12 September 1992. Just about every time I leave the house these days it’s preceded by a television announcement of major disruption to London caused by a planned demonstration against Nazis.
They were hardly the Beautiful South, but there was something sickeningly exciting about going to see Skrewdriver. Just about every Nazi in Britain who could walk was expected to be at Waterloo Station in London for redirection to the big event. Their mixture of rock-a-billy and poor white trash blues often got hundreds of skinheads and their girlfriends on the dance floor moshing, punching and kicking each other, smashing glasses and bottles into each other’s faces while the hard men stood on the sides bemused, drinking lager and eyeing up the skinhead girls. Donaldson’s music career had begun in a band playing Rolling Stones’ cover versions, but he saw nothing strange or hypocritical applying race hate lyrics to what was after all, originally black music. Driven from his London bedsit a few years before by a sustained campaign by anti-fascists, Donaldson had also spent time in prison for attacking a black man on the London Underground. He spent his time out of London travelling the world, writing new songs, shagging young girls and doing weights in a German prison.
Skinheads were the only group on the right that were guaranteed a regular sex life. Something moronic and twisted among them didn’t seem to mind treating the skinhead girls as trampolines, who went from one painful and pointless relationship to another with a mattress tied to their backs. Some skinheads had fathered children with two or three different girls, who in turn had three other kids to three other fathers, who all played together like one big happy family. Skinheads were mistrustful of the ‘casuals’ who hung around skinhead events, because they knew it was not for the music. Most casuals hung around only because they were more apt at making money from the events than the skins. The skinheads who sold t-shirts and CDs only did so because some casual had manufactured and printed them on their behalf. ‘Political parasites’ the skins called them.
I met Nicky outside the Hotspur pub on Tottenham Court Road and he had another large scab on him, this time from being hit in the head with a toilet seat at the punk gig he had recently attacked. He also had a huge bruise from a kick to his back, which he gladly pulled his shirt up to show me. ‘I’m fighting reds seven nights a week now,’ he told me brightly as he shadow-boxed his way into the pub. Five large bruisers sat at the table and all rose and shook my hand in turn. They’d been snorting shit off the table and I was suddenly overcome by a previously unfelt puritanical streak. Fucking drugs. I knew it went on amongst the football hooligans, but dedicated fascists weren’t supposed to do it. I knew Charlie Sargent sold drugs, but I didn’t think for one minute that the anti-drug campaigners of the BNP would indulge in them personally.
We made a painful trek across London with our paranoia heightened. When we arrived Waterloo Station for redirection, the streets around it resembled a battleground. Having dodged reds on the Underground until we came up into the station concourse, we were greeted by the sight of bloodied skinheads sat around dazed and confused, nursed by their girlfriends while panicked passengers ran for cover. For the past few hours, huge groups of anti-fascists and skins had done battle in and around the station. The press were on the station taking photographs of the mayhem, while Nicky and I calmly walked through the mess to the clock that marked the main entrance. Outside, hundreds of police vans and officers aided by dogs and helicopters overhead hovered around. A footbridge crossing the road into the station was full of skins penned in by the police, while below, hundreds of anti-fascists made a mess of any Nazi not hiding behind police lines.
The skinheads looked so helpless, almost childish in their silly boots with swastikas shaven into the backs of their heads, ripped bomber jackets and Nazi badges torn from the arms. The skinhead security had been given a pounding earlier in the day, and there was no one around to redirect the stragglers who had come from as far as France and Sweden.
A huge roar went up as behind us another load of anti-fascists came into the station from the Underground and laid into the skins who were fleeing for the exits. More fighting broke out outside as the skins on the footbridge tried to make a run into the station to join the fracas and the police started to baton-charge the anti-fascists. ‘We’ve got to meet the Aldershot train,’ said Nicky, hurriedly pushing through the police and Nazis struggling on the station concourse. A young girl was shouting from the arrival gate, ‘The Yorkshire Grey in Eltham, the gig’s moved to the Yorkshire Grey, Eltham,’ before turning around and getting back on the train. Was she for real?
Daphne Liddle, a small Communist woman I had for years abused on Lewisham High Street where she sold her papers, came and stood next to me. ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked. ‘The gig’s at Yorkshire Grey, in Eltham.’ She pointed her camera in my face and muttered ‘Nazi bastard.’
I headed for the exit to Waterloo East, just as the police were closing down one of Britain’s busiest train stations. On the other side of Waterloo East Station Nicky stood in front of a bus heading for the Elephant and Castle, and would not let the driver go until we had all made it on. Even at the Elephant, we would not be safe as we could see a huge mob of Millwall supporters milling about with black youths heading towards the station. The rest of the bus sat in stony silence as police cars drove past us in the other direction and a helicopter flew overhead. I remembered reading in a local paper about a cab firm at the Elephant and Castle that had recently been prosecuted for only hiring black drivers who ‘looked and behaved’ like Trevor Macdonald, the newsreader. I told Nicky that we would all have to get cabs from there, and to make sure the skins had got some money. After some threats, the cab firm gave us its four best white drivers, while Nicky and I sat in a cab with a black driver, who looked nothing like Trevor Macdonald.
The Yorkshire Grey used to be an enormous but mainly empty pub near the A20 and the Well Hall roundabout, on a main road facing some of Eltham’s more notorious council estates. Nicky stuck more powder on his fist and snorted, until I exploded. ‘What the fuck is with the coke, man? What the fuck is with the drugs?’ He looked a little bit embarrassed. ‘There’s just so much of it around, I couldn’t help but give it a go, could I?’
In the main bar the C18 team sat trying to catch a glimpse of the aggro still going on at Waterloo on the television. A couple of angry blacks came into the main bar to complain to the landlord that they had been racially abused on their way in. The bar staff were shitting themselves.
The C18 crew consisted of all the well-known Nazi football hooligans from London, dressed to the nines in expensive gear, snorting drugs off the tables and drinking bottled beers. This was madness. I followed Nicky into the toilet where he was using his Switch card to cut up some more coke. He was getting more and more jumpy, but I kept following him until he agreed to talk.
‘We’re splitting up into teams. Charlie’s giving us the orders and we’re carrying them out for him. It goes all the way to the top. The UDA, the BNP, the Headhunters. We’re gonna be unstoppable.’
We missed the first band and piled into the hall free of charge. A couple of hundred skins sat around the floor while the C18 mob drank at the bar. It seemed incredible but it dawned on me, that C18 deliberately let the skinheads get done over at Waterloo so that they could run Blood and Honour themselves.
Charlie wanted to run everything, he’d named his price for fronting a mass street army and it was the book clubs, the UDA under Frank and Eddie, the football hooligans, the BNP casuals, all falling into order. I stood away from Nicky for the rest of the night as he swayed and jabbered his way around the room, bumping into people. The Yorkshire Grey was a fifteen-minute walk from home, I could leave now and be gone, but outside the reds and the police had arrived. The bemused sound engineer was playing rap music during the interim, which the C18 crew seemed to like, but it perplexed the skins somewhat.
When Ian Stuart took to the stage the whole hall ran to the front to salute their hero, returning to London to play for them. Stuart looked uncomfortable. The lights didn’t go down, they never did at these gigs. It was a million miles away from Paul Heaton and his cheeky grin. There was a large flag behind the band and a small gang of hard-men at the front of the stage to protect their hero. Donaldson described it as a victory that the gig went ahead despite more than half the expected turnout not making it. ‘And even though he’s not here, I wanna thank Charlie Sargent and the boys from Redwatch for making this gig possible. He may look like a naughty schoolboy, but he’s the toughest bastard I know,’ he shouted into the mic. And with that, Skrewdriver launched into their first song, with lyrics about hating blacks, hating gays, and Jews and foreigners.
Nicky sauntered back over to me. ‘He got it wrong. Redwatch is our hitlist.’ From his pocket he pulled out a newsletter. ‘Look at this.’ Redwatch was a tatty piece of paper handwritten in places, with dozens of names of trade union members, teachers, community workers and members of the anti-fascist community. ‘All you gotta do is look in the phone book or behind a PO Box and you’ve got ’em. Then we give them a call or even pay them a visit. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve done loads.’ He grinned at me like the silly bastard I knew he was. But this was what it had been bound to lead to.
How long, I wondered, before my name would appear on such a list?
For the rest of the gig I stood in the middle of the hall while skinheads moshed around the room, breaking each other’s noses and battering into the skin girls who sat on the sidelines holding their jackets for them. After an hour I could bear it no longer and was just about to run from the building when the landlady intervened. Ian Stuart was no little boy but he was hardly brave either. She pulled the plug. I nearly cried for her. ‘Gig’s over,’ she said into the mic, then left the hall. Rock and Roll! Ian Stuart walked from the stage without protest. Everything fell flat, there were large groans, but nobody kicked off.
The skinheads insisted I get in the minibus with them because ‘London’s not safe for a white man.’ I didn’t mind. Everyone in the minibus had a copy of Redwatch and was scouring it for names and addresses near them.