Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs (11 page)

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 themselves 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.

Despite all the blood, sweat and tears, not to mention the sheer amount of time that went into obtaining them, the Pagans used to joke that their patches might just was well be attached with Velcro.

While a prospect is constantly ordered around or looking to anticipate what he might be asked to do next, full members are able to make their own plans, so long as they stick to the obligations of their particular club. One of these will be to attend all the mandatory runs for the particular club, usually around six per year. Another is to attend church where all the business of the chapter is discussed and voted on.

For the majority of clubs, church meetings last anywhere between one and three hours depending on how much club business needs to be discussed and how long it takes everyone to settle down. Drinking during meetings is allowed, though it is frowned on to be drunk or stoned while they were still in session. The proceedings are highly formal – motions are introduced and seconded, votes are taken for and against, and the president often has a gavel. Heated arguments often erupt and the debates can rage on for hours. The philosophy is a simple one: everyone gets their say but not necessarily their way.

Although the president and other officers are technically in charge, absolutely everything is decided by a vote. In clubs like the Pagans with just one chapter, this would be straightforward. For clubs with lots of chapters spread across a wider area, individual chapters have their votes weighted according to the number of members they have. This use of proportional representation ensures that the decision of the large chapters doesn’t sweep the smaller ones along.

It was during a church meeting that the Pagans first decided to make full use of the lessons that had been learned from the Scorpio. Although a few members dealt drugs on a casual basis, this was mostly to ensure that there was plenty to go around at parties and to help them get their own stuff for free. Now a decision was made to formalise the trade and to get everyone involved.

As the members sat around a meeting table, one of the new prospects placed a small bag containing five grams of amphetamine in front of each of them. The terms were simple: the club had obtained the drugs at a bulk discount price. The drugs had a certain street value. Each member had to take the drugs and return a week later with that sum of money.