1991 ended as frantically as it had begun. I was now working up on Oxford Street. The new job had provided me with personal confidence and slowly I reverted back to the cheeky kid on the fruit market, with a disposable income, silly haircuts, a new orange coat and a belly full of more alcohol than a star substitute should really drink.
Racism and fascism were irrelevant here and my old friends were more than willing to welcome me back into the fold. I realised I had not spent much time in the company of normal, single women, so my jokes about helmet cheese, Roundheads or Cavaliers only ever attracted blokey interest.
A brief love affair popped up for a couple of weeks and all my pent-up poetry came gushing out as I gazed at her arse and listened intently to her go on about unilateral disarmament, the impending Labour victory at the next election, and how jogging and a strict diet would save my waistline. Then my mate from the army came home on leave and shagged her.
In October I agreed with Gerry Gable that I would go for one last bang on the drums with the NF at that year’s Remembrance Day Parade. I was looking forward to my lunches with the ‘old monster’ Gable. He’d been both a Communist and an alleged burglar during his lifetime of fighting fascists. Things were changing, things could be about to become far more dangerous for me now that I’d toyed around with paramilitaries and C18 was flexing its muscles.
Searchlight wanted me to follow Eddie out of the NF entirely, follow him into the UDA, whilst still keeping an eye on Blackham. It was a natural course for me to follow. The BNP annual rally (as opposed to the annual conference) was approaching. Getting in there and reacquainting myself was an important first step. Gable and I spoke for hours. He gave me a long list of everything to look for and who to talk to. There were things I wanted to ask him about Searchlight but it was obvious that if I didn’t know them, I couldn’t trip up. Time after time I asked to be told who else worked for Searchlight within the far right. He did not say.
On 19 October Paul Ballard and I met at Euston with a few others for a couple of sneaky snorkels. 300 Nazis hung around the area, mixing with plain-clothed police and football casuals, providing security. A few NF hung around with their faces covered in case they were photographed by NF spies, while in the pub the walls were covered with stickers from home and abroad carrying the legend: ‘Niggers Beware’ or ‘Stamp out homosexuality, stamp out the AIDS menace’. The chief BNP steward ‘Daddy’ Derek Beackon, took me aside. ‘We’ve got a really useful team waiting up at Bethnal Green. Can you lead the first party up there?’
Forty of us made our way east to Bethnal Green. As ever, with everyone lagered up and jingoistic, trouble was already in the air. They stopped people getting on or off the tube when they wanted to. At one stop a black woman got on. ‘Sorry luv, this is a no-nigger train,’ they told her, shoving her off onto the platform. The bemused woman pushed her way back on and through them, her eyes widening in confusion. Did she not hear them? ‘Are you deaf?’ one lad said, leaning into her. Beackon joined us on the journey. The tube was jam-packed with terrified and embarrassed passengers staring at their feet or avoiding looking at us. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a young girl mouth to her friend, ‘Who the fuck are these people?’ As the train pulled away from the platform we began Nazi saluting people on the platform and making monkey noises at black youths still on the platform. The shaken woman took her seat and Beackon barked that nobody was allowed to touch her. ‘Keep it all bottled up for now boys,’ he said excitedly. He turned to me grinning. ‘Wait till you see what we’ve got at Bethnal Green,’ and remained grinning for the rest of the journey, like a fucking idiot.
On the platform at Bethnal Green, a team of smartly dressed casuals greeted us and directed us to one of the exits from the station where, resplendent with BNP armbands for identification, there was another group of men only allowing BNP supporters to pass through. The precision and the absolute front of their behaviour was stunning. They pointed and barked instructions at civilians walking towards them to ‘use another exit’ and the vast majority of them happily obliged. Beackon and I hung around for a while as the stewards pointed everyone in the right direction, towards York Hall, the famous boxing venue.
Could the BNP really just turn up in armbands and commandeer a tube station like this? If they were true to their fascist beliefs, they should also have checked our tickets.
York Hall was booked under a false name and the bar was filling up rapidly. It’s an impressive venue, large and long with a balcony that runs around the top. Edmonds ran up and grabbed my arm excitedly. ‘Welcome to the Nuremberg rally, Bethnal Green style,’ he beamed, proudly. Already, a hundred or so drunk men were falling around the place with more piling in, sharing tales of racial violence dished out since we all last got together. Nazi CDs were for sale, as were books rewriting the Holocaust. Once more I could smell the white men’s drinking club. In the last twelve months the BNP had as much as trebled its membership. They were proud to be here, in their full moronic glory. Today we would hear from the regions how the party had grown in stature, how violence and intimidation were the key BNP strategies.
Its pride and joy was its new Scottish branches. Scott Maclean was the BNP’s leader up there and he droned on and on about his achievements, wearing a shirt straight out of its wrapper. How could I be here, how could I still be doing this? The whole idea was to get away, and yet, these were still the only people I knew. The events were lightened somewhat when a spurned female admirer of Edmonds’ tried to storm the stage as he rose to speak. He held up the Jewish Chronicle, which he described as a ‘piece of shit’ and loudly plotted the BNP’s intentions to continue aggravating the racial tensions in both east and south east London. Edmonds sat down to warm applause. He looked almost apologetic and embarrassed for his popularity with the supporters. No, I did not want to be friends with Richard any more.
The bar was forcibly emptied for the Leader’s speech. Tyndall rose to foot-stomping, Sieg-Heiling and chants of ‘Leader’, which became ‘Führer’ in a roar. He allowed himself a small acknowledgment of his pumped-up stature, before crashing down upon us with thunderous words. Men should be real men, women should be women. These blacks this, those Jews that, my men this. His speech was like a huge wave continually crashing down upon us before receding, to come crashing again. He accused the Tories of only flying the national flag because it had ‘Israeli blue’ in it, which everyone loved. York Hall was alive, nothing was held back as, from the seats facing Tyndall, people raised their right arms to salute their hero.