A man from Searchlight and I shared an overpriced cup of tea in a museum in town. This was a peculiarly surreal moment by any standards. What was his agenda? I knew what mine was, but what was his obsession with people like me? Further, were we going to become friends or was he going to try and stick his cock up my arse, like all lefties do?
I had my newspaper laid out on the table, as per my instructions. I had also ordered myself a lemon meringue pie, in an attempt to look a little sophisticated while I awaited his arrival. Upon his almost magician-like appearance in front of me, the man from Searchlight eyed me suspiciously, as if I could have been there to shoot him. It didn’t even cross my mind as I sat there broken-hearted. What would be the point, for a start?
He asked me if I knew of the last time I had been photographed by anti-fascists.
‘All the fucking time,’ I told him.
‘I know who you are anyway,’ he said and then we parted.
I had to leave first, no doubt so some fucker could take my photograph. I stuck my hands in my pockets, bowed my head, stuck my collars up and ran for the Underground. I went home to bed cursing my stupidity.
After the meeting, I felt a bit numb. I also had to ask myself honestly what my motivation had been for doing it. It hadn’t been financial, as not even my meringue had been paid for. Searchlight was a sinister magazine that nosed in and out of the rubbish bags of far-right activists, published the details of their findings and humiliated the decent law-abiding patriots that it exposed. It harassed us, tormented us and even scared us. This magazine was totally dedicated to fighting everything I had for so long thought I stood for. Who read it, and what for? People who were even suspected of helping them were often left in a pool of blood and piss. Searchlight’s mere existence cast a huge shadow over everyone’s confidence. Even in meetings attended by very few people there was a suspicion that even among our closest and most trusted comrades one of us was ‘selling out’.
The truth was, I was changing. Why take two steps forward, followed by three back? I didn’t enjoy the company of fascists, perverts, thugs and incompetents. The ‘movement’ was a guarded place where you couldn’t breathe or blink differently, show compassion, have other friends or other interests. Sure, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but the fence was long and high where we lived.
The same week I met Searchlight, I met Adrian Davies in a Lewisham pub because he wanted to talk. It struck me, as we sat in the pub, that I had friends in the far right with £100,000-a-year jobs and about eight educated years of difference between us. Davies wanted to offer me his tutelage. He knew I was low and confused, had got my fingers burnt and had a permanent look of hopelessness on my face. He talked about his disasters at Cambridge University over a woman, his political aspirations – ‘If I thought there could be a nationalist government tomorrow, I’d vote for it, then get the first boat out!’ – but his concern for me was genuine, although misguided in many ways.
Davies was such a Tory. He was short, bald, portly and incredibly posh. He was always flitting in and out of the far right with little success. Adrian said I should prepare myself for all the rumours now I was in limbo. The word was out that the young Nazi about town had fallen out with the NF leadership. The rumours would be sexual, financial, religious, racial, everything.
As if a light had been turned on somewhere inside his obviously overworked head he’d decided that what I needed was go to university, and ‘literally fuck every woman that you ever speak to. Forget politics, forget the NF and the BNP, that’s all finishing. The political landscape on the right is changing so much that you know nothing and can do nothing unless you go to university, get a good job and contribute to your own well-being.’ I noticed that Davies kept all his money in a small purse and paid for all his drinks in small change.
He was right. The first rumour came out of the Anderson faction in Croydon NF. The guys at Searchlight had already heard it. Anderson had set me up in a small flat in Barking on the NF’s funds and I was biting his pillow. The police (of course I was a police spy) had taken me off the job and I was now moving to the BNP. My old man had apparently been released from Long Kesh and had persuaded me to join the INLA (Irish National Liberation Army). Eddie relayed them to me daily over the telephone, as Anderson despatched rumour after rumour – except, I’m sure, for the one about the flat in Barking – all over London via Blackham. The idea was to scupper any plans I had to join the BNP. Anderson also called to remind me, in a friendly manner, that I was still a party employee and was still a member, so not to do anything to damage its interests. Not that I’d signed any confidentiality agreements, but I understood.
Anderson, Blackham and I still rang each other almost daily. Even for them it was difficult to lose comrades and friends I suppose. Terry and I could barely be in the same room as each other but we still needed to talk to each other because we both had shared a hatred of black people and there did not seem to be enough other people who thought the same way to just let another lone traveller simply pass you by. I had stopped leafleting and selling papers with Blackham and the rest of south London NF and instead spent my evenings watching the never-ending pieces about the BNP on the local evening news. It was an almost daily event. Richard Edmonds would always be filmed throwing open the doors to the BNP shop and welcoming whichever news team it was inside. He even refused entry to a black reporter ‘and that’s my right’, he told me.
Searchlight wanted another meeting and the mix of curiosity, and fear as to what trouble this would get me into, was too tempting to turn down. I knew they’d think I was just another workingclass, clueless and uncultured idiot. The meeting lasted an entire afternoon and it was long and painful. The security was enormous and involved changing cars, short cab rides and very nearly a paper bag over my head. The trip was made in silence except for the grunted instructions given to the taxi driver as to when to move on. I don’t know if the drivers were in on the job or not but they took instructions that seemed to be sending us around in circles and down one-way streets back the way we had just come. Eventually we ended up at the back of a shabby London hotel. With my collar up, I entered, accompanied on either side by my two ‘friends’, and walked straight to the elevator.
This was it then. My legs were like lead jelly and my stomach was screaming in terror. The room was small, with a net-curtained window and a small single bed with brown bedding. Perhaps he was going to try and stick his cock in me.
The meeting began. Since our last meeting, he’d been away to do his research. They showed me photographs of myself with the friends and foes I had nurtured since I was fifteen. I had to name every one of them. Having made a habit of sticking my fingers up at photographers I was now seeing the results. Even in a photographic still you can tell when someone’s shouting ‘cunt’ at the photographer. I’d been on a lot of marches, paper sales and provocative meetings in my short life, that much was obvious. Quite clearly, so had Searchlight.
Towards the end of the interview, as the rain pissed down outside the window and the cheap bulb was casting a dim, golden light, the tables turned against me. Photographs of Eddie and me in Birmingham photographing Irish marchers, photographs of me and other known UDA men, photographs of me with people I’d said I’d never met, at places I’d never been were produced. They knew these were dangerous times, they knew what I was loosely associated with. They knew more about my relationship with Mr X than I’d ever known.
Suddenly, for the first time ever, I was really scared. What the fuck had I been doing? I could easily get myself killed. But my biggest fear was of myself, having been with these people who, when described aloud for the benefit of the tape, were not just the peculiar misfits I had known and associated with, but dangerous monsters. Everyone I described as being an ‘alright, good bloke’ had ‘gets pissed and smashes things up’ and ‘wants to blow up a synagogue’ following afterwards. Men with no lives, no compassion, who could have crushed me at any moment had they chosen to. Men who would go on to murder people, plant bombs, attack innocent women, drive cars loaded with guns, give support to cold-blooded killers, fight as mercenaries in foreign wars. Men who would cover up for each other if one of them killed me now. They were not going to go away, I would know these people for the rest of my life and, from this day on, live in fear of them. How could I not realise this awful mess around me?
I gulped for a long breathless period and went to the toilet for a loud and embarrassing dump while the two people from Searchlight whispered in hushed breaths outside in the room. The whole hotel seemed to be full of people that were there for the meeting. People loafing in reception, people waiting outside the room, people I have never seen since.
The meeting finished quite abruptly. I had a few tears which, when I brushed them, only made it worse. The man offered me an apple to take home. The woman didn’t say a word. There were no smiles, no arms around the shoulder. They just repeated the magic act of seemingly disappearing into thin air, picking up as they went, the large amount of security that came with them.
All the way home I cursed myself for what a fucking idiot I had been. The rain in London only brings out strangers and raincoats, passing you by with anonymous heads bowed, not stopping to ask your name as you pass against them. If meeting Searchlight had been an attempt to unburden myself, it was not having the desired effect. It was a dreadful, intimidating meeting. To them I was obviously still a, very confused, Nazi fanatic with an irritable bowel. I obsessed about what I had said to them and what they would do with the information. No arrangements had been made to meet again and neither of them had ventured a hanky for my tears. Why were they trying to break an already broken man further?
Terry Blackham needed a bit of help at the office. Things were getting done in a strange way. Cheques were being cashed, but there was no stock. He didn’t know how to do things.
‘Come over, we’d love to see you. Ian thinks you feel a little bit surplus, but this is all your own doing Matthew. You’ve alienated us.’
Ian must have been whispering this speech in his ear, because Terry couldn’t have read it and there were at least two words that were not part of his limited, gruff vocabulary. Panic set in, so I immediately obeyed and caught the train into London. What if it was like the plot in Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday and Ian Anderson and Terry Blackham were also passing info to Searchlight? It wasn’t that much of a weird idea. Someone, somewhere inside the party had been keeping an eye on me and had been passing info to Searchlight.
We took a little lunch in a pub in East Ham, where all formalities stopped when a stripper came in and, well, stripped for a group of laddish builders in the middle of a freezing pub. Some bald guy was getting his head stuffed between two tits covered in shaving foam while his mates made lewd comments with their hands in their pockets. We lost Terry and, probably sensing that this would be a weak moment for me too, Anderson began the spiel I’d been waiting for.
‘We don’t want you to join the BNP. I know that it is a possibility, but we think the breakthrough for the NF will come when the Tories make their move. We know that you’re in with the Tories through Adrian [Davies] and we think there is potential there, for you and us.’
I would have given anything to have had my head between those sagging, tattooed cockney knockers as opposed to having to sit with this far less appealing pair of tits.
‘Let’s go back to the office,’ said Anderson.
Back at the office which was, if possible, even dirtier than when I left it, Terry was overcome with his importance and showed me pictures of Mr X and himself at a London UVF function just before Christmas, with men in balaclavas and other loyalist regalia. Anderson somehow sensed this was not a good idea and coughed ‘put those away now, come on’, and Terry snapped to attention. I had my chance.
‘That’s not very clever of him is it, getting himself photographed like that?’
Ian agreed. ‘His carelessness has cost us all dearly.’ He too was looking at the awful state of the office and Terry’s appalling administrative skills. Not only did he not clear up after Anderson, Terry actually doubled the mess.
‘It keeps me off the building sites working here,’ said Terry glumly. ‘The fucking reds have got the word out about me. If I go onto a building site in London some Irish cunt’s gonna either drop something on my head or push me off the scaffolding.’
He scrunched his nose up, he hated the idea of having to take a low profile, particularly when he enjoyed the work on site and it obviously paid much better than the NF.
We didn’t mention Mr X again for the rest of the afternoon. Ian went out to the printing machine in his back garden while I showed Terry how to fiddle the mail order records in case the Jews at the tax office were ever going to be even mildly interested. Terry even asked me what he was ‘supposed to do all day… I mean there’s nothing to do. The phone hardly ever rings, Ian won’t let me near the printing side, I’m as bored as hell.’ In a moment of madness, I promised him I’d come back the next day and we’d go leafleting together in streets where BNP members lived. For a whole day I was not one bit scared of the lunatic. He seemed quite helpless. I did the best I could, but I could not make stock appear magically out of my arse. Terry drove me home, in almost complete silence. I wish I had asked him to teach me how to drive.
Searchlight picked me up in a car the next day. The man was insistent I cancel all of my plans – so out went leafleting with Terry – and join him instead. He parked his car just off the estate and told me to get into the back. Another, enormous, man came from nowhere to get in beside me. The new man was much more chatty, almost friendly. He was built like a brick shithouse and looked like the sort of bloke who worked out in front of his bedroom mirror with his cock in his hand. He fancied himself.
‘You’re a bit of a character Matthew – I can call you Matthew can’t I? I’ve just been reading The Flag. The NF’s got exactly the same line on the Gulf as The Guardian,’ which he was also holding.
I grunted. I didn’t know what The Guardian was saying so I took his word for it. Our new friend gave directions to our destination.
‘Cheer up,’ he said, leaning over to push the lock button down on my door, ‘We’ll be there in a minute.’
He kept tapping his shoulder so I got the message that he was carrying a gun. An hour later we are sat in a flat that wasn’t furnished any better than the cheap hotel room. We spent three hours going over everything we had done only a few days previously and Blackham and Anderson were furious I missed leafleting. Apparently Terry had sat indoors all day waiting for me to arrive.
1991 started with a letter from Anderson and a pay cheque, effectively paying me off after I’d told him that I would prefer life on the dole, to taking a pay cut to accommodate Terry. He told me he was hurt and I told him that I was skint. Neither of us gave a fuck about the other’s predicament.
One Monday morning in February, Searchlight hit the stands with ‘Gotcha: Front’s Chum on The Sun’ emblazoned across its front page. Fucking hell!! I hadn’t been warned and had not seen the article. My phone call came sometime after eight that morning. I was being ordered over to east London, by Angry Anderson.
‘Get over here now, we have a major problem!’
I refused outright. ‘What is it? I’ve got a job interview today.’
He exploded. I could hear the phone being hammered on the bottom stair, by the front door where he took and made his calls.
‘You get the fuck over here now, TODAY!’
The life drained out of me immediately. The fucking Jews at Searchlight probably didn’t roll into work until sometime after midday. I slumped on the living room couch. The phone rang again. This time it was Whicker.
‘They didn’t keep that secret very long, did they?’ he said, chuckling to himself. He read the entire article about Mr X to me. Apparently, Blackham had even posed alongside Mr X in The Sun, masquerading as a homeless person for a feature on homelessness. I hadn’t seen it or even known about it. Other things I had known were thrown in there, but it was the work of four or five other parties as well.
‘He’s going to sue, so if you’re the source you’ll be in court facing him, and me,’ shouted Blackham furiously down the phone when he rang a few minutes later.
Anderson and Blackham quickly drew up a list of possible informers that started with ten names and grew to over a dozen, then thirty. They had to start with the Directorate, then slowly move through all the people who had seen Mr X with the NF or Blackham, at meetings or functions. The list grew longer until even Anderson was under suspicion from himself. Then it was Brady and Acton, Nash, Murphy, Adrian Woods, everyone. But the fact was, it was Searchlight that had the story and only my commitment to the NF was under the spotlight.
‘Everyone in the NF has a huge fucking mouth,’ I told Anderson when I called him back in genuine shock at the story. It was now a quarter to ten. In little under two hours the NF had almost imploded. Ian sounded distraught but I felt nothing for him, not an ounce of sympathy and, funnily enough, not an ounce of regret. They’d already had the chance to speak to Mr X, who had obviously told them of the story himself. Searchlight had not contacted him for a comment so he was suffering in the shock of it too. No one in the NF had actually seen the article except for Anderson, Blackham and Whicker, who subscribed to the magazine under a different name. They had relented somewhat by mid-morning, given that there was stuff in there that just could not have come from me.
‘When we find the cunt that’s done this to us, we’ll fucking bury him, no questions asked,’ said Terry and I did not doubt that for a moment.
During all of this, I could not help wondering when I was going to be getting a magical financial windfall. If the Anderson story about printing Labour Party memberships was potentially worth five grand, surely this was worth at least the same? I had to get into the little car with the man from Searchlight again, but this time I was to make ‘absolutely certain’ I was not being followed. We’d arranged signals to give each other as I approached the car in case either one of us sensed danger. I was handsomely paid with record and book tokens.
The Mr X scandal dragged on for the next few days. There was nothing in the papers, though the Daily Mirror had now begun to doorstep NF members that I had mentioneded to Searchlight. By all accounts the Mirror decided not to doorstep Blackham after they assessed the situation as too dangerous. Whicker’s place of residence was impossible to gain access to and the Mirror also put him on the too dangerous list. Poor old Murph had stood frozen to his doorstep, speechless, whereas other members confirmed the story from behind closed doors, not wanting to get involved. One particular member allegedly offered them more information for ten grand. The Mirror refused.
On Sunday, copies of Searchlight were handed out at Brick Lane by the BNP. BNP members usually stole copies from a leftist bookstall on the market, but they had actually gone out and bought them during the week to photocopy and distribute and the entire fascist community of London read the story aghast.
I stood with the renegade members of Croydon NF, the rest of the London party having gone into hiding on Anderson’s instructions. By now I knew the article word for word, but nobody was overly surprised that the story was now out. Tony Lecomber enjoyed rubbing it in but commented loud enough for the rest of my comrades to hear, ‘You never said anything about this, Matthew.’
We took the traditional Brick Lane Sunday drink with the BNP that day, watching strippers and eating a selection of mussels and whelks off the bar. I opted for a lift home with Edmonds that afternoon, and nobody seemed to care.
‘It’s time you joined the BNP, Matthew,’ proclaimed Edmonds over his driving shoulder. ‘The NF cannot protect anything or anyone.’
It was like being given the answer to a simple mathematical equation. Was I blind? Was I too scared to go to prison with these guys?
‘We’re off to Portsmouth next weekend, come down with us. It’ll be a bit of a wind up, there’s loads of Jews down there.’ A week later the local paper in Portsmouth reported a series of desecrations of Jewish graves.