Billy Bragg
Back in 2003, the BBC asked me whether I’d come and meet this bloke who’d flown in from Australia to talk about his time with the National Front, the BNP and Combat 18. The Beeb was making a documentary about him but I wasn’t particularly keen to be honest. These were the sort of people engaged in the ongoing intimidation and harassment of people who bought my records and used my website as a fanbase and I wasn’t in the mood to sit down with somebody who wanted patting on the head.
But after talking to the good people at Searchlight, curiosity got the better of me about his story and how he’d changed sides from fascist to anti-fascist and passed valuable information on without his comrades knowing anything about it. I ended up in a café in Shepherds Bush that specialised in Thai and traditional English cuisine, having breakfast with Matt Collins, talking about football, Englishness, page three girls and my music. He told me that he’d previously shaken my hand in the toilets of Melbourne Town Hall.
So here finally, is his roller coaster ride. A brilliantly candid memoir of being a confused and isolated teenager witnessing the far right’s terrifying acts of violence and depravity during the Thatcher years and later those of John Major, as they plotted their seemingly impossible dream of one day sitting in the council chambers of England and the European Parliament.
Matthew’s story is as emotive as it is horrifying and of course, always viciously witty, warm and poignant. But this book should sound a warning too; that we should not ignore the fascists or ever think they’ll go away.
Since that fateful full English in Shepherds Bush, I’ve had Matthew come on tour with me, speak on stage with me and even organise and promote benefit gigs for me. We’ve stood shoulder to shoulder on numerous occasions in the face of those fascists, none more memorable I suppose than in Barking and Dagenham in 2010, where we came face to face with the BNP’s council leader in the street and I ended up in heated discussion in front of the media with people who really would tell any lie and say and do anything to win over the hearts and minds of ordinary, disaffected working class people. We went on to help remove every single one of the BNP’s twelve councillors and defeated Nick Griffin’s parliamentary ambitions during that same campaign.
Matthew Collins should be the first port of call for anyone serious about understanding how people so isolated, driven by fears they cannot understand or comprehend, can be so taken in by racism and fascism. Taking that other brave step, as he did, to then go and spy on them gives us also an edge of the seat thriller.
He’s pulled no punches. If he ever has a guest list, you’ll wanna be on it.