by Max Schaefer
‘The old Front would never have done that. The old Front would have said, “Oh, this bunch of niggers, we’ll have nothing to do with them.” And that’s the difference. Because we’re national revolutionaries, because we have a programme of ideological development, we don’t do what’s easy, we do what’s right — even if it’s difficult, even if it’s the exact opposite of what Tyndall’s Tory Front would have done. So that means forging links with the Nation of Islam, it means supporting the miners who want to stop the closure of British pits, even if we don’t agree with their tactics or their leaders, it means going back to the land, to the earth, here, this stuff, and learning to use it again, to live from it, and defending it against capitalism and industrialization and pollution, and getting involved with people like the Greens and anarchists and animal-rights activists, helping them out, exposing them to our ideas and ideology. Because all these different things are part of getting back what we’ve lost as a race — a tradition and a way of life; and all their enemies, Thatcher and the bankers and the nuclear industry and the people behind vivisection and kosher slaughter, they’re our enemies too.’
Nick stops and smiles, as if embarrassed by his passion but still proud of it. In the silence they hear music starting down the hill. It is lunchtime proper now. Tony says, ‘You want to unite with the blacks?’
‘Not unite with them. Stand alongside them for our right to stay separate. It’s easy to say send them home, but it’s stupid to ignore the fact that’s what they’re asking for. That’s reactionary. Now most of the guys down there, the skinheads’ — he points towards the farm buildings — ‘are basically reactionaries. They’ll beat up the odd Paki and sniff a bit of glue, but discipline and ideological development is too much for them. We need something better. We’re building a revolutionary organization and that means starting with a revolutionary cadre body. A highly dedicated political middle management. People who will come to the sessions, and read and learn and train, and stick at it, and not give up, not accept second best.
‘I wish you could read — my colleague Derek’s written, we’re about to publish, a really inspirational booklet. It’s about the political soldier — it’s a phrase from Evola, but Derek really explains it, puts into words what we’re about. He goes back through history and looks at examples like the Spartans and the Crusaders. There was this guy in Romania, in the twenties, Corneliu Codreanu. His country was being destroyed by immigration, filling up with Jews, and he started a revolutionary movement, the Iron Guard. They had an oath: to defend their country, defend their race and their soil. They said, we’ll make a permanent sacrifice. No pissing around: we’ll be poor, put everything into the movement. And we’ll never compromise. The oath ended: “Long live Death!” That’s how Derek ends the booklet, “Long live Death.” Well, that’s what we’re about. Devoting ourselves, devoting our lives, to the revolution.
‘Look what happened in Lebanon. The US went in to help the Zionists. America is one of two world superpowers, a massive military machine armed to its teeth, and the revolutionaries were penniless. But they still kicked them out.
Because the Yanks were fighting for their wage packets and pensions, and the revolutionaries were fighting for an ideal. They said OK, we don’t have planes, so we’ll drive truck bombs straight into your camps. And yes, we’ll die, but we don’t care, because we’re fighting for something more important. That’s what the Iron Guard meant when they said, “Long live Death.” Not desire to die, but contempt for death. That’s what makes a political soldier. That’s why they won. And that’s why we’ll win.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Tony says.
He has been watching a figure climb the hill towards them. He knew who it was long before he could see him properly. Now, as he approaches, Glenn’s smile wavers before firming, like a radio tuning in.
‘All right Glenn?’ says Dave.
‘I wondered where you was,’ Glenn says, broadening the ‘you’ from Tony to include Dave with a sudden zigzag glance. Nick smiles up, a look that makes clear he has already decided not to include Glenn in his recruitment pitch.
‘It’s started,’ Glenn tells them. ‘You’re missing it.’
When Tony arrives the courtyard is filling up. He doesn’t recognize the band on stage, but a banner behind them says offensive weapon. The singer sounds Irish. He cannot yet be twenty, and is tall, with a round face and a toothy, childlike grin that appears from nowhere as the song ends. He says, ‘This next one’s for our boy Joe,’ and on the intro his smile drops quickly and he bounces on his toes to the beat, like a boxer limbering up. When he starts to sing he breaks into a ferocious, spittly rage. He yells into his microphone and bounds about the stage, kicking at the air and his band-mates, who kick him right back. The bass player, a short lad in bleached jeans and braces, mauls his guitar, brown and white with black strings. When the singer gets near him they spit at each other. With his accent, drunkenness and limited ability, and the way the mike sways past his mouth as he bounces and kicks, the lyrics are hard to make out, but when the chorus comes some of the crowd join in on the key word, and swap sieg heil salutes with the band. “Bulldog!” they all shout, and the singer adds ‘something something-ay’. Bulldog! — it’s here to stay. Bulldog! — something stand, something fight. Bulldog! — something Britain white.
Glenn makes brief forays to the jumping cluster at the front and pulls back again. There aren’t enough people yet for Tony to want to join; it’s just some younger lads so far, the rest of the audience more or less still around them, at most nodding a bit and saluting for the chorus. Ian Stuart is here, drinking with his musicians, giving the younger band public support. Nicky Crane stands with them, pulling at his can and laughing at something, and Steve, too. It would be nothing, really, for Tony to go up and join them. They might even welcome it. He could walk straight over across the space, say, ‘All right,’ nod. Steve catches Tony looking and says something visibly loud over the band, and the others laugh. Nicky flicks Tony a glance, and Tony turns away. ‘Going to get more beer,’ he mouths to Glenn and Dave. The song finishes behind him in a crash of yells.
Dave joins him in the queue. ‘Set’s over. Nothing more for a while.’
‘What did you think of them?’
‘They were all right.’
‘Yeah. Seen Glenn?’
‘He’s with some of the lads I think.’
‘Thank Christ for that. He’s doing my head in.’
They buy beers and sit on the grass at the churned earth’s edge, watching the crowd. Under the flat autumn sky, in this interstitial moment, the other skins look unexpectedly lost, like animals waking in a foreign zoo; they pad the field aimlessly, with involuntary darting looks at nothing in particular, and an air of having forgotten something, of which only a troubling nag still lingers. There are pockets of laughter and a couple of tetchy brawls, but even these look like manufactured distractions against the vast oppressive silence of the countryside, which swallows the sounds and leaves only their pale echo. Tony and Dave drink. After a while Dave says, ‘It’s all right out here, isn’t it?’ and Tony says, ‘I couldn’t live here though,’ and then they drink some more.
‘Look at Steve,’ nods Tony. ‘Fucking giving it.’ He is walking with the Skrewdriver boys, looking ostentatiously around as if any second he will need to wrestle a mad fan to the ground, take a bullet for Ian.
Dave smiles. ‘He’s enjoying himself isn’t he?’
‘Oh he loves it.’
‘How long’s he been doing it now?’
‘I don’t know. A few months. Since Nicky come out of prison.’ Ian and Nicky are pretending to fight: there are inflated postures, yells, and then some mutual feint, too minor to see from here, into laughter and a short, aggressive hug.
‘How well do you know him?’
‘What Nicky? To say hello. I joined up before he did, so. You must have met him when you joined, he was Leader Guard then.’
‘Yeah. He was all right. Qui
te friendly really.’
‘Not what you expected?’
‘Well, after all I’d heard. Is he as mad as they say?’
‘He’s a good fighter. He stopped some nigger knifing me once. Back when we had that do at the Odeon, you remember. One minute the cunt was all white eyes in my face and it’s me thinking I’m for it and the next Nicky sweeps him aside like he’s a fucking, I don’t know, packet of crisps.’
‘Don’t think I noticed him that night myself,’ Dave says.
‘That last Sham gig at the Rainbow, I think that was first time I saw Nicky really go for it. I’ve got this picture in my head now of him like charging through the crowd towards the stage, picking up anyone in his way and just chucking them over his shoulder, like the Incredible Hulk. It can’t really have been like that but it’s how I remember it. Just like, aaaar.’ Tony mimes the throwing action: left, right. ‘Cra-a-ne-e-y!’
Dave smiles. ‘I heard about that. I mean the night. I wish I’d been there.’
‘It was a good night.’ He nods. ‘I went outside after, when it was over. Everyone had fucked off and I didn’t know where they were, I was trying to find them. I went out the back and I seen Jimmy Pursey.’ ‘
‘Really?’
‘Sat on some steps with a beer. Wasn’t no one else around, just him sitting there. He looked at me but he didn’t say anything. Swear to God he was crying. I thought, We fucking shut you down mate.’
‘You didn’t say nothing?’
‘No. I felt a bit sorry for him. He was all right, Jimmy. I hung around backstage with him a few times in the old days, back in ’78 or so. With the old Mile End boys, Steve and that lot. We used to drink all his beers and argue with him about politics. Steve and them lot would be all, Adolf Hitler, Adolf Hitler, and however much he went on Jimmy would never just say shut it, he’d always argue, like he could really convince us or something.’
‘Do you think he recognized you? Outside the Rainbow?’
‘I don’t know. Probably. Sham were good though once.’ Tony drains his can and opens a third, mumbling, ‘Jimmy Pursey is innocent’ in vague tune.
Dave grins: ‘I’ve still got that T-shirt if you want it back.’
‘Nah fuck it, I wouldn’t wear it now.’
‘I hung on to it for you.’
Used it for a wank rag probably.’
‘Fuck off.’ Dave throws his empty can at him, not hard. From the direction of the courtyard comes the noise of another band starting.
That’s not them yet is it? ’ says Tony.
‘No, there’s three more supports first.’
‘Any good?’
‘We’ll hear it if they are.’
‘Yeah.’
Dave says, ‘I thought you might start doing that.’
‘What?’
‘You know. Skrewdriver Security.’
‘No. And no one’s asked me have they.’
Tony looks at the ridged ground, from which insects slowly distinguish themselves. Dave leans back with his hands flat beside him, facing the sky. He says: What did you make of that stuff earlier?’
‘What stuff?’
‘About the Front. How it’s going to be different now. All that.’
‘I don’t know. It sounded a bit daft to me. I mean, I’m here because I’m a fucking racist, I don’t want to start holding hands with Arabs do I. What’s the point of that? And all that reading and ideology sounded like a lot of shit.’
‘Yeah I suppose.’
Tony shrugs. ‘Student isn’t he.’
‘Don’t you get frustrated sometimes though?’
‘What do you mean?’
Well I’ve been doing this for five years now, it must be six or seven for you, and we’re not getting anywhere are we? I mean we’ll have a march and we’ll have a fight and that but we’re not changing anything.’
‘Yeah I’ll give you that much.’
‘Maybe we do need to think more. About how we’re going about it. I liked what he was saying about getting serious, you know, devoting your life to it.’
‘I’m not driving fucking truck bombs for nobody.’
‘But he’s got a point. Don’t he? If we really want to change how things are. We need to do something. I don’t want my kids growing up in a country like this one’s turning into.’
‘Is that what’s brought all this on? You get some bird pregnant?’
‘No leave it out. I’m serious. I’m going to have some one day I aren’t I. And if I want them to have a proper home I’m going ; to have to fight for it. Because no one else is going to do it for j me.’
‘Want their dad alive,’ says Tony, ‘won’t they.’
Dave says, ‘Maybe it’s different for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know Tony. I mean, I can’t see you with kids.’
‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t imagine it really. No offence or nothing. I mean you’d be a good dad if you wanted to.’
‘Yeah well.’
‘No you would.’ Dave drains his beer. ‘But I do. You know what I mean? I do want kids. So.’
He stands, unreally tall against the dimming sky.
‘I’ll see you later yeah? I’m going to have a piss.’
You see: blankness. Only grey with a memory of blue, and darker grey scrolling in from the left. The thinnest fringe of a breeze just starting up the hill and brushing your face. The impossibly muted sound of music, doll’s-house bangs and shouts. And nothing and noise and nothing.
And you’re twenty-fucking-eight.
‘Oi! What are you doing down there?’
‘Oh bang on fucking cue.’
‘Fuck off.’ Glenn mugs a grimace, then grins and sits. ‘Brung you a beer.’
‘Cheers.’
‘What have you been doing anyway?’
‘Nothing. Drinking.’
‘You missed the Die Hards. And Public Enemy.’
‘Who’s on now?’
‘Brutal Attack.’
‘They’re not bad.’
‘I know. I’m going back in a minute. You coming?’
‘In a bit.’
‘How pissed are you?’
‘A bit.’
Glenn drinks. ‘One of the drummers was all right.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘He was.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He had his shirt off and he was fucking wet with sweat.’
‘Leave it out. I’m serious.’
‘No one can hear us.’
‘These are my mates all right?’
‘They’re my mates too. Imagine what would happen.’
‘Shut your cakehole.’
‘They’re looking at us now. Shane and Martin. All right lads? They think we’re talking about Skrewdriver. Imagine if they knew. How I drive my fucking skrew. If I leaned over and snogged you.’
‘You’re not funny.’ But at his crotch, amazingly, a rodent tug. ‘I tell you what’s not funny is how fucking randy I am right now. Just lean forward twenty-four inches and kiss you. They’d fucking crucify us. I want you so badly now. I want to strip you naked and come all over you.’
‘Piss off right now,’ says Tony, ‘or I’ll kick your head in. And I will not fucking care. I’m not joking neither.’
Glenn whispers, in his Barbara Windsor voice, ‘I want to get me smackers round your knackers.’ Then he laughs and stands. ‘Don’t be too long eh? You’ll miss the headliners.’
Now, heading back to the courtyard, where music has again started, the uneven ground keeps tilting towards him, and the sky seems to dip close when he’s not looking, with sudden lunges. The grass is pockmarked with trash, discarded cans and wrappers, in a pattern that scrolls jerkily down as he walks. The unevenness of the ground travels up his legs, their suspension system dulled by drink, and he feels it bump, his solar plexus, a reminder that he needs to piss. He veers away from the looming courtyard and round the side of the building, rememb
ering as he parts his fly the pasted imprecations to use the Portaloos and spattering the whitewash with satisfaction.
As he stands, focused on the middle distance, he hears voices and laughter approach and there are new presences on either side, talking across him as they ready themselves at his improvised, now shared, urinal. There is movement he will not look at and ‘Fucking wankered’ pronounced in tones of surprised, nearly joyful introspection. Tony stares determinedly ahead, blocking the stereo siren call, so aware of the corners of his eyes they almost itch. His flanking companions sound young; the one on his right belches, spurring a shared shout of laughter, and Tony, charting at the most functioning level of his thought the route between prurience and blank hostility, allows himself an indulgent smile at this, zipping up as he does and turning to go with such efficiency of purpose that he almost doesn’t see the trio of skins sprawled in his path a few feet ahead. He stops just in time, over the aerial view of one of them holding white plastic to his mouth like a horse’s nosebag and staring back at him with a kind of glassy, dazed benevolence.
The boy is perhaps fifteen, with a snub nose, freckles and close-cropped hair. Thrown from his purpose by having to stop so suddenly, Tony keeps looking at him, and the boy gazes back with peaceable curiosity, as if trying to answer in his mind some tiny but elusive question. Then, slowly, he extends his arm, lifting the bag from his face and silently offering it, a diver sharing his supply of oxygen. Tony says, ‘You’re all right,’ but the boy doesn’t react, doesn’t retract the bag. Tony takes in for the first time the boy’s companions, of a similar age and in the same state, all now looking at him with this well-meaning, strangely underinvested interest.