by Iain Parke
‘On the road,’ I intoned.
As Road Captain it was my responsibility to answer for each of the fallen brothers whose pictures adorned the far wall of the club room, in the same way that Butcher as Sergeant at Arms answered ‘Down but not broken’ for the guys that were inside, who were also always with us in spirit.
It was just strange that Gyppo was the first, in both ways.
With the register finished and the roll call taken, we waited in silence as Tiny closed the book on the desk. I and the other officers pulled out our chairs from under the tables and sat down.
Tiny remained standing, and seemed to take a moment to gather his thoughts before leaning forwards, knuckles planted on the table he announced, ‘I’ve got something to say.’
This was it at last. The reason for the urgently called High Church meeting. You could feel the expectation in the air.
‘You’ve all seen that Dazza from The Brethren is downstairs so you’ll have guessed why we’re here tonight as a club. Dazza called me last week and asked if he could speak to us. So according to our rules I need to ask you for your permission to invite a stranger to address a club meeting.’
*
A few moments later, Butcher escorted Dazza up. In silence, Gut ushered him to a space that had been made for him to stand beside Tiny who nodded in greeting, while Butcher closed and locked the doors from the inside.
Tiny waited for Gut and Butcher to resume their seats before speaking again.
‘You all know Dazza here. So I guess I’ll just let him say what he has to say.’ He turned to Dazza and with a gesture gave him the floor as he pulled out his own chair to sit down.
Dazza nodded to him and looked out across the room, calmly meeting the guys’ eyes as they stared at him.
Dazza had a presence. You could never deny that. And it was a very calmly delivered speech, very businesslike, almost a formal diplomatic address delivered to a hushed hall.
‘Well firstly I’d like to start by thanking you guys for the opportunity to talk to you here tonight at your club meeting. I know you like to keep club meetings private, so do we in The Brethren, so I appreciate being invited in.’
Very polite. Very correct. We waited.
‘We in The Brethren have known you guys now for many years, we know that you are stand up guys that we can respect and we’ve always had good relations.’
It was like hearing the ambassador from a powerful country address the parliament of a smaller, but fiercely proud, friendly power. He obviously had a message to deliver and would do so courteously but firmly, and despite being alone in this room, he was calm, protected by the knowledge of what an assault on him would mean.
I was still thinking about that Totenkopf skull and crossbones on his cut off and what Billy had said. Being a Bonesman didn’t automatically entitle him to membership of The Freemen, otherwise he’d have been in what, six or seven years ago? But it was widely understood as being a necessary qualifier.
‘Obviously some of us have long standing business relations with some of you, and we don’t do that lightly.’
‘Some of us’ was a bit of a generalisation on his side of the house. I knew full well that Dazza was the main guy in the north-east charter who dealt. Since Gyppo, I wasn’t involved in any of that any more but I knew he did deal with many of our guys as a way of moving his product into our club’s territory. Billy for one, but Sprog and a number of others who either dabbled for a bit of extra bread, or dealt more seriously, mainly in whizz or blow as their main lines, together with acid and E for the dance crowds, although rumour had it that supplies of snow were starting to become much more available as well.
So what was coming here I wondered?
‘I’m here to offer you guys a choice. The world is changing, you’ve seen that. The Duckies are organising in Scotland and now we hear that they have been talking to The Hangmen.’
There was a stirring amongst the guys. The Duckies were The Rebels MC, The Brethren’s main rivals over here. In addition to Scotland, this side of the border they had charters that ran in a band across Liverpool, Salford and over the Pennines to Leeds where they ran into The Dead Men Riding, as well as down across most of Wales. Their patch featured a screaming eagles’ head that The Brethren insultingly dismissed as looking like a duck.
The Hangmen however were very much our regional rivals and bête noirs. They had charters in Lancashire and South Cumbria so we regularly ran up against them in a border war that had been simmering and flaring up at odd intervals for the best part of ten years or so now. A link-up between The Hangmen and The Rebels could make us the meat in the sandwich and potentially lead to a serious escalation in hostilities.
But over and above our local beef with them, might it also mean that a wider war was in the offing? The Brethren were currently the top dogs nationally and they would refuse to let that change. If The Rebels absorbed The Hangmen that would strengthen their presence significantly and might even make them numerically the largest club in the country. The Brethren want to prevent that happening which meant that they might either be looking to recruit extra troops to fight, or just to ensure they retained numerical superiority.
‘The regional independents are being rolled up – you’ve all seen it happening. So guys like you sooner or later are going to have to choose whose side you want to be on.’
So I could see what was coming. We and The Hangmen had in effect provided buffer states between Rebel and Brethren territory. If The Rebels made moves to absorb their buffer, then The Brethren would have no option but to respond in kind.
‘You might say why do we need to choose? Why can’t we just stay out of it, stay independent? Well that’s a mistake. You can’t.’
He certainly had balls coming in here and saying that to the guys’ faces. If he wasn’t who he was, he would probably have been stomped. And it wasn’t that we were scared of The Brethren that was stopping anyone. It’s difficult to describe to an outsider, but it was like I say, a respect thing. Almost as though he was here to parley under a white flag. He was an envoy. So it was like a tradition, his person was inviolable as he came here to speak. If we fought them later over this we would stomp him without question if we caught him. But here and now, we would hear him out and he would unquestionably walk out unharmed.
‘If you try to stay neutral in a war, you will end up the losers. And the losing side in the war won’t be able to help you, while the winner won’t have needed you to win or have any reason to value you.
‘But don’t get the wrong idea here. I’m not here to threaten you guys.
‘We don’t recruit, we recognise.
‘And I’m here to tell you, as guys we respect, we want you on our side.
‘So as I say, I’m here to offer you all a choice.
‘It’s time to step up to the big time. Time to join the international Brethren world.’
Oh fuck, I thought, so that was what was coming.
‘We want you to patch over. We want you to join us to expand the North-east charter across the region.’
Oh fuck. The what happens if you don’t was unsaid. Once The Brethren had made an offer like this we were either in or against them. It was not a choice being offered but an ultimatum, however quietly and smilingly delivered. It was join us or disband.
And it was always a one time offer.
Once Dazza had finished, Tiny stood up to formally respond. He thanked Dazza for coming out to see us and for setting out what he had to say so clearly. Obviously there was a lot to take in and we as a club would need to consider what he had said; to consult; we would need to ask the brothers inside who weren’t here tonight what they thought; we would need to come to a view.
‘Of course,’ said Dazza. ‘That’s only natural. Now I could hang around but I know that this is something you guys will want to discuss amongst yourselves so I suggest I leave you to it. Obviously you guys know where I am if there’s anything you want to talk to us about.’
&n
bsp; Butcher stood up to escort him from the room.
‘But before I go, there is one thing I would like to say in conclusion.’
The room waited in silence.
‘Just don’t take too long.’
The storm of noise and voices broke after he left the room.
It was a heated discussion, freewheeling was always the way in the club. But immediately, it was difficult to put a finger on it exactly, there was already a bit of a change in atmosphere. The discussion was perhaps just a shade less open than it would have been normally. I just got the feeling that some people were being more careful about what they said than they would normally be. That this was serious, that the wrong words here could have serious consequences later on, of interests being assessed, of positions being considered.
Irrespective of what we thought of him or the message, as a representative he had clearly given a good impression for his club. As the evening wore on I heard a number of people say more or less the same thing:
‘He has balls coming in here like that.’
‘He was pretty cool about it.’
‘You’ve got to admire his balls, walking into our clubhouse to deliver a message like that.’
We broke up that night without any formal decision being taken. I hadn’t expected it would be. We were a strangely democratic group in many ways; we were brothers and we tended to naturally seek to reach a consensus. With most things Tiny would take soundings, discuss the offer with small groups, and gradually we would come to a view as to what we, as a club, would decide to do.
*
It was a crisp cold night under an inky black sky filled with millions of brilliant white stars and the ride home from the clubhouse took twenty minutes or so.
I loved riding on my own at night.
There was something about the blackness, the cold wind biting my face, the streaming smear of light on the road ahead, the howling solitude, the unthinking way that I followed the road, long grooved with memories, testing each familiar curve just one more time, that made me feel as though I was riding towards the end of the world; by myself in my own private bubble of time and space.
Alone in a dream I roared up and across the high empty moors. Then the dry stone walls started to close in on either side of the road’s curves as I left the high ground behind and descended through the curves into the rolling foothills with their fields and occasional yellow-windowed dales farms.
Down here, the road home was along a mix of straight old Roman roads that just begged me to gun the motor, the wind whipping past my ears singing the strange music, and sudden twisting curves familiar through years of instinctive riding, requiring fierce braking at the last possible moment, the bike drifting, using all of the available road to get the right positioning to hustle through them, the bike heeled over to maintain the speed and set me up for the acceleration that pulled me upright again as I set up for the next bend. Before the glow of the first streetlight ahead signalled the start of the final drop down the long straight into the valley, the lights of the town opening up before me as the machine and I roared out of the dark.
It was the type of riding I always enjoyed. It was very Zen somehow. The speeding solitude, with just the sound of the wind, and the mix of unthinking instinct, and fierce full mind and body concentration required on the here and now of the riding freed my mind to wander, it gave me time to think.
But tonight was different.
It had been fascinating, sitting back to hear and see Tiny our pres, and Dazza theirs, in operation, and to mull over the difference.
All clubs are either dictatorships, run by a single dominant individual until such time as someone successfully usurped their rule, or democracies, run on the basis of consensus. They always have been and always will be.
We in The Legion were a democracy, certainly the ex-Reivers’ part was, some other cohorts less so. That was why Tiny had called the meeting tonight. If there was something important to be said, we all needed to hear about it if we were to decide what we as a club were to do.
Dazza by contrast ruled his charter with a rod of iron. A bit like Butcher did with his boys down in Maccamland. I’d never been surprised that those two got on so well.
It was gone eleven when, bike locked up around the side, I walked in through the back door and parked my lid on the table.
‘How did it go? What’s up? Can you tell me?’
Sharon was an old school old lady. She knew that club business was club business and that sometimes I couldn’t tell her everything.
I hadn’t yet decided how much I would tell her. But I had to say something.
‘In a word? Trouble. With a capital F!’
PART 2
1983 – 1994
Some clubs are old, with long established rules,
some clubs are new.
Damage 2008
Chapter 2 – THE KID
I was just a pretty much fucked up kid of twenty when I first got involved that night back at the Golden Lion.
I’d dropped out after my first year at uni, doing history. It was a pity in some ways. I really liked history, I still do, and I’d cruised through A levels just doing enough to get by, but I just couldn’t hack student life, which was pretty much the final straw as far as my folks were concerned. Looking back I can’t really blame them, what with the booze and the dope that had got me my nickname of Brain Damage, usually shortened to Damage by my mates, although I did at the time.
I think I was probably about as low as you get at that stage at that age. I say I’d dropped out, the reality was that I just couldn’t cope.
As I say, pretty much a fucked up kid, living in a fucked up shared flat with Billy, one of the guys I’d known from school who was also into bikes and heavy metal, riding a fucked up GS250T rat, a strange bodge of a mini custom with a 2 into 1 Neta exhaust and a pair of ace bars in place of the touring ones Mr Suzuki had intended. They say your bike reflects who you are which I guess is true. I sort of think I was inspired by the black café racer Harley sportster that they had out, but really it was a bit of a mess.
Billy was away that evening, out somewhere on his flash RD250LC, can’t remember where now, and none of the other guys were around or wanted to go out. So as I sat there smoking in my room I had a choice. I had a bit of cash so I could get some beers at the offie and stay in staring at the walls while I got tanked up until I passed out. Or I could go out and at least have the blast there and back.
A suicidally reckless death ride into town suddenly felt a hell of a lot less self-destructive than sitting in my room so with a ‘Fuck it,’ I stubbed out my Silk Cut and reached for my lid.
Whenever I was on the bike, I just always had to ride as fast as I could. That was all there was to it. I just had to do it. Had to fly. Every ride was, and still is to a degree, a potential street race where I need to push it, to prove myself against the odds just one more time.
Riding fast was a way of continually testing myself. When I was on the bike there was the exhilaration of being free, being solely in control of my own life, and yet and yet, at some level I actually lived for those moments when things went out of control, those terrifying seconds of extreme calm, when my heart leapt into my mouth, and when everything hung in the balance.
The moment when the tyre chirps and starts to drift on a slew of gravel across a corner and you think in that instant – Is this it? Is this the one?
And when it does.
The peaceful inevitableness of the feeling of the bike sliding away from underneath you.
The way time slows so that you can watch and admire all the details at a quiet distance.
There’s no pain on hitting the deck.
It always happens in complete silence.
And the images stay with you in your mind forever.
The sparks of the steel scraping along the road.
The petrol spilling out from the filler cap as you slide towards it.
The first wondering realisation are
n’t bus wheels big from down here?
But not tonight.
Tonight the instinctive life force was too strong. As I felt the bike start to slip on a slew of gravel across the apex of a bend, with an instinctive reaction I kicked down hard onto the road with my left leg, brutally wrenching the throttle open at the same time, the engine snarling as I booted the bike back upright just enough to make it back onto the clear tarmac and then engine roaring as with a wave of adrenaline I screwed it open, feeling the bike wrenching beneath me as the tyre grabbed traction and the bike picked up its head, clawing its way up and out of the corner, the acceleration pushing me back down and into the seat.
As it said in a joke I’d read in one of the bike mags, ‘Slide, don’t roll – and don’t do it in front of steamrollers.’
The Golden Lion was a bit of a dive. It was a small pub set back from the town’s main drag, with a function room behind that was a heavy metal disco every Friday night. As I pulled into the car park it was filled with bikes and I found a space in the far corner to chain mine up.
The back of my hand stamped, I walked on into the pounding gloom lightning lit by the flashing orange and green lights of the DJ’s sound system. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see it was the usual black tour T-shirt, denim and leather clad crowd. Dinosaur Heavy Metal never really dies, but back then the NWOBHM3 was having a brief moment of fashionable success and so a lot of the crowd my age were really just pimply heavy metal kids, into the music and the image before jumping into their Mum’s borrowed Mini to drive home again after an evening of headbanging and posing to Whitesnake.
Then there were those like me, the ones who were seriously into bikes.
I resented the heavy metal kids in their black leather jackets who never rode, seeing them as poseurs trading off our image and the risks we took. We bikers were the ones who took the danger. We were the ones who gave black leather jackets the edge of glamour. Testing made us different, what did they ever do?