Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs

by Thompson, Tony

  As for the battles between the Pagans and the Ratae, the police were the first to admit that, had it not been for Rabbi’s death, they would never have found out about the incidents that led up to it. Even having prosecuted the case, they were still mostly in the dark about what had been behind it all.

  The case spelt the end for the Ratae who simply fell apart once Scout was out of the picture. The Pagans, on the other hand, rode out the storm and looked forward to the day they would all be back together again.

  PART TWO

  SIZE MATTERS

  MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

  Motorcycle clubs in the USA had long held rallies and festivals as a way of earning extra income and by the mid-eighties the idea was taking hold in the UK. Some clubs, the Road Rats in particular, refused to go down such a route fearing it would force them to present a false public relations image for the sake of profit.

  The Hell’s Angels had no such qualms. Since 1979 they had staged a Custom Bike show in Kent, which from humble beginnings grew rapidly to become one of the largest festivals of its kind. The Angels also occasionally hosted a Crazy Daze weekend. Both events earned tens of thousands of pounds for the club, a significant proportion of which was passed on to local charities.

  Eager to get in on the act, the Wolf Outlaws from Gloucestershire approached the owners of the former Royal Air Force base at Long Marston and requested permission to stage an event of their own. They hoped to cash in by offering punters a unique opportunity to ride their bikes flat out, either alone or racing against another rider, down the main runway which was as straight as an arrow and almost a mile long.

  The only obstacle in the way of their plans was that Long Marston was in Warwickshire, not Gloucestershire, so the Wolf Outlaws approached their friends the Pagans to get permission to hold the event there. At that time, with all the Operation Biker court cases at an end, the ranks of the Pagans were so decimated that they were barely able to exert control over their territory and couldn’t have objected even if they had wanted to. Knowing that the Wolf Outlaws would happily let them co-host the event in the future, the Pagans gave permission for the show to go ahead on what was effectively their turf.

  The first Long Marston festival took place in August 1987 and, although relatively small and not particularly well organised, it was a massive success. Among the many attendees were dozens of members of the Kent chapter of the Hell’s Angels. They were hugely impressed with what they saw, so impressed in fact that they decided to completely take over the event and run it themselves the following year.

  The Wolf Outlaws were far too small to take the Angels on and with most of the Pagans still behind bars, the Warwickshire club were in no position to challenge them either. By the time the Pagans were back to any kind of strength, the show was firmly linked to the Hell’s Angels and had been renamed the Bulldog Bash.

  Over the course of the next two decades the Bash would go on to become one of the biggest and most lucrative biker events in Europe, attracting up to 50,000 visitors from all over the world and earning millions of pounds in profits for its hosts. The Wolf Outlaws and the Pagans were understandably peeved about the lost business opportunity, not to mention the annual invasion into their territory. And as the years went by and the festival became ever more successful, that seed of resentment grew and grew until it ultimately reached the point where it would cost the Hell’s Angels the life of one of their own.

  * * *

  The first Pagans to emerge from prison – those that had received time off for good behaviour or had spent the longest on remand – were back on the road during the early spring of 1988. In their absence the club had limped along with a single full member and a couple of prospects and should by all rights have been shut down, but as soon as there were six full patches around, the Pagans were finally able to behave like a real MC again. With more than a dozen members still behind bars, the main priority for all those who had regained their liberty was to get their hands on as much cash as possible.

  All MCs require a constant flow of income in order to meet the costs of running the club and the Pagans were typical in terms of how they went about achieving this. A small but steady stream of cash came from membership dues which averaged around twenty five pounds per month for each biker, but which those in prison were exempt from having to pay.

  More cash came in the form of fines which the Pagan officers imposed on members who breached rules such as missing a mandatory run, turning up late for church, having their bike off the road during riding season or losing a set of patches. Fines typically ran from five pounds up to several hundred pounds a time and would often produce more monthly income than all the membership dues combined. The amount of the fine varied according to the offence but also in line with whatever the particular member was thought to be able to afford. The richer you were, the more you paid.

  Much of this money – known as ‘central funds’ – was then invested into legitimate enterprises, often involving the purchase of second-hand cars and bikes which, thanks to the high levels of mechanical expertise among the membership, could be bought on the cheap, fixed up and sold at a significant profit. The Pagans even opened up their own custom shop, building dream machines to order for members of the public, many of who were so delighted with their purchases that they wrote letters of commendation to the firm.

  If a member came up with a good business or money-making idea, they could bring it up at church and apply for a loan from central funds to help them pursue it. Many MC members set themselves up as mobile mechanics, driving around to assist other motorists using vehicles and tools paid for by their clubs. If the business became successful, a percentage of the profits would be returned to the club. If it failed the member would still have to pay back the original amount plus interest so the club was always in a win-win situation.

  Rather like terrorist cells, this organisational structure is one of the reasons the police all over the world find it so difficult to clamp down on the clubs. If a member happened to come across an opportunity to invest in, say, a major drug shipment, he might do so using central funds. Thereafter, even if he is caught red-handed, it is almost impossible to tie his crime directly to the club. If he succeeds, the club profits from the drug trade while retaining plausible deniability about the details of that business.

  This is particularly true of the larger clubs when contacts made between members from different countries can help facilitate the movement of drugs, weapons and other contraband across international borders.

  No one percenter MC has ever denied someone membership because they have a criminal record. That said, there are many members, some of them senior, who do not have so much as an outstanding parking ticket against their names. If you join the mafia, you know you are going to be breaking the law on a regular basis, but it is possible to be a law-abiding biker. You must, of course, be tolerant of those around you breaking the law and understand that you risk being tarred with the same brush, but unlike a drug cartel or mafia clan, criminality is not a condition of membership.

  This kind of set-up means that, even if a particular club or chapter is wealthy as a whole, the levels of affluence among the individual members can still vary widely. The membership of the Pagans included its fair share of working Joes but also a sprinkling of management types and the odd company director. There was a paramedic, a restaurant owner, the floorman of a chroming business, a fair few mechanics, the director of an engineering company with more than forty employees, a gamekeeper who worked on an estate owned by Prince Charles, a scene builder for the Royal Shakespeare Company and a man who trained police dogs for a living.

  In times of special need, everyone in the club would be asked to make a contribution to central funds, often as much as several thousand pounds a time. This money would be used to build up the kitty until it contained enough to pay for a large one-off purchase such as a truck or even a clubhouse.

  Most new MCs begin by renting the houses they use as a base,
usually in the least desirable part of town where prices are at their lowest. Once the clubs become established, they invariably prefer to own. This means that any modifications or fortifications necessary to ensure the survival of the club can be carried out without having to worry about the wishes of the landlord. The clubhouse of the Wessex Chapter of the Hell’s Angels in Saint Peter’s Road, Reading consists of two neighbouring houses – both fully owned by the Angels – in which the connecting wall has been knocked through to allow for a full-size snooker table. This arrangement also allows for a double-size sun terrace at the rear.

  As well as being a refuge and social centre, the clubhouse is a key source of income. The heavy-drinking, party-hard lifestyle favoured by bikers means clubs can make a lot of money from running an unlicensed bar. Alcohol is bought in bulk at discount rates and then resold to members for prices that are lower than those on the outside but still high enough to make a tidy profit. Some clubs would extend this principle to other commodities, purchasing bulk quantities of motorcycle spares and accessories to sell on to members. The larger the club, the more money such schemes would generate.

  Money taken behind the bar could also come from outside the club. Most weekends, the doors of the Pagans clubhouse – and those of many other MCs – would be opened up to non-members for wild, all-night drinking parties that would ultimately push profits even higher. Only one or two actual members might be in attendance, but the punters would get the dubious thrill of entering the domain of a semi-secret organisation and the club coffers would swell dramatically.

  The battle at George Street meant that the Pagans no longer had access to that source of income. It wasn’t just that the property had been reduced to a burnt-out shell, it was also the fact that the locals, once accepting, had turned against the gang and no longer wanted them anywhere near their town. In fact, it was impossible for any Pagan to ride through Leamington without being pulled over by the police and subjected to a lengthy, ultimately pointless search. It was harassment pure and simple and it worked like a charm.

  A new clubhouse was soon located on Tudor Road in Nuneaton but having lost money from the sale of the property in George Street, the Pagans were in urgent need of even more funds. It was during times like this that the Pagans, while still acting as individuals, would collectively get involved in low-level criminality.

  Several Pagans had experienced the misfortune of losing their wallet on a plane or train or ferry which, while stuffed with enough ID to ensure it would be handed in to staff and returned to its holidaying owner, had been emptied of cash. With most travel insurance policies covering up to £500, central funds would receive a welcome boost at least once a year.

  Boone had already pulled the wallet scam twice in the past three years so when the post-prison drive started up he turned back to another mainstay of funding that the Pagans shared with most other MCs – motorcycle theft. There was one general rule: you could not steal a bike that was parked outside the clubhouse or outside the home of a member. Bikes that had been built by the Pagans own custom shop were also off limits. This was run as a fully legitimate enterprise and it was important for the gang to retain full integrity in its dealings with the public.

  At first bikes would simply be stolen and resold. As the business developed, they would be stolen, chopped up into parts and sold on in this way. These spares would also find their way into the Pagans own stores for use by members. (Although the custom shop was a legitimate business, the origins of some of the parts used to build the machines were often somewhat dubious.) Occasionally the club members stole the bikes themselves. Often they were approached by professional thieves who knew the bikers would be able to find a ready market for whatever they picked up.

  One time, Boone was asked if he could get hold of a Triumph Bonneville and put out a few feelers. A pristine sample turned up a few days later and Boone took one look at it and knew just what he had to do. ‘I’ll give you the money for it,’ he told the thief, ‘but you have to take it right back to where you got it. Right now.’

  The machine had been lovingly restored and seemed to be in showroom condition. It was clear that the owner had poured an enormous amount of blood, sweat and tears into the project. As a custom bike-builder himself, Boone knew exactly how much work had been involved and how heart-broken the owner would be to see it gone. He knew that neither he nor any of his fellow Pagans would feel right about stripping down such a beautiful specimen.

  Anything standard was fair game and, with practised hands, could be liberated in a matter of seconds. There was a different method for each kind of vehicle: slide hammers for Japanese bikes, mole grips and feeler gauges for Harleys. Any opportunity to steal was seized with both hands.

  A favourite hunting ground was outside the rallies and bike shows. The Pagans would wait until the festivities had begun, turn up with a couple of trucks and then work their way through the parking area grabbing any high value models they could find. In one single busy weekend, the club stole thirty-nine bikes.

  Over time, the Pagans’ bike theft network became ever more sophisticated. Their contact in the DVLA – the same one who could get addresses for licence plates – began selling blank sets of registration papers at £1,000 a time. Soon after that, one of the Pagans, by all accounts a bit of a maths whiz, managed to work out the formula that Harley Davidson used to produce the vehicle identification numbers stamped on the frames and engines of every motorcycle they made.

  With his mastery of the complex alphanumeric code, a combination of a Julian date and a string of letters and numbers based on location, it was now possible for club members to sell stolen Harleys as if they were brand new. Little wonder that there were soon more new Harleys being registered in the UK each year than were being officially imported.

  Boone and the others would be particularly delighted when a stolen Harley turned up bearing a sticker reading: ‘This bike belongs to a Hell’s Angel. Fuck with it and find out’. Boone would shake the bike, run his hands over the engine, fiddle with the switchgear and then take a step back with a puzzled look on his face: ‘Shit guys, I don’t think the sticker is working on this one. I’m fucking with the fucker and nothing seems to be happening’. Clubs that hated the Angels – and there were plenty of them around – would happily pay a premium for bikes belonging to one of their members.

  At the end of the day, however, this was strictly business and not at all personal. The Pagans had always got on reasonably well with the Hell’s Angels. Boone in particular had a number of friends who were members of the Big Red Machine, both locally and in other parts of the country, though he tended to socialise with them on a one-to-one basis rather than with the Angels chapters as a whole. The bonds were so strong, at this time, that after Rabbi died a few members from the Kent chapter organised a couple of charity runs in order to raise money for his wife and children.

  The other key focus for the Pagans was to build up their numbers by bringing in a swathe of new recruits. Prospects were always needed. Not only were they an important source of new funds but they were also good for a laugh and an outlet for casual violence.

  Every club gave its newcomers a hard time, but some more than others. During the seventies, in the now-defunct Manchester-based Sons of Hell, being a prospect was, in the words of one former member, ‘nothing short of a series of near-death experiences.’ Being beaten, stabbed, hung from trees or ritually humiliated and mentally abused was all par for the course. The club also routinely set its prospects on fire then left them to put the flames out on their own.

  The California-based Mongols MC had such a reputation for assaulting its prospects that by the mid-eighties its membership was in freefall. No one wanted to sign up for a club in which you were likely to receive a savage beating every night for your first year. The club was eventually forced to adopt a new national policy: no assaulting prospects.

  The Pagans had long prohibited serious physical and mental abuse, but many prospects still found the
mselves pushed to their absolute limit. During a Pagan weekend run to the New Forest, Link and Dozer realised that they had lost the stopper valve from their inflatable tent, which meant the air kept escaping. Every time they pumped their tent up, it would slowly deflate. The solution they adopted was a novel one: they ordered their prospect to use the foot pump to continually add more air so the pair were able to get a good night’s sleep. The prospect did as he was told without question and kept pumping until he fainted from exhaustion at around four am.

  The fewer prospects a club has, the greater the workload. When Boone was prospecting for the Pagans he was one of only two others trying out for the club at the time, and he found himself being run ragged at parties and events. During the rebuilding of the club there were at least seven prospects attached to the club so even though some of them were fairly useless and clearly never going to make the cut, they were able to share tasks between them in a way that made it seem they were quite efficient.

  Other clubs like the Cycle Tramps and the Pariah from Leicester would visit the new clubhouse, see how well things were being handled and quietly berate their own prospects as they headed home: ‘Why the fuck can’t you organise stuff the way these guys do? They make you look like shit!’

  Like all MCs there were dozens of rules about conduct and obligations and anytime one of them was breached – late to a meeting, missing a run – the guilty member would suffer the humiliating loss of their top rocker or centre patch or both. ‘I’ll bust you back to prospect’ was one of Caz’s favourite sayings. Most of the time these temporary prospects would be restored to full patch members once they had learned their lessons, but there was always the odd member who couldn’t seem to cut it and would keep losing his patches until he found himself out of the club altogether.