Tuesday 22 November 2016

Waterloo Screwdriver gig protest

I remember when i was young, us Medallions used to love all the protests happening in London. To be honest, we were only going for the scraps they entailed rather than what the protest actually stood for but we always made an effort. There were the Poll Tax riots, the Criminal Justice Act mash up on PArk Lane. We always made an effort to go on the Anti Nazi LEague Rallies. We liked having fights with Nazi's but mainly we just liked fighting coz it was fun and we were young and it was stupid and anyway, it wasn't actually real fighting. Life was all a game.
I remember being at Waterloo station one time to stop a Screwdriver gig from happening at a secret location in London. The Screwdriver meet was at Waterloo so we all showed up and threw glasses at some boneheads who cowered by the ticket booths, glass smashing above their heads. They were massively outnumbered and i i have to admit, i did feel pangs of sympathy on a purely human level. No one got really hurt but they just looked so pathetic all dolled up in their NF regalia. It was like they couldn't understand why folk were hating on them. Silly boys.
Anyway, it turned out that most people there that day were also just like our group. Thrill seekers really. And cowards. But i'll get onto that. I remember a man being beaten up just because he had short hair and his Indian friend screaming at the attackers that he was with them. It was horrible. We all ended up running around like headless chickens. At one stage i remember crossing the rail tracks just outside Waterloo (one of my reoccurring nightmares). I dunno who we were running from. It was all charging about but i didn't really see much action.
The police ended up "kettling" us up under a bridge whilst the main body of skin heads (who magically appeared shortly after) were then led to safety across Waterloo bridge and then onto their gig.
Afterwards folk seemed to congregate towards Jubilee Gardens. Dunno how many of us, a couple hundred maybe. An element of fear and suspicion had entered the mind of the pack. Folk with short hair (me included with a shaved head) quickly found hats to wear. There was a lot of unspent adrenalin going around.
And then check this, The Naziest of Nazi skins i had ever seen, this lone guy with the swagger of Leon Gallagher enters Jubillee Gardens and into our throng. Held held high and he was walzing about everyone. It was hilarious. No one went near him. I'd just watched this group beating up innocent people and here was a guys seriously fronting out a crowd of hundreds. I'll never forget it. It was almost magical. Humans are cowards. All it would have taken was one person to ignite the spark and then he would have got a paste but no one went near. I think that was the last Anti Nazi League rally we went on.
20 years on and we have a real enemy. The far Right are on our fucking doorsteps. For real. I have to say that my fists are twitching.This feels like war. Horrible.

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