Hateland

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  'Benny the Jew' (as Adolf, especially, liked to call him) had in fact been christened 'Maurice'. However, Adolf thought 'Maurice' sounded 'kikey' ('Maurice, shmorrish. Oy vay, oy vay.'). He was about 5 ft 9 in., had cropped hair and was fairly stocky, although Adolf insisted he was fat. He and Adolf were often at each other's throats. They'd end up brawling, rolling around at our feet while we continued drinking.

  Ray and Tony were two brothers who lived in Railton Road, Brixton, known locally as 'the Front Line'. Ray, the elder of the two, was three years younger than me, 5 ft 9 in. and lean. His younger brother, Tony, was of similar height and build, but somewhat quieter than Ray, who tended to drink heavily and never shirk from violence.

  Colin was short, about 5 ft 6 in., stocky with cropped ginger hair. He didn't have a violent manner. He could usually be found singing Frank Sinatra or Max Bygraves songs at the top of his voice while disorder raged around us. He was also in his early 20s. Despite his apparent unwillingness to cause trouble, he had no qualms about ending it quickly with a knife, bottle or whatever came close to hand.

  Larry 'The Slash' was probably the meekest among us. He was about 5 ft 9 in. and thin almost to the point of frailty. He always wore a cream-coloured 'flasher'-type mac. His 'Slash' nickname came from a deep-red, angry scar which started at the bottom of his ear, ran along his jawline and tapered off under his chin. He picked it up one night down the Old Kent Road after Adolf got into a dispute with a black man. Unknown to Adolf and the others, the man was attending a party nearby. Around 20 of his armed friends then joined the dispute. A serious fight ensued and Larry was slashed with a craft knife. Nobody else was injured. The police arrived and both sides fled.

  Del Boy was the oldest. He was well into his 20s. I don't know if he got his nickname from the small-time, south-London wheeler-dealer of the same name in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses, or whether that fictional character was based on him. He was an electrician by trade, but dabbled in everything from greyhound racing to drug smuggling, although he was never very successful at anything illegal. Everybody who saw him thought he was a policeman. He had an air of authority about him, perhaps because he always wore a suit. He also had short, black hair, neatly parted at the side, and a well-trimmed moustache.

  One Saturday afternoon, I watched as he and Adolf bought a 'champion' greyhound in a Clapham pub. I say 'champion' because that's the word its owner used before selling it to the drunken duo for a few hundred pounds. Adolf and Del Boy used to train the dog in the local park for its debut race with them as owners. On the big night, we all made our way to the track in south London. Just before the race, Del Boy gave the dog a substance which he described as 'rocket fuel'.

  The traps opened and the dogs sprinted out. Del Boy and Adolf's dog took the lead. We all jumped up and down, screaming encouragement. Adolf was shouting 'I told you so' at the non-believers and sceptics whose mockery he'd been shrugging off for weeks. The dog led the pack as the first bend approached. Our screams got louder with every second. The scent of victory filled the air, only to dissipate suddenly as the hound not only failed to turn, but failed even to acknowledge a turn might be necessary.

  Without slowing down, it rocketed head first into an advertising hoarding. We could hear the crunch from where we stood. Badly injured, the dog never raced again. I next saw it being walked as a pet in the same park where it had trained. Adolf had given it away to a pensioner on his estate.

  The other regular face in our circle was a teenager from Battersea called Adrian. He was broad, about 6 ft, with cropped fair hair. We called him 'Army Game' because of his obsession with all things military. The first night I met him he invited me and Colin back to what he said was 'his' flat in Battersea Bridge Road. We'd wanted to continue our drinking session after the pub. Adrian claimed his flat was full of beer.

  We arrived by cab. As we climbed the steps to a three-storey townhouse, Adrian put his finger to his lips and slurred drunkenly, 'Wait here.' He went into the house and emerged a few minutes later with a set of keys. He said they belonged to his flat downstairs. I couldn't believe what we found when we walked in. One room contained cases and cases of Carlsberg lager. 'Help yourself, lads,' said Adrian, 'I'll put on some music.' He claimed the lager had been given to him by his father, who worked for Carlsberg.

  He said we could drink as much as we wanted. He showed us a room full of new promotional Carlsberg clothing and electrical goods (such as a stereo and a TV). Some personal items were scattered around. Adrian said these had been left: by the previous tenant. He said, 'Take what you want.' We raised our cans to his father and then spent the night drinking, trying on the promotional clothing and packing anything we liked into the previous tenant's suitcases. We got everything ready for carting off the next day.

  In the early hours, someone banged on the door. I opened it to be faced by a West Indian man in his 50s wearing a dressing gown. He began screaming about the loud music. Before I had a chance to say anything, he said, 'Keep the noise down - or else.'

  'Or else fucking what?' shouted Adrian over my shoulder. 'Or else fucking what?' I told the guy to fuck off and slammed the door. He shouted through the letterbox, 'I'll be back, you wankers, with my sons, and we'll see who'll fuck off then.'

  We flung the door open and ran out, but he'd already disappeared. Around seven, we'd all lapsed into a drunken slumber. I heard someone putting a key in the lock. Then the letterbox clattered. I made my way on my hands and knees to the front room. I said, 'Colin! Colin! There's somebody at the front door. I think it's the black geezer and his sons.'

  I picked up a knife, Colin a weightlifting bar. We walked to the front door and I shouted, 'Who is it? Who the fuck are you?'

  A man's voice replied, 'Why can't I open the door? Who are you?'

  Adrian had double-locked the door from the inside. I opened it. A well-dressed man, aged about 30, stood there.

  I said, 'What do you want?'

  'What do I want?' he said. 'What the hell do you want? This is my flat. And that shirt he's wearing is my bloody shirt.'

  I looked at Colin, who still looked pitifully pissed. I said to the man, 'Give me five, mate.' I closed the door. The flat didn't look good. Cans, clothing and records were strewn everywhere. In the hallway, the stereo - speakers tied to it - had been put alongside the suitcases of clothes. Everything stood ready for transportation. In the bedroom, we found Adrian lying on his back, the nearby duvet covered in vomit. We tried rousing him, but he remained dead to the world. In the end, we decided to leave him. It was, after all, 'his' flat. We slipped out the back and hailed a cab.

  Later that day, Adrian arrived at Colin's carrying a suitcase. His own suitcase. He'd left 'his' flat - and the house he shared with his dad. Apparently, the flat belonged to Carlsberg, for whom Adrian's father worked. A salesman currently occupied it. He'd gone away for the weekend, leaving the keys for safe-keeping with Adrian's father, who lived with his son in the company house above.

  With the double-lock off, the salesman had been able to enter the flat after we'd left. He'd found the comatose Adrian, recognised him as the paralytic progeny of his work colleague upstairs and called dad down. The two managed to rouse Adrian. His furious father helped him upstairs.

  About an hour later, the salesman knocked on Adrian's father's door. He was bleeding from the nose. He said someone had knocked on the flat's door. He'd opened it - and three well-built black youths had set upon him. They'd accused him of bad-mouthing their father and beat the shit out of him before leaving.

  Alongside these drunken japes, Adolf made sure we never lost sight of the way 'our country' was being plundered by 'foreign invaders'. In fact, most members of our little group had at least one Irish parent. Some of us had two. So we probably weren't best qualified to represent British bulldog nationalism. That didn't stop Adolf enlisting us for 'the Movement'. For him, the most important facts were that we were white, working class and spoke with an English accent, albeit in my case with a regre
ttable regional variation.

  None of us really bought into Adolf's fascist politics. But all of lis bought into the widespread white, working-class sense of resentment of immigrants (especially non-white immigrants) and, in particular, of the perks we felt they enjoyed at the expense of 'the natives'. Adolf's sister had been born and bred in Lambeth. She was engaged to a man who'd also been born and bred in Lambeth. They'd applied for housing to the local authority, but were told they'd have to sit on a waiting list for at least five years. Yet they could see whole estates of council houses being filled with immigrants. It wasn't a figment of their racist imaginations. They used to say that every plane flying into England over Lambeth en route to Heathrow put them a few hundred places further down the housing list.

  Foreigners could swiftly achieve higher priority over natives, because of what we regarded as the unjust way in which councils allocated public housing. Foreigners from alien cultures with no blood links to this country could arrive at Heathrow, be deemed 'homeless' (and therefore in greater and more urgent 'need' than natives) and shoot to the top of the queue. We felt strongly that these Third World shit-bins (as Adolf called them) should not have been immediately given the same rights to equal treatment as natives. Adolf's view, which we shared, was that if the government wanted to give them a home, and make them feel at home, it should have built a few tin-shacks or mud-huts for them on Hackney Marshes and let them shit in a big hole. Instead, as Adolf said, the Labour Government and all those lefty councils seemed to hand the best houses and flats to the wandering tribesmen of the Kalahari. It seemed so unjust. And that sense of perceived injustice bred resentment, frustration and, ultimately, hatred. Many white working-class people also felt they couldn't protest without being labelled 'racist'. Only extreme right-wing groups seemed willing to articulate their grievances and anger.

  That spring, south London was simmering. You could feel the tension. It reminded me of Northern Ireland during the hunger strikes. I knew the simmering anger would soon boil over into violence. The police patrolling Brixton were just like the British Army patrolling Northern Ireland. It seemed like the men on the ground had their hands tied by politicians. The ordinary police seemed reluctant to enforce the law, particularly in the face of aggressive blacks, partly because doing so just wasn't worth the hassle and partly because their main aim was to survive their 'tour of duty' (which meant avoiding confrontation at all costs).

  In the early part of 1983, officers on 'the Front Line' in Railton Road suffered several horrific attacks by mobs. These attacks received little or no publicity, presumably to avoid inciting copycat incidents. One day, I saw a policeman walking along one of the streets off Railton Road. A group of black youths hurled a milk bottle at him as he passed. The glass shattered at his feet. But he didn't even turn to look where it had come from. He just walked on and away. However much I despised the police, I still didn't like seeing them humiliated in this way.

  The situation sickened me and my friends. Our resentment stewed. We talked about the 'repatriation' of immigrants and, if that failed, leaving England ourselves.

  We used to drink with a couple of black blokes. They were friends of Ray's brother, Tony, and so were deemed 'OK'. We saw them as different from 'the others'. Of course, we didn't speak to any others.

  In April 1983, I stood trial at Stafford Crown Court for the glassing incident on New Year's Eve. Charged with wounding with intent, I pleaded not guilty, knowing that 'intent' is very difficult to prove. I told the jury I'd gone to the aid of a woman in distress. I'd been alone and outnumbered by a gang with a reputation for violence. As a good citizen, I'd remonstrated with them regarding their obnoxious and anti-social behaviour. One of this gang of notorious hooligans had then grabbed me and, acting totally out of fear, I'd pushed him away, forgetting I held a glass in my hand.

  The prosecution argued I couldn't 'forget' I was holding a glass. I said 'forget' probably wasn't the right word. I explained that I was wearing a pair of trousers, but I wasn't 'conscious' of that fact. I hadn't been conscious of holding the glass either.

  The trial lasted three days. My victim put on an outstanding performance in the witness box. At one stage, the judge even let him sit down after he appeared to faint. I was genuinely impressed. Until then, I hadn't realised I'd assaulted such a gifted actor. However, the photographs of his injuries turned the stomach. He had a track of stitches along the length of his neck. His ear had nearly been severed and its remnants looked like they'd been in a dog's mouth. I could see looks of horror and disgust on the faces of the jury. I didn't fancy my chances.

  On the morning of the third day, the jury retired to consider its verdict. Before leaving, the jurors had been given an alternative charge to consider: simple 'unlawful wounding', which is far less serious as there's no intent involved. They returned after six hours' deliberation. Not guilty to 'wounding with intent', but guilty to 'unlawful wounding'.

  My barrister read out both the testimonial in my army Certificate of Service and a reference written by my former troop leader, attesting glowingly to my good character. I'd told my troop leader in a letter I needed it for a job. He hadn't been fooled. On a separate piece of paper, he'd written, 'Hope this is OK and you get off. Good luck.'

  The judge told me that, because of my 'exemplary' military record, society owed me a debt. He said he'd considered sending me to prison for a considerably longer period, but, in the circumstances, nine months would suffice.

  My mother was in court. Her look of anguish tore through me. It affected me more than the sentence, which I thought was pretty lenient, given the injuries I'd inflicted.

  I served the first part in HMP Shrewsbury, known locally as 'The Dana'. Towards the end, I was moved to HMP Stafford, which had a bad reputation among prisoners, although to me it didn't seem any worse than 'The Dana'.

  In both establishments, boredom reigned supreme. Life proceeded slowly and with great tedium. I was issued with prison-tailored jeans, a blue-and-white striped shirt, a grey jumper with a light-blue neck and a remarkably ugly pair of shoes. I felt the shoes in particular had been designed to deter escape attempts, because I couldn't imagine how anyone with a shred of dignity would consider wearing them on the street, whatever the circumstances. For one pound twenty per week, I worked on a sewing machine in the prison workshop making mailbags and jeans. Contrary to tabloid myth, there were no TVs in the cells.

  The only TV I encountered was a long-haired effeminate Yorkshireman called Dan or Diane, depending on who was talking to him. I needed the patience of a saint to tolerate some of the fools around me. Occasionally, I'd meet an intelligent, interesting or amusing person, but by and large I found myself surrounded by idiots, fantasists, losers, bullies and the clinically insane, some of whom wore uniform and many of whom had very poor standards of personal hygiene. There was less violence than I'd imagined, but it happened now and again.

  Just because I was in jail didn't mean I escaped the attention of the police. Detectives from my home town came to visit me at one stage. I guessed they hadn't come out of concern for the progress of my rehabilitation. They produced a list of around 20 petty crimes which they said I'd committed. I'd had nothing to do with any of them. My unwanted visitors had even prepared a statement they wanted me to sign. They said I wouldn't have to go to court. The crimes wouldn't even appear on my record of convictions. They'd simply be recorded as 'TICs' ('taken into consideration'). It was a popular police method of massaging the crime figures to boost the clear-up rate. I told them to fuck off. They said, 'Fair enough, Bernie. We'll arrest you at the gate and we can discuss it then.' That's something all prisoners fear. On the day you're released, the police are waiting for you outside. You walk your first steps of freedom into the back of a police car. I signed the statement. Such was the system that demanded my respect.

  I fought back in little ways. At Stafford, I shared a cell with an Irish traveller called Finbar. He'd do anything for prison currency (biscuits, Mars bars,
tobacco). We were on the third-floor landing. On the ground floor stood the Wing Office, outside which prison officers congregated every morning to drink tea and stroke each other's egos. I used to give Finbar a packet of biscuits or a Mars bar to fill a large plastic tea-mug with piss and throw the contents down onto the screws through the open metal grids underneath our feet. The screws would think they'd been accidentally splashed with tea or water by a careless prisoner. They'd shout up, 'Oi! Watch what you're bloody well doing.' Finbar would either apologise profusely or deny all knowledge. Little things like this helped me through.

  I only had to serve six months of my nine-month sentence. Getting parole is easy, so long as you're prepared to toe the line and be dishonest.

  'Do you regret your crime?'

  'Deeply.'

  'How do you feel about your victim?'

  'Sorrow and remorse.'

  'Will you offend again?'

  'No, never.'

  'Which lessons have you learnt for the future?'

  'The importance of discipline and self-control.'

  I just told them what they needed to hear. Lie, lie, lie. They didn't want me in their overcrowded hate-factory anyway. They were under-staffed, under pressure and underpaid. The truth was that the only regret I had was that I'd been caught and convicted. That's the only regret most prisoners have. But you can hardly be honest if you want to get out of jail. The system would find honesty 'unacceptable'. But perhaps if young offenders could be genuinely honest, then the roots of their behaviour could be explored in a constructive way. As it is, honesty only opens you up for additional punishment.