Several of Ray's black friends turned up. In truth, Ray had never been much of a Nazi. He just loved the excitement of anti-social behaviour. In fact, Adolf had viewed Ray with suspicion for some years. Among other things, he regarded Ray's skin as a trifle too sallow for him to be a kosher Aryan. Of course, Ray was as white as any of us; he just took a good suntan.
This sort of conjecture isn't unusual for Adolf. Even your choice of holiday destination can arouse his suspicions about your 'true' racial origins or political leanings. Too many trips to 'unsound' countries (that is, most of the world) may lead to your inclusion in his mental list of those marked down for arrest, imprisonment, torture and possible execution when the National Socialists come to power.
Adolf had begun hunting for proof of Ray's impure blood and believed he'd found it when he discovered Ray's father had been born in Canada. It's one of Adolf's fixed ideas that Canada is full of Jews. To make everything even more murky for Adolf, he was told that Ray's father, the son of British expatriates, had spent part of his childhood in India, where his father's work had taken him. This led Adolf to speculate that Ray might actually be a 'shopkeeper' (his favourite word for Asians).
During the service, the congregation sang enthusiastically the stirring song 'Jerusalem', written by the poet William Blake around two centuries earlier in the heyday of the British Empire. I later discovered that the song is normally associated with the Church of England, not the Church of Rome. But even among Anglicans, there's been a controversy about whether 'Jerusalem' is really a hymn or merely a sort of national anthem. The song's last verse shook the church:
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.
Outside the church, Adolf said to me bitterly, 'Did you see that Provo bastard?'
I said, 'Which Provo bastard?'
'That so-called "priest", Father Fucking Fenian.'
'What about him?'
'He didn't sing along to "Jerusalem", the IRA scum. I watched him closely. His lips didn't move.'
'Perhaps he didn't know the words.'
'No, he did it deliberate. A coldly planned provocation. Fucking republican.'
I couldn't see how a failure to sing 'Jerusalem' - even if that had indeed been the case - could be interpreted as support for the provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army. The priest had struck me as a very nice man who was about as likely to go on a rampage with Millwall fans as support the Provos. He'd conducted a moving service. The many normal members of the congregation would have been horrified to hear Adolf's rant, but they didn't know him like we did. If Ray had been around, he would have laughed. It was only fitting that Adolf behaved entirely in character for our friend's farewell.
We drove to the crematorium. Lots of flowers had been made into blue-and-white footballs or Millwall shields. I stepped forward and laid my hand on his coffin. I said my goodbyes. All of a sudden, the sound of grinding hydraulic machinery snapped everyone out of their personal misery. Ray's coffin began slowly to disappear on its last, short journey. It was awful.
As we left the crematorium, Ray's dad could speak to me for the first time. He said, 'He won't be getting in any more trouble, will he, Bernie?'
I couldn't answer. We all went back to a club which Lorna had hired. Adolf stood on the table and asked everyone to raise their glasses in memory of our friend Ray. None of us will ever forget him. He was, as they say in south London, 'proper'.
Later, we went to one of 'our' pubs, The Brockwell Tavern, near Ray's house. A couple of men sat down at a table near our group. Adolf soon became convinced they were Special Branch officers, there to keep us under surveillance. At first, we all laughed at him, but his paranoia became infectious. After several drinks, one of our group told the 'Special Branch' men that they'd been sussed. He ordered them to leave quietly and immediately - or be dealt with violently. The men denied vehemently they were police officers, but left hurriedly anyway, thus confirming Adolf's suspicions. We found out later that the men were in fact well-known regulars who had nothing to do with the police.
As the evening wore on, Paul became convinced the barman was stealing money from us. I could see in his eyes that without my intervention the dispute would end in violence. I talked him into leaving the pub. I called a taxi, paid the driver to take him wherever he wanted and gave Paul a few quid on top. I haven't seen him since.
Over the following months, he rang me to say he'd been evicted from his flat and was living on the streets. On Christmas Eve 2003, he rang me. I told him to meet me at Barnet tube station. I brought along three sets of new clothes and five hundred quid in cash. I wanted to take him home to my mother, who hadn't seen her four sons stand in the same room together for 20 years.
At nine in the morning, Paul rang to say he was at the Embankment and would be with me in half an hour. I sat waiting for three hours. He never showed. Since then, he hasn't rung me - or anyone else in the family
A few months ago, I got a call from Adolf. He said he'd found Paul lying in a sleeping bag at the Elephant and Castle in south London. He'd hardly recognised my brother, who'd grown a long beard and looked like a last-gasp wino. Adolf said he'd tried talking to him, but Paul hadn't appeared to recognise him. He'd just mumbled something incoherently to himself.
Now, when I'm lying in bed, listening to the driving rain outside, I feel overcome with guilt, because I know Paul's out there. My conscience screams at me. Bernie, who's always tried to pick up the pieces and make things right, should get out of bed, drive to London, pick his brother up off the street and bring him to shelter.
I'd do it now, if I could, but I know I can't help a man who won't help himself. I can't help a man who doesn't want my help. Like my uncle Bernie before him, Paul has simply given up on life. He's just waiting for his time to come. And that breaks my heart.
CHAPTER 21
NAZIS AREN'T US
Adolf's meeting with Paul at the Elephant And Castle struck me as one of those startling little accidents of fate. It reminded me of a spooky incident some weeks after the death of Adrian 'Army Game' Boreham. A group of us decided to head off in an old white Transit van up the Ml motorway to Codsall for a 'jolly up'.
The van belonged to Paul. I think it was the one he'd used to run over the Scots who'd tried cheating at his card game. The van's main deficiency was the leak in the brake-fluid compartment. The reservoir had to be topped up every few hours. Even then, the driver had to pump the brake-pedal manically to get the van to slow.
We wouldn't allow Paul himself to drive, because he was too appallingly drunk. I was the only other person with a full licence, but I felt too slaughtered to manage the motorway. Ray volunteered. He was also pissed, but still in possession of many of his faculties. The main drawback with using him as driver was that he'd never driven before.
We reached a compromise. I'd tackle the difficult stage (that is, from south London to the Ml at Brent Cross) and non-driver Ray would steer the van up the motorway. We felt the Ml offered a suitable learning environment for him, because he needed only to drive straight ahead. He wouldn't have to worry about turning left or right or manoeuvring down narrow side streets.
At Brent Cross, we picked up a young hitch-hiker, who turned out to be a soldier on leave. He'd looked reluctant to get into a van packed with Paul, Ray, Tony, Benny, Colin, Larry, me and two crates of beer. But Benny had cunningly held out a can and said, 'D'you want a beer, mate?' The man looked nervously at Ray's co-pilot, Colin, who was wearing a crash helmet. He glanced at the beer and got in.
Ray got off to a spluttering, van-hopping start. I had to keep explaining which pedal did which and Colin had to grab the steering wheel occasionally. Along the way, our guest expressed some anxiety about Ray's driving skills. He said he'd become a bit more nervous on the road since three of his roommates had been killed in a car accident in Germany. Benny ask
ed if one of his dead mates came from south London. He said yes. Benny said, 'What was his name?' The hitch-hiker said, 'Adrian Boreham.'
If I were Doris Stokes, I'd conclude that the ghost of Adrian had sent his mate to warn us of the dangers of a man with no experience driving a van with no brakes up the Ml while drunk. However, perhaps under Army Game's ghostly protection, we reached our destination alive and uninjured.
It seemed fitting that Adolf of all people should have met Paul at the Elephant and Castle in the way he did. It had, after all, been Paul who'd first introduced me to Adolf and the whole south London gang. Though I'd long moved away from 'the Movement', I'd still kept in touch with Adolf over the years. I wasn't always sure why. Nor, I suppose, was he. We were mates, bonded by blood, albeit other people's. We went back a long way, but we'd certainly grown apart - in our views, at least. He regarded me as a turncoat and a lackey of ZOG. I regarded him as a dangerous and deluded lunatic, though that's never stopped me liking someone. In truth, Adolf's never really had friends - just people who put up with him. He won't let anyone get too close, because he trusts no one fully. Everyone's an actual or potential agent of ZOG. Everyone. Consequently, he's always at war with those around him.
But, for all that, he's likeable and he's loyal. He'll do anything for you. In his own way, he's a very kind and generous person. He has his own code of behaviour, which is sometimes difficult to decipher. Weirdly, like many Nazis, he's always had a few black, Asian and Jewish mates. I think he turns them into honorary Aryans for the duration of their friendship.
He was never involved in football hooliganism, and Millwall was never his team. He supports Tottenham Hotspur, nicknamed 'the Yids' (apparently because so many of their supporters are Jewish). In fact, for many years he used to go to their games with a Jewish-Asian solicitor from Brighton. He's got a lot of respect for Muslims. Indeed, Islam is fast becoming the religion of choice among Britain's Nazis. In particular, he admires the American 'Nation of Islam', which, like the Klan, believes in racial separatism.
On the British far-right scene, he's always been in the engine room of things. He knows personally all the main faces, past and present, although he's never joined any party, assuming they're all infiltrated by ZOG. I was talking to him once on the phone when he said proudly, 'Ah, I've just got an e-mail from David Irving.' Irving is the writer of history who believes that no systematic murder of Jews took place in Nazi Germany, that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and that Hitler should be exonerated from the atrocities committed in his name. In 2000, Irving lost the libel action he took against a writer published by Penguin Books who'd described him as a 'Holocaust denier'. He refuses to use the word 'Holocaust', seeing it as vague, imprecise and unscientific.
Adolf has also met the former US Nazi party officer William Pierce, who's better known as the author of The Turner Diaries, that infamous novel about a violent Aryan uprising. After one trip to the States, Adolf came back to say he'd seen a video which, if made public, would cause Pierce a lot of embarrassment. He wouldn't tell me what the video contained, because, since I'd done work against 'the Movement' for the tabloid representatives of ZOG, I was no longer to be trusted. I kept pressing him to tell me. At first, he refused, but then he said that, compared to the contents of the Pierce video, a film showing Mrs Thatcher having unnatural relations with a goat would be quite mild. This aroused my curiosity even more, but Adolf wouldn't go into details. He adopted instead his usual 'protective adult' pose, saying he couldn't tell me in any case, because the description would only irreparably disturb an innocent young 'northern' lad such as myself. All he'd divulge was that the video showed some sort of extreme homosexual activity between Pierce and various males. William Pierce went to join the immortal heroes of the Aryan race on 23 July 2002, when he died of cancer.
Adolf went out with a nice girl from Liverpool for a few years. She had no interest in his Nazi activities. For a while, there seemed a chance he might settle down and become semi-normal. But the relationship came under strain, partly because of his constant sniping at northerners. His girlfriend's city of origin came in for particular stick as the home of 'whinging, unemployed, Militant Tendency, red Scouse bastards'. He used to mimic a Liverpool accent to tell jokes like, 'A dog isn't just for Christmas. You should be able to squeeze a few sandwiches out of it on Boxing Day, too.'
When he went to meet her parents in 'the Third World' (as he calls Liverpool and the north generally), he took not only his own water, but also a crisp fifty-pound note. He wanted to show the inhabitants what one looked like, because he believed they'd never have seen one before. He told me he put it in the charity bottle on the bar of her local pub just to fuck off the natives.
The cultural divide became a chasm. In a last-ditch effort to keep them together, he paid for a Christmas holiday to America. He promised her a big surprise. She began dreaming of Yuletide romance in the snow. He took her to a Klan rally. The relationship ended shortly afterwards.
Copeland's bombing spree in London had a huge effect on the far-right in the United Kingdom. A lot of the smaller, crankier Nutzi groups had already been wobbling, riven as usual by splits and squabbles. The intense police focus killed off several of these groups - and made would-be mainstream 'nationalists' like the BNP shout themselves hoarse trying to convince people of their new commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
Adolf declared glumly to me on the phone one day that National Socialism in the UK was dead. He said, 'How can I build a movement with beer-swilling football hooligans?' He seemed to have forgotten that almost every one of his friends was once a beer-swilling football hooligan. But he refused to abandon his dedication to the cause. Instead, he fixed his fanatical Hitlerian gaze across the Irish Sea. He believed that any hope of a white man's heaven in Europe now lay in Ireland - land of one branch of his forefathers. Racism had become an increasingly touchy subject in Ireland since the beginning of the '90s when refugees, asylum-seekers and foreign workers began for the first time to arrive in large numbers in the overwhelmingly white, Roman Catholic country.
Adolf saw the influx of foreigners - particularly black African foreigners - and the natives' sometimes violent and vocal resistance to them as an opportunity to fan the flames of racial hatred. He wanted to start a forest fire of animosity towards foreigners in Ireland. He hoped the flames might then jump across the water, both to the UK and to the rest of Europe.
He helped form a group named 'National Socialists Are Us' (NSRUS). He took part in organising an anti-immigration march in Dublin, which was modestly attended, then he started canvassing in the city of Limerick in the run-up to elections there. He kept the message simple and found his 'Say No to a Black Ireland' slogan going down very well in the city's white, working-class housing estates.
He decided to help start up an Internet site to promote the 'Say No to a Black Ireland' message. The NSRUS editorial talked about parasitical invaders 'raping and pillaging their way across sacred Ireland'. It lamented 'the destruction of a monoracial society and its replacement by a multiracial experiment'. And it called upon the Irish to draw their inspiration for resistance from Adolf Hitler ('the leader and guide sent to us by Providence'). NSRUS set up links between its site and those of the mainstream Irish political parties, the Irish army and University College Dublin. These activities provoked a storm of outrage in the Irish media.
Adolf sent me an e-mail of a story published by CNN on 24 August 2001:
Irish police are investigating racist Internet sites calling on Ireland to remain 'white for ever'.
The websites promote messages such as 'Say No to a Black Ireland', 'Ireland is under Attack', and 'Savages Stalk the Land'.
'I can confirm we are aware of them and are investigating,' said police spokeswoman Lynne Nolan.
'We are trying to track down the people concerned,' she added, saying that the case was being handled by the National Bureau of Criminal Investigations.
Irish police said all of the
websites appear to be based outside the country, with at least one of them in Britain.
The websites have already caused embarrassment to the Irish political establishment by including links to mainstream Irish political parties.
Adolf's NSRUS site also attracted the attention of the BNP's leader, Nick Griffin, who was disturbed that it might set back the cause of racial nationalism in Ireland. He sent an e-mail, which Adolf later sent me. It read:
What are you playing at?
If you are not state agents provocateurs , for God's sake drop the outdated NS tag before you set back the construction of a credible and acceptable racial nationalist movement in Ireland for years. Hundreds of thousands of Irishmen volunteered to fight against Hitler and for Britain in the last war and, regardless of the rights and wrongs of that conflict, that has left a political and psychological legacy that you cannot overcome.
How on earth do you think that you can sell an ideology of dictatorship to the section of the European race that is probably the most individualistic and bloody-minded of all? ... In fact, the idea is so ridiculous that it's odds on that you are indeed yet another state-sponsored pseudo-gang on the C18 model. If so, damn you to hell. If not, wake up and look at the model presented by people like . . . Le Pen [leader of the French National Front] ... A movement like [that] could save Ireland, and we will do what we can to help build it if asked. A crank group modelled on Hollywood will be just another nail in the coffin.
Adolf was furious at Griffin's suggestion that NSRUS might be agents of ZOG. He mentioned sneeringly some allegations about Griffin's private life which had been printed in the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight. He said, 'And that fucker talks to me about being a member of a fucking crank group.'
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