Hateland

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  Larry, Benny, Tony, Ray, myself and a few others hired a Transit van, filled it with beer and headed off to Luton. We arrived around lunch-time in a town that had already been occupied by invading Millwall troops. We went into the first pub we found. Inside, Millwall fans sang loudly and chanted ' Sieg Heil! ' at any Asians foolish enough to pass by on the street. As the pub filled, fans became more boisterous. They knocked over tables and hurled chairs and glasses across the room. The landlord phoned the police, who moved us on to the next pub, where fans wreaked similar havoc, until the police moved them on again. While making our way from pub to pub, I watched shop windows being smashed and Asian drivers at a taxi rank being attacked and beaten up.

  Everyone seemed pretty drunk by the time we reached the ground. Then we found ourselves being crammed like cattle into a small enclosure. Just before the game started, the Millwall fans surged forward. Fans at the front feared a crush, so they spilled onto the pitch, delaying the kick-off for 25 minutes.

  Throughout the game, I watched fights breaking out in different parts of the ground. With 10 minutes to go, Luton led 1-0. Hundreds of Millwall fans poured onto the touchline to try to get the game abandoned. The police struggled to hold them back. The match ended. Millwall had lost. Everyone surged forward and most found themselves on the pitch. Nobody knew quite what to do. I couldn't see Ray and the others, so I just followed the mob.

  We ran towards the seating enclosure. Everyone started ripping out the plastic seats and hurling them at the police, who scattered, but then regrouped and baton-charged us. Total chaos reigned. I looked up into the night sky and could see only plastic seats flying through the air, their trajectory captured in the powerful floodlights.

  Outside the ground, the rampaging mob damaged houses, shops and cars before wrecking a train in the station. The day's events had left 47 people injured, 31 of them police. It was front-page news.

  The next day, UEFA awarded the Euro '88 competition to Germany. The British Football Association attributed their decision to the rioting at Luton. Even Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher, fresh from winning the Miners' Strike, condemned the Millwall hooligans. Her words became a source of great pride and encouragement to us all.

  A few weeks later, I was summoned to appear at Stoke Crown Court for trial over the bottling incident. I didn't go. I knew I'd be sent to prison and that thought didn't fill me with joy. In order to avoid arrest, I moved out of the house in Deptford and into a squat near Clapham Common. Normally, I disapproved of squatters. Indeed, until the point at which I myself became a squatter, I hadn't considered the possibility that squatters could be anything other than bash-worthy red scum. Del Boy, an electrician by trade, employed me as his labourer for a few weeks, although he didn't really need me. He then invited me to go with him to Holland for a job wiring-up oil-rig platforms. The money was good, so I said yes. I also thought I'd have a better chance abroad of avoiding arrest.

  The only problem was my lack of electrical qualifications. I'd learnt a few things from Del Boy, and I'd changed a few light bulbs and plugs in my life, but I didn't feel qualified to take on a responsible job. Three hours after our arrival in Rotterdam, they sent us to work on a huge oil rig in a dry dock. The foreman handed me a very complicated wiring diagram and told me to get on with it.

  I'd hoped to stick by Del Boy's side, but we'd been split up. A Scottish man called William was my partner. I had no choice but to explain my problem. He did the decent thing and said he'd help me. We worked twelve-hour shifts, from seven to seven, six days a week. Everything I did was guesswork. I suffered more electric shocks and burns in a twelve-hour shift than most electricians suffer in a lifetime.

  A few years later, the Piper Alpha oil rig went up with a bang, killing scores of people. I often wonder if some of the electrics on that platform had been done by someone with similar professional skills to mine.

  The job came to an end. I didn't want to risk returning to England, so I told Del Boy I'd head for Amsterdam. He said he'd go back to England for a month, then join me. Drug addicts, con-men and sleazeballs preyed on the thousands of young tourists in Amsterdam. I saw several street robberies, including one particularly bad stabbing when a German tourist refused to let go of his wallet.

  I slept in the train station until the police moved me on. Then I slept in the park, but I didn't like my roommates. I booked into a hostel run by American Christians. Cheap and clean, its only drawback was the staff, who spent their time trying to lead me to

  God. I couldn't sit anywhere without one of them sidling up to say, 'Bernard, are you seeking inner peace?'

  I met someone called Billy He came from Leicestershire and was also on the run from the law, though he never told me why. He'd moved to Holland with his girlfriend Angie, who was about 17, attractive, streetwise and a prostitute. She'd almost been murdered a few weeks after her arrival. A man had taken her for sex to one of the floating hotel boats at the dock behind the central station. In the room, he'd turned nasty, taken out a carving knife and stabbed her seven times. It took her five months to recover. But, as soon as she could, she went back on the game. She'd started taking heroin.

  At first, I got on fairly well with Billy. He invited me to stay at the flat he shared with Angie. She worked nights and slept during the day, so I didn't see that much of her, though every time I did see her I thought she'd slipped another few yards downhill.

  Billy introduced me to two scumbags from Surinam called 'Orlando' and 'Johnny'. They made their living selling drugs and stolen passports. They also pimped, preying on teenage girls, the younger the better, most of them drug addicts. I think Billy hoped to open up some business opportunities for us, but I wanted nothing to do with his mates. I started hanging around with a Dutch giant with a very English name - Henry. He worked as a nightclub doorman. I asked him to try to fix me up with some work. The next day, he invited me to meet a club manager, a little pumpkin of a man, with a bald head and a sleazy manner.

  I expected an offer of work on the door or in the bar. In fact, the pumpkin wanted me for sex. That is, as a performer in a live-sex show. The job entailed going on stage dressed as a gorilla and performing a full repertoire of sex acts with two women and various types of fruit. He showed me my would-be co-performers' photos. Both looked gorgeous, but - on a stage, in front of an audience, brandishing bananas and wearing a gorilla suit - I had to decline. Henry and the pumpkin seemed genuinely surprised by my refusal.

  I rang Del Boy. For one reason or another, he kept postponing his return. I concluded he wouldn't be coming back. I decided I wanted to leave Amsterdam. I'd only been there a few months, but the sleaze had begun to get me down. My money was getting low and I didn't think much of the work opportunities. Billy had also been talking about leaving - without Angie. By now, she was a total wreck, her mind and body ravaged by heroin. I wanted to hitch-hike, to follow the road wherever it might take me.

  I'd done that once before in England. Aged 17, I'd made pregnant my girlfriend of three years. She gave birth to a boy, Adrian, but then dumped me. With hindsight, I know she made a wise decision, but at the time I felt heartbroken. I decided to leave the area. I packed a holdall and said goodbye to my mother, not knowing where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there. Saying goodbye to my mother devastated me. I walked the five miles to the M6 motorway in tears. I decided to leave my final destination to fate: I'd stick my thumb out and go wherever the first car to stop was going. That night, I found myself trudging in a blizzard through a run-down area of Glasgow. I slept in a tin workman's hut near the Celtic football ground and in the morning I explored the city. I'd heard unemployment was high in Glasgow, but I didn't think things could be that bad. Then I found a jobcentre that appeared not to have any jobs on its boards. When I enquired at the desk, the clerk started laughing. He called over his colleagues to show them the Englishman who'd come to Glasgow to find work. As he sent me away, he said, 'You're at the wrong end of the motorway, Dick Whittington.' I l
ived rough in Glasgow for a few days before moving on and doing the same in Edinburgh and then Dundee. After six months, I ended up back in Codsall.

  Billy said he wanted to leave Amsterdam and move on with me. I agreed to let him travel with me, though I felt I'd probably made a mistake. I'd been growing gradually to dislike him. His callous treatment of Angie had accelerated the plunge in his personal ratings. I asked him to tell her about our plans, but he wouldn't, and he forbade me to say anything. He didn't care about her. Her prostitution had kept him fed, clothed and boozed for several months, but now he couldn't even be bothered to say goodbye.

  We packed our stuff and left in the early morning before she returned. I felt guilty, so I left her a note. I kept thinking she'd go completely under when she discovered Billy had left her. He didn't give a toss. He said, 'She's only a whore.' God only knows what happened to the poor girl.

  On the road, our 'friendship' deteriorated further. We couldn't get many lifts and we ran out of money. Billy kept moaning and moaning and moaning, like a whining child. Outside Maastricht, I finally had enough. I told him to stop moaning or fuck off on his own. We had a brief but intense exchange of views, then he pulled a knife on me. He kept jabbing it at me, calling me a wanker and saying, 'Come on, then! Come on, then!'

  I didn't fancy bleeding to death on a deserted road, so I ran away. But Billy shouldn't have jeered as he did, because I wasn't running far. I'd merely spotted something I wanted. I jogged 30 yards to an embankment where out of the ground I pulled up a long, thin, metal rod (which workmen use when taping off trenches). Then I jogged back to my dear, dear friend, whose recent pride in victory was now evacuating rapidly into his underpants.

  Billy seemed transfixed as I bore down upon him. I swung the rod and clubbed him across the head. He fell to the ground. I kicked him in the head and body before taking the knife off him. I was tempted to stab him, if only for Angie, but I thought better of it. I punched him a few more times in the head and just left him there, moaning again, though this time with good reason.

  Blood had spattered over my face, hands and clothes, so I knew I'd now have even greater difficulty hitching a ride. I cleaned myself up in a petrol station before setting off on my own.

  It soon dawned on me that I was never going to establish myself anywhere without money, so I returned reluctantly to London by jumping trains and conning my way onto the ferry

  It was late summer 1985. Nothing much had changed. My friends were going about their unruly business much the same as before. I was told that the police had called at my old address a few times looking for me. But they hadn't bothered searching it. They hadn't even asked too many questions, so I felt they weren't in hot pursuit. Then again, I'd hardly committed the crime of the century. A bottle over the head in Codsall wouldn't be competing with the Great Train Robbery for a place in the annals of crime.

  I got back in time for the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium. This event, televised live and watched by hundreds of millions throughout the world, aimed to raise money for famine victims in Ethiopia. Many of the entertainers taking part had sung on the so-called 'Band Aid' single 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' at the end of 1984. That record sold 3.5 million copies in the UK. I went along with a closet fascist to hear a few bands and to laugh at the outpouring of what I saw as bogus compassion for the Third World.

  For some years, I'd loathed the event's organiser, Bob Geldof, and his band, the Boomtown Prats. My friends and I had seen them as perfumed maggots on the joyfully stinking corpse of punk. Now that the public had tired of buying his crap records - I ranted to myself - Geldof had dreamt up this 'Feed the World' bollocks to boost his diminished status. The idea of all these hugely wealthy, if not multimillionaire, pop stars getting on stage to browbeat poor people into handing over money to 'feed' even poorer people really brought out the Adolf in me. I couldn't believe the gall of these 'musicians', many of whom led lives of extravagant and wasteful luxury, publicly weeping crocodile tears for the poor little black kids going to bed hungry. I felt sure a single restaurant bill from one of these fucks would keep a Bangladeshi village in rice for a decade. Chief phoney Bob Geldof was the sort of person I wished I'd been at school with. I'd have sentenced him to hang long ago.

  Another pop star showing signs of becoming a similar 'Messiah of Compassion' was U2's Bono. In 1985, Bono, unlike fellow Irishman Geldof, could at least say he'd once led a decent band. Sadly, too much time spent with Geldof looked like infecting Bono with the same drooling Jesus complex. My closet fascist friend felt the same way. When the band U2 took to the stage, a man near us began waving an Irish tricolour. My friend told him to take it down. 'Wembley,' said my friend, 'ain't the place for IRA scum to wave their colours.'

  An argument developed between us and the man. My friend grabbed the flag. Inevitably, a fight broke out. The crowd parted to avoid the flying fists. My friend started rolling about on the famous turf, punching 'the red scum', until the security staff intervened. They threw us out, pushing us into the street still clutching the snatched flag.

  Within a few weeks, events occurred which made me and most of my friends wonder again if we should bother staying in England. An incident in the Handsworth district of Birmingham in which young blacks accused the police of racism led to two days of rioting, arson and looting, costing millions of pounds and the lives of two Asian men who died trapped in a burning post office. Around 120 people were injured, two-thirds of them police officers. A total of 437 people were arrested.

  A few days later, so-called 'copycat' riots took place in Dudley, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Moseley in Birmingham and St Paul's in Bristol. It seemed, from our extremist viewpoint, as if our familiar, British way of life might collapse for ever under the weight of all these immigrants trying to take over our country, with no regard for our laws. As we saw it, they would go shopping when the shops were shut and, if the police intervened, they'd petrol-bomb them and accuse them of being 'racist'. We'd have been happy for the government to send in the Paras to carry out another 'Bloody Sunday' on British soil, though this time with black victims. Some of us began to dream of emigrating to a country where the authorities knew how to deal firmly with uppity darkies. South Africa was mentioned for the first time as more than a possible holiday destination.

  I guessed it wouldn't be long before south London joined the list of riot zones. I think the police agreed. There seemed to be a lot more of them on the streets. And the local papers reported more police raids on illegal drinking and drug dens and the like. I wasn't entirely unhappy with this part of the situation. I felt if the police were concentrating on the possibility of major civil disorder, they were hardly likely to devote any resources to hunting me down.

  On 28 September 1985, the police raided a house in Brixton searching for a black man called Michael Groce. They wanted to question him about the illegal possession of a shotgun. During the raid, his mother ended up being shot by a policeman. A few hours later, around 300 youths, most of them black, attacked the local police station with petrol bombs. The shooting of Mrs

  Groce had finally kicked off the riots we'd felt had been waiting to happen.

  We all rang each other with the news. Later on that afternoon, seven of us, including Adolf, Colin, Adrian 'Army Game' and 'Benny the Jew' met up for a drink in Stockwell. Benny lived just around the corner from Ray and Tony's house on the front line. We decided to head over there to see what was happening. Police had cordoned off the area and were stopping non-residents from entering. Resident Benny convinced them to let us all through to go home. As we made our way down the road, we passed some white teenagers who warned us about blacks attacking whites. We relished the thought of a row. Nothing prepared us for the scale of the trouble. Hundreds of people filled the streets - most of them engaged in law-breaking of one kind or another.

  Screams and missiles hurtled towards police cowering behind riot shields that were being tested to the limits of their brick-resisting endurance.
Petrol bombs added colour and warmth to the occasion. And, in an early pre-Christmas non-sales rush, mask-wearing bargain-hunters emptied shops of their goods.

  We passed people we felt sure were trying to organise this chaos. I saw white individuals with whistles which they seemed to be using to send signals to other people with whistles. I didn't ask them to show their party cards, but they looked like members of the red rabble we'd encountered countless times before.

  One man stood on a small pair of stepladders. Perhaps he just wanted a better view, but he seemed to me to be watching the police's movements. Then he'd make hand signals - and I don't think he was waving to his mum. I'd seen this before in Northern Ireland, where riots were rarely as 'spontaneous' as they appeared and, once they'd kicked off, were often led and directed by people with a politically motivated agenda. We felt a confrontation in this situation would be unwise. We left the main theatre of riot and headed towards Benny's house.

  At a junction, we heard the sound of hammering. It was coming from the back of a jeweller's shop. We lifted ourselves up onto a wall to have a look. A group of black youths ran off. We climbed down to see what they'd been up to. Instead of using their sledgehammer to tackle the shop's heavily armoured back door, they'd opted for trying to smash a hole through the brickwork.

  Our conversation until that point had been filled with outrage at the 'black criminals' running riot and looting in our cities. Now the thought of getting our hands on a few trays of gold necklaces prompted us to join in. We took turns trying to knock through the wall. Every few minutes, a police siren would wail nearby. We feared they were coming for us. After a while, having made little progress through the reinforced wall, we gave up.

  We spent the rest of the night at Benny's, watching the riot on the news. By midnight, the police had shed their defensive tactics and charged the crowd. The disorder had subsided by 2.30 a.m.