Europe of the Peoples.’ People would no longer be just looking after number one. And uncertainty would be just a thing of the past. We would be heralding the start of a New Era. An era of peace, prosperity, pride and above all, hope. This would be a New Dawn of greatness for our ‘Europe of the Peoples.’ Indeed, it would be a great Victory, worth both fighting and dying for.

Ian Stuart came out of prison to a band which existed in name only: Australian guitarist Adam Douglas had left the country to join the French Foreign Legion. Not long after Ian got out, Cat Valesio and Ian met up for a drink. He was skint and she lent him £30 which she never got back! By now Cat had grown her hair and was more into the Rockabilly scene. She remained friendly with all the old lot and used to bump into Des Clarke, Andy ‘Jock’ Dewan and Eddie Stampton at Rockabilly clubs, mainly in places like the Warehouse on Saturday nights (this was situated upstairs at the Electric Ballroom in Camden). She moved to a flat and drifted away from the nationalist scene so to speak. She never attended another RAC concert after around 1986. [After Ian left London she totally lost touch with him.]

Albums by Brutal Attack and Public Enemy

Musically, the year of 1986 started with the release of two skinhead nationalist records by Rock-O-Rama Records. The first was the Stronger Than Before LP by Brutal Attack (catalogue number RRR 57). Brutal Attack had Ian Stuart to thank for arranging a record deal with Rock-O-Rama. The band comprised Ken McLellan on vocals, John Whittington on guitar, Paul Thornton on bass guitar, and Tony Tompkins on drums, who was an active official of the NF.

A drawing of Norse god Odin atop his eight-legged steed Sleipnir graces the front cover, which symbolised for Brutal Attack their aggression.³³ The LP thanks the likes of Patrick Harrington, Derek Holland and Joe Pearce, as well as Ian Anderson, who also sat on the NF National Directorate. The album is dedicated to Martin Wingfield, also a member of the NF National Directorate and the editor of National Front News. In April 1985, Wingfield was convicted under the Race Relations Act for inciting racial hatred in election literature distributed by the National Front in 1983. Fined £1,500, which he refused to pay on a matter of principle, he was imprisoned that November for three months. He served his time in Pentonville prison. Val Drury, who was Tony Tompkins’ girlfriend, is also thanked.

England’s Glory no. 6, 1987.

Recorded at Mark Sutherland’s studio, this time there was absolutely no cause for complaint about the production or the mix. Curiously, Ken McLellan was not of the same opinion, remarking:⁴⁴ ‘I was not 100% happy with the end result. I think that some of the production left a little to be desired, rough edges which, if they had been removed, would have improved the finished product no end. However, it was our first effort so we must expect there to be ample room for improvement.’

Interview with Ken McLellan, fanzine White Noise no. 2.

The music is rousing and infectious Oi, although there is no saving the limp ballad ‘White Pride, White Passion.’ The vocals are angry, but strained on the high notes in ‘No One Remembers.’ ‘Outside’ and ‘Let It Burn’ had been played by Brutal Attack as a punk band and were on the live demo. Likewise, ‘Dawn Patrol’ and ‘Freedom’ appeared on the 1983 demo. The lyrics promote white pride, comradeship, honesty, strength, patriotism and the repatriation of immigrant populations, denounce the press, the government, CND and communists, and yearn for freedom, typified by ‘Freedom’:

                  When we want to march the police try to ban it

                  But take a look at history the commies began it

                  Now they are afraid of us because we know the truth

                  The CND on their TV they ain’t gonna lose

                  My patriotic heart for my country feels so proud

                  But when I stand to make a speech I’m told I’m not allowed

                  Freedom from press lies and government betrayal

                  They’ve joined forces together now my country’s running off the rails

                  They can try to suppress us with their Armies and Police force

                  We will emerge victors we fight for the true cause

                  A group of the patriots are not afraid to stand

                  We are all prepared to die fighting for our land

                  We don’t want no aliens we don’t want no reds

                  Send them back to Russia or shoot the bastards dead

                  So hurry let’s get organised this time we will plan it

                  I will not be free again but this way I’m turning

                  A country free of reds, a country free of blacks

                  We won’t make the same mistake and let them back

Elsewhere, ‘Justice Is a Joke’ and ‘We Only Came to Dance’ complain again about the police harassment of skinheads and the abuse of SUS. ‘No One Remembers’ draws attention to the plight of soldiers returning from war:

                  He runs the gauntlet of hate on the streets

                  They want to lock him up for the memories he keeps

                  He remembers England when it was fresh and green

                  And now he’s returned he can’t believe what he’s seen

                  The medals in his pocket are rusted and worn

                  His once proud uniform now tattered and torn

                  He just wants to live in peace

                  The Britain he knew is now deceased

                  Social outcast cos of his memories

                  This is wrong, everyone is somebody

                  There he stands, out on his own

                  Just a sad stranger in his hometown

The live favourite ‘Let It Burn’ bemoans the end of the British Empire, which at its height was arguably the largest empire in history:

                  Passions of the West world burning tonight

                  Finish of an empire, death’s angels in flight

                  I can see the flames at a mile away

                  They keep burning all through the day

                  Remember our empire once so great

                  Now it’s been destroyed maybe it was fate

                  Now it’s gone forever, all that’s left are memories

                  I’ll never forget and I’ll lay a burning wreath

‘Rivers of Blood’ refers to the so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech made by Conservative member of Parliament Enoch Powell in 1968 which criticised Commonwealth immigration as well as the proposed anti-discrimination legislation. He predicted that mass immigration would lead to violence. He said: ‘As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.’ Powell also recounted a recent conversation with a constituent, described as ‘a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries.’ The man finished by saying to him: ‘In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.’

Brutal Attack sticker

When interviewed by one fanzine in 1986 and asked what record had influenced him personally to carry on the struggle, Ken McLellan replied:⁵⁵ ‘Believe it or not, “Free Nelson Mandela” [released in 1984]. That record really bought home how sick the world really is and while the red scum can sing their politics across the airwaves I find myself continually baulked of any recognition for my own cause.’ Overall, Stronger Than Before is a strong debut with one or two truly standout tracks, but arguably more could have been expected from a band which had been around for so long.

Interview with Ken McLellan, fanzine English Rose, 1987.

The second of the two nationalist skinhead records was the Public Enemy England’s Glory LP (catalogue number RRR 58). There are no details of the band on the cover. The LP was made available through the fanzine England’s Glory which was based in Wokingham, Berks. The front cover of the album features photographs of Boz of English Rose fanzine, Neil Edwards who did backing vocals, Paul Burnley [top right in round sunglasses] sitting next to his girlfriend on a train, as well as ‘Security Man’ Buster, who was none other than Nick Rich:

             Yes, it’s me on the front cover of the Public Enemy LP. I was great mates with the band and I did some security for them. My nickname was Buster. Well I do look like him, but I’m not like him in any way at all. Two Americans once asked me for an autograph. They thought I was him! I had to laugh. Anyway, the album was recorded at Mark Sutherland’s studio and I was there. It was good fun, but it took ages to record. They certainly took their time. I did backing vocals on ‘Pervert,’ ‘Proud to Be British,’ ‘Skinheads’ and ‘Win or Die,’ which was used on the No Surrender comp volume 2. Ian Stuart came along to give his support. We had a few drinks. Ian gave advice, as did Mark. It was just a bunch of skinheads having fun! The following weekend, we went back to the studio to watch Skrewdriver record Blood and Honour, which was a real honour! Like the Public Enemy album, it seemed to take ages to record. Ian Stuart told the Public Enemy lads he had done some of the guitar work on the album. When the Public Enemy album was released I got a free copy from Worzel. It was a good LP and still sounds good today. Richie has now sadly died of cancer. Rest in peace, my friend.

On the rear cover ‘Special thanx’ are extended to ‘Security Man’ Buster, Dal’s girlfriend Tracey and Paul [Burnley] of Kent-based National Socialist-oriented fanzine The Truth at Last, who took over lead vocal duties from Dal after the album had been recorded.

England’s Glory is a genuinely striking collection of patriotic skinhead songs by a band who felt strongly about the ‘way our country is going downhill.’⁶⁶ Besides ‘Bank Holiday’ and ‘Disco Nightmare’ which had appeared elsewhere on vinyl, ‘1984,’ ‘Pervert,’ and ‘Fought for Our Freedom’ command most attention here. ‘Pervert’ demands justice of death by hanging for rapists and child molesters. Starting and ending with military-style drumming, ‘Fought for Our Freedom,’ whilst recognising the bravery and sacrifice of those who went to war, questions why when Britain is no longer a country fit for heroes. In the words of ‘Fought for Our Freedom,’ Britain is described as a country ‘wasting away’ where ‘factories are getting shut,’ a country of ‘houses getting knocked down’ and a country of ‘strikes and fights.’ Curiously, the sleeve lists a 12th track ‘Sound of the Streets’ which does not actually appear on the vinyl. [It was never released on vinyl.]

Interview, fanzine Bad Influence, 1986.

Around the same time as the release of England’s Glory the band parted company with vocalist Paul Burnley. Writing in the third person in his fanzine, Paul Burnley angrily denounced Public Enemy for sacking him and dropping their nationalist approach:⁷⁷ ‘They [Public Enemy] sacked their lead singer Paul because of his strong NS beliefs (contrary to popular belief). Now they have also dropped their political stance. Their ex-vocalist was told “not to raise his right arm” or “Sieg Heil” because they didn’t want a Nazi reputation. Their ex-drummer [Martin] was found out to be a member of a multi-racial gang and played in another band secretly. He left because he did not like Paul’s politics.’

Fanzine The Truth at Last no. 8, circa 1986.

Also, bass player Richard Worsdell is quoted as saying: ‘I don’t care if he [Martin] is a nigger lover. He’s still a good mate.’ Paul Burnley called Public Enemy ‘traitors.’ Years later, he would record as Public Enemy. The final irony!

Indecent Exposure also suffered the wrath of Paul Burnley:⁸⁸ ‘Indecent Exposure who were a top “patriotic” band have been reduced to a mere trendy group. Just as their popularity was increasing and they were about to become one of the best R.A.C. bands, they turned their backs on their political stature because they thought they had a chance in the world of commercial rock (which is run by race-mixers and Jews). They just don’t seem to realise that once you raise your right arm and proclaim you are proud of your race and nation you have no chance in the scene of commercial rock.’

Ibid.

After coming out in support of Indecent Exposure, Terry ‘London,’ who was editing a strictly Oi and football fanzine called Cockney Express, received death threats. He later said of this: ‘I didn’t give a toss then and still don’t today, by the way. If anything it just made me laugh and I have to say it also made Ian Stuart laugh. I was at Bow Road studios one Sunday with Ian and Milky and we were sitting with Mark Sutherland having a chat about it all when I showed them the threats etc.… We all had a good laugh and Ian promised to address the situation with those concerned.’

No Surrender! Volume 2 compilation LP

In February 1986, Rock-O-Rama Records, again in collaboration with White Noise Records, released the No Surrender! Volume 2 compilation LP (catalogue number RRR 59), which featured three English nationalist bands, Skrewdriver, Public Enemy and Brutal Attack, alongside a number of bands from Germany and France. Skrewdriver contributed two tracks, which were both recorded during the Blood and Honour sessions and intended for release as a single. The first Skrewdriver track was a reworked version of ‘Streetfight,’ which dated back to 1977, with new lyrics:

                  Waiting for the weekend on a left-wing afternoon

                  Reds are gonna lose their power, skinheads gonna call the tune

                  Pushing through the red scum, feeling pretty good

                  The pride of being white men, go for commie blood

                  All that pent-up anger that goes pouring through your head

                  Streetfight in the city, the reds are gonna end up dead

                  All right now!

                  The time is nearly here, the tension starts to build

                  Communists all over, Jubilee Gardens are all filled

                  Reds are pretty worried about the skinheads at the show

                  Sheep they fly their Red flag, but the skinheads have their own white power!

The revised lyrics now refer to that infamous day of Sunday, 10 June 1984 when skinheads and nationalists trounced the Redskins on stage at the GLC-sponsored ‘Jobs For a Change’ open-air festival at Jubilee Gardens on London’s South Bank. The second track, ‘Friday Night,’ is a light-hearted look at going out on a Friday night, having a drink and a laugh, pulling some bird and ‘waking up in the morning with a hangover and a right old pig!’⁹⁹ ‘Friday Night’ is disposable.

Pearce, The First Ten Years: Chapter Blood and Honour.

Considering the musicianship and songwriting displayed on the Public Enemy album, the two songs delivered here, originally intended for release as a single, are lacklustre. Lyrically ‘Strength Through Oi!’ is another anti-disco rant whereas ‘Win or Die’ seems to be a fictional tale of fighting to defend this fair nation against a communist invasion:

                  Dressed in combats ready to fight

                  Out with your gun day and night

                  You’re on the hills with a gang of ten

                  Hunted down so you leave your den

                  Fighting the reds win or die

                  They’ve invaded our country

                  And I don’t know why

                  And there’s a bullet on your arm and blood on your face

                  When the fighting’s won you’ve freed your race

                  You meet another group they’re on your side

                  In come the reds they better run and hide

                  A mob of red scum

                  Prisoners, we don’t take none

                  The fighting’s on you’re going to win

                  Shoot the cowards never give in

                  Raise your head you’ve done your best

                  You’re now a hero with a medal on your chest

Arguably though, the song describes the guerrilla war waged by the Afghan resistance movement against the Soviet invaders.

The two Brutal Attack songs were originally intended for a single on Rock-O-Rama Records, but eventually ‘turned up’ on this compilation album. The first of Brutal Attack’s two offerings is the raucous sing-along ‘We Are White Noise,’ which, despite stating the obvious, also boldly proclaims support for the National Front: ‘For the Front we will stand.’ The second offering is the equally raucous ‘Slave to the Grave’ which rejects conventional life, notably the acceptance of a life ‘devoted’ to work. The tracks from Brutal Attack, like those from Public Enemy and Skrewdriver, were unavailable elsewhere until Rock-O-Rama Records released them on CD in the early ’90s.

Vengeance

Friends Tom and Daz from Norwich in Norfolk formed Vengeance in March 1986. Interviewed in 2009, Tom said of the band’s early history:¹⁰¹⁰ ‘I was a drummer anyway and Daz was a keen vocalist so we set about looking for a line-up. Daz recruited two friends of his, Tim, a really good lead guitarist, and Rach who played bass. Vengeance was formed and we spent many months writing songs and practicing. We laid some tracks down in the studio and released them on demo.’

Blog: Glory Days of the RAC.

However, forming Vengeance was not quite as straightforward as Tom recalled all those years later. According to one fanzine,¹¹¹¹ within the first four months of forming the band there were five line-up changes before the stable line-up of Daz on vocals, Tim on guitar, Rach on bass and Tom on drums. Tim and Rach were punks. Tom and Daz were skinheads. The band recalled of their first gig:¹²¹² ‘Our first gig took place in the bar of a pub in Norwich which attracted an audience of about 40 people, half punk and half skin. It wasn’t the best gig the world had ever seen, but we were pleased with the reaction we got, especially when a few of the lads started dancing and enjoying themselves.’

Fanzine England’s Glory no. 6.

Interview with Vengeance, fanzine White Noise no. 4.

They sang about such topics as poverty, inequality, police oppression and youth unemployment, but it was not all negative. ‘We also sing about how we love our country and will stand up for it, as well as being proud of being skins’ said the band.¹³¹³

Ibid.

Peter Mathewson Memorial gig

On Saturday, 12 April, Brutal Attack and Skullhead played a ‘Peter Mathewson Memorial gig’ at the Marlborough Social Club, Newcastle. The redirection point was Yates’s Wine Lodge opposite Newcastle Central British Rail station. A minibus of skinheads made the long journey from London. David Webster still smiles about the reception they received: ‘I remember us walking into this pub before the gig where a few of the locals took great exception to London skinheads in their boozer. Lucky for us it didn’t come to blows as they were massive guys. They sure make them big up north. They were like miner types and let’s not forget they were having a raw deal at the time. Guess they saw us as Thatcher’s Boot Boys, assuming as everyone did that all skinheads were against anything left-wing especially the unions. But in actual fact I had a lot of sympathy for the miners and supported their cause massively. I’m pretty sure Ian would have supported their cause too. Quite ironic really that Ian and Mensi should have something in common. What a funny old world!’

Similiarly, Posty Rob recalls a frosty reception: ‘When we arrived at Yates we were told to get out of the way by the local skins. Rumour had it that some Newcastle United fans had been attacked by rivals and they were out looking for revenge. Also, at the venue, a skinhead who was playing pool was hit with a pool cue by a local in an unprovoked attack. The local then casually walked off!’

Quite by chance ‘Jim the Skin’ from Berwick in Northumberland found himself at this concert. He went along because it was a skinhead concert; he knew absolutely nothing about the bands. The concert proved a revelation. This is his long and detailed story of music, politics, trouble and one or two brushes with the establishment along the way:

             I was born in Plymouth in 1966 into a poor single-parent family looked after by my Father and my Grandparents on my Mother’s side. Growing up was like any other working-class child. Bomb-sites and rampaging through the streets until we were hungry or everyone else had gone home. Things didn’t really kick off with me musically, politically or even sexually until I reached Secondary school after failing my 11+ exam. However, once there, things exploded on all three fronts.

                  It was 1977 when I first walked through the gates of Penlee Secondary with my head full of wonder and dread. I was now with the ‘bigger boys’ whose tales of violence were legendary. I quickly settled in, finding my feet and making a small group of friends. These friends were the ‘inbetweeners,’ not hard and chaotic and also not the nerds, but they knew what was what and who to avoid as did I. However I was always drawn to the ‘dark side’ and tales and witnessing the exploits of the older lads the more I wanted to be like them. Not only did it look fun but they also seemed to get the birds, something I was yet to experience (not that I’d knew what to do once I got there). Another thing I noticed about this group is their different syle. I had never bothered with fashion as first I couldn’t afford it and secondly I was too busy climbing trees and smashing windows. But this fashion, mesmerising, different and defiantly anti-establishment was something I liked the look of. It was Punk, or at least a watered-down, school-acceptable version of punk. So to ape these ‘apes’ I hounded my Gran for a pair of cherry-red Dr Martens which were purchased one Saturday in a shoe shop opposite the giant Co-Op in Derry’s Cross, Plymouth. (Gran thought the boots looked like trouble, but I was her ‘little soldier’ and got most of what I wanted within reason.) The Sta-Prest got shorter, however my hair got longer. I liked to think that I was bucking the trend but it was actually down to not having the bottle to get it cut. Anyway I was still hanging around with ‘the inbetweeners’ with bouts of leaning against walls with the harder lads.

                  During this period not only was I becoming more aware musically as Punk was at its height (1979) but also politically as the country was straining under various factions fighting for power. This awareness was not because of the politics but because of the violence and unrest that was being beamed into our houses every night on the six o’clock news. Why was this happening? Why was everyone fighting? Who cares, I want some and went out of my way to become an agitator, well a secret one anyway. Scratching or scribbling big A’s in a circle wherever I went. Did I know what it meant, socially yes. It meant getting up the noses of people. Politically no, I’d seen it on walls, heard the establishment ‘coating’ it off and on my turntable with Johnny singing about it being in the UK. I also started going to Plymouth Argyle FC as you could guarantee a punch-up every other weekend. I was crap at this but I always say ‘it’s not the winning but the taking part that counts.’ Anyway the reports in the midweek Evening Herald kept me going back. I scanned the numerous photos of gangs of ‘Maggie’s Boot Boys’ going at it across the terraces but alas I was never in any, Bollocks, and as my teachers always said ‘Must try harder,’ which I did.

                  It was about this time I starting hearing about scraps that the older lads were getting into on a weekend with ‘the reds.’ ‘The Reds’? What were these? Do I ask and get ripped apart for not knowing or do I just listen and learn? I went for the latter option.

                  ‘The Reds’ by all accounts were traitors, scum who hated Britain, Commies, and the weak and they must be attacked at every level to stop this treasonous takeover. (This in part was actually the truth.) This was my sort of carry-on. Not only organised trouble but also against Britain’s enemies. It was a win-win situation as far as I was concerned.

                  Before this crusade could be realised I was brought to the attention of a gig coming up. Now I had been to a gig but everyone who was anyone was going, so three weeks of not eating lunch and saving my dinner money I had enough for this gig. It was to be played at the Fiesta Nightclub in Plymouth and the bands playing were the Specials, the Selecter and Madness on the infamous 2 Tone tour of 1979. Now this was completely by accident as I would not be seen dead near Mods, but I’m glad I went as it blew me away and led me on to becoming a Skinhead. The place was ‘what I thought,’ packed with Skins, Rude Boys and Boot Boys, all in their own little gangs. I’d never seen so many angry youth in one place before. Little gang fights were kicking off all around and you had to be on your guard and not leave your gang. Going to the toilet was a right chore. Either sneaking in, piss as fast as you can and out, or all 20 of you on a mass piss break. Anyway, that night changed my musical outlook and realised it wasn’t just punk or get stuffed. There was a world out there to listen to. Next day the bragging rights were mine; well, they were after the bigger lads had finished. I never saw any Ska bands again until Madness on the first of their numerous ‘comeback’ gigs at Finsbury Park. However, not only has the music stayed with me but helped me appreciate other genres of which I listen to daily. Incidentally it was here I picked up my first bit of political literature, The National Front News, and this was to lead me on to my political lifestyle.

                  My first political outing was a National Front march through the middle of Plymouth city centre, organised by (I think) David Merryweather in 1980. However, before the march we were to attend a counter-demo organised by the Anti-Nazi League outside Plymouth civic centre. Now when I heard attend, I thought go and make ourselves scary and say our piece, not the Rorke’s Drift it actually became with waves of ‘anti-nazis’ attacking us from all sides. Now I don’t mind admitting I was 15 and crapping myself as 20 of us fought off three hundred rabid SWP, who should have actually killed us, but their inability to keep the pressure up enabled us to break the place up and escape with only minor injuries. Job done. The rest of the day was a bit of an anticlimax really with four hundred of us marching though the town centre with no opposition, flanked by police to the outskirts of town for the meeting to be held in the car-park as the meeting hall wouldn’t let us in. Monday at school was fantastic as I regaled tales of dare-doing, rescuing children from fires, fighting tigers and destroying ‘the Reds.’ I was hooked — this quiet, not-out-of-the-ordinary boy was doing something different and for what I thought was a just cause. I read everything I could about how the ‘traitors’ were ruining my country helped along with the bosses who were intent with swamping the country with cheap labour so they could make more money. A note of interest is that there was only one non-white in my school called Shupak Uddin who we all bullied (even the ‘right-on’ teachers), and it was rare to see a black person in Plymouth in 1981, so my political leanings didn’t come out of a visual one but more of a troublesome/antisocial one which then manifested into belief.

                  Even though there were coaches away to places as far as London for NF marches, I didn’t go as I didn’t have the money, I didn’t travel well and anyway my Grandparents (who I was living with by then) wouldn’t let me. Haha. So I had to wait for the next Plymouth NF march. It came in May 1981 whilst Britain was burning under a storm of race riots that spread across Britain that year. Brixton, Toxteth, Tottenham, Bristol were the major ones reported on but through the grapevine (no Internet or mobile phones then) there was unrest in Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester, and numerous towns and cities with large non-white populations. The Plymouth NF’s turnout was poor with only two hundred turning up due to reports in all the local newspapers for weeks of the oncoming ‘riot.’ However, these two hundred were hardcore, looking for the battle. Anyway, same spec as last time, straight into the ‘lefties’ holding their ‘preaching to the converted’ demonstration at the civic centre. This time there were more of us and we were more organised and vicious. There were more of them but they just scattered, leaving us to batter the speakers, the brave and to break the place up. Job done (again). This was followed by a quick march up through the deserted and boarded-up town centre, flanked by hundreds of coppers and just as many photographers. I was a star, well I felt like one anyway.

                  Next Monday at school I was fielding questions from the adoring and awestruck crowd. All right then, my mates, the inbetweeners! Wednesday, however, took an unexpected turn when I was summoned to the Headmaster’s office. ‘What’s this?’ Mr. Russell said as he showed me the front page of the local paper. There I am holding a NF placard whilst goose-stepping up Royal Parade. Oh dear. Anyway, I am suspended forthwith whilst they prepared the way for me being expelled. Off I was sent with a letter of explanation for my Grandparents. Didn’t feel so clever or brave now. Grandad was called home from work by my Gran who was having a meltdown. Stern talking-tos crossed with understanding of where I was coming from helped matters, and after a day of phone calls and clandestine meetings by my Grandad I was back in school the following week. Grandad, it transpired, was head of the Masonic Lodge in Devon. Get in.

                  Not much political activity happened after this for me in Plymouth, not because I wasn’t allowed but because of the internal struggle the NF was having at the time. Most of my mates went on to the British Movement which was a more overtly Nazi and violent organisation and the NF died in Plymouth. As there were no organised BM groups in Plymouth our time was taken up with spray-painting BRITISH MOVEMENT everywhere, hanging around Union Street where all the prostitutes, sailors and clubs were, shoplifting and nicking anything that wasn’t nailed down, football hooliganism and generally being a pain in the arse. This, however, got me into bad trouble and after a long charge sheet that included fraud, theft, arson and being a twat, I was ordered by the Judge, who Grandad the Mason knew, to leave Plymouth to live with my Dad and stepmother in Berwick-upon-Tweed or face a lengthy borstal sentence. Goodbye the south, hello the north!

                  I arrived by train in this small northern town in the early months of ’82. It was raining. I was 15, cold and knew no one apart from my Dad and stepmother. Home was a comfortable two-bedroom council house on an estate that overlooked the harbour town, population 25,000, and was at least an hour away from civilisation as I knew it. As I had done my exams and had obtained five GCEs it was decided by my probation officer that I didn’t need to return to school as I only had a few months to go until my 16th birthday. That’ll do for me. Time was spent with exploring or shoplifting from Woolworths, Boots or the other big High Street shops, and as I hadn’t started drinking yet I was watching a lot of telly and listening to music which I would get from the independent music shop in the town centre. Music at this point was becoming politicked with Oi! mainly being right of centre and 2 Tone being left of centre, or that’s how it I saw it anyway, and listened to and loved both. This boring existence went on for a few months. However, the relationship with my stepmother was getting strained to say the least. A month before my 16th birthday I was out of the house and living rough. This was actually a blessing and pushed me towards living with another skinhead called Charlie I had met and befriended. Charlie lived on another council estate in a house with three of his four brothers and a dog called Fuckwits. It was like the Young Ones. I was Vivian.

                  For the next couple of years my life was not political at all and was taken up with drinking, fighting, stealing and again being a twat, at which I excelled. My musical tastes had drifted back to Oi! and I attended quite a few gigs, Toy Dolls, Damned, Exploited, UK Subs etc., etc. where the chance of disorder was guaranteed. Due to the high unemployment levels that successive governments had created then, the Youth Training Scheme was the order of the day for most youth and that included me. A generation was paid £25 per week to sweep some corporate’s floors as it kept us off the unemployment figures. This droll existence lasted until April 1984 when I went on holiday paid for by the government. When I say holiday I actually mean borstal. A range of charges, a Test Tubes ‘PRICKS’ T-shirt, a number 1 crop and SkinS tattoo on my forehead ensured that the Magistrate took pity and gave me a lenient sentence. What was I thinking? But hey, that’s the beauty of youth, you don’t. Oh, how me and my prison escorts laughed as I was driven one hundred miles to Medomsley Road, Consett Young Offenders Institute for six months’ rehabilitation. I was shitting myself. This, however, was where I was reawakened to my political side. After getting over the shock and that my mate who was also there telling me he was out the next day, I quickly settled into the strict regimen of physical education and work. The place was full of skinheads with the majority being political. After being out of the political scene for two years I was interested to know what was going on. Well, the biggest thing was that the BM had folded as the leader, Michael McLaughlin, had been leant on by the police and the NF was back in. Not as strong as ’79 but more violent and direct. That’ll do, where do I sign? Six months came and went and I came out fitter and stronger than I had ever been in my life.

                  On my return to Berwick I quickly slipped back into ‘twat’ life and was living in a halfway house called the Royal Hotel organised for me by my probation officer. You might as well have called the place Ali Baba’s with the amount of ‘ne’er do wells’ in there. Good crack and never a dull moment though. Determined not to stagnate I contacted the Newcastle NF organiser and before long I was getting involved in punch-ups at the Monument, Gateshead and the train station usually on match days supporting Newcastle. This in turn led me to riot at many a major club’s ground picking out ‘foreigners’ for particular attention. I was arrested after 60 of us went to watch Berwick Rangers play Forfar only to cause a riot when we tried to reclaim Scotland. The Jocks had other ideas about this. I was released after two days and a special court with a £20 fine.

                  Newspapers and leaflets were taken to grounds and how we chuckled as the Geordies sang ‘Geordies are white’ and we rose in Bulldog’s hooligan league table. One particular awayday I remember was going to Chelsea v Newcastle by bus with the Newcastle Mainline Express (NME) hooligans. I was getting this bus as I had arranged to meet other NF members in London for a demo. Anyway, the upshot was a chaotic and fun weekend resulting in trashed pubs, ground and property, mass crowd trouble, stabbings, setting a pub on fire, theft, aggravation and graffiti. All in the name of nationalism, of course. Job done I thought. Still never got to that demo.

                  Back in Berwick I was still doing the same old same old when one Saturday in April ’86 I was in Newcastle getting a new pair of boots when a couple of skins approached us and said that a couple of skinhead bands were playing that night in Newcastle. We were told that Skrewdriver were not to play that night due to Ian being jailed. I quite clearly remember this as I replied: ‘Christ, don’t tell everyone at once.’ Now I had heard of Skrewdriver but not really listened to them. I’m in. Meeting point was at Yates Wine Lodge outside the train station at 6 p.m. We got there prompt and were greeted with around 150 skins mostly dressed in black. This gradually grew to around three to four hundred. Unfortunately, the NME (the hooligans and not the paper) found out about this and even though they thought the same as us, a fight was a fight and so steamed into us with Yates being wrecked and chaos ensuing. The light in this dark tunnel was me being able to nick a load of lager. The police soon turned up and turfed us all out. Next pub up the Westgate Road, same thing happened (except the lager liberation), pub wrecked and bleeding heads on both sides.

Brutal Attack — Marlborough Social Club, Newcastle (picture by Jim the Skin)

                  The gig was held at the Marlborough Social Club on the Westgate Road, Newcastle, and was a surprise, to say the least, to the management when four hundred nazi boneheads goose-stepped through the front door. However, they were good as gold and let everyone in without any fuss, making sure they stood rigid to their licensing conditions by getting all of us to sign in as guests. I’ve never seen so many Adolfs in one place before: Adolf Smith, Adolf Wright, Adolf Brown etc., etc… The place was a typical northern working men’s club, down-to-earth, clean and cheap beer. Brutal Attack and Skullhead played. Both good bands, I thought and still think. The gig passed off without any incident, with the manager actually thanking us after and saying that his attitude had been swayed in favour of us. One thing of note I should mention was that Nick Griffin and Derek Holland were punting out a load of Skrewdriver and associated stuff through the White Noise Club. I bought White Power, ‘Invasion’ and ‘Voice of Britain’ on 7″ vinyl whose picture covers I still have in immaculate condition. The gig stopped at 11 with us all moving on to an alternative club called the Mayfair where we took over and terrorised the Goths and Punks until the small hours. I would say this one gig was my pivotal inspiration moving from skinhead to political skinhead, and even though I had been involved in NF activities they seemed tame and were led by people who seemed to have a different agenda to the rank and file. We wanted to laugh, pose and riot. They seemed to be always hiding the motive for things and using us to further their own financial standings. They didn’t even dress like us, were always older and a different class. Anyway, soon there was a ‘new kid on the block’ and this new kid was called Blood & Honour.

To return to the gig, there was only one word to describe it and that was poignant. After the gig, Skullhead were told that they had landed an album deal with Rock-O-Rama Records. The band was pleased, obviously, if not a little surprised because they fully expected that they would have ‘to break into the vinyl scene with a single or a track on a compilation LP.’¹⁴¹⁴

Interview with Kev Turner of Skullhead, fanzine Unity no. 1.

Concert ticket stub, stamped National Front on the rear and numbered

St. George’s Day!

On Saturday, 19 April, White Noise celebrated St. George’s Day with a London concert featuring Brutal Attack, Public Enemy and Skullhead. The redirection point given was London Bridge tube station. The venue was the nearby St. George Church. Luc Taymans of fanzine Pure Impact Skins was over from Belgium for the concert:¹⁵¹⁵

Fanzine Pure Impact Skins no. 3, 1986.

             So we arrived at the meeting point, at London Bridge, where we met some skins who we followed to the gig. The gig was to be held in an old chapel, yes it’s the only place where the NF can organise its meetings and gigs. About three or four hundred skins packed the house, also some punks and members of the NF. Before, during and after the gig some skins shouted ‘Nigger nigger nigger’ and everyone answered ‘out out out,’ a great atmosphere. First band on that night were Skullhead, a young but promising band, they did a good job and played ‘White Power’ in tribute to Ian Stuart, jailed at that time, which was well-received. Then came Public Enemy who played a short set with some mistakes. During their set, Paul of The Truth at Last fanzine fame jumped on stage showing a Nazi war flag, most of the audience started sieg heiling. And then came the last band of the night, Brutal Attack, incredible, amazing, one of my favourite bands at the moment, they’ve just released an ace LP and put on a memorable performance. Ken the singer is a great showman and gives all he can to the crowd. During one of their songs ‘White Pride White Passion,’ which has the line ‘And my guardian angel at my side,’ he took his bird in his arms while singing. He also showed a flag with a sunwheel. Only technical problems could stop him. But what a strong set it was. After the gig the fun wasn’t over, when we went into the tube station a fight began against some niggers. After a bit of kicks the cops came and tried to arrest some skins, a mini-riot erupted with everyone beginning to kick them with fists, boots and bottles, and beer cans began to flow right in the cops’ faces. But more cops came, arrested some skins and made us leave the station. So we walked to the next one, the cops came with hounds to see if all was in order, we then caught our tube back to the hotel.

Posty Rob is convinced that one of those arrested during the fracas at the tube station was the NF organiser for Hounslow. The West Middlesex NF reported in December: ‘Hounslow Branch Organiser and Directorate member Phil A was jailed this month on trumped-up charges resulting from a police attack on NF members at the St. George’s Day Pageant. Yet again this shows the State’s paranoia at the growth of the NF and its determination to smash us.’ He was sentenced to six months ‘for assault on police’ and served time in HMP Pentonville.

More concerts followed. On Tuesday, 6 May, Brutal Attack and Sudden Impact played together. [The venue is unknown to the author, but may have been the Ship, Croydon.] Tickets exist for the concert.

Originally planned for Saturday, 14 June, but rescheduled to Saturday, 28 June, a skinhead open-air festival was held in Consett, County Durham, featuring Skullhead, Section 5, Condemned 84 and Vicious Rumours.

On Thursday, 10 July, Brutal Attack headlined at the St. Helier Arms in Carshalton, Surrey, with Sudden Impact in support. The concert was organised by the Rose of England Scooter Club.

Public Enemy

Public Enemy broke up soon after the St. George’s Day concert. After sacking Paul Burnley and dropping their political stance, there was really no way forward for them as a nationalist band. Guitarist Dal Mumford later joined Vicious Rumours, but proved a time-waster. Anyway, Public Enemy also wrote and played live a number of songs which were more outspoken than those which had made it onto vinyl: ‘Smash the System,’ ‘We’re the Elite,’ ‘IRA Bastards,’ ‘Skinhead,’ and ‘Whites Unite,’ undeniably their most racist song with such lyrics:

                  The National Front will march till their dying day

                  The National Front will march and we will have our say

                  Think about our future for the Union Jack

                  Immigrants taking over send the bastards back

                  Ruining our future nicking all our jobs

                  Everywhere you go they open a corner shop

                  The white man is losing out so we got to fight

                  The white man is losing out white man must unite

The NF splits

During the summer of 1986 the National Front split into two: on the one hand was the Official National Front led by the young radicals Nick Griffin, Patrick Harrington and Derek Holland who had embraced the ideas of the Third Position and the Political Soldier years before;¹⁶¹⁶ and on the other was the National Front Support Group or Flag Group led by traditionalists Martin Wingfield and Ian Anderson.

In this way, philosopher Julius Evola and Corneliu Codreanu, the charismatic leader of the interwar Romanian Iron Guard, emerged as the new heroes of the NF Political Soldiers.

Under the leadership of the self-styled Political Soldiers, the Official NF lost interest in electoral politics, preferring a more revolutionary, Third Positionist strategy. The cornerstone policy of the NF to halt any further non-White immigration into Britain and repatriate all coloured immigrants was abandoned in favour of racial separatism.

As for Ian Stuart, he stayed loyal to the Official NF, convinced that they were more likely to further the cause of Rock Against Communism, although he refused to disown Joe Pearce, still in prison, who chose the Flag Group. Moreover, Harrington and Holland managed to poison Ian Stuart against Ian Anderson of the Flag Group by claiming that he had ripped off Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack.

Following Ian’s release from Her Majesty’s Pleasure, the NF launched the White Noise magazine, which ran to eight issues. White Noise covered the nationalist music scene and promoted the White Noise Club, which was introduced as follows: ‘We are a nationalist music organization promoting European nationalist groups who are mostly ignored by the left-wing and capitalist music media. We will be interviewing leading personalities on the rapidly expanding nationalist music scene. We will be reviewing concerts, records and tapes, and will provide a service to distribute the music of bands whose records and views ensure that they are not available in the State-run shops in your countries.’

Ian Stuart also saw the role of the White Noise Club in very specific terms: all profits were to be ploughed back into creating the chance for more nationalist bands to record and release records.

On Saturday, 30 August, Skrewdriver headlined the White Noise Club ‘Summer Festival’ held at Halesworth, Suffolk, with support from British Standard, Prime Suspects, Sudden Impact, Skullhead and Brutal Attack. Tickets for the festival cost £4.50. Skrewdriver featured a makeshift line-up including Andy Nunn on bass, who had previously played bass for Brutal Attack. [Jim of punk band Chaos may have played drums.]

For British Standard, who were back from the dead with a new line-up, this was their second ever gig, but they impressed even if vocalist ‘Lorraine did look nervous up there on the stage.’¹⁷¹⁷ The festival brings back fond memories for Jim Boland, the drummer of British Standard:

Gordon of Prime Suspects, correspondence 2012.

             The White Noise festival came about for us through getting in contact with the NF paper Bulldog. There was a bit in it on the bands and a contact address so I wrote away and sent a cassette of one of our band practices. A few weeks later we had our invite to play at the White Noise festival. I can remember getting on the bus for London with guitar, bass and carry-out (our alcohol refreshments) then meeting up with friends from London before getting on the bus to the festival. We were one of the first bands to play. There we were up on stage, looking out at the crowd which we all thought was a great moment. I can honestly say that we played our set spot-on. I think we were all surprised just how good we played on the day, also with the sound system which made it even better. I know that at our practices either one of us would sometimes be out or make a mistake, but on that day from what I can remember we played our set without any hiccups. If we had made a mistake we would have slagged off the person afterwards and no words were exchanged. After our set, we came off stage to the sight of young lovers sneaking off over the fields (we all know what for). A few people came up to us after the set and said we were good. As we were one of the first bands to play we could now relax, enjoy the rest of the day and take in the other bands. I thought Skullhead were good, but Brutal Attack, who I have always liked, played a great set. Talking to Ian Stuart after the festival, he said he thought we were the best band on the day. Now that’s saying something! The festival remains the highlight of my time with British Standard.

Gordon of Prime Suspects said of playing this particular festival: ‘Danny had a bad gut. We thought maybe too much lager, but it actually turned out to be appendicitis. I seem to remember Spike taking him to Nick Griffin and his wife Jackie, who was a nurse and gave him something for it. Nevertheless, we carried on and played the set okay afterwards apart from one number where three members were playing three different songs!’

For Sudden Impact from Croydon, this was only their third ever gig. They failed to impress.

Kev Turner of Skullhead remembers more about the performance of Skrewdriver than his own band and for all the wrong reasons: ‘Ian had not long got out of jail and he got stupidly drunk before he went on stage and couldn’t remember the words to the songs. The band he had playing for him were all over as well. Paul Swain had recruited them when Ian was in jail. They were hippies and they were stoned. The whole thing was a shambles. Luckily the crowd knew the words and sang most of Ian’s lyrics for him.’

Glyn from South London believes that he attended this festival and that it was his first live experience of Skrewdriver. This is his story:

             I was born in a little village in Kent called Paddock Wood and lived there till I was nine years old, then up till I left home at 18 we moved several times around Kent and Sussex. As a youngster I was brought up listening to Reggae and Ska music as I have older brothers and two of them were Skinheads. I had my first pair of boots and cropped hair for my ninth birthday in 1976. With my parents divorced, I lived with my mum and as she had five boys having short hair was not a problem for her. She never really had a problem with how I dressed as I used to say to her I don’t want to dress like everyone else and I like to stand out. I then got into Madness, Bad Manners, the Specials etc. before getting introduced to Punk and Oi by a punk friend of mine at school when I was about 13. My first gig was to see Anti-Nowhere League at the Victoria Hall, Southborough near Tunbridge Wells (where they were from). I was 14–15 and went with a couple of mates from school. My life changed when I moved to South London in 1985 and started to drink in the Horn & Trumpet pub on Surrey Street, Croydon, the same pub where Ken McLellan used to drink in and so did all of Sudden Impact. Also, I experienced quite a few problems being a skinhead in London; I grew up in small villages and towns in Kent and Sussex where there were not many Blacks and Asians and the ones that were there kept themselves to themselves and didn’t bother anyone, but London was completely the opposite. As for the festival, we took two minibuses from Croydon (both filled up). Sudden Impact went down quite well compared to the St. Helier gigs. Skrewdriver, who I had only heard of before, were awesome. Another thing that I remember was security had shotguns trying to get people down off the roofs of the farm buildings! We was supposed to be coming back after the gig but the drivers were drinking and we ended up sleeping in the adjoining field, lighting straw for warmth and light.

Glyn met Ian Stuart just the once and quite by chance: ‘Well, me and Tracie (my wife) were getting a train from East Croydon down to see my parents and while we were waiting for the train Ian came down onto the platform to get a train up to London Bridge, and he just came straight over and started talking to us just like he had known us for years. We chatted away about general things until our train came. I had never spoken to him before but I did think he was a really nice bloke.’

Like Glyn, David Webster attended the festival and recalls: ‘It was a trouble-free day of much drinking and jumping about with right-arm action from bands and audience alike in full flow. Skrewdriver may not have gigged for a while but the supporters had not gone away.’

Max, an Italian skinhead who attended the festival, wrote a letter about his day to a fanzine back home, which decided to publish it:¹⁸¹⁸

Italian fanzine Kriminal Class no. 9, 1986.

             There were roughly five or six hundred skinheads, of which half were Europeans (Belgian, Dutch, German, French, Italian plus more from other European countries) — the cream of Europe (Europe Awake!) Right-wing personalities, such as Beber from Brutal Combat, were in attendance of this festival. I have never laughed so much in my life. Ian was very drunk and couldn’t take anymore! Anyway, the Skrewdriver line-up has changed: Guitar - Paul Swain ex-4-Skins with a spider tattoo on his neck, well now he’s a Biker; Second guitar - Tartaro, who is the most terrifying-looking member of the band (another Hell’s Angel). He gets on like a house on fire with Paul Swain and together they give Skrewdriver a heavier more metal sound. Word is that Skrewdriver now only play metal, but that said, they also delivered the old classics, such as ‘Back With a Bang,’ ‘Anti-Social’ and all the songs from the Hail the New Dawn album (the ‘Hail the New Dawn’ song itself being played twice). Moving on with the new line-up: Bass - the last surviving skinhead in the band and a Punk/metaller on Drums. I think that between the band members, no one is really interested in the National Front. The five of them have already played two or three times together and musically, they complement each other nicely. Let’s proceed with the order the bands played in. We had Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, Skullhead, Sudden Impact, British Standard and a few others with lesser-known names that started the festival off. The best of the lesser-known bands, which started the dancing off and whose name I do not know were fronted by a female vocalist — a skinhead girl. [That was British Standard.] Not only was she a good singer, but was attractive too. They had a typical Oi! sound. There’s not much to say about the other bands, perhaps due to the fact that usually at the start of these type of events there’s a bit of chaos. Perhaps this is due to lack of practice and inexperience? Fuck knows the answer! They were all playing out of tune and Tartaro and Ken McLellan were looking on, one holding his head in his hands and the other shaking his head. Brutal Attack are quite good and they played a song from the album, some new tracks and some old. They also played ‘Free Joe Pearce.’ Now let us move to the main attraction, not ‘them’ but ‘him’ — guess who?! Ian, since the sound check earlier, was very drunk. Skrewdriver began to play and Ian couldn’t remember anything, including the order of the songs. He kept saying that the stage was covered in empty beer cans, but they were mainly his! And so he continued, with a bottle in one hand and a mike in the other. The crowd was dancing so ferociously they nearly broke through the line of security who were all the size of Nicky Crane. At one point a lot of the kids managed to get on the stage and were throwing themselves into the crowd. At the end even Tartaro was saluting among a sea of shaven heads and he and Paul Swain were playing crazy guitar riffs as if they were in AC/DC (the crowd was going wild). After a while it all came to an end. There were around 20 skinheads on the barn roof and it gave way under their weight. At one point during the band’s performance, Ian was holding a mike in each hand as one had conked out. He was acting the clown — pulling funny faces and sticking the mikes in his ears! Every so often he seemed to have moments of clarity, but at one point he was heard telling Paul Swain he could not remember the lyrics to ‘White Power’!! All this is no lie and you had to be there to see it. At the end, poor Ian was trying to find a seat on the coach. I don’t know if he found one, but I did see him fall into a ditch beside a field. Maybe he got lost in the Suffolk countryside? Luckily it was a summer festival and not a winter one as the temperature would have been sub-zero.

Flyer for Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack concert on Saturday 20 September, which did not take place

Despite the intermittent rain, the ‘Summer Festival’ was deemed a tremendous success, attracting over 650 people, some of whom had travelled from France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Greece and Italy. ‘It was a great demonstration of European solidarity,’ proudly boasted one review.¹⁹¹⁹

Fanzine White Noise no. 2, 1986.

Skrewdriver had now started to attract a great deal of attention from America. Representatives of a group called WAR [White Aryan Resistance] had even attended the Summer Festival in Suffolk to see Ian and the band in action. In a bid to bring Skrewdriver to America in 1987, WAR, the Illinois Ku Klux Klan and the Chicago Area Skinheads set about raising the necessary funds. White Power tapes of Skrewdriver and other bands were sold through the Illinois-based Romantic Violence, with all proceeds going towards bringing Skrewdriver to America. Skrewdriver never made it to America.

On Monday, 6 October, Vengeance supported Condemned 84 at Santanas in Norwich.

On Thursday, 16 October, Skrewdriver played the St. Helier Arms in Carshalton, Surrey. Again Andy Nunn was on bass.²⁰²⁰ Sudden Impact supported. Glyn from South London attended this gig and all subsequent gigs at the St. Helier Arms: it was only a short trip on the 157 bus from his local. The gig was reviewed by ‘Buster from Kent’ [Nick Rich]:²¹²¹

Andy Nunn died on 29 January 2014.

Review, fanzine Voice of Britain no. 4, 1986, grammar corrected.

Andy Nunn with a distinctive throat tattoo playing bass for Skrewdriver

             Skrewdriver took to the stage to the sound of Swainy knocking out the National Anthem on his guitar and Ian launching into an attack on the Jews, Blacks, Pigs etc. and other enemies of the White Race. This led into their first song ‘White Power,’ and the crowd responded with a sea of Nazi salutes. This is what we want, not the Commie Oi! shit of Oi! Records. Fuck off and die Roddy! Drumming was spot on and even when Ian lost his way, which I put down to a poxy P.A. and Ian being a bit pissed, the spirit survived with songs like ‘Nigger, Nigger,’ ‘Free My Land,’ ‘Hail the New Dawn,’ ‘I Know What I Want,’ ‘Back With a Bang’ and ‘Voice of Britain’ and all the rest of it. To me, this band can never go wrong. They pulled a crowd of around 400 NF and BM skins, blokes and birds. No aggro, no fights against each other, just White Unity all the way… All in all, this gig was a great night out and I don’t think any other gig will better it in any way. Except maybe the White Christmas gig perhaps. Sudden Impact were good as well, but I don’t have a lot to say about them. That was also their farewell gig. They ain’t been going long either. Anyway, I’d give 9 out of 10 for the gig due to the poxy P.A.

However, many would disagree with Buster. Some have described Skrewdriver as a shambles and even Ian Stuart had to acknowledge that they had ‘played really badly.’²²²² The ‘white magic’ had gone or so it seemed. Plans that Ian Stuart had for Skrewdriver to record a new album in October, which was moved back to December, and ‘play three White Christmas gigs at three major locations’ never materialised.²³²³

Interview with Ian Stuart, Australian fanzine The Storm Troop no. 1, 1987.

Interview with Ian Stuart, White Noise no. 1, 1986.

By the end of November, Skrewdriver had a new line-up.²⁴²⁴ Ulsterman Merv Shields was recruited to play bass. He said of joining the band:²⁵²⁵

Interview with Ian Stuart, fanzine Boots ‘n’ Braces.

Interview with Merv Shields by Ainaskin, October 2011.

             Basically I came to London as a punk in 1983 but I had embraced the skinhead culture since 1979, so with my Protestant work ethic I decided to seek work and it was easier to dress smart in order to substantiate this. I knew Adolf through pubs and gigs and he got me a job working with him humping antique furniture at a shop in Islington. I happened to mention to him that I had previously played bass in a punk band and when Adam Douglas left he mentioned my name. I’d already seen the band a few times, embraced their politics and liked their music. So Ian suggested I come down to Mark’s for an audition, played along to a few songs and was asked to join. I joined the band around September/October 1986. Adam Douglas had just left but I remember him coming over from Orange in France where he was serving with the Foreign Legion. Paul [Swain] was still on the scene but had turned Biker. My initial recruitment was held at Mark Sutherland’s house/rehearsal studio in Bow, East London where he commented that my Eros Mark 2 bass sounded like a wet fart. I was then supplied with a Fender Mustang bass with a short neck which had allegedly been stolen by Sid and Nancy from a rehearsal room in North London. I rejected this as I was six foot tall and didn’t equate to playing a short-neck bass…

Martin Cross was recruited to play guitar and joined around the same time as Merv Shields.²⁶²⁶ For Merv Shields, Martin Cross was the proverbial Jekyll and Hyde:²⁷²⁷

One interview makes mention of a certain Martin Childs on guitar, which the author has assumed is a misspelling for Martin Cross (interview with Ian Stuart, fanzine Boots ‘n’ Braces, circa late 1986).

Interview with Merv Shields by Ainaskin, October 2011.

             He was a shit hot guitarist and what impressed me about him was the fact he was very melodic and competent. In both our cases we were recruited by word of mouth due to the nature of our music. Ross McGarry was later recruited on this basis but the common denominator to all this was a guy called Adolf (Alan Pond). He suggested me and Ross but Martin came from elsewhere which led to an air of suspicion. Martin was an old skin from 1977–78 but due to our close-knit affinity he was always an outsider. Martin and I joined around the same time… Initially I gelled with Martin as we both came on board more or less together but he did have a reputation for violence as I found out to my cost later on… Although we had similar points of view politically regarding Ulster, I found he could freak out at a moment’s notice. Even Ian was cautious of him and tried to keep him at a distance.

Martin Cross remained a ‘political animal.’ Indeed, according to one newspaper article: ‘Martin Cross has been picked as the National Front prospective Parliamentary candidate for Dagenham. Mr Cross, 24, says he will postpone a European tour with his band Skrewdriver, if a General Election is announced for this year so he can concentrate on politics. He has been an NF supporter for 10 years and recently returned from a six-month NF recruitment drive in Ulster. Mr Cross replaces the former parliamentary candidate, Joe Pearce who quit after a row with party members.’

Sudden Impact broke up and reformed late December with a line-up of Paul Dunbar on vocals, Danny Hooper on guitar, Phil on bass and Andy on drums. Phil and Andy had been recruited from rival Croydon band Short Back and Sides.

On 25 October, Vengeance from Norwich recorded a seven-song demo: six originals and a cover version of ‘Borstal Breakout’ by Sham 69. The demo cost £1.30 plus postage from the band. Skinzine British Oi! reviewed the demo as follows:²⁸²⁸ ‘A great start to a band that I believe will go far on the Oi! network. Their music I can’t really compare to any other band as they are a one-off. My favourite song has to be ‘Life Sentence’ which tells the tale of an evil child molester. The only song I don’t like is ‘England’s Glory’ as it should be ‘British Glory’ (or Welsh). All in all a great start to this band and I now hear that they have more songs to add to their set.’ The lyrics to ‘Life Sentence’ are:

Review, fanzine British Oi! no. 3.

                  He’s never seen the light since that fateful day

                  Never seen the light since they put him away

                  They stuck him in the back of an old bill van

                  A child molester not a man

                  Evil crime, doing his time

                  Evil crime, doing his time

                  Death, death, death….

                  He was caught with a child in his arms

                  But standing in the docks where he lost his calm

                  Putting through grief and strife

                  Justice has been brought now, he’s doing life

                  Now he’s in the cells he’s getting paid back

                  Day after day he’s under attack

                  The inmates chant an evil name

                  A child molester going insane

Record offers were forthcoming and Vengeance fully expected to appear next year on the ‘Skins ’n’ Punks’ series of split albums on Oi Records, which was run by Roddy Moreno of the Welsh skinhead band the Oppressed.²⁹²⁹

Interview with Vengeance, fanzine British Oi! no. 2, 1987.

Prime Suspects

Besides playing the Summer Festival, Prime Suspects played two other gigs in 1986. The first was in Stoke-on-Trent with Public Enemy. [The exact date of this gig is not known, but may have taken place late spring or possibly early summer.] Lead guitarist Gordon recalls of this gig:

             I can’t remember the exact date of the gig with Public Enemy, sorry, but I do remember that it was a blinding gig and both bands were really on form. At the end both bands played and sung together. However, this was marred by the fact that Prime Suspects were asked to pay for the mixer desk. Apart from the fact we had no money at all, having spent ours on van hire, diesel etc.. etc., we were unaware we were supposed to pay for it. I remember walking out to the van and confronting the rest of the band about this! It was only the start of things to come!

Danny regarded the Stoke gig with Public Enemy as their best. The second gig was in their hometown of Reading much later in the year. Again this gig sparked trouble in many different ways as Gordon explains:

             Danny told me a couple of days after the gig that White Noise weren’t happy that we’d done a gig off our own backs and we were to ask them if we wanted to play. I just said: ‘Tell them to stuff it. I’m out!’ I walked away and never played again for the band. The gig was only done for our own crew in the first place at a pub called the Cap and Gown in Reading. We were supported by a band called White Speed. They weren’t nationalist as such, but their guitarist, Tim, was the guy who owned the studio where we practiced. We were banned by the council from playing locally after this event too. Something was written in the Reading Evening Post about ‘Nazi band start riot in Reading’ and yet I don’t remember the police intervening that night. So, if there was any trouble, it must have been after I left which would have been very late in the evening.

Gordon had played a total of four gigs with Prime Suspects.³⁰³⁰ Gordon also played guitar on a demo recorded by the band:

Interestingly, Danny recalls playing six gigs with Gordon, fanzine Blood and Honour no. 3.

             The demo (such as it is) was recorded at Reading in a mate’s studio. This was stolen from us before it was ever completed. All that’s on the tape was the first sitting, not the finished product! There was no overdubbing done, i.e. me playing rhythm then lead, so it sounds very weak and tinny rather than the ripping raw sound that we normally had. After the tape was stolen we sort of carried on and forgot about it for a while. I don’t know who released it, but could hazard a guess. However I’d rather keep that to myself. In fact I only found out two years ago it had been released. I’m unhappy it got released because the sound quality was really crap and also any profits from it went into someone’s pocket and not where it was intended to go.

British Standard

As mentioned earlier, 1985 saw the return of British Standard with a new line-up of Lorraine on vocals, Sim on bass, Jim Boland on drums and Cazy on guitar, making them the first ever RAC band with a female vocalist. Jim Boland said of Lorraine and Cazy:

             Sim had been seeing Lorraine for a while and when we were talking about getting the band back together we asked Lorraine if she could help us out with the vocals and she agreed. Lorraine already knew some of the songs from cassette recordings of our band practices from the early days. She was a talented singer. Cazy wasn’t a skinhead or into the political side of things, just a really nice bloke. He was also really good on the guitar, that made it that bit different. Cazy came about if I remember correctly through Sim as he lived in a place not far from him and I think Sim knew him from school.

Sim and Jim Boland were still active members of the NF, but much more vocal about it this time. When asked by a fanzine what sort of topics they sing about, Jim Boland replied:³¹³¹ ‘All of our songs are mainly based on personal experience and observation. For example, our song ‘Keep Britain White’ is about what is happening to our nation right in front of our eyes! We sing about what is happening and what has happened in the past, so that we can think of a brighter future for this country.’

Interview with British Standard, fanzine White Noise no. 2, 1986.

British Standard contributed ‘Keep Britain White’ to German compilation tape Die Netten Jungs Von Nebenan (‘The Nice Guys Next Door’), which featured bands from all over the world, including the Betrayed and Indecent Exposure.³²³² The lyrics to ‘Keep Britain White’ by British Standard are:

Tape Die Netten Jungs Von Nebenan presented ‘My Tomorrow’ and ‘Judgement Day’ by the Betrayed and ‘Authority’ and ‘Rocking the Reds’ by Indecent Exposure.

                  If you stand and look around you

                  You’ll see your cities being taken away

                  We can only stand and watch them

                  As the White Youth’s got no say

                  So what’s gonna happen in a few more years

                  When your beloved city’s gone?

                  Just another deal by the politicians

                  Just another black man’s con

                  We’ve all gotta stick together

                  We’ve gotta stand up and fight

                  We’ll never let it happen here

                  We’ve gotta keep Britain White

                  They’ve opened up places in every town

                  With their hatred, lies and deals

                  The politicians back them up for this

                  No matter how the White Man feels

                  They expect us to just sit here

                  And watch them take our cities away

                  Now time has come, we’ve had enough

                  We’ve gotta keep Britain White today

Other songs included ‘Working Class Hero,’ ‘Skinhead Headlines,’ ‘Bomb Scare,’ ‘Smash the Reds,’ ‘Race and Nation,’ ‘Overrun’ and ‘Up for Sale.’ ‘Working Class Hero’ was a personal favourite of Jim Boland: ‘The song was about an old man who had fought in the war for this great country only to see it rotting at the core. His sacrifice was in vain, his loyalty betrayed, for in old age he is nothing but a number who gets no respect and no help whereas our coloured friends from far-off lands who basically hate us get everything going. So the song was about this old man.’

‘Working Class Hero’ about ‘British soldiers fighting for Britain in World War II’ also confirmed British Standard as a nationalist skinhead band and not a nazi band.³³³³ The band also pledged solid support for the loyalist cause in Northern Ireland and ‘Bomb Scare’ was the band’s way of saying ‘how much the IRA were cowards in planting a bomb and running away.’

Interview with Jim of British Standard, fanzine Short and Sharp no. 2.

As well as playing Kilsyth Rangers Club in North Lanarkshire with a friend’s punk band [date unknown] and the White Noise ‘Summer Festival,’ British Standard played the Hod Carrier, Leamington Spa on Saturday, 8 November 1986 with Skin Deep, British Born, Close Shave and England’s Glory. This was Close Shave’s maiden concert. Jim Boland recalls:

             The Leamington Spa gig came about because I was in touch with a bloke called Mick from the Coventry area at the time. He was British Movement and asked if we’d be interested in playing down in Leamington Spa. I said yes, of course. We hired a car and Sim done the driving as I couldn’t drive. It was a wee trip down to Leamington Spa with our RAC music blaring out and the ones not doing the driving were doing the drinking. We got down to Leamington Spa where we were met by the BM boys from Coventry, who put us up for the night in one of their flats. When we hit the stage we had a minute’s silence for our war dead. The whole place paid their respect before the music began. I can remember it was a night to remember! We got a great response from the crowd that night, especially the Coventry and Bristol crews. The whole weekend went down a treat and we made new friends. It’s a pity that we all lost contact over the years.

The gig was marred by acts of wanton vandalism, though. The editor of skinzine Voice of Britain complained:³⁴³⁴ ‘The upstairs bogs got smashed up and that was before the gig had started. The van window of the P.A. operators was smashed. Various other minor things also occurred. You know, it makes me laugh to see or read people shouting about there’s nowhere to go or that there’s nowhere for gigs to be held. It’s hardly very surprising that pub and club bosses blacklist us if things like that happen to their premises!’

Voice of Britain no. 4.

Jim Boland also spoke to one of the blokes in New Dawn about doing a gig together, but it never happened. That same year, British Standard recorded an eight-track demo of melodic punk rock, delicate guitar melodies and endearing, impassioned vocals. Jim Boland said of recording the demo: ‘The demo was done in the same studio in Glasgow that we hired for our band practices. Besides that, after ringing round other studios to get quotes to do a demo, it proved to be the cheapest! I think it cost us £60 at the time, but I’m not too sure on that. No one else ever put anything towards the recording, especially Griffin and his White Noise.’

The songs recorded were ‘Football Violence,’ ‘Keep Britain White,’ ‘The Enemy,’ ‘Violence, Rape and Murder,’ ‘Working Class Hero,’ ‘Race and Nation,’ ‘Up for Sale’ and ‘Old Man’ whose start is only one or two notes away from sounding like ‘Warhead’ by the UK Subs. The demo was mainly given away to friends. Tape trading ensured that it received a wider audience. This is one demo that deserves the vinyl treatment.

White Noise offered the band two tracks on the forthcoming album No Surrender Volume 3, but nothing came of it, which is not surprising as both White Noise and British Standard were no more by the time that record was finally put out. Lorraine left the band before the end of the year to start a family.³⁵³⁵

Her departure before the end of the year is confirmed by a ‘Stop Press’ announcement in Voice of Britain no. 4.

Bulldog Drummond, who was good friends with Jim Boland, was asked to become their singer, but he lived in Bristol. He did not take over in the end and no longer recalls why he didn’t do it. Without a vocalist, the band was now forced to cancel a number of White Christmas gigs, which would have certainly raised its profile. Jim Boland, who was sad to see Lorraine leave, also had to rethink his plans to hold a NF benefit gig in Glasgow in the summer with the likes of Skrewdriver, No Remorse, British Standard and two newly formed Scottish bands named Bulldog Breed and National Anthem from Aberdeen. When a replacement could not be found for Lorraine the band folded. Jim Boland returned to London and reveals:

Rare original gig flyer for Leamington Spa

             I met Martin Cross when we used to be members of the Dagenham / Barking NF. I was living in Ilford at the time so I got to know Martin well through paper-selling in Barking High Street shopping centre and down Brick Lane as well as other NF stuff. If I can remember right he used to go down the Panther pub with us on a Sunday after paper sales. The pub was in some housing estate just off Bethnal Green Road and was used by the NF at the time on a Sunday. It was roughly the same time as the split as the NF Flag sellers used to use the Ship pub on Bethnal Green Road. We decided to start a band together, but nothing ever came of it. I can also remember bumping into Des Clarke in a pub in the Kings Cross area. I knew him from the odd gig and a few pubs he used with Ian Stuart. He was good friends with Ian Stuart and he asked me if I’d be interested in drumming for Skrewdriver as Ian was looking for a new drummer and my name had been mentioned, but as I had plans of starting a band with Martin Cross I turned him down. Still to this day I regret not taking that offer up, but that’s life I suppose.³⁶³⁶

Despite much questioning, Jim Boland cannot recall exactly when Des Clarke asked him if he’d interested in joining Skrewdriver. ‘The dates are a blur,’ Jim Boland readily admits.

British Born

From the Ibstock/Coalville area of Leicestershire, British Born first started life as an unnamed band in late 1984, but soon split up due to a lack of interest and talent. Vocalist Bevo reformed the band in 1985 as War Machine with a new line-up of Kelly on guitar, Wooly on bass and Steve on drums. Not long after, they changed their name to British Born when they discovered that a thrash metal band already had the name of War Machine. The band was without a bass player for some time following the departure of Wooly. On 9 April 1986, they played their first gig at the Coalville Greyhound with punk band Destroy the Reality. As previously noted, they later played Leamington Spa which the band regarded as their best gig yet because ‘the place was packed out.’ Spen joined the band on bass towards the end of 1986, shortly followed by Bish on guitar in January 1987. Bish was ex-Destroy the Reality.

The band may not have been into politics, but one of their songs called ‘The Real Oi’ was strongly tinged with a sense of patriotism:

                  If we sing about our great land

                  Or being willing to make a stand

                  No one seems to want to know

                  But the more they hate us the stronger we grow

                  The Real Oi won’t die, it never will

                  It’s the movement they can’t kill

                  Patriotic music for the British youth

                  The Real Oi, music full of truth

                  There’s not many places that want our Oi

                  Most want to search and destroy

                  Skinhead bands and patriotic songs

                  They slag us off and say it’s wrong

                  Garry Bushell’s Oi has gone away

                  And the real Oi will have its say

                  No commie shit will put us right

                  Just British Oi for British skins

Other songs included ‘British Born,’ ‘The Law,’ ‘Kick to Kill’ and ‘Taken for a Ride.’ Most of their lyrics were written by friend Steve Jones who went on to form his own nationalist skinhead band by the name of White Aggression. Bass player Spen left British Born at the end of June 1987 to join White Aggression. He was replaced by George, who was also ex-Destroy the Reality.

Skinzines

By 1986 the first skinhead fanzines or skinzines had started to emerge covering the Nationalist music scene. There was 14-Up (from Scotland), Boots‘n’ Braces (at least four issues, which is not to be confused with Boots & Braces), Chargesheet (at least 12 issues, but the content changed drastically when Steve Goodman became the sole editor), English Rose (at least two issues), England’s Glory (at least six issues), Punishment Block (at least eight issues), Short and Sharp (from Scotland, at least two issues), Skinhead Arrival (possibly two issues), The Truth at Last (at least 13 issues), Red, White and Blue, White Rebellion (at least two issues with the highest Swastika count of all fanzines), Voice of Britain (five issues) and White Riot. Most were very crudely produced, photocopies stapled together, but they served a purpose. Like the first punk fanzines, they helped to spread information and gave the scene a sense of coherence. The fanzines carried interviews with bands, song lyrics, gig reviews, cartoons, poems, articles, artwork and contact addresses for merchandise, fanzines, pen-friends and skinhead prisoners. Readers were urged to correspond with skinhead prisoners both home and abroad.

Seventeen-year-old Mark from Coventry started Voice of Britain skinzine late 1984, perhaps early 1985, with four or so months between each issue. This is what he said of doing a skinzine:

             There were five issues of Voice of Britain written, the first one was co-written with a school-friend and good friend of many years. He then baked out and I decided to carry it on. I bought a second-hand photocopier, a typewriter, and through friends in the skinzine world, reading other skinzines, and having tapes of obscure bands etc., I managed to get contact details for lots of bands. English was quite a strong point at school (spelling and grammar etc.) and I thought it was my way of contributing to the scene. But it was also a way to build up friendships and contacts worldwide amongst fellow travellers, so to speak.

                  Initially, the idea behind the skinzine name was indeed named after the Skrewdriver song… but because we’d set out to be an organ of and a voice for skinheads, we named it Voice of Britain for that reason. It wasn’t solely aimed at a British audience. It was just that we were living in, and distributing in Britain. There were quite a few non-British subscribers, who had mainly got to hear about us via small adverts in other skinzines. There was always a ‘help each other’ ethic among most of the skinzine writers the world over.

                  Whilst I wanted to introduce all bands etc. to my readers, I tried to make my line of questioning a little more interesting or entertaining by throwing in daft questions or humourously worded questions, such as (instead of asking who do you most hate in this world) ‘who would you like to see drink a pint of acid with ground glass in it?’ and stuff like that. I tried to be a little different. I learned off a good old friend of mine called Vince, who was co-editor of (in my opinion) the best British skinzine England’s Glory.

                  There were not many of the first two issues… probably about 40–50… but once I’d got to issues 4 and 5 it would have been well over 150–200 copies, if my memory serves me correctly. I enjoyed compiling them although it was stressful at times, but it gave me an insight into organising things. Although unconnected to the skinzine [the author disagrees], I later went on to form and organise my own branch of the BNP for about seven years, and also became the Assistant National Treasurer of the Party, looking after the then 125 units of the Party, and responsible for compiling sets of audited figures for the Electoral Commission.

                  The main distribution of my zine was mail order, via adverts in other skinzines, and through trading with other zines and music distributors etc.… I have no knowledge of my zine being sold in retail outlets, and certainly no such person/s ever purchased it from me for those purposes, as far as I know.

                  One of the memorable interviews was with Ian Stuart of Skrewdriver whilst he was in HMP Wayland for his assault conviction. As to why, I think mainly through the fact that Ian was looked up to as a leader of ‘the movement’ (the right-wing skinheads in Britain and Europe), and the fact he was in prison. It was almost like interviewing a celebrity within our ‘community.’ Ian was loved by everyone as not just a decent bloke, but arguably the best lyricist the cause had ever seen. Everyone in life has a natural talent at which they excel — Ian’s was writing lyrics which not only inspired people fighting for the same cause, but also gave people a purpose to keep fighting that cause. His lyrics were pretty much a recruiting/rallying tool to all disaffected white youth the world over.

                  I did try to launch another fanzine about six months after finishing VOB. I can’t even remember the title of it, and I was only co-editor anyway. It was more about political counterculture, as opposed to skinzine. Two issues were published but it didn’t really take off, to be honest.

                  Today, I only have one black-and-white poor copy of issue 4 of VOB. Sadly, due to a relocation and a police raid on my home a few years back (which amounted to nothing in the end), I had to get rid of an entire filing cabinet of old skinzines, political magazines, scrapbooks, and all manner of interesting reading material and collectibles.

More fanzines followed over the years (in alphabetical order): Aryan Warrior (at least two issues), Blood and Honour (at least three issues, not to be confused with the magazine of the same name launched in 1987 by Ian Stuart), British Oi (the longest-running skinzine chalking up over 30 issues), British Patriot (at least six issues), Cry of Havoc, Fire and Ice (at least two issues), Hail (at least eight issues), Hammer of Thor (at least five issues and issue n°^. 5 was a summer special), Impact, Last Chance (16 issues), Look Ahead (at least two issues), Offensive Weapon (at least four issues), Onward (two issues), Patriotic Youth (at least two issues), Pride of the North (four issues), The Raven (at least three issues), Retaliate (at least five issues, from Shropshire), Signal, United Forces (12 issues), Unity (six issues), Viking Review (at least one issue), Voice of the Youth (from Barrow), Welsh Leak (at least six issues), When the Phoenix Rises (at least four issues), White Pride (at least two issues) and White Revolution (three issues). Some fanzines only lasted one issue and then reappeared under a new name. Some were professionally printed and even had a splash of colour. Some have now become impossible to find.

The mastermind behind fanzine British Oi!, which started in March 1986, was Chris Hipkin. This is his story:

             I was born in June 1970, youngest of four brothers, dad a brickie, mum a secretary. I was raised on a council estate called Chapelwood, new houses built in the late ’60s, in the Llanedeyrn area of Wales’ capital city, Cardiff. Here until I was ten, then we moved to an area of Cardiff called Tremorfa, as my parents became steward/stewardess of a rugby club in that area. Growing up, punk made an impression on me. I first witnessed the punk image by a few of the older boys on the estate, bondage trousers, safety pins, spiked hair and the like. I thought it looked really cool and different from the flares my mum still had me wearing! As the years passed these boys formed a punk band called No Choice who put a few records out. I loved some of the Pistols songs, ‘Silly Thing’ being a favourite, but you really could not beat the Buzzcocks’ ‘Harmony in My Head’ and the Skids’ ‘Into the Valley.’ I then found out about the Cockney Rejects after I saw them on Top of the Pops, bought ‘The Greatest Cockney Rip-Off’ and loved it. The energy of the band and its football banter made it very exciting. Then of course the whole 2 Tone scene erupted. I loved Madness, still do, also Bad Manners and the Beat, but didn’t care much for some of the others: the Selecter, the Bodysnatchers or the Specials. I continued to listen to the Rejects much to my mates’ annoyance as I was into the old stuff, not the new 2 Tone scene as much as them. Like most working-class families with lots of boys, I’d always had a shaved head so as such there was not a divine moment to shave my head. I started dressing as a skinhead, well as much as my mum would let me, about 1980. Initially my parents had no problem with me dressing as a skinhead, but that all changed when I became politically involved. We had at our school maybe a hundred or more skins in our year alone, and the teachers hated it.

                  I was brought up to be very proud of being Welsh, but not so much white. In Cardiff it’s all about rugby and Wales are the best. My school at the time promoted the culture a lot. And yet I vividly remember the first black kid who came to our school. I was in juniors, last year, aged ten, I think. I didn’t like the fact he had a right attitude and got away with all sorts at school. Friends of mine started using silly slang words he did. To me, it was wrong. This was my school!!

                  I was very anti-IRA which my family liked. My first real contact with nationalist politics was with an older lad at high school called Bol. I was chatting to some friends about how much the IRA were scum and he chipped in that he and his mates were also anti-IRA. We got nattering. It turned out he worked on a fruit and veg stall on Saturday in town and said to meet him there. I went along and a few other skins were there I didn’t know. Well, besides the fruit and veg, Bol was also selling National Front News. I bought it, along with some badges, liked what I read and joined the Young NF. I became more racially aware. My parents didn’t understand my views, because the racial idea wasn’t affecting their lifestyles, as most at the time. In later years, when I was 17–18, I brought home a Brutal Attack ‘European Unity’ T-shirt, nice design, had the many flags of Europe and the swastika included, mum hit the roof, ‘Don’t you know the evils’ etc., etc. In one ear, out of the other! I think it mysteriously vanished in the wash in the end!!!!

                  I saw an advert in NF News for the Skrewdriver White Power EP. I had heard of Skrewdriver before, having bought the United Skins LP. I loved the power of both tracks, still do. Anyway, I went up the post office, got my postal order and two to four weeks later the EP arrived. It really surprised me how a band could be so outspoken about their beliefs. I liked it. ‘White Power’ is a classic song, a real smash it in the face of your enemies type song. Ulster loyalism and smash the IRA really appealed to me. Don’t forget we were at war with the Provos, so ‘Smash the IRA’ really rang true. ‘Shove the Dove’ made me laugh, as some schoolmates were all ‘yeah peace man’ CND buffoons, so that hit the mark too. A friend of mine not long after this mentioned a bloke in Scotland who sold tapes, Gord’s Tapes, said he had loads of stuff, nationalist, punk and Oi!, and through this fella I gained a large collection of the relevant stuff out there, for example the early Brutal Attack demo which had the classic track ‘Knives in the Dark, Stab You in the Head’ and of course not forgetting the best demo ever, the ‘Hail the New Dawn’ demo which I think actually had more power than the finished product, as well as bands like the Ovaltinees, the Diehards, Indecent Exposure and Public Enemy, which I enjoyed too.

                  Later I met Cardiff’s Young NF organiser, Wyn, who became a great mate and still is, though sadly I don’t see him that often. We actually met for the first time one Saturday at Cardiff train station, jumped on the train to Paddington and headed to the NF bookshop in Croydon. We got there around dinnertime to find it shut. We met some Cockney skins and they were going to see Crystal Palace vs. Man Utd so we ended up going to that. I never did get inside the bookshop! I was a NF member for four–five years I think and ended up being quite friendly with many NF members up and down the country through various demos, Remembrance Day marches etc.… I remember the 1987 Remembrance Day demo. We were flag bearers at the front, with the drum corps from Oldham NF. It was the first time I saw Ian Stuart. He was with Nicky Crane and a few others, BM I think. It was when all the NF splits happened and two NF marches were going on, crazy to have such division amongst our own. As a branch Cardiff did quite well attracting a lot of support from the Welsh valleys, and a lot of hate from the left.

                  My first attempt at a gig was when I was 13, I think. I got the ticket from Spillers Records in Cardiff (a great stockist of punk etc.). It was for Peter and the Test Tube Babies with support from Cardiff band the Oppressed and valley boys Impact. My best mate Mike and I went along to the venue, the Top Rank club on Cardiff Queen Street, to be told by the bouncers it was over-18s only. I was left gutted, but my brother Martyn got in and had a great night. A picture from that gig is on the back of the debut album by the Oppressed. Martyn was drumming for a skinhead band at the time which included Roddy Moreno’s younger brother Adrian on bass. The band never really took a name, but toyed with Harassment. The band never really achieved anything, even though they were offered a support slot to the Oppressed once, which they bottled, I think. They were together six or so months before calling it a day. I used to enjoy Sundays at my mum and dad’s rugby club because that was practice day in the skittle alley when the place was shut. Good times!

                  Over the next few years Mike and I tried in vain to get into the Casa Gil, a skin pub in Cardiff which put bands on. It too had a strict policy of over-18s only. We finally got into one at Cardiff’s Bristol Hotel, Condemned 84 and Section 5. I was 15 at the time, met Cliff the drummer and had a good chat. What a top bloke.

                  The first fanzine I bought was Beyond The… written by a bloke from mid-Wales. It was sold at Spillers Records in Cardiff. To be honest, it was a revelation. It was real. It was done by our own. I liked that concept. From that first fanzine I bought others and so on. One of the best fanzines was England’s Glory written by Vince from Reading if I remember correctly. My best mate Mike and I decided to have a go at doing a fanzine. We were 15 and still at school. Why we called it British Oi!, I no longer recall, sounded good at the time no doubt. Roddy’s Oi Records was in full swing at the time, so we wrote to a couple of bands on his label as well as a couple of White Noise bands (Brutal Attack and Skullhead), got the replies and some snaps, got the typewriter out and put it together, albeit using stencils from W.H. Smith where you would have to scratch them off onto the paper with a pencil. The printing was done for a few quid courtesy of my dad’s mate who was a printer. Incidentally, he was a local Labour Party councillor!! In this way, the fanzine was born, but the printer, who thought he was being cool or whatever, printed it on different-coloured paper, grey, yellow, pink, green and red, much to my mates’ amusement! Nevertheless, we endeavored. We sold some down the football where the presence of skins was then great and through Spillers Records with the help of Roddy Moreno as his missus worked there. The fanzine went down well and so we decided to carry on.

Produced by Vinnie and Skinny Jim, the first issue of England’s Glory hit the streets around 1984. Vinnie was 17 years old at the time and still lived at home with his mum in a maisonette in the ‘roughest shithole’ in Wokingham, near Reading in Berks. They were inspired by the flood of punk fanzines around in the early ’80s but thought most were really shoddy and scruffy. Also, they felt there weren’t enough covering the skinhead scene, particularly the patriotic/nationalist front. In fact, most fanzines seemed to be left-wing and anarchist in nature and they felt the need for an alternative. So Vinnie bought a £35 Silverline typewriter from W.H. Smith, together with a bagful of Tipp-Ex and Pritt Sticks. Six issues were published, the last three produced solely by Vinnie as co-editor Skinny Jim had moved on to pastures new — football hooliganism followed by the underground rave scene. By issue 4 Vinnie, who had by then turned 18, was living in Reading. The final issue was published in March ’87. Bands featured included Skrewdriver, Vicious Rumours, Section 5, Brutal Attack, Vengeance, Public Enemy, Pride of the Lion, No Remorse, Indecent Exposure, Condemned 84, Skin Deep, Skullhead, Complete Control, Prime Suspects, the Ovaltinees, Urban Soldiers, the Oppressed and Intensive Care. The fanzine also ran reports on the skinhead scenes in Sweden, France and… Coventry. After England’s Glory, Vinnie started working on a new fanzine project based more on politics than music. He spent a while putting it together but it never materialised. The main reason was that he was too unsettled to edit a successful fanzine and he was just taking on too much.

As for Welsh Leak, editor Spike said of his fellow collaborators and his reasons behind starting the fanzine:³⁷³⁷

Interview with Spike, fanzine, Look Ahead no. 2.

             We started Welsh Leak late in ’87 though issue 1 didn’t appear until early ’88. To start with, it was only myself and Wyn who produced Welsh Leak, though Casey who later joined us did do a lot of artwork for us, including the popular cover of issue 1. The reasons behind starting the zine were many. For a start we were buying zines from around the world, many of which, to put it bluntly were pure crap. So we thought, ‘Surely we can do better.’ Whether we have or not is for our readership to decide, but we feel that Welsh Leak is just the start of a new era of zines. Another reason why we started the zine was to combat our political enemies that some skinheads were starting to believe. We thought the time was right for a real National Revolution: a zine to stand up and speak for the skinhead movement and bring more and more skinheads into our movement… Another fact which spurs us on is the fact that it’s not just Welsh skins who buy Welsh Leak but skins (and nationalists) from all the British nations, Europe and virtually all over the world! Not only this but we sell to casuals, thrashers, punks and ‘normal’ people as well, who agree with the basis of our message.

The well-written United Forces, which ran for 12 issues, came later still. It was unique as its editor, Scott from Teesside, explains:

             I was 23 when I started the zine. The name United Forces was to signify the ‘spirit of Oi!’ as in punks and skins united. United Forces was my first fanzine. I started it out of pure boredom during a long spell of unemployment. It was meant to be non-political, but as it coincided with the rise of RAC and B&H and most of the skins had swayed that way by the late ’80s–early ’90s, I decided to include these bands under the banner of ‘Oi!’…. also, the nationalist ideals appealed to me at the time, even though I was a punk, so I rather stupidly thought that other punks would get into the nationalist music scene… duh! No chance, in hindsight, this united force was never going to work… but that was my intention with the zine.

                  The fanzine was truly diverse. I interviewed punk, anarcho, psychobilly, Oi!, RAC, even thrash metal bands… all bands were keen to be interviewed, all were publicity-hungry, but I was quickly labelled a ‘nazi punk’ and you know how that song goes! Some bands were appalled at being in the same fanzine as a RAC band, but I didn’t dupe anybody, they all knew UF was pro-RAC beforehand, even though they might deny it now. As for memorable interviews, I was pleased to get Nidge out of Blitz in, one of the old school. I did so many I can’t remember… The Macc Lads were funny and Kev out of Skullhead was always interesting and informative, but like I said there was so many and it was so long ago I can’t remember too much about them now or even which zine I interviewed individuals in cos I worked on at least four zines circa ’89–’92. The only band I remember agreeing to an interview but then didn’t respond was an Oi! band called the Crack…. Circulation for UF was small, punks dismissed it as a nazi mag, skins dismissed it cos it had punk/anarcho bands in it. It was doomed to fail really. I don’t think I ever sold more than 150 copies of any one issue. And that’s why it ceased… shot by both sides. I made a decision and chose my side, wrapped up UF, shaved my head, abandoned the punk scene and went full into the B&H scene… I started a new completely RAC-only zine called Hail!

Brutal Attack

1986 was a year of highs and lows for Brutal Attack. The release of their debut LP enhanced their standing on the White Noise circuit and established Brutal Attack as ‘one of the main White Noise bands.’ Ken McLellan said of this newfound recognition:³⁸³⁸ ‘It is nice to see that after so many years of grafting we have proved to people at last that we are worth supporting. To those people who have always had faith in us, we’d like to say a big “Thank you.” Another sign that we are established is the demand for a Brutal Attack songbook.’

Fanzine White Noise no. 2, 1986.

The songbook was not printed. Other highlights of the year were the St. George’s Day concert and the concert in Utrecht in the Netherlands, attended by some three hundred skinheads. Apart from the personal pleasure of playing abroad, the band felt that the concert was ‘vital in the process of building White Noise in Europe.’ The low point of the year was an accident which effectively put the band on hold as Ken McLellan explained:³⁹³⁹ ‘As well as being offered the chance to record with the front-rank French band Brutal Combat, we were also offered two gigs with them in Brest, which is their hometown. Unfortunately, on the afternoon of our intended departure, our bassist Paul and our drummer Tony were involved in a crash. Luckily Tony escaped without injury, but Paul got a broken leg which meant that we were forced to cancel a number of gigs including the French ones.’

Ibid.

The two gigs were organised by Gael Bodilis for 5 and 6 September. Bodilis would later gain notoriety as the owner and distributor of record label Rebelles Européens. Nevertheless, something good for Brutal Attack did come out of the motorcycle accident: Paul used his enforced rest to write a lot of new material. The idea of recording a split EP with Brutal Combat was not abandoned, and two songs were set aside for this truly European project, ‘Lies’ and ‘Think Again White Man,’ but it never came to fruition. The band did negotiate a new album contract with Rock-O-Rama Records, although they wanted to record a double album because they had written so much new material.

1986 was a political turning point for Chad from Barrow-in-Furness, a large industrial town and seaport in the county of Cumbria, which is literally the arse-end of nowhere. This is his story:

             I was born in 1970. I grew up surrounded by music. My mum, who was the oldest one in the family, was into Northern Soul and Motown. My uncles were skinheads and my aunt, who was a skinhead first time round, was married to a skinhead who rode a scooter. I always spent holidays and weekends at my Nan’s. I idolised one uncle, who was probably five years older than me. He was my hero. So you could say the skinhead and scootering way of life is in my blood! When I was seven or eight years old my uncle introduced me to punk. I remember there were newspaper cuttings on his bedroom walls. I also remember seeing punks around Barrow. I then got into Mod and 2 Tone, and started to dress as a mod. By the age of 13 I had turned skinhead. My dad did not like me having a crop because it had become a political statement by then. My Nan always used to say to me that I looked like a convict. Then again, like any other typical teenager, I was in and out of trouble! Around the same time I also started on the scooter scene, getting my first Lambretta at 13. I rode illegally. Even so I went by train to my first scooter rally in 1984. It was at Morecambe, an hour’s train ride away. I went just for the day and loved it. There were skinheads everywhere. I have not looked back since. Through the scooter scene I have met a lot of good people.

                  Not long after I turned skinhead, I was given a copy of ‘Back With a Bang’ by Skrewdriver. I think I got it from one of the older lads I knew at the time who had been down to the Last Resort in London. After playing it for the very first time, I knew I was always going to love Skrewdriver.

                  The first band I saw live was the Gents. I was 13, maybe 14. The Gents were a mod band with a hint of punk and they played Champers in Barrow during the daytime when the nightclub hosted a teenage disco. The drummer, and I don’t know how he did it, momentarily ignited his kit while he played on. The spectacle only lasted for a couple of seconds, but that memory has always stayed with me. [I have now seen them three times in total, again in Barrow and at a scooter rally, probably early ’90s.]

                  In 1984, the family moved from Ormsgill, a huge housing estate, to the town centre. It represented a huge change, because the town centre felt more upper-class. In reality, it wasn’t. I started to knock about with a lad called Mike who was in care or a kids’ home at the time of turning skinhead. We watched either Oi for England or Made in Britain starring Tim Roth. I was also knocking about with a few punks that weren’t political but more into Oi and ’80s punk (Exploited, GBH etc., etc.); Dave & Keith Crossy, Dinx, Peno Woody and a few more — mates till this day. RIP Dave Crossy. He was killed in a street fight two years ago.

                  Then in ’85 I started hanging around properly (already knew them) and drinking with Frank who lived in the street I had moved into as well as Stew, Paul, Mark and a few other older skins. In fact, some were ten or eleven years older than me. They were into the 4-Skins, Last Resort and Skrewdriver, of course. That November, I went to see Condemned 84, Section 5 and a local band, whose name escapes me, at Barrow civic hall. The gig was attended by more punks than skins. However, the hall was so large that it seemed empty.

                  I started to buy a lot of good music from Gord in Scotland and later from Mandy who did Impact fanzine.

                  Stew, who used to go to Frank’s house, gave me copies of White Power and Voice of Britain. He was the Barrow NF organiser and a skinhead like us. So there I am playing Northern Soul one moment and White Power the next. I did not understand what it was all about, but my mum hated me playing it. I was not that interested in politics, even though I attended meetings and got Bulldog and NF News. I was more into fighting and getting drunk, but that all changed in 1986 when I started to attend NF meetings up in Workington where I met other skins: John, Carl, Shane, Andy, Baz and Roger, who was the lead singer for Fatal Blow. We became good friends and I’m still mates with them today.

                  I remember the time Ian Stuart was due to speak at a NF Flag Group meeting in Workington. The meeting saw the biggest turnout of skinheads, all armed with a camera, but Ian had cancelled and the organiser, Kev Wilshaw, had failed to let anyone know. A lot of folk were gutted. Some skins never did gigs! I have a picture of me and Roger at the meeting holding a Union Flag and saluting in front of the substitute guest speaker.

                  Every weekend or so it seemed was spent fighting. If it wasn’t the SWP, it was casuals, opposing football fans or red punks. I once had a bottle smashed over my head. It was nothing serious, though. In late April 1987, I was among a group of skinheads who went to the Blue Bird Club, Barrow Football Club, with the intention of smashing up the Blyth Power and Chumbawamba gig, but Chumbawamba never turned up. Blyth Power were not too bad actually, think I even got a T-shirt from them, not that I would have bought it but I do remember having one!

New bands

There was Fatal Blow, a four-piece from Workington, Cumbria, which formed in the late summer of 1986 ‘with something to say.’ The original line-up was Roger on vocals, Norm on bass, Courle on guitar and Sid on drums, but Sid left the band due to ‘lack of dedication’ and was replaced by Ron in March 1987. Then Ron left the band and Sid, the previous drummer, rejoined. Interestingly, this was not the first time they had played together. Interviewed by White Noise, the band explained:⁴⁰⁴⁰ ‘The current line-up of Fatal Blow were in a fairly successful Oi band called Public Disorder and this was taken as far as we could reasonably take it. We played quite a few local gigs, but this merely led to us being banned from all local venues because of friction between various local gangs. Public Disorder split up in early 1982.⁴¹⁴¹ We then took a look at the white nationalist scene and decided to get together again as Fatal Blow.’

Interview with Fatal Blow, fanzine White Noise no. 4.

Public Disorder did record a demo tape by the name of ‘Rough Justice.’ They also appeared on a television documentary singing two songs.

The driving force behind Fatal Blow was white nationalist politics, so much so that the band was convinced that ‘without nationalist politics we wouldn’t be a band.’ They wrote songs about their personal experiences, of course there was one about ‘everyone’s friend, the Old Bill’ which was called ‘Strong Arm,’ and about political issues of the day, such as the troubles in Ulster (‘Ulster Is British’), immigration, multi-racialism and repatriation (‘Valiant Warriors’) and the Jewish control of Britain (‘Their Temples Must Fall’). Other songs included ‘Take it Back,’ ‘Dark Ages’ and ‘Pride of a Nation’ about ‘skinheads who have remained skinheads.’ They also covered the classic ‘Wonderful World’ by the 4-Skins and ‘The Return Of St. George’ by Brutal Attack.

Fatal Blow — Friday 17 July 1987, Imperial Hotel, Workington

Defendant Tapes, operating out of a P.O. box in Huntingdon, released a five-track tape by Fatal Blow, which was nothing more than a ‘practice session’ recorded live in a local pub. The quality was not great, though. There was talk of Fatal Blow appearing on a White Noise Records compilation single along with choice cuts from Skullhead (‘Hang the IRA’), Vengeance (‘Pride and Pain’) and Palazard, which was scheduled to be released in January 1988, but nothing came of it. Talk of an album went the same way. Fatal Blow played their one and only gig on Friday, 17 July 1987 at the Imperial Hotel in their home town of Workington, supporting Condemned 84. A listenable audience recording of this gig exists. Chad was present: ‘There wasn’t that many people there. Nevertheless, it was a brilliant night. Fatal Blow played ‘Strong Arm’ twice. This is not on the live tape.’ Fatal Blow had gigs organised with No Remorse in London [date and venue unknown], Brutal Attack in London [8 October 1987] and Skullhead, Vengeance and Lionheart in Oldham for White Noise [4 December 1987] but they did not play any of them.⁴²⁴² Fatal Blow called it a day soon after. However, there was one final twist to the story of Fatal Blow as Chad explains: ‘It’s not well-known but somebody wanted to release the album. No Remorse wanted to do the backing with Roger singing. Sadly, it never materialised.’ Fatal Blow must have left an impression on No Remorse because they are thanked on their first two albums.

Chad of POTN fanzine is adamant that Fatal Blow only played the once.

After Fatal Blow broke up, Chad and a couple of skinheads from Workington talked of getting a nationalist band together, but they never did. They wanted to be an NF band like Skullhead.

Violent Storm from Cardiff, Wales, were formed late 1986 by Dennis on guitar and vocals and Clarkey on drums. Initially the band had no name. Amos was recruited to play bass and Billy took over vocals from Dennis. And still the band had no name, although that of Celtic Warrior had been suggested, but dismissed. Amos left and was replaced by Brydon. And it was at this point, some six months after forming the band, that the band name Violent Storm was agreed upon.

Pissed off with being out of work, Dennis left to join the army.⁴³⁴³ Thereupon, the line-up stabilized with Billy on vocals, Sheeley on guitar, Brydon on bass and Clarkey on drums. Both Billy and Sheeley had been in a skin/punk band called the Outraged in 1985, which only did a few local gigs in Cardiff before they had called it a day because the band was going nowhere.

Dennis left to join either the Royal Marines or Parachute Regiment.

Violent Storm cited their musical influences as Skullhead, early Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack because ‘they inspired us to be a Nationalist skinhead band.’⁴⁴⁴⁴ There were other reasons:⁴⁵⁴⁵ ‘The reason why we formed was that all of the band members were unemployed and patriotic, so we thought it would give us something to do. We were sick of all the Red, homosexual, drug-pushing and multi-racialist bands who were mainly out to line their pockets but who were spreading appalling lies amongst an impressionable public. Another reason for our formation was that it would give our mates, and people like us, a chance to listen to the music that they wanted to hear.’

Fanzine Look Ahead no. 1.

Interview, February 1989.

Politically, Clarkey was a member of the NF, Billy sympathized ‘a lot with some of the early NF views’ whereas Sheeley was ‘not political at all.’⁴⁶⁴⁶ Violent Storm joined the White Noise Club and started to gig from 1988.

Interview with Billy of Violent Storm, fanzine British Oi! no. 14.

Lionheart from Rochdale in Lancashire formed in late 1986.⁴⁷⁴⁷ By September 1987, the second line-up was Hammy on vocals, Jon ‘Icky’ Hickson on bass, Tom on guitar and Shane on drums. None of the band were members of any political party, although Jon ‘Icky’ Hickson was the editor of the unashamedly National Socialist-oriented fanzine Viking Review which was introduced as follows: ‘The Zine is based on National Socialism and will feature likewise articles, and feature reviews on National Socialist bands and other items of interest.’ One such article was titled ‘The Aryan Man:’⁴⁸⁴⁸

Interview with Jon of Lionheart, fanzine British Patriot no. 6, 1988. And yet, curiously, according to the interview with Jon in fanzine British Oi no. 7, 1987, ‘Lionheart formed in September 1987 with me (Icky) leaving another band called ‘Casey Jones’ and Tom the guitarist leaving another local band.’ The author has assumed that Jon is referring to two different incarnations of the group.

Viking Review.

             The greatest leader of this century was Adolf Hitler who fought for the cause of the Aryan, whilst providing us with a German National Socialist example that the most important thing was to fight for your race. In Mein Kampf the Führer left us with the weapon to last for eternity. The truth about multi-racialism and the power-mad, money-hungry scum, who insist we should pollute our blood and culture. The Aryan man should look after his body and mind, and also his fellow Aryan and also have contempt for non-Aryans. He should have pride in his race and have the will to fight and protect, and also be courageous. The Aryan fights for his Family home, race and state, and can trace his ancestry back to the Warriors of the Vikings, Celts, Danes and Gauls. Many say this is Mongolisation, but this provides us with the Ultimate Man, the Aryan Man.

While not exactly a new band, No Remorse reformed in November 1986 after original guitarist Mark met Paul Burnley at the Skrewdriver concert in Surrey in October. Paul Burnley, the outspoken editor of the National Socialist-oriented fanzine The Truth at Last who had previously fronted patriotic Oi band Public Enemy, became the vocalist. They were joined by Stew from Essex on drums and Ulsterman Archie on bass. Stew was no stranger to No Remorse. He was the old drummer. The average age of the band was 18. The nascent No Remorse covered ‘Kicked to Shit’ by the Ovaltinees, ‘Chaos’ by the 4-Skins and ‘Solly’ by the Belsen Horrors, who had okayed the use of the song because the band was no more. To promote the band, No Remorse printed up some 6,000 stickers and distributed them at scooter rallies, three in particular.

When asked about the band’s name, Paul Burnley replied: ‘The name No Remorse came from the original guitarist Mark. It means we are not ashamed of what we believe in.’⁴⁹⁴⁹ And ‘we will never change our views for profit.’ Paul also promised at the time.⁵⁰⁵⁰ The main aims of No Remorse were ‘to spread the word of White resistance to the treacherous government and alien forces dominating our existence’ and also ‘to plan a massive gig at Wembley called ‘Aids to Africa’ and hopefully raise enough money to ship all the queers from Britain to join all the other scum in Africa.’⁵¹⁵¹ With such sarcastic and provocative words uttered so publicly in a fanzine, No Remorse announced their intention to go where very few other bands dared.

Interview with Paul Burnley, French fanzine One Voice.

Interview with Paul Burnley of No Remorse, fanzine Short and Sharp no. 2.

Interview with No Remorse, fanzine England’s Glory no. 6.

Politically, the entire band supported the British Movement as they saw it as ‘the only truly honest dedicated white working-class National Socialist group in Britain.’⁵²⁵² To demonstrate their support for the British Movement, No Remorse even adopted its phoenix logo. Paul Burnley and his brother, Jon, were paid-up members of the British Movement, who had been recruited by Eddie Stampton:

Ibid.

             John and Paul Burnley were very good mates in the early days, John more so than Paul as Paul was a bit younger and really looked it too and we didn’t want him around a lot of the time because of that. They only lived a short bus ride from me in Battersea when I first knew them. I was introduced to John by a mate, Terry Miles, who went to the same school as him — Sir Walter St. John’s Grammar School for Boys. Basically, the Burnleys were two middle-class kids that got into the skinhead thing through the 2 Tone music phenomenon that had briefly swept the country making the skinhead style of dress fashionable, mainstream even for a while. Bands like Madness and the Specials were in the Top 10 and it seemed like every kid owned a pair of DMs and braces. John was a skinhead, Paul wore all the stuff but had longer hair and classed himself a ‘Rude boy.’ They were into Ska, not Punk or Oi! which they hadn’t even heard of. Neither were political at all. Terry Miles brought them round to my gaff and I was playing Oi! The Album. They asked: ‘What’s this?’ I replied skinhead music. That’s when I reeled them in.

                  Their Dad was a really bad alcoholic and struggling artist. The mother worked as some kind of shrink at Wormwood Scrubs prison. I liked John Burnley senior but couldn’t stand the lefty mother and that feeling was reciprocated! The parents owned three posh properties, one in Battersea and two others located on Clapham Common. She actively encouraged their slightly younger sister, Anya, to date black boys and was a typical middle-class red. Interestingly enough as soon as the father hit the big time as a recognised artist (mainly due to the efforts of his New York-based Jew art agents) these typically well-to-do ‘left-wing’ parents, in true Champagne socialist style, sold up and bought a place resembling a stately home in rural Cambridgeshire. Even that didn’t seem good enough and they eventually relocated to Tuscany in Italy.

                  I know she blamed me for totally leading them astray and drawing them in to the violent world of 1980s National Socialism and she was spot-on! It wasn’t hard considering that although some parts of Battersea were affluent, there were also loads of ******* running round stabbing, robbing, raping, drug-dealing and ‘culturally enriching’ the area in general. Paul went to a different school to John and because he wore glasses and was of very small stature as a child (we used to say he looked like Tristram from the ’70s sitcom George and Mildred) he was badly bullied by blacks at school. So badly in fact, his parents had to move him to another school.

                  Paul was the most unlikely Skinhead, gangly, awkward and lacking in confidence. No personality and the charisma of a wet Haddock. He wasn’t a fighter, was physically unimposing, had no tattoos and hardly drank a drop. For these reasons he didn’t fit the stereotype of what you would expect the lead singer in a Skinhead band to be. After the bands he was in started to become popular he began to appear as arrogant and right up his own arse. For this reason a lot of people couldn’t stand him. He was always slagging someone off trying to pretend he was a better National Socialist than anybody else. This was all an act. Sure he was a racialist, but not what I would describe as genuinely ‘NS.’ An example of this I recall him buying a stolen car stereo off his sister’s black boyfriend! The same boyfriend his mother ‘forced’ him and John to sit around the Sunday dinner table with at their home on Windmill Drive on Clapham Common.

                  Paul was actually politically active, though, unlike the other jokers and posers that just attended gigs and maybe the yearly Remembrance Day parade held by the National Front. I remember one time when commie scumbag and IRA supporter ‘Red’ Ken Livingston was due to give a speech at a school in Pimlico. I was SW London BM organiser at the time and decided we would picket the meeting. On the night of the meeting the Burnleys and I stood at the school gates handing out BM leaflets. We must have looked fucking nuts! Three teenage skinheads, one handing out leaflets and the other two, each holding a proper spiked flagpole with a Swastika and BM Sunwheel flag! How we never got attacked I don’t know. Most people wouldn’t even make eye contact with us and then what do you think happened next? John and Paul’s mum came walking along on her way to the meeting! To say she was none too pleased is putting it mildly!

                  A funny thing is, long before Paul or John became band members we were toying with the idea of forming an RAC band. John on drums, Paul on guitar and me as the singer! We bounced a few names around, the first being the name of a defunct Punk band that was spray-painted in huge letters under the railway bridge at the Clapham Junction end of Falcon road — Jack Boot and the Stormtroopers, the second being Wotan 18. Anyway, I have to say, mainly due to me and the fact I would never in a million years have had the arsehole to get on stage in front of loads of people it never got off the ground.

                  Don’t get me wrong, the real Burnley No Remorse (as opposed to the clowns now using the same name who write songs with retarded lyrics very probably intended to confirm to the enemy everything they already thought of people like us) and some of the earlier stuff and spin-offs like Public Enemy were great and many songs were very inspiring and showed lyrical genius, but at the same time Paul stole a lot of his ideas. One example is the infamous No Remorse T-shirt with the portrait of AH and the slogan, ‘One day the world will know Adolf Hitler was right.’ This was actually something he had got off me — a verse I’d read in what is supposedly the last testament of Adolf Hitler. Another thing was his fanzine, The Truth at Last. I actually thought up the name for that. Years later I discovered that well-known American racialist and publisher of the long-running Thunderbolt newspaper, Dr. Ed Fields, had come across the fanzine and was so impressed with the name that he wrote to Paul asking for his permission to rename his newspaper The Truth at Last! Of course, I never received any credit for it.

The scooter scene

Many nationalists and skinheads were attracted to the scooter scene. There was some trouble at the 1986 National Run at Great Yarmouth, which Scootering magazine blamed on National Front skinheads. A certain Wullie McClure of Greenock, who had once played in RAC band New Dawn, wrote to Scootering to defend the good name of NF skinheads who were very much part of the scooter scene:⁵³⁵³

McClure to Scootering, July 1986.

             Having just read your article on the NF skinheads at Yarmouth I am writing to put a few points of my own on this matter. Firstly I have been a member of the National Front also a Scooter Club (non-political just a mixed bunch of people who drive scooters) for a few years now. Not being present at Yarmouth I cannot speak for anyone there, but you cannot point your finger at one group of people (National Front Skinheads in this case) for causing trouble at this run or any run for that matter. Your article even said and I quote you ‘suspected NF skinheads, numbering about one hundred.’ How you can say NF skinheads without any supporting evidence shows you are clearly out to blame them… So please in future could you write your articles on troublemakers at runs with a bit more thought for others…

The Isle of Wight run ‘ended in a riot with a burning beer tent, exploding gas bottles, ransacked dealer stalls and the emergency services declaring the site a no-go area for several hours after being pelted with missiles.’⁵⁴⁵⁴ Chad from Cumbria was present and remembers the riot as well as the beating he and his ex took at the hands of the Calverton Hornets Scooter Club because they were playing a tape of RAC bands on their scooter. Mick Smith, who would later play in a patriotic skinhead band, had this to say about the Calverton Hornets: ‘We had loads of trouble with them. We were the Rat and Rodent SC. My brother squared up to 25 of them on his own with a broken bottle at Newquay the weekend of the famous storm 25 years ago and they bottled it and he also got done over by them at the Isle of Wight rally when it turned into the riot. We had loads of fights with them. We all went up to a pub in Lincoln to fight them and they shit themselves. Complete wankers and bullies if they get you on your own.’ The Calverton Hornets would continue to prove troublesome just like the insects in their name on a hot summer’s day.

Scootering, www.scootering.com/news, 22 September 2012.

There was a certain amount of tolerance within the scooter scene and this was tested to the limit by the appearance of customized scooter ‘Sieg Heil’ which featured artwork from the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. Asked why he chose a subject that was so emotive and still deeply offensive to a lot of people, the owner replied: ‘It was something that I’d always been interested in and the fact that it was so controversial just convinced me more that I should do it.’⁵⁵⁵⁵ An article about ‘Sieg Heil’ concluded:⁵⁶⁵⁶

Scooter Scene, January 1989.

Ibid.

             In two world wars our fathers and grandfathers fought for the right for freedom of speech and of expression. If you start to deny people a platform on the basis of your own political beliefs, no matter how right or justified, then you’re setting yourself up as judge and jury without giving anyone else a chance to hear the evidence. Censorship is wrong, though others might have you think otherwise. ‘Sieg Heil’ has certainly provoked the kind of reaction Dave [the owner] had hoped for. It’s almost impossible to not feel strongly one way or the other and in that sense it’s significant. Objectively, it’s a beautifully understated scooter with a powerful theme and one or two clever innovations that differentiate from the rest. And it’s going to win custom shows. It already has.

England’s Glory/The Glory

The inclusion of the Glory is debatable, but unlike Section 5 and Close Shave, who played with nationalist skinhead bands, the Glory graced the pages of Blood and Honour. Formed in the summer of 1986 by Timo and Mark, England’s Glory from Leicestershire changed their name to the Glory after discovering that a band from the early ’70s with the name England’s Glory had just rereleased an album. The original line-up was Timo (ex-Clockwork Soldiers) on vocals, Nick on bass, Mark Magee (who had played in local Oi band the New Breed) on guitar and Daz on drums. This line-up lasted until Christmas: Nick left without giving any reason, although he was more into heavy metal than Oi anyway, and Daz was knocked off his scooter and could not continue with the band. By February, the band had a new line-up of Timo [Mark Timson] on vocals, John on bass, Mark Magee on guitar and Jim on drums, who had previously played in a punk band. They gigged with the likes of Section 5, Skin Deep, Close Shave, Condemned 84 and Society’s Rejects as well as Skullhead and Violent Storm.

The Glory played competent, catchy and tuneful Oi music. They released six songs on the split Skins ’n’ Punks Volume 3 LP (Oi! Records OIR 009, 1987) and the full-length We Are What We Are LP (Link Records LINK LP 039, 1988) and appeared on compilation LPs Oi Glorious Oi (Link Records LINK LP 023, 1987) and That’s What I Call Oi (Link Records LINK LP 038, 1988). A single was planned but after ‘we’d recorded the finished product, we didn’t feel it actually represented what we are or what we do,’ said Timo.

Politically, the band was certainly patriotic and perhaps even anti-communist, but not National Socialist. And yet in one interview Mark stated ‘we don’t really have any political interests.’⁵⁷⁵⁷ The lyrics to some of their songs were explained as follows:⁵⁸⁵⁸

Interview with Mark of the Glory, British Oi no. 7.

Interview with the Glory, Blood and Honour no. 6.

             ‘Scarred for Life’ is about how everybody decides that we’re bad and don’t give us a chance because of what we are. Everything we say is wrong, or twisted, or taken the wrong way. We’re guilty before we’re tried. Be a skinhead and you’re always to blame.

                  ‘Nobody’s War’ is about joining up and how it changes you and fighting in a war that wasn’t ours, but the government’s. When you die all you get is a medal. ‘Should Have Paid’ is about a pervert who gets put away for his sick crime and instead of being hung he gets protected from other prisoners. There’s no justice. ‘Who’ll Bear the Shame’ is about someone wiping out this planet — America or Russia — simply by pressing a button and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. We’ve got the best army in the world and we could be winning but they wipe us out with a button.

The rival factions of the NF vie for skinhead recruits and support

Timo regarded ‘Scarred for Life’ as their best number, although he could not say why. The Glory broke up in 1988.

The year’s end

Skullhead played a northern White Christmas concert in Newcastle, supported by a local band called the Tempests. Nonetheless, some two hundred people still turned out for the concert to witness a powerful, tight and energetic performance from the ever-improving Skullhead. To loud applause and cheers, Kev Turner then called on Ian Stuart, who was in the audience, to join Skullhead on stage to do a short set of rehearsed Skrewdriver numbers, which included ‘White Power’ and ‘Voice of Britain.’ The concert finally ended with Kev Turner and Ian Stuart doing a duet of the classic Cock Sparrer anthem ‘England Belongs to Me.’ Filmed, the gig was made available on video and sold by White Noise. ‘Jim the Skin’ from Berwick thinks he attended this one:

             I travelled down with mates on the train. Same MO as before. Meeting point was Yates at 6 p.m. on the Saturday. This time no aggro but a heavy-handed police presence which made it a very tense and siege-like atmosphere. The gig was at the Old Hall Social Club in South Benwell. The Social Club was a toilet. Bands playing that night were Skullhead and Skrewdriver I think. I say I think, as I was drunk after drinking all day and a lot of these gigs merging into one. Gig finished at 11 p.m. again and me and my mates stumbled off to find a stag night bus that was going back to our hometown that night. No trouble which was probably just as well as I was a stumbling buffoon.

This was Skullhead’s last gig before vocalist Kev Turner was sent down for four years by Durham County Court on two charges of wounding. Kev Turner was convinced that the sentence was politically motivated:⁵⁹⁵⁹ ‘I was sent down for defending myself and my girlfriend against a knife attack. When it came to doing the nicking the police openly told us that they were not interested in the other ‘scum’ involved, they had what they wanted, me and the other NF organiser. They thought by jailing us that NF activities in Consett would end. Unfortunately, they were wrong, cos my mate got found not guilty and with me not being the local organiser their plan failed, cos Consett NF is doing well.’

Interview with Kev Turner of Skullhead, fanzine English Rose, 1987.

1. Rumours still circulate of a photograph in Ian Stuart’s possession of Madness giving the nazi salute in front of the Eiffel Tower.

2. National Front News no. 76, 1986. The article later appeared in fanzine Blood and Honour no. 3 (not to be confused with the magazine of the same name), circa late 1986 or early 1987.

3. England’s Glory no. 6, 1987.

4. Interview with Ken McLellan, fanzine White Noise no. 2.

5. Interview with Ken McLellan, fanzine English Rose, 1987.

6. Interview, fanzine Bad Influenc,1986.

7. Fanzine The Truth at Last no. 8, circa 1986.

8. Ibid.

9. Pearce, The First Ten Years: Chapter Blood and Honour.

10. Blog: Glory Days of the RAC.

11. Fanzine England’s Glory no. 6.

12. Interview with Vengeance, fanzine White Noise no. 4.

13. Ibid.

14. Interview with Kev Turner of Skullhead, fanzine Unity no. 1.

15. Fanzine Pure Impact Skins no. 3, 1986.

16. In this way, philosopher Julius Evola and Corneliu Codreanu, the charismatic leader of the interwar Romanian Iron Guard, emerged as the new heroes of the NF Political Soldiers.

17. Gordon of Prime Suspects, correspondence 2012.

18. Italian fanzine Kriminal Class no. 9, 1986.

19. Fanzine White Noise no. 2, 1986.

20. Andy Nunn died on 29 January 2014.

21. Review, fanzine Voice of Britain no. 4, 1986, grammar corrected.

22. Interview with Ian Stuart, Australian fanzine The Storm Troop no. 1, 1987.

23. Interview with Ian Stuart, White Noise no. 1, 1986.

24. Interview with Ian Stuart, fanzine Boots ‘n’ Braces.

25. Interview with Merv Shields by Ainaskin, October 2011.

26. One interview makes mention of a certain Martin Childs on guitar, which the author has assumed is a misspelling for Martin Cross (interview with Ian Stuart, fanzine Boots ‘n’ Braces, circa late 1986).

27. Interview with Merv Shields by Ainaskin, October 2011.

28. Review, fanzine British Oi! no. 3.

29. Interview with Vengeance, fanzine British Oi! no. 2, 1987.

30. Interestingly, Danny recalls playing six gigs with Gordon, fanzine Blood and Honour no. 3.

31. Interview with British Standard, fanzine White Noise no. 2, 1986.

32. Tape Die Netten Jungs Von Nebenan presented ‘My Tomorrow’ and ‘Judgement Day’ by the Betrayed and ‘Authority’ and ‘Rocking the Reds’ by Indecent Exposure.

33. Interview with Jim of British Standard, fanzine Short and Sharp no. 2.

34. Voice of Britain no. 4.

35. Her departure before the end of the year is confirmed by a ‘Stop Press’ announcement in Voice of Britain no. 4.

36. Despite much questioning, Jim Boland cannot recall exactly when Des Clarke asked him if he’d interested in joining Skrewdriver. ‘The dates are a blur,’ Jim Boland readily admits.

37. Interview with Spike, fanzine, Look Ahead no. 2.

38. Fanzine White Noise no. 2, 1986.

39. Ibid.

40. Interview with Fatal Blow, fanzine White Noise no. 4.

41. Public Disorder did record a demo tape by the name of ‘Rough Justice.’ They also appeared on a television documentary singing two songs.

42. Chad of POTN fanzine is adamant that Fatal Blow only played the once.

43. Dennis left to join either the Royal Marines or Parachute Regiment.

44. Fanzine Look Ahead no. 1.

45. Interview, February 1989.

46. Interview with Billy of Violent Storm, fanzine British Oi! no. 14.

47. Interview with Jon of Lionheart, fanzine British Patriot no. 6, 1988. And yet, curiously, according to the interview with Jon in fanzine British Oi no. 7, 1987, ‘Lionheart formed in September 1987 with me (Icky) leaving another band called ‘Casey Jones’ and Tom the guitarist leaving another local band.’ The author has assumed that Jon is referring to two different incarnations of the group.

48. Viking Review.

49. Interview with Paul Burnley, French fanzine One Voice.

50. Interview with Paul Burnley of No Remorse, fanzine Short and Sharp no. 2.

51. Interview with No Remorse, fanzine England’s Glory no. 6.

52. Ibid.

53. McClure to Scootering, July 1986.

54. Scootering, www.scootering.com/news, 22 September 2012.

55. Scooter Scene, January 1989.

56. Ibid.

57. Interview with Mark of the Glory, British Oi no. 7.

58. Interview with the Glory, Blood and Honour no. 6.

59. Interview with Kev Turner of Skullhead, fanzine English Rose, 1987.