Among the Thugs

by Bill Buford

  There were women present, girl-friends mainly, who had also retained an affection for the punk style—bleached jeans and T-shirts, their hair cropped short except for a flattened duck-tail at the back. I learned later that the women were even more anachronistic than the men and that their hair-style was in fact pre-punk. They were called ‘suedeheads’. The women sat at the far end of the pub, smoking cigarettes. They did not join in the bouncing and the clasping and the rubbing. The bouncing and the clasping and the rubbing were distinctly boys’ concerns. The boys danced; the girls watched.

  Disgusting rabble, Phil said, muttering quietly. Skinhead riff-raff. They don’t know what the National Front is really about. They don’t understand the message.

  Another record, and more dancing. The rest of the night was clearly going to consist of lads drinking large quantities of lager and shaking it all up violendy in the middle of the room. I then noticed that, stationed at several points around the pub—forming an outer circle around the knot of dancing lads—was a number of well-dressed men.

  1 was surprised I hadn’t seen them before. They were different from anyone else in the pub. They were wearing flannel trousers and jackets and had neat executive haircuts. Several were here with their girl-friends, but they were different from the ones sitting in the back. The girl-friends were dressed in a style that could be called ‘sensible’. One had a silk scarf and a cashmere jumper. Another was dressed in jeans, but the jeans were expensive and highly flattering. They stood alongside their partners, resting on their arms.

  These were the visitors from London.

  That some had come with their girl-friends suggested that they, like the others, regarded the evening as an event, an entertainment, a Saturday night out, but they did not appear to be enjoying themselves—at least not yet. Unlike Phil—who was still at my side, and by now drinking very heavily, and reminding me that he didn’t speak to the media—none of the London visitors was touching alcohol. They were drinking mineral water or Coke or nothing at all. They were also not dancing and didn’t look like they were about to begin. They were not even talking—neither between themselves nor with their girl-friends. They just stood there, looking on.

  I recognized one of these urbane visitors. His name was Nick Griffin. All the others from the executive branch, including Ian Anderson, might well have been there, but it was Nick Griffin I spotted and ended up watching. He seemed to have a role in managing the evening’s activities.

  Nick Griffin was not in fact from London. He lived nearby, in the Suffolk countryside. The National Front was always having to change its base of operations, and for a while it would be run from a converted barn on Nick Griffin’s family’s property. I got through to the family once. They might well have been farmers, landowners certainly, affluent enough—you could hear it in their accents—to have sent their son to Cambridge, and they were now involved in helping him out in his career as a fascist.

  The son was a well-mannered young man with an intelligent face. He had a politician’s good looks and an attractive manner. Like the others from London, he was different from—in Phil Andrews’s phrase—the rabble bouncing up and down in the middle of the room. In fact, it was evident that Nick Griffin had no intention of being seen near them. He spent the evening against a wall, watching, inconspicuous, and the only time he spoke was when he walked over to Neil, which he did every now and then, and whispered an instruction. Then he returned to his position against the wall. His girl-friend—pretty and blonde and utterly expressionless—stood beside him and never said a word.

  There was some talk about playing the White Power music. In Nick Griffin’s view, it was too early to play the White Power music. The White Power music should be played only at the end.

  I was feeling the need to wander round. My friend Phil was starting to become importunate. He was now very, very drunk, and very, very determined to tell me how he never spoke to the media. Why, he wanted to know, was he speaking to me? Why, I wanted to ask him, won’t you stop then? Phil was bothered that, in his opinion, I had not understood the observation that he had made earlier in the evening, even though he had made it several times. This was his observation that, even if it was in the National Front’s power to organize riots on the continent, what would be the point? And so he asked the question again. He asked: Even if it was in the National Front’s power to organize riots on the continent, what would be the point?

  I told him I agreed. I believed him. You are right, I said, there is no point; the National Front could not possibly have organized those disturbances. The National Front, I added, has been unfairly blamed.

  You see the point? he asked.

  Really, I said. I see the point.

  Phil followed me. I should have known. I went to the bar for another drink, paid and turned round: Phil was there. I went to the loo and when I opened the door I almost knocked Phil over. When I stepped outside to get some air, Phil stumbled along after me.

  I did not want to talk to Phil any more. I didn’t want to be impolite, but I wanted him to go away.

  It was time, I said, that I spoke to some of the lads. It was essential to my research.

  There were many more dancing now—perhaps thirty.

  Fucking skinheads, he said. They’re all lobotomized. Ignore them. What I want you to understand is this: Even if . . . Even if . . . The riots, that is. Even if . . .

  And he stopped.

  I spotted the boy whose birthday the occasion was notionally honouring.

  How do you feel? I asked.

  Wonderful, he said. I’m very happy.

  How old are you?

  Twenty-one, he said.

  And was this how you wanted to spend your twenty-first birthday?

  It couldn’t have been better.

  Do you know many of the people here? I asked.

  Hardly anyone, he said and then started giggling uncontrollably. He stopped only when he realized that I was the journalist that he had heard the others mention. I was surprised he realized much at all. I don’t know what chemicals were in his body, but there must have been many and his body did not seem to be particularly accustomed to housing them. He had been dancing hard, bouncing up and down, and was covered in sweat. The pupils of his eyes had contracted to tiny little dots.

  You’re the repoyta, aren’t you?

  Amphetamines, I figured. Speed has this effect.

  You are the repoyta, he said. I knew it!

  And then he grew very excited. He was convinced that he was going to be written about. He grew so excited he started to bounce up and down. I’m going to be in the papers, he said, bouncing higher and higher. I’m going to be in the papers, he said, still bouncing, until finally, ecstatic, he bounced out of range, through the crowd, over a table, and somewhere on to the other side of the pub.

  I turned round and there was Phil Andrews. He was still trying to finish the sentence that he had begun the last time I saw him. He was having some difficulty focusing. He was pointing vaguely. He wanted badly to tell me something. I thought I knew what it was that he wanted to say.

  Even if, he said, and stopped.

  He was not going to reach the end. Nature, in a sense, had finally silenced him. I was pretty sure that he was about to vomit.

  I started moving around, confident that Phil couldn’t keep up. I moved from one conversation to another. People were telling me things.

  I was told that they were an organized army; that football had brought them together; that they were creating a police force; that they tried to take over the places they visited.

  I was told that they were warriors.

  I was told that the banks were run by Jews and that the banks ran the country; that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was vastly exaggerated.

  I was told that the Labour Party was a shambles; that the Conservative Party was a shambles; that all Americans soldiers should leave Britain.

  One member told me the cities should be ‘deracinated’—that was
the word he used—and that we should all return to our natural element. The man who said this was another one wearing a Nazi arm-band. He was a member of the League of St George.

  More militant and more extreme, he assured me, than the National Front, the League of St George was against all modern technology. It advocated a form of agrarian socialism. Modern man, he said, has been uprooted from the soil and placed in an artificial concrete world.

  It’s a view, I told him, that sounds like the one held by the Khmer Rouge.

  Precisely, the man from the League of St George said. And he then said it again: Yes, precisely. He nodded and grinned. It was a very sinister grin.

  There was no longer a centre of the room where people were dancing, because everyone was dancing everywhere. On the far side, some of the new members had started in on their football chants, just as Neil had feared. These appeared to be West Ham supporters. They were then answered, from the other side of the room, by Chelsea supporters. A contrapuntal chorus of West Ham and Chelsea songs followed, one that sent Neil scurrying through his record collection. It was time to change the music, and Neil looked over to Nick Griffin.

  Nick Griffin nodded. It was time to play the White Power music.

  Most of the songs Neil then played were by a group called White Noise; Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack were among the others. None of the songs was played on any of the established radio stations or sold in any of the conventional shops. It was a mail-order or a cash-in-hand music trade, and from the titles you could see why: ‘Young, British and White’; ‘England Belongs to Me’; ‘Shove the Dove’; ‘England’ and ‘British Justice.’ These were the lyrics of ‘The Voice of Britain’:

  Our old people cannot walk the streets alone.

  They fought for this nation, and this is what they get back.

  They risked their lives for Britain, and now Britain belongs to aliens.

  It’s about time the British went and took it back.

  This is the voice of Britain.

  You’d better believe it.

  This is the voice of Britain

  C’mon and fly the flag now.

  It’s time to have a go at the TV and the papers

  And all the media Zionists who’d like to keep us quiet.

  They’re trying to bleed our country,

  They’re the leeches of the nation.

  But we’re going to stand and fight.

  This is the voice of Britain.

  You’d better believe it.

  This is the voice of Britain

  C’mon and fly the flag now.

  The music was delivered with the same numbing, crushing percussion that had characterized everything else that had been played that evening, and most of the lyrics of the songs that followed were lost to me, disappearing into a high decibel static. The only reason I can quote the words from ‘The Voice of Britain’ is that they were reprinted in a ‘White Noise’ pamphlet that was being passed round, no doubt to aid understanding. There was one refrain I could follow, and that was because it was played repeatedly, and because, each time, everyone joined in. It seemed to be the theme song.

  Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps.

  Wogs out! White power!

  Wogs out! White power!

  Wogs out! White power!

  It was interesting to contemplate that the high-point of the evening was organized around this simple declaration of needs: a lad needed his lager; a lad needed his packet of crisps; a lad needed his wog.

  Nick Griffin indicated that the volume should be turned up further, and the music was now brutally loud. The room was hot and filled with smoke and smelled of dope. The air had grown heavy and damp. Sixty or seventy lads were in the middle of the room, clasped together, bouncing up and down, rubbing their hands over each other’s heads and chanting in unison:

  Wogs out! White power!

  Wogs out! White power!

  Wogs out! White power!

  They had taken off their shirts and were stripped to the waist, their braces dangling by their sides, knocking against their legs: sixty or seventy pale, narrow chests, covered in perspiration, pressed tightly together. They were bouncing so vigorously that they all fell over, tumbling on top of each other. I thought someone was hurt—a table had been knocked over—but they all clambered up over each other and, with difficulty, resumed their dancing. They fell over again, wet and hot. I don’t know if it was the drink or the drugs or the delirium of the dancing or that chorus, over and over again, but there was a menacing feeling in the air—sexual and dangerous. The people in the crush were not in control—the business of falling over was not intended and no one was finding it funny, as people might in a spirit of drunken merriment. Some of the lads appeared to be in a trance.

  I looked at the women, sitting in the dark, smoking cigarette after cigarette, none of them dancing. Something was happening that they didn’t understand. They were embarrassed. One was giggling. Their boy-friends were in the middle of the room, pressed against each other, virtually undressed, heaving and bouncing.

  Louder, Nick Griffin was shouting to Neil, but Neil couldn’t hear him, and Griffin had to cross the room. I could not follow the exchange, but it seemed that Neil was being asked to turn up the volume, but that the volume couldn’t be made any louder. The volume was turned up as high as it would go.

  There appeared to be more well-dressed men than before, but I don’t think that could be right. Is it possible that more would have shown up just at the party’s end—its climax? They formed a discernible circle. For the last fifteen minutes, none of them had moved; no one had gone to the loo or got another drink. They stood transfixed, studying the group.

  Neil had taken to repeating the theme song. Once it had finished, he merely replaced the needle and started again.

  Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps.

  Wogs out! White power!

  Wogs out! White power!

  Wogs out! White power!

  Wogs out! White power!

  And then the whole thing was over. Dougie, suddenly, went berserk. There was some screaming on the other side of the pub, and I looked up and saw Dougie swinging a bar stool above his head. Somebody went down, and a table full of glasses got knocked over. He picked up a chair and raised that above his head, but lost his balance and crashed into a table. There was more broken glass.

  Nick Griffin went over and stopped the record and turned off the stereo. The party had ended. I spotted Phil in the corner. He had passed out and was leaning against the wall, seated on the floor.

  DOUGIE, DOUGIE, DOUGIE.

  It was Neil speaking. He was whispering: gentle, comforting, reassuring.

  Dougie, Dougie, Dougie.

  I am still not sure what happened between Dougie’s swinging a chair over his head and Dougie’s pinning me against a lamppost. Having your head bumped against a lamp-post concentrates the mind wonderfully, however much it might jar its container. I am very clear about the moments when I was in Dougie’s grasp because I was thinking about each one with some care. I was thinking about the look in Dougie’s eyes—not a nice look and one that suggested that my prospects of being Dougie’s friend were very small. I was also thinking about the words Dougie’s brother, Neil, was saying. Having seen me being banged against the lamp-post, Neil had intervened.

  Dougie, Dougie, Dougie.

  Neil had a very gentle manner, and it seemed to be producing the desired effect. Dougie had stopped banging me against the lamp-post and was now listening. It was as if Neil was calling out to someone who was very far away and not in view—at the end, possibly, of a very long tunnel.

  Dougie, Neil said, there is no need for that now, is there?

  Dougie had turned his head to his brother. He was very attentive.

  Dougie, Neil said, this man is a nice man. He’s a friend. He is one of us. If you let go of this nice man, Neil continued, then we can all go off and have another drink, and, if you’re good, I’ll let you throw a brick th
rough the Indian restaurant.

  Throwing bricks through the window of the Indian restaurant or the Indian food shop or, occasionally, an Indian family’s home was, I learned, a common late-night pastime. Dougie grinned—a toothy, stupid grin—and he let me go.

  I’m not sure what happened later. I followed along, criss-crossing the town of Bury St Edmunds, stumblingly, going from house to house, most of them fairly run-down terraces, meeting new people, including three men in black SS uniforms. I know that I had fulfilled my promise of getting very drunk and had, additionally, supplemented the liquid toxins with whatever else was to hand. And there seemed to have been many other toxins to hand. And then blank. Nothing. I have no memory of anything. At some point, late the next morning, I woke up, feeling very unpleasant, and found myself in a damp two-up two-down. It was where Neil and Dougie lived, a squat with no heating and a broken window—through which, I assumed, they had first entered. There was only one bed and I, the guest, had been given it. On the floor around me had slept more than twenty skinheads, the rabble of the pub. They were still asleep. The room had a powerful smell about it.

  Neil woke me up. He was offering me a can of lager for breakfast. There were several cases of Harp lager stacked, I now noticed, at the foot of the bed, and he wanted to know if I wanted one.

  I left later in the afternoon.

  Thereafter I followed the National Front casually, believing that there was something more I needed to discover. I contacted Nick Griffin several times, attended some marches, listened to the speeches afterwards. More party magazines and newspapers were sent to me—not to my home; I had moved; but care of the office where I worked—but I learned recently that the staff was so offended to receive them that the publications were all sent back with rude cover notes. In fact, I had already gained my most important insight into the National Front—there, that night at its disco—and it had little to do with its politics or its membership. It was its attitude towards the crowd.