I first met Martin ‘Damage’ Robertson in 1999, just after he had become President of The Freemen and therefore in practice the national leader of The Brethren’s UK charters at the age of thirty-six.
At the time, I was researching an article on bikers for the national newspaper on which I was working. Like many outlaw bikers he was wary of journalists as a profession and so it took quite a while and an introduction through mutual contacts before he would agree to firstly a meeting, and then subsequently to being interviewed. Given his and The Brethren’s fearsome reputation, I was nervous about our initial encounter, but I soon found that whilst guarded and reserved in some ways, he was very personable to talk to, and within limits, and only to the degree that he obviously felt it within his and the club’s interests to do so, he was prepared to talk to me.
As a journalist I naturally sought to stay in touch and I spoke to him on a number of occasions over the next few years.
In 2003 based on the evidence of Michael ‘Fat Mick’ Cooper who had become a police informer, Robertson, together with Matthew ‘Gut’ Gordon, who had taken over as president of the north-east charter, were convicted of conspiracy to murder Simon ‘Pretty Polly’ Pollio who disappeared in 1998, believed strangled, and whose body has never been found.
Gordon received a much reduced sentence for turning Queen’s evidence and in a subsequent trial Robertson was also found guilty in a separate trial of the execution style murders of Darren ‘Dazza’ Henderson, Sam ‘Doggie’ Collier, Mike ‘Spud’ Williams, Richard ‘Scottie’ Green and Clive ‘Bagpuss’ Armitage on the night of Wednesday 14 September 1994. Their bodies have never been found but are widely believed to have been dumped at sea.
Robertson received life sentences for these offences with a recommendation that he serve a minimum tariff of thirty years.
Such was Robertson’s reputation and position within the club that police sources widely believe that despite his incarceration, he continued to be The Brethren’s de facto leader, directing operations from within prison.
Gordon was found hanged in his cell in 2004. The verdict was suicide, although inevitably there remains speculation that he was murdered, with the finger of suspicion pointed at Robertson for directing this. Other rumours suggest that members of a Rebels’ support club were responsible.
It is believed that Cooper was provided with a new identity under witness protection arrangements, and his whereabouts are unknown at the present time.
I spoke to Robertson once while he was in prison after his conviction but he didn’t have much to say.
Then in early 2008, Robertson asked me to visit him in the Long Lartin maximum security prison in Worcestershire as soon as I could. There then followed a swift series of meetings at his request over the following three months during which I interviewed him at length and collected the information that makes up this book. During these sessions he seemed to want to be completely open with me and to answer all my questions about the events he wanted to discuss. In fact looking back through my notes and the transcripts of our conversations, it is striking that other than on one solitary occasion, I do not remember any question that he did not answer.
During one of the last of our meetings I asked him whether there was ever anything he had done about which he felt guilty and it seems to me to be worthwhile including here what he had to say verbatim.
MR – For what I’ve done? [Pause] No.
IP – Would you do anything for the club?
MR.-.Yes.
IP – Anything at all?
MR – Sure, yes.
IP – Why?
MR – It’s about commitment, total commitment, it’s about being part of the elite. The Angels have got it, they showed that at Laughlin.14
IP – What about the drugs?
MR – What about them? [Shrugs] We sold whizz, coke, E, acid, basically anything that people wanted to buy and enjoy. We dealt in stuff that was fun and basically wouldn’t kill them so what’s the problem?
IP – You made enough money out of it.
MR – Yeah we did. So what? Just think, next time one of your mates has a snort at a party or your bird drops a tab at a club, someone’s had to source it for you, someone like me. This coke and shit doesn’t smuggle itself in y’know? It takes a bit of good old entrepreneurial risk-taking and effort on somebody’s part so’s you can get off your face. There’s demand, we take the risk and supply, and we get the rewards. Ain’t that how it’s supposed to work? Anyway, big tobacco sells stuff that kills you and if you’ve got a pension I bet you own some of it. [Laughs] So who’s got the problem to be guilty about now?
IP – OK, so you got me.
MR – Yeah. Bang to rights. [Pause]You know people like to think they’re so clean. But really they’re all dirty in some way or other. I suppose part of the difference is just that we don’t try and pretend otherwise.
IP – So you’re telling me you’re just more honest about it?
MR – [Laughs] Yeah, I guess so. No bullshit from us.
IP – So you’ve never felt guilty?
MR – No. I did what I needed to do. It was all [pause] necessary. So no, I don’t feel guilty.
IP – What… [Interrupted]
MR – But if you ask me whether there are things I regret then there are a few.
IP – Like what?
MR – Well I regret being in here for a start.
IP – What, getting caught or being in jail?
MR – [Pause] Bit of both I guess. It’s tough on Sharon and my girl so I’m sorry for them about that.
IP – But not for yourself?
MR – No. It’s my life. I make my choices. I don’t complain about the outcomes Anyway, it’s my own fault I should have done something about that wanker Fat Mick years ago. I knew he was a weak link and he knew that I knew, so he hated me for it. So I knew that he was a threat that I should have destroyed.
IP – Why didn’t you?
MR – Well I didn’t actually have anything on him so I didn’t want to act against him.
IP – Why not? Doesn’t sound like you?
MR – Because the last thing I wanted to do was unsettle everyone else. If I’d taken him out just because I didn’t feel comfortable then I risked inducing paranoia in everyone else. If I’d offed Fat Mick just because I didn’t like or trust him then everybody would’ve started to feel nervous, everybody would’ve felt at risk and then everybody would’ve become a threat.
IP – OK.
MR – And then there’s the fear thing.
IP – Fear?
MR – Yeah. Even though he hated me, Fat Mick was still too scared of me to do anything and that was the hold I had over him. The only problem would be if he fell into the hands of someone who scared him more.
IP – Like who?
MR – Well the plod, I guess, the way it turned out, but it could have been anyone else who got a hold over him. If it comes to a choice between fear of me and fear of the system and the time if you get caught, some guys are always going to go the wrong way. That was the one thing I could never quite work out how to deal with. It wasn’t something that old Nick covered in The P15 so there was no help there. And in the end that’s what got me.
IP – So do you feel responsible for being in here, for bringing this on Sharon and Lucy?
MR – [Pause – shakes head, does not answer]
IP – So what about the violence? The deaths?
MR – Like I said, no, I did what needed to be done.
IP – So you don’t regret any of the killings?
MR – Listen, the guys I knocked off, they were all in the game you know? They all knew what they were into, what the risks were. No civilians. They were all guys that would have done it to me if it had suited them, so no, I don’t regret any of them.
IP – Did you hate Dazza?
MR – Hate Dazza? No.
IP – But he had killed your friends.
MR – Yes he had. And I resented that. But really it was business.
I didn’t have to like it, but I could understand why he’d done it. I could respect it.
IP – And Polly?
MR – He was different. I was glad he got done.
IP – Why?
MR – He was just a cunt.
IP – So you don’t regret any of the deaths?
MR – Well there is one.
IP – Which?
MR – The dog, Wolf. [Pause] He was great. I really liked him y’know?[Shakes his head] I remember him looking up at me as I aimed. Pulling the trigger. That was the hardest thing to do. I still regret that I guess.
IP – But that’s it?
MR – Yeah, I guess that’s it.
*
Martin ‘Damage’ Robertson was found stabbed to death on 17 July 2008. He had just celebrated his 45th birthday in jail and left behind his wife Sharon and their daughter Lucy, aged seven, a pretty little girl that I met once on a prison visit, dressed in a black and red stripped T shirt with the words ‘My Daddy’s a Menace’ across the front.
Despite his reputation and the acts that he confirmed to me he had taken part in during our meetings and discussions, I have to say that right from the outset I came to respect him as a person and to a degree I think he wrote his own epitaph in the excerpt quoted above, No bullshit from us. While I will never now know why he decided to speak in 2008 as he gave no clue that anything was up, in many ways I guess this book is his last will and testament.
But if it is, one question has to be, so is it true? It’s a question I have had to face as I have edited these pages for publication. And on balance I think it is, but that equally it’s not a complete truth.
It’s striking, for example, that not only did he really only want to talk about the crimes for which he had already been convicted, on looking back through my notes, the only people he ever mentioned in connection with any crime, from Adrian ‘Gyppo’ Leverton and Peter ‘Tiny’ Gresham or William ‘Billy Whizz’ White, through to Darren ‘Dazza’ Henderson were all dead (even Stuart ‘Popeye’ Shaw who died of a heart attack while running an ‘Iron Man’ marathon in South Africa in 2005). So nothing that he ever said to me ever implicated anyone living in any crime other potentially than Steve ‘Wibble’ Nelson.
Even though I now think that he had only asked to see me, and was only speaking to me because he must have discovered that others were moving against him, and he would have known who they were and how that was going to end, he never once spoke about it. Instead in the end he kept to the code of silence that he believed in, never once implying that anything was wrong.
*
He was buried in August 2008 in Enderdale.
It was a full dress, full turnout Brethren funeral. Amongst a large but restrained police presence every Brethren member in the country that was not inside or in hospital made it, and charters from around the world sent representatives to pay their respects, many anonymous behind their scarves and skull printed bandannas. So, together with contingents from other friendly clubs, on the Saturday morning of the funeral the village was completely overrun with parked bikes, the small central market square filled with serried ranks of The Brethren’s parked up Harleys, guarded as always by the strikers working their way towards their colours, and leaving only a thin driveway for the flower decked hearse.
After the service the huge convoy of bikes roared off through the village, a thunderous torrent of noise tearing up through the country lanes and out across the moors to the clubhouse where the surrounding field had become an impromptu tented camp, to kick off a party and wake that lasted until dawn the next day.
At around about midnight Police reported that the revellers blocked off the road below the clubhouse for an impromptu set of races. Petrol was poured over the bikes’ back wheels and set on fire as the riders gunned the engine, front brakes locked on and span the back wheels in a roar of flame, exhaust noise and choking tyre smoke. It’s an old drag racing technique used to get the tyre good and hot and sticky for maximum grip, to launch away from the line when the Christmas tree lights turn and you dump the clutch and the brakes and hang on for dear life against the savage gut wrenching acceleration of a big bike at full power. But of course for show, the more petrol that’s used, the more spectacular it is and local witnesses reported the sight of the flaming back wheels spinning crazily into the darkness.
At some point during the night, police sources later learnt that The Freemen met to elect a new President. Based on the northern powerbase that Martin had established within The Brethren in the UK and the apparent control of the main organised element of drugs trafficking carried out by some of the club’s key members, Martin was then succeeded as leader of The Brethren in the UK by Steve ‘Wibble’ Nelson.
*
No one has ever been charged in connection with Martin’s death.
The police say that no one has been prepared to cooperate with their enquiries.
I think that’s the way he would have wanted it.
When men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition called war, and such a war is of everyman against everyman.
For … the nature of war consists not [only] in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.
Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (modernised spelling)
Iain Parke, London, 2009
1 Across all 1%er clubs there are distinct classes of association that can lead ultimately to full membership. Potential recruits go through a period of association with the club (usually known as being a ‘hang around’ or something similar) before, if they seem suitable, a member may put them forward for consideration. They will then go through a period of trial or apprenticeship which lasts for at least one and sometimes more years before their membership is voted on. The Legion used the description striker for guys at this stage (a term also used in Australia and some US clubs) as the equivalent of a Hells Angels’ ‘Prospect’, or a ‘Probationary Outlaw’. NB: All foonotes by Iain Parke.
2 The more correct term for what is usually referred to in the press as a ‘chapter’.
3 The New Wave of British Heavy Metal typified by bands such as Iron Maiden which emerged after punk.
4 Biker slogan Born To Lose/Fuck The World (or occasionally, Fight To Win, depending on who’s talking).
5 Disparaging term for Usual Jap Multi – a reference to the ubiquitous layout at the time of larger Japanese bikes of an in-line four cylinder mounted across the frame – on the grounds they were therefore all the same.
6 At 250cc, the liquid cooled two stroke Yamaha RD250LC was the fastest bike a learner could legally ride and in one jump took the speed at which you could ride, aged 17 on L plates, to over 100mph.
7 Adrian ‘Gyppo’ Leverton, born 26 November 1959, believed to have died of an overdose sometime during the night of Saturday 21 May 1994.
His body was found on Tuesday 24 May 1994 by his girlfriend Sharon Wright at the flat they shared. The cause of death was a cocktail of alcohol, barbiturates and intravenously injected heroin although the pathologist noted that there was little evidence of any previous intravenous drug use.
An inquest was held and the coroner recorded an open verdict.
8 Peter ‘Tiny’ Gresham, born 10 November 1945, was found dead on Friday 21 July 1994. Like Adrian ‘Gyppo’ Leverton previously, the post mortem showed a significant quantity of barbiturates and alcohol, together with an intravenous injection of heroin but no evidence of prior use of intravenous drugs. However the post mortem also revealed significant levels of bruising and the coroner’s inquest recorded a verdict of unlawful killing. No one has ever been charged in connection with his death and officially the case remains open.
9 Cocaine is usually smuggled in compressed 1 kilogram wrapped blocks known as ‘bricks’. Henry Loaiza-Ceballos, alias El Alacran, ‘the Scorpion’ was a member of the notorious Colombian drugs dealing Cali cartel and allegedly the man in charge of most of their military operations. Bricks in wrappings stencilled with a scorpion logo would be assumed to have been sourced from his part of the cartel.
10 William ‘Billy Whizz’ White, born 8 June 1964, was killed instantaneously on Wednesday 17 August 1994 when a bomb made from military style explosives went off, where it had been attached under the floor of his car with magnets, while he was driving through open countryside. The bomb had been detonated by remote control, apparently using a mobile telephone.
No one has ever been charged in connection with his death and officially the case remains open.
11 Ken ‘Butcher’ Moore, born 2 April 1948, was found dead on Monday 29 August 1994 in the cold store of his butcher’s shop having been killed it’s believed on the Saturday evening. He had been handcuffed and been suspended by the cuffs from a meat hook in the ceiling. He had then been shot twice at point blank range with both barrels of a sawn off shotgun and police had to rely on fingerprints for identification. The gun was found at the scene although it had been wiped clean of fingerprints.
Again, no one has ever been charged in connection with his death and officially the case also remains open.
12 Disparaging nickname for The Brethren based on their black and red colours, from Minnie the Minx as opposed to Denis the Menace.
13 Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System (LAPES) was invented by the American air force during the Vietnam war and is designed for dropping supplies from an aircraft when they either cannot land or the target area is too small for a normal parachute drop. A set of drogue parachutes are released which pull the load from the rear cargo hatch of the airplane and then help to break the load’s skid on impact. With the right specification pallets the technique can be used for quite large objects even up to small armoured fighting vehicles. There is a video clip on www.youtube.com of the Australian air force dropping a tank using this method.
14 The River Run at Laughlin Nevada is the largest bike rally in the Western USA. It’s held in April and attracts up to 100,000 bikers from across the country, mostly normal types, but as it’s such a public event the patch clubs always show up as well and ‘put on a show’, most notably the Hells Angels who dominate the US South West.
Having originated in California, the Hells Angels have had a running feud with The Mongols since the late 70s after The Mongols adopted a ‘California’ bottom rocker without the Angel’s permission. Over the years this war had rumbled on in a low key way involving shootings, stabbings and car bombs. Tension had been growing again between the two in the late 90s as The Mongols membership in the South West grew much faster than that of the Hells Angels.
In 2002 both clubs were at the River Run when a group of Hells Angels from San Francisco found themselves in the bar of the Harrah’s casino where a much larger group of Mongols had assembled. Hearing the news, members of other Angel charters rapidly gathered and rode to the casino where they entered, and although knowing they were still outnumbered, immediately launched an all out attack on the Mongols on the floor of the casino in full view of the security staff and surveillance equipment. One Mongol and three Hells Angels were killed in the ensuing fight.
Under the ferocity of the assault some Mongols were seen to flee the scene or to take off their colours to escape detection. But despite the odds, and their own level of casualties, the Hells Angels remain proud to say that, as Martin had put it to me earlier in the same interview when we had been discussing it, ‘No Angel ran and no Angel hid their colours. Every Angel knew that in a fight to the death like that [with a rival gang], they could rely on each other totally, they would each die for each other.’
15 Martin’s somewhat ironic nickname for ‘The Prince’ which possibly rather justifies Bertrand Russell’s famous description of it as ‘a handbook for gangsters.’
From speaking to Sharon I understand that the version he read was the Penguin classics George Bull translation of 1961 which I have therefore consulted (together with a more recent translation by Tim Parks), although in practice Martin did not tend to quote it word for word but to paraphrase the bits that were of interest to him.
All characters, events and in particular the clubs named in this book are fictional and any resemblance to actual places, events, clubs or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. None of the views expressed are those of the author.
I have had to ascribe certain territories and names to my fictional club charters, for which I apologise to both the 1%ers in those areas and any clubs with similar names.
While I’m a biker, I’m not, and never have been, a member of any 1%er club. To the extent that over the years I have met and talked to 1%er club members, I have found them to be intelligent guys who have lived by the motto which is repeated by the central character in this book, ‘if you show respect, you will be treated with respect.’
So I hope that any 1%er who reads this book will feel that, while this is obviously a work of crime fiction which therefore has to involve some crime, it treats them and the lifestyle seriously and with respect.
To my parents for what they put up with and their support,
P for the same,
and to NM for first inspiring me to write.
I, Iain Parke, hereby assert and give notice of my rights under section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted at any time by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
The second book in The Brethren trilogy:
Iain had written a book about The Brethren MC and how powerful they could be.
He knew it was a dangerous thing to have done, whether they liked it or not, and one that had taken him part way into their world.
And now it was his turn.
Now a new President, with big boots to fill, was going to make him an offer he was going to find difficult to refuse, and once in the outlaw biker’s world, would he ever be able to get out again?
And as an outsider on the inside, with serious trouble looming, who, if anyone, can he trust?
This book is available in print at most online retailers
ISBN 978-0-9561615-3-6