Still life with Volkswagens by Geoff Nicholson

Author:Geoff Nicholson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1993-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Six

Paint Your Volkswagen

The first skinhead says, “What if we went down Brick Lane and did over a few Indian restaurants?”

“It’s definitely a possibility,” says Phelan.

“Or,” says another, “what if we went to a Jewish cemetery and, you know, knocked over a few gravestones and painted ’em with swastikas?”

“Why not?” says Phelan approvingly. “Crude perhaps, but undeniably resonant.”

They are in a scout hut adjacent to some overgrown allotments somewhere within striking distance of the M25. Phelan is having what he calls a Mission Session. He is instructing, persuading, motivating, setting goals. His audience consists of eight skinheads, the same ones who attacked Barry at the Little Eater and who previously destroyed the New Age travellers’ campsite. He tells his charges that they are only one cell of a growing movement, but he flatters them into thinking they are his crack squad, his storm troopers. The room is brightly lit and bare. There is no stage, no podium, no backdrop of Nazi flags. Phelan believes there will be a time for oratory, for the big rally and the triumph of the will. That time is coming soon but it has not arrived yet. For now he chooses to remain low-key, makes one or two allusions to the effect that the Western world is in thrall to a cabal of ‘international bankers’, but generally remains informal, intimate, a style that is interestingly at odds with the exuberance of the skinheads, and yet he feels wonderfully safe and in control when he talks to them. He feels they are his skinheads.

“What about doing over a rap club?” one skinhead says. “I hate rap music. I hate niggers, of course, but I hate rap music even when whites play it.”

“Well,” says Phelan, “mightn’t it be more interesting to attack a club that was, say, frequented by black drug dealers? That would be morally ambiguous. That would give the liberal press something to think about.”

His audience are not the type to give much consideration to the thoughts of the liberal press, but Phelan sounds as convincing as ever.

“And maybe we could burn some crosses,” one of the skinheads shouts.

The others like this and for a while they become uncontrollably wild and exuberant. After this has died down one says, “I hear there are these things called gay centres. Fuck knows what they are, but I wouldn’t mind smashing one of ’em up.”

Phelan smiles approvingly. He enjoys these little chats. What he likes best is the noble savagery, the instinctive correctness of these young men. He is a thinker. He has theory and ideology behind him. He knows why he wants an end to immigration, to political softness, to social and sexual divergence. The skinheads don’t, and yet they’ve come to the same conclusions as him. They have a natural, unthinking energy that he knows he is too studied to possess. But he can admire it, and he can most definitely use it.

“What about massage parlours?” one of the skinheads shouts. “I mean, all that sensual massage

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