Hateland (17 page)

    In the months following the riots, I attended a lot of Nazi meetings. Some of the speeches had a powerful rabble-rousing effect. The speakers would rage about 'the immigrants' looting and burning shops on 'our manor', beating up 'white men' on 'our streets' and terrorising 'white women' into staying indoors.

    Down the pub afterwards, we took it all very personally. No 'unemployed coons' and their middle-class red supporters were going to take the piss on our doorstep. On Friday nights, especially, as the alcohol flowed, we'd sit around in the bar having a communal rant. By closing time, everyone would be seething, desperate to seek revenge.

    We'd all pile into Del Boy's old blue Transit van. Armed with bats, bars, hammers and chains, we'd cruise up and down the road that runs between Stockwell and Clapham Common underground stations, looking for groups of blacks to attack. Our victims rarely fought back. They could usually flee as we jumped out the back of the van and ran at them. But twice we managed to capture someone. On both occasions, we bundled the young black man into the back of the van, gave him a good beating, then dumped him near The Windmill pub on Clapham Common.

    One evening, an excited BNP member we knew came running into The Royal Oak. He said Gerry Gable - a man hated and feared by Nazis as the force behind the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine - had been spotted drinking with a few friends in The Bull pub in Clapham old town. A group of BNP members had already gathered near The Bull to attack him. We all jumped into Del Boy's van and sped off to join them. Gable, who had lost relatives in the Holocaust, was often targeted for abuse and threats. People like Adolf regarded him as the incarnation of ZOG. In later years, a group of British Nazis on holiday in Prague sent Gable a parcel containing an old-fashioned suit, a pair of shattered pebble glasses, some chicken bones and a sprinkling of mud. The accompanying note said they'd just visited a former concentration camp and had managed to locate Gable's grandfather.

    When we arrived, the BNP members were already running from the pub, having carried out their 'attack'. They jumped in our van and we drove back to The Royal Oak. They were laughing excitedly, almost screeching with delight. I thought their attack must have been a real success. But when we all sat down to hear their war stories, I was disappointed. They said that, because of the 'panic in the pub', they hadn't been able 'to do him properly'. From their description, I felt they'd probably done the most panicking. I guessed they'd probably lost their bottle, thrown a couple of wet punches and legged it. Later, I discovered that the target hadn't even been Gerry Gable. It had been the then chairperson of the WRP. It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last, that I'd experienced an incident in which Nazi loudmouths talked war, then ran a mile at the first sign of trouble.

    One afternoon, Del Boy was driving me and Adrian 'Army Game' through the back streets of Brixton in his newly purchased car. Adrian was in the front seat; I was in the back. We spotted a black man working under the bonnet of a mini-van. Del Boy slowed down next to him and Adrian shouted, 'Oi, you fucking nigger!'

    The black guy stood up and said, 'Fuck you, boy.' Del Boy slammed on the brakes and we all moved to get out. As it was a two-door car, I had to wait for Adrian to go before I could push forward the front seat and get out myself. Adrian was only half out when the black man ran over and started punching him.

    As the two struggled, the black man started shouting, 'Help me! Help me!' In seconds, around ten other blacks had surrounded the car. I still hadn't had time to get out. I pulled Adrian back in and he slammed the door shut. Del Boy also got back in, but before he could slam shut his door someone hit him on the head with a spanner. He rammed the car into gear and we sped off down the road, chased for a few yards by a group of angry blacks.

    Blood ran down the back of Del Boy's head and his hands shook as he clutched the steering wheel. I kept laughing at the stupidity of it, and probably out of shock. My companions didn't see the funny side. They kept telling me to 'fucking shut up'. I felt that if they lacked the bollocks to fight these people, then they should have kept their mouths firmly shut. Simple as that.

    We began talking more often of emigrating. Many of us felt England had already lost the race war. It seemed like the blacks and the Asians and every other toerag called Abdul living in every other Third World shithole would soon be making a home in our green and pleasant land. The alien culture had already swamped us.

    I can't remember who first started talking about South Africa, but the country of apartheid began to shine out to us as a beacon of hope and a focus for our escape fantasies. It was hot there, English was spoken, more whites were needed and the blacks knew their place. Colin, in particular, often brought up the subject of this white paradise. He seemed genuinely to want to emigrate there. South Africa represented a new beginning, away from those bloody invaders and their appeasing hosts.

    At first, I thought it was just 'pub talk', but one day I asked him if he was serious. He convinced me he was. On the spur of the moment, I said, 'Why don't we go together?' He agreed. The night before we left, I stayed with him at his father's house in Stratford, east London. I didn't fancy flying out of Heathrow because of my outstanding warrant. Passport checks were less vigorous on the ferries, so we agreed to take a boat from Harwich to Holland, then to fly out to Africa from there with our tourist visas.

    I still laugh now when I think back to the day we left England. We both wore our Sunday-best suits and behaved like robot model-citizens. Very sober and correct. Indeed, as the train pulled out of Liverpool Street Station, we vowed never to drink alcohol again. Alcohol only brought trouble. And we were determined to avoid trouble in our new life. Even Millie's parents would have been proud of me.

    We were on our way to white man's heaven.

CHAPTER 8

WHITE MAN'S HEAVEN

Our iron-willed commitment to a new life without alcohol remained intact throughout the journey to Amsterdam. On the train, we drank only tea. On the ferry, we ordered only soft drinks. In the duty-free shop, we bought only postcards. As we set foot in Holland, still wearing our suits, we felt pride in our self-mastery. Our abstinence had set us firmly on the road to a new beginning.

    In Amsterdam, we booked into one of the floating hotels where Angie had nearly met her death. After a shower and a change of clothes, we decided to watch a football match on the telly. Holland were playing Belgium. We had to go down to the bar to see the match. Again, we ordered soft drinks. We sat sipping them for ten, perhaps eleven, minutes. Then the football chants combined with the holiday atmosphere to weaken our teetotal resolve.

    After a short discussion, we agreed it might be possible to relax our puritan restraint without compromising our good intentions. We'd proved to ourselves we could go without alcohol. Now we needed to prove we could drink in moderation. With that goal in mind, and nothing else, we decided to allow ourselves a few beers. Just a few. Nothing to excess. There'd certainly be no relapse into drunkenness.

    After a few hours' heavy drinking, we felt the agreement needed alteration. It was now all right to get drunk so long as we avoided trouble.

    We were having a good time drinking with a group of Dutch football supporters. 'Boisterous, but relaxed' is how the police might have described the scene. A fat but otherwise nondescript young woman waddled over and, with an English accent, told me and Colin to keep the noise down. I said I didn't think we were being too noisy. No one else was complaining. She disagreed and added that her boyfriend, who'd be down in half an hour, would also take exception to the volume, especially as he was a staunch Welsh nationalist who didn't like English people. This confused me. I asked what he was doing with her if he disliked the English. She said, 'My mum's Welsh.'

    We both laughed at her. Looking riled, she said, 'I'm advising you, for your own sake, not to be so loud when Dai comes.' I told her to fuck off. She said, 'You won't say that when Dai gets here.'

    She waddled back to her friends at the bar. Together, they kept glancing at us and the door. They seemed to be counting the seconds till Dai's arrival, eager to witness the English loudmouths' comeuppance at the hands of the destroyer from the valleys.

    Over the next half hour, various characters came into the bar. I'd say to Colin, 'D'you think that's Dai?'

    Colin would say, 'Naaa'. Then he'd make some derogatory comment about the potential gladiator.

    A slightly built creature with permed, peroxide-blond, shoulder-length hair arrived. He looked like the female flatmate in an unfunny 1970s sitcom. I said, 'That can't be Dai.'

    Colin said, 'Naaa, that's Princess Di.'

    We both laughed. Then the fat woman waved at the new arrival and shouted, 'Dai!' We laughed even more.

    Dai spoke briefly to his Bacon, turned and walked towards us. The look on his girlfriend's face said, 'Now we'll see.' Dai was a pace and a half away from me. As he opened his mouth to say something, I punched him hard into the side of the head. He fell back onto a table and crashed to the floor. As his girlfriend started screaming at me to stop hitting him, I stamped on him a few times. Dai stayed where he was. I don't think the Welsh warrior had encountered the direct approach before.

    Next morning at breakfast, Colin and I sat at one end of the room. All the other guests sat at the other. Only the sound of toast being chewed broke the perfect silence. Colin and I agreed that the new life, the new beginning, would start when we reached Africa. We flew first to Cairo in Egypt, then on to Nairobi in Kenya before landing in Johannesburg at midday after 16 hours in the air. As we shuffled through passport control, I vowed never to sit in a plane again. If necessary, I'd walk back to Europe.

    We found ourselves an apartment suite in the rather lavish Mariston Hotel and paid a month in advance. We wanted to ensure that, come what may, we'd have a roof over our heads. Only a month earlier, I'd been stranded in Europe without food, money or shelter. Now I was relaxing in opulence with black servants to cater for any wishes that occurred to me as I lazed in our spacious quarters or occupied myself in the sauna, swimming pool, bar and restaurant.

    It was all very pleasant. You could almost forget the civil war on the horizon. A real civil war, that is, not a few bricks being thrown in Brixton. It seemed to come a little closer with every day spent downing beers by the pool. You only had to watch the censored television news to see what was coming. The South African Army's supposed 'victories' against 'terrorists' on the borders filled those parts of the bulletins not taken up with reports of rebellion in the black townships or violent crime in the once 'safe' white suburbs.

    We treated the first fortnight as a holiday, sunbathing by day, clubbing by night. Then we started looking for work. Given the shortage of whites in a country that sought to preserve their dominant status - they represented about 18 per cent of the population, while around 68 per cent were classified as black, 11 per cent as coloured and 3 per cent as Asian - we thought it wouldn't be too difficult to find a slot somewhere. But as we'd entered the country on tourist visas, we found the search for work more challenging than expected. Everyone asked for work permits, which we didn't have.

    The South African authorities strictly enforced the permits, largely as a way to control the movement of blacks. Employers who chose to ignore the law could find themselves in a lot of trouble.

    Someone told us that foreigners could enlist in a branch of the South African Army to fight on the Namibian border. Given the seeming absence of other employment possibilities, we decided to offer our military services to the cause of white rule, although we didn't see our actions quite like that at the time. We just wanted adventure, although, to be honest, the adventure was the thought of a war where the enemy wasn't very good.

    I'm not saying my actions had nothing to do with politics, but for me the political dimension lay in the enjoyment I felt at doing something I knew would piss off those right-on, middle-class leftists I'd left behind in England. At that time in the mid-'80s, to do anything in support of 'white South Africa' and 'the apartheid system' was to break a widely enforced taboo. You weren't supposed to bank at Barclays or eat Rowntree's sweeties or drink South African sherry or chomp Cape apples. It was as if everything bad in the world was only taking place in South Africa. The millions of people enslaved by the various sects of communism and socialism didn't seem to count.

    This obsession with the evils of apartheid just struck me as the most awful bollocks - and encouraged me to support the Boers. On a good day by the pool, with a few beers inside me, I could even agree with the white South Africans' view of themselves as a victimised minority fighting for the Free World against the communist forces of darkness.

    We had to travel by train to the capital Pretoria to see if the South African Army would let us strap on the jackboots. We asked a taxi-driver to take us to the main barracks. We told the duty officer at the heavily fortified main gate that we wanted to join up. He ordered a soldier to take us to the relevant person, who turned out to be a middle-aged major sitting in a wood-panelled office, shuffling papers.

    We told him we wanted to enlist and fight on the border. He seemed surprised - and impressed. He asked us a few questions about our backgrounds. I told him I'd been in the British Army. He asked us why we wanted to join the beleaguered Boers. We said we felt South Africa was a country worth fighting for - and we didn't want the reds to take over.

    He looked at us with eyes almost moist with respect and approval. He said he'd sign us up on the spot if he could. Unfortunately, he couldn't. First, we weren't South African nationals. Second, we only had tourist visas. The information we'd been given about an official South African 'Foreign Legion' was false.