Heavy Duty Attitude (9 page)
An eyewitness account and analysis from our crime correspondent Iain Parke
Amongst the biker world, it was billed as ‘peace in our time.’ Instead it turned into one of the worst days of violence and death that the UK biker world has ever seen.
Following an invitation from The Brethren MC, known as the ‘Menaces’ from their black and red colours, to attend their Toy Run, I had ridden there on Saturday morning at the back of the outlaw convoy. It felt a perfect weekend for the event, sunny and peaceful.
The Brethren hadn’t given any warning of their intended meeting with The Rebels so the arrival of a contingent from the other club at the event just after one o’clock on the Sunday took most onlookers by surprise and for a moment observers feared serious trouble was about to erupt as the two clubs have a long tradition of vicious rivalry.
Members of the two clubs were beginning to mingle, perhaps for the first time ever when in the words of one biker, ‘All hell broke loose.’ The first indication that anything was wrong was a whooshing sound followed by the roar of an explosion as what we later found out was an antitank rocket hit a group of parked bikes near to where I was standing.
Someone amongst the bikers yelled ‘Incoming’ and we dived for cover as a second rocket hit the brick clubhouse behind us. Beyond that, a third rocket struck close to a tent that was acting as a bar for The Brethren and their guests, following which there was the clattering noise as a burst of automatic rifle fire swept the site.
The firing died away as quickly as it had started and as some members of both clubs raced across towards the woods from where it had seemed to emanate while others, together with a visibly shocked team from St John’s Ambulance who had come expecting to see the odd case of heat exhaustion or at worst perhaps a broken limb from a bike prang, began desperately tending the wounded.
Three of the dead, The Brethren Adrian ‘Shady Aidie’ Christianson from the London charter, Jonathan ‘Greasy Fingers’ Hodge from the North East and Rebel sergeant at arms Richard ‘Ric’ Taylor from Liverpool, had been standing together discussing the bikes and took the full force of the explosion when the first rocket struck.
As the smoke cleared and a fleet of cars and vans were commandeered to ferry the injured to hospital pending the arrival of ambulances for the most seriously wounded, the club members gathered in grim-faced quiet conclave. Those who had reached the woods had reported back that the attackers, whoever they were, had fled the scene.
Most of the bikers who were in a position to do so then rapidly saddled up and rode off, ignoring the arriving police to whom, despite everything that had just happened, they had nothing to say.
These levels of violence and even the use of sophisticated military hardware are hardly unknown amongst biker gangs elsewhere in the world. Eleven people were murdered, with over 70 attempted murders, during the so-called Great Nordic Biker War when from 1993 to 1997 the Hells Angels and Bandidos fought for control of the Scandinavian drugs trade using machine guns, hand grenades and rocket launchers; in Canada the police attribute up to 69 deaths, including those of innocent passers-by, to a similar war which ran from 1994 to 1999 and which involved numerous car bombings; while in Australia a single confrontation at a motorcycle rally in Milperra in 1984 between members of The Comancheros and members who had defected to patch over and form an Australian Bandidos charter, left six bikers and a 14-year old girl dead.
Until Saturday’s incident however, while there have been a number of shootings involving biker disputes, including some fatal ones, this type and scale of violence has not been seen in the UK.
It would have to be someone with the capability and interest in attacking a biker event and in practice police specialising in the biker clubs at SOCA, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, clearly believe this means other outlaw bikers.
The first, and in many ways the simplest explanation, is that another club had decided to attack The Brethren. In this scenario, The Rebels, who the attackers may not have expected to be there given the historic grudge between the two clubs, would just represent collateral damage. If this is the case, police fear that the two clubs may now seek to join forces to hunt down the attackers.
Assuming however, that the attack at this point was not a coincidence but was linked to the Brethren and Rebels’ peace process, then this means the attackers would have to have been in the know about the planned meeting.
Again, it could have been another club which may have felt threatened by the two linking up. Police speculate that the intention may therefore have been to cause casualties on both sides in the hope of sinking the peace deal. However this scenario would require the attackers having advance knowledge of the planned meeting, which whilst known about by officers in both clubs, was otherwise a quite closely guarded secret.
While not ruling this out, given the fierce degree of loyalty that outlaw motorcyclists have to their own clubs and the rigid codes of secrecy, the police are therefore discounting this as a possibility.
There is a third possibility however, which is that dissident factions within one or other club, The Brethren or The Rebels, arranged to stage the attack using either their own members or those of so-called support clubs, as a strike against their own leadership in an attempt to derail the clubs’ rapprochement.
If this is the case, the strong joint response of the two clubs suggests that it has not worked, at least so far. However it does raise the possibility that some kind of internal dispute may be breaking out within one or other club. The implication of any of these scenarios for the outlaw biker scene in the UK is one of uncertainty and possible trouble, and so both the police and bikers are already turning their minds to what happens next.
The first concern is obviously whether there will be further attacks and if so, when and where. Both clubs now have members to bury and while outlaw biker funerals are always significant events within this community, attendance at these particular occasions is likely to be at an all time high. The police will already be considering the security implications of covering each of these runs.
There is obviously also concern about the potential for revenge attacks as and when the clubs believe they have identified those responsible. The police believe that the clubs are already mounting parallel investigations of the attack using their own channels and whilst they will not admit it for the record, there is serious concern at high levels that if the outlaws establish the guilty parties before the police are able to arrest them, there may be an outbreak of serious violence in retaliation.
That piece was front page, above the fold, with my by-line.
Pages two and three covered in text and pictures some of my shots, some of the aftermath, police crawling through the woods in white overalls, and abandoned outlaw Harleys being lifted in slings onto recovery trucks to be taken away for examination.
This was the major story on Monday, and one I was right in the thick of whether I liked it or not. The editor had been pleased with the scoop of having an eyewitness account but now he wanted to know more. Who had been behind this, and where was it going to go?
I had called Bob first on the Sunday. It was a quick call to his mobile, very much on the fly from the newsroom as I raced to pull together and file my copy. It was the weekend but given what had happened I guessed he’d be working.
‘Jesus. Nothing on the fucking radar. Your Intel is crap!’ I accused. ‘So help us then,’ he suggested quickly.
So help us then
?’
‘Give us information on The Brethren. You’re in seeing them.’ *
Naturally it was The Brethren rather than the cops who knew what was going on as I found out with a simple call on Monday morning to the mobile number Wibble had given me.
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to speak to you.’
‘What for?’
‘To find out what’s going on, what you know.’
He thought about that for a moment and then said, ‘OK then, come over.’ ‘Where?’
‘It’s OK, you don’t need to know. You at work?’
‘No, at home.’
‘Fine. Stay there. We’ll send someone to collect you.’
‘Great, it’s at…’
Of course he did, I thought uneasily. Why didn’t that come as a surprise? *
It was Bung who turned up outside my flat about an hour later. He was driving an ancient Astra and he didn’t come in. Just stopped outside and beeped his horn like a taxi waiting for a fare, then sat there waiting behind a pair of dark sunglasses until I appeared. It was the first time I’d seen him not wearing his colours.
We drove in silence for about twenty minutes, Bung juggled his way through the late morning traffic towards Chiswick and up onto the elevated section of the M4 so soon we were heading west out of London.
Then he was indicating and pulling into Heston Services where he headed over to a corner of the car park away from the buildings and stopped beside a battered looking parked up despatch bike equipped with well stickered top box and panniers. A rider started to walk towards us as we climbed out of the car.
‘So,’ I asked, ‘are we meeting him here?’
‘Nope,’ he replied, without looking at me.
‘So what’s this?’
‘What’s this about?’ I asked.
‘We’re going the last bit of the way by bike,’ said Bung, pulling on an open faced lid that the biker had also produced, ‘So get this on first.’
I understood what he meant then. Wearing the balaclava back to front I’d be effectively blindfolded while the darkened visor on the full faced lid would mean that no one would be able to tell this was the case. They were serious about me not wanting to know where I was going and they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. The bike was an oldish, ordinary, naked, and knackered looking Kwacker, a classic dispatcher’s slab sided GT750 shaftie with a lot of miles on the clock and a radio set bungeed across the tank. It was The Brethren equivalent of mufti. In his worn leather jacket and scuffed jeans, on this bike Bung just looked like a bit of a burley despatch rider. Every day and anonymous.
As we rolled out of the car park I realised both that the whole exchange had only taken a couple of minutes, and that the other biker had never said a word.
Bung blasted down the motorway to the next junction and then I felt the familiar sinking sensation as he slowed slightly to enter the roundabout and dropped the bike into the corner before a boot of acceleration in the small of my back tugged my shoulders backwards as it lifted the bike back out again and we were on our way to wherever our destination was going to be.
It was a strange feeling, riding pillion without being able to see. There was nothing to it but to just try and relax, to just go with the interplaying rhythms of the ride; the tugging backwards of acceleration, the sliding forwards of braking and the jinking and yawing swoops to left and right as we took the bends or hopped the traffic, the back wheel juddering over the cats eyes. Without the visual clues it was very difficult to judge how long we were riding or how far we might have come. I’m sure he went round a couple of roundabouts twice just to ensure any sense of direction I might have had would be confused but frankly he needn’t have bothered. By the time we got wherever we were going I wasn’t going to have a clue anyway. Eventually the wind and exhaust roar died as we slowed almost to a halt before, with a bump of the suspension, we were heading down some kind of a ramp, the exhaust noise echoing back at us as we rode into the cool damp of what had to be some kind of underground car park where we pulled up. Bung kicked out the stand and let the bike settle; steadying it as still in blackness I climbed off and stood surrounded by the acrid smells of hot oil from the bike and old piss from everywhere else.
My guide directed me along a corridor until at last we stopped and he knocked on a door. We waited outside for a few moments, I assume while we were being inspected from inside, before the rattling sound of bolts being drawn came through the door and then it clicked open. At a prod from Bung I stepped forward and into the space beyond.