As well as violent depression, a growing theme among the far right is alcohol abuse. Part of the reason for this is the obvious loneliness that perpetually single men feel. Every morning becomes the morning after the night before. Excessive alcohol consumption is a theme of everyday life for the far right. This was evident when spending time at the Croydon organiser’s house.
I was crashed on a bag of unopened cement. Dignity through work or something, Marx said. The organiser was not a Marxist so, despite being a builder, he was not getting through that many bags of cement. He’d bought the house with his brother. It was large but run-down, on the outskirts of Croydon, the sort that would nowadays be converted into tiny rabbit hutches and called studio apartments; in hindsight, it was a sound financial investment. He lived there alone while renovating very gradually, surrounded by old fish and chip wrappers and empty cans of beer. He was also becoming obsessed with the fact that his neighbours might have thought he was gay. For the life of me, I couldn’t see why they would think that.
I made my bed for the night out of half a dozen unopened bags of cement and collapsed into a drunken mess on top. In the morning I was to make my first ever visit to Rochdale. 22 April 1989, as Chinese students were building the protests that would lead to their eventual massacre at Tiananmen Square.
On arriving in Croydon earlier that evening, I had met neo-Nazi punk-rock god Ian Stuart Donaldson, all shaven hair and big boots, strolling through the train station on his way to the local skinhead boozer for a drink. I felt like Prince William meeting the Spice Girls at Windsor Station. Ian Stuart, as I knew him, was the John Lennon of the Nazi music scene. Well, he’s dead now, so they have that in common anyway. During the 1980s, he and his band Skrewdriver helped fund the NF’s political ambitions by playing ‘white noise’ gigs, where skinheads turned up to get pissed and stomp around hired halls to the dire noise created by skinhead ‘musicians’. Where it all went wrong for Stuart I don’t really know. The original line-up for the band had been signed to a progressive record label and became mildly famous towards the end of the punk era. When Rock Against Racism took off in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stuart rebelled and ended up reforming the band under the NF’s own music umbrella, ‘Rock Against Communism’. He was a died-in-the-wool neo-Nazi; as the NF diminished in the early 1980s, the skinhead scene had begun to grow and so had Stuart’s influence. As the Front lumbered around from pillar to post trying new ideas and radical new policies, Stuart and his band churned out crude punk-rock anthems for a German record label which the NF distributed for a tidy profit. Eventually he’d quit to do it for himself.
‘How are you Ian?’ I asked.
‘Fucking great,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’
Who was I? Dedicated Follower of Fascism. The Boy With A Thorn In His Side, Charmless Man, you name it. We exchanged small pleasantries about the Rolling Stones and how easy it is to form a Nazi rock group based on a few cords ripped off an early Rolling Stones album.
‘Come down and have a drink with us,’ he suggested and off he wandered towards an evening’s drinking pleasure in the company of his nearest and dearest. The same awaited me.
Donaldson had formed the ‘Blood and Honour’ music network and enjoyed worldwide notoriety between prison sentences, as a leader and spokesman for the international skinhead scene. Skrewdriver were pioneers of the Nazi-rock movement and, for the first time ever, skinhead musicians were paid real money for their musical output. He was hounded mercilessly, not just by anti-fascists who realised how dangerous this sort of counter-culture could become if left unchecked, but also by those in the political movement he and his potential funding had deserted. Politically, he punched far above his weight, having the muscle and the capital everyone wanted.
Eddie Whicker and his fat mate from London Underground are taking turns driving the Croydon NF minibus, berating each other and everyone else about their haircuts, their bad breath, their smoking. Gays take good care of their hair, Eddie tells me. And being men, they probably go at it like rabbits too. Fascinating isn’t it?
‘Fornicating,’ he says, at the top of his voice, and everybody giggles. We wasted much of our bad breath on intelligent conversation.
We were free to smoke and fart at will, as Anderson and the only other member of Newham NF had to pick up Hemel Hempstead and Luton NF members in another minibus. I was astonished to discover we actually had to pay for the hire of the bus and petrol ourselves, but delighted that it was £5 cheaper to go with the drunks from Croydon and south London than to go with Anderson and the other contingent. As well as homosexual hair care, Whicker returned to his favourite subject: stories about tampons.
‘I’ve given up collecting them,’ he mused. ‘I couldn’t find any other collectors to join me at a swap-meet.’
Whicker was always light relief to the hungover. He insisted we pull over at a Happy Eater for cooked breakfasts and coffee. Stalin ran the Soviet Union over drunken, bawdy meals where a wrong comment or even a wrong glance could seal your disastrous fate. There was something not unlike Stalinism about most NF functions.
Despite the grandiose claims by party publications, the emerging BNP and their confrontational activities meant that we were slowly drowning while pretending we were only waving. The question on most of our minds was who would be the next to go over to the BNP? The Croydon organiser denounced Paul ‘Trotsky’ Ballard as being too close to the BNP. He had made the fatal mistake of not agreeing with some stupid dictum criticising the ‘Naziness’ of Edmonds and the rest of the south London BNP. He went into the car park to sulk as I quietly bit my lip. It was an attack that had obviously come from up top.
‘You too,’ the organiser said, pointing at me angrily, ‘you’re too close to them.’
Eddie coughed, leant across the table, put his thick, tattooed arm on my shoulder and glared at the organiser.
‘Maff has friends, so does everyone else. Button your lip.’ The organiser protested some more, though obviously without the aggression he’d shown to either me or Ballard.
The twelve of us marched back to the minibus. Whicker turned to the organiser and told him bluntly for us all to hear, ‘If anyone starts slagging off any other nationalists I’ll give them a clip around the ear.’ And he meant it too. ‘No doubt you’ll be reporting this to Anderson, but if it’s a choice between a wimp or a Nazi, you’d better make sure you have plenty of backing.’ I sat next to Ballard for the rest of the journey.
Despite the cold weather, we had to drive with the windows down because we smelt so bad and smoked so much. Whicker didn’t drink or smoke. The bins kept him fit and occupied, while his spare time was spent standing guard on Anderson. In his white shoes and resplendent, well-ironed black shirts, he was a complete contrast to Anderson, who dressed in an old pinstripe with egg stains on his tie and socks poking through his shoes. Eddie’s clothes were always clean and well-pressed, Anderson’s were always crinkled and dirty. On almost every activity I went on that Whicker and the Chairman attended, Whicker would bring a spare shirt and pair of trousers in case Anderson should ever truly despair of his own attire.
I didn’t know the geography of a journey from Croydon to Rochdale but even an inexperienced driver like myself knew that driving on the hard shoulder was not going to get us there very quickly. The longer I sat in the van and smelt the by-products of last night’s beer and kebabs, the more I thought about the Socialist Workers Party, all perfumed and nubile, heading off for a huge shagging session at somebody’s stately home while their parents were in the Algarve. An experienced journalist who strayed into the NF declared: ‘If you’re not a Socialist at sixteen you have no heart. If you’re not a National Socialist at twenty-one, you’ve got no bottle.’ So I, just turned eighteen, had plenty of time then, eh?
Our proposed march had been banned. With a certain predictability, it transpired that we never really intended to march anyway. Ian Anderson had not even planned for one. All we would do was turn up so we could be turned away. Then we would retreat in the direction of our unassuming hotel on the outskirts of the town and make complaints about the lack of democracy and freedom of speech for us race-haters.
Rochdale played Peterborough that day. As we pulled into our designated meeting point with the rest of the motorway travellers, we decided that we would be the ‘Peterborough Supporters Association’ should the police pull us over. A quick head-count revealed that there were forty of us, plus at least another hundred in the town awaiting our arrival. It was like being in the cavalry, descending upon the poor defenceless white folk of Rochdale to restore their national pride. The big boys from London and the Midlands were going to show the local boys how to stir up the public, pitch whites against Asians and reclaim Rochdale as their own once more.
A quick phone call to one of our local lads told us that the news was not good. Asians with baseball bats were running riot and the police could not control them. A mob of reds from Manchester were in town whipping them into a frenzy, and our local members had decamped the area for their own safety. With nobody in the Leeds branch either competent or responsible enough to hire a minibus, they too were on their way home, having been picked up at the train station by the police.
Anderson addressed us with cool words. The game was up, we would have to do it on our own. We would have to save Rochdale ourselves. This was first class news. The hangover was clearing and I was in need of a brisk walk.
‘I have to warn you,’ said Anderson, ‘that there are hundreds of Pakis armed with baseball bats causing mayhem in the town. We shall have to show great restraint.’
Restraint? Did that mean we were going to have to do a runner?
‘Pakis play cricket, not baseball,’ I offered, by way of light relief.
Anderson exploded like an old bitch, ranting and raving, ‘fuck this’ and ‘fuck that’. He was still ranting and raving as I got on the minibus.
‘Just get in your bus and keep your mouth shut!’
And that’s what I did, red in the face and a little flabbergasted. It was from that moment on that Anderson was named ‘Angry’ Anderson, after a dreadful Australian pop star. Whicker offered Anderson a coat, but he refused.
‘What a bitch,’ said Whicker as he followed Anderson’s minibus towards Rochdale, towards humiliation, towards an early bath.
The Greater Manchester Police sent a bloke with a lot of tassles and buttons on his shoulders to stop us getting into Rochdale. He stood in the middle of the road and flagged us over to the side. Anderson got out of his bus with hands on hips and argued. Then argued some more. Then got really annoyed and sat in his minibus and sulked. Another plod came and pressed his face against our window to watch our impending humiliation. We were told to leave our minibuses and stand by the side of the road while the plod looked inside. Fortunately Eddie had not brought his collection of used tampons along for the journey, because plod was desperate to arrest somebody and the theft of surgical materials is a serious offence in Lancashire. It was decided we should drive into Rochdale and pick up any stragglers whom the police were keeping behind their lines for their own safety. We moved in a convoy of two minibuses, one car and half a dozen plod vehicles, into the outskirts of town, where we decamped behind a church.
All hell was breaking loose in front of us. Angry young brown faces were running up to the mall line of police and trying to throw things at us.
‘Come on let’s have it!’ they were shouting, wielding baseball bats.
I’ve often wondered where people get baseball bats from. They should probably ban them, because they appear only ever to get used to hit people with. This seems quite strange if you’ve ever seen them play it on television, because the professional players always drop their bats when it is time for fighting.
A confused young Asian strolled up to us from behind and was belted to the ground by somebody from Hemel Hempstead. ‘Angry’ Anderson had given up arguing and was now pleading that the police let the NF hold their pre-booked meeting in a hotel that wasn’t even in Rochdale anyway. Is there no First Amendment in Britain? We were screaming ‘Free Speech’ and ‘Hang Winston Silcott‘, because, after all, you may as well try and persuade the plods that you are quite decent really. No go. So off we went in disgrace, smashing the church windows as we went. Absolute losers. The National Front: as much influence as a sack of shite.
The hangovers returned as we slowly drove out of Rochdale, accompanied by a police escort until we were finally out of Lancashire. No stopping (because we were not allowed) at any more Happy Eaters. No more tampon jokes, no more quick wit. I buried my head in my lap and got the distinct impression I would have to dispose of my underwear by the time we got to Watford Gap. It could have been nerves, it could have been the chilli sauce. I’m not sure.
I left my underwear sunny side up over the bonnet of some unsuspecting French motorist and listened contentedly to Paul Ballard address everybody in the canteen. The Croydon organiser paced around the car park looking crestfallen.
Eddy suggested that with our humiliation being so early in the day, we had enough time left to travel to Southall and attempt a wrecking spree on the planned festivities in memorial of the anti-fascist campaigner, Blair Peach.
Now, at the Embankment tube station there used to be this graffiti that read ‘SPG killed Blair Peach’ and under it somebody had scrawled ‘Good’. I didn’t know who Blair Peach was, but my juvenile foolishness had taught me that the police only ever kill people who deserved it, even accidentally. It turned out that Peach was a New Zealander and a schoolteacher in Southall opposing an NF election meeting and his death had been the butt of many a bad joke in the NF ever since. What we would do is drive into Southall, find the plaque in his honour and remove it, possibly raffle it off at some function later on. We were all very keen to do so, given that we had wasted all our money on a non-event. There was only one dissenting voice: the man from London Underground was not keen.
‘Have you seen Southall? Pakis everywhere. We’ll be picked out straight away.’
‘No, no, no,’ I protested. ‘All the Pakis are in Rochdale today.’
But they weren’t.
When we got to Southall, Ballard got out of the bus and looked around, hesitantly. We were parked in a car park around the back of Southall market. Ours were the only white faces in town, all sitting together silently, expectantly. Ballard took a walk. Southall was preparing for the next day’s activities. They were planning to march, sing, chant and give speeches before unveiling the plaque. By God we wanted that plaque too. No one was around but we whispered in case anybody realised who we were. In the background, we could hear the noise and bustle of the market.
Ballard returned with the news that the plaque was at the town hall, behind a fence. This time we drove into the town and everybody stopped and stared at us, thinking we were the police. ‘Is this what Calcutta would be like?’ I wondered. We would never know, so we assumed so. Ballard claimed that he’d seen them slitting the necks of goats in the market, causing us to tut-tut at the scandalous outrage that they were allowed to do this in an English town. We were doubly defeated; we couldn’t find Blair Peach’s plaque, and another piece of English suburbia had turned into Calcutta. Refused a march, refused a meeting, refused even a motorway stop at any Happy Eater in Lancashire.
In a poetic Russian novel, we would have rushed home and pulled our families to our breasts, sobbing uncontrollably at our sorrows, possibly drunk too much and taken our own lives. I got dropped off at my local and told my sorrowful tale of woe to the landlord, who understood everything. It was a pretty lonely drink, given that most people my age would have been out having sex at parties and listening to Acid House or something.
Rochdale was a terrible defeat for the Front. The following month the party paper tried to make a lot of noise with its headline ‘MOB RULE’, trying to express the anger that the members felt, encouraging them to sell more copies of the paper than in previous months, to spread the word about just how shocking Britain had become for white, law-abiding patriots. It would never work. It was humiliation that we felt, from top to bottom. Many of us just crashed into our beds, hungover and depressed by the events at Rochdale. The NF was no longer big enough, strong or capable enough to pull off such stunts. We had been humiliatingly run off the patch by Asians and reds. No propaganda would ever persuade the members it was anything else. It did nothing to encourage members to become more active and it became twice as difficult to persuade the only member with a girlfriend to ever come out with us again. Those of us who knew we would be back in such circumstances again felt embarrassed trying to persuade the few armchair members to get active.
We felt we had let down all the people we had tried to recruit. Without even the numbers for a punch-up, the entire day had been a disaster. Anderson was held up for ridicule for his shortcomings in negotiating with the police. BNP members from Lancashire who made it into Rochdale, had spread the news of our defeat to London before we’d even arrived home. Not allowing us into the town had worked. They knew we wouldn’t be coming back, they knew we weren’t interested in them any more.
The next day at Brick Lane we scratched our arses and sighed. The BNP was in the process of distributing the 100,000th copy of its anti-Semitic hatesheet Holocaust News which ridiculed the NF. Tony Lecomber issued a scathing attack on the NF in a typed circular, predicting its imminent demise and we left the Lane feeling black and sorry for ourselves. By contrast, after more successes in the East End, holding meeting after meeting, the BNP put the final nail in the coffin of the SDP by beating them into fourth place in an Essex Council election, scoring in their ward alone, just under half what the NF had polled only months before in the whole parliamentary seat. Anderson had to have a change of strategy. The members had to feel useful again. The Vauxhall by-election would be perfect.