Paul Gitsham: The Common Enemy

‘We’ve seen it in the evolution of organisations like the BNP; out go the jackboots and the Combat 18 jackets, in come the sharp suits and the election manifestos. Until UKIP started stealing their thunder, they even had some success. Nick Griffin was invited on the BBC’s Question Time , remember – mind you, he got such a spanking, it probably did him more harm than good.’

‘And you think the BAP are going that way?’

‘Well, quite the opposite, we thought. The BAP were supposedly one of a number of ragtag groups formed out of the old guard who didn’t want to go down the political route. They were proud of who they were. I have to confess, our intelligence on them was pretty slim until recently, much of the information we had on the key players came from their previous associations with more established groups, or through other sources such as criminal records.’

‘So what changed?’

‘The rhetoric on social media, primarily. We were already watching Islamophobic groups, such as Britain First, and when we saw the BAP starting to share followers and content, we started to pay attention.

‘At first, we saw them as a bit of a joke. The usual muddled neo-Nazi rhetoric, wrapped up with so-called British patriotism – a ridiculous contradiction if you think about it too hard, citing Winston Churchill in one breath and praising everything he stood against in the next. Their philosophy varied depending on who was in charge of their Facebook page that day. But when Tommy Meegan became their de facto leader, that all changed.

‘Tommy recognised that Islam is fair game nowadays and he started playing on those fears, whilst also moderating their public image. He understood that it’s about far more than how many troglodytes you can pack in a coach and drive to a rally. It’s about how many retweets or likes you get on social media.

‘Protests against so-called super mosques are just a bone to keep the hardcore onside and stop them pissing off to join somebody else. Tommy Meegan knew that he’d never effect social change that way. But a leopard doesn’t change its spots and he and his brother were nasty, violent pieces of work. Wherever the hell he is now, I’ll bet Tommy Meegan is loving every minute of this; his death could lead to the sort of race war he could only dream of in his lifetime.’

Warren needed to change the subject.

‘So how did you get into this game?’

Garfield pointed to himself.

‘Well, when you’re the colour I am, growing up in Liverpool in the Seventies and Eighties, racial politics is hardly something that passes you by.’ He held out his hand. ‘This sexy brown is the result of a white mum and a black dad.

‘Now I know what you’re thinking: I was brought up by a single mum on a housing estate in Toxteth with no opportunities and no job prospects until I decided to turn my back on a life of crime and either enlist in the army or join the police.’

Warren said nothing; he’d not really given it much thought, but it was obvious Garfield enjoyed telling the story.

‘Actually, it was far worse than that. I was born into a loving family in the Wirral – that’s the posh end of Liverpool – you know, indoor toilets and electric lighting,’ Warren smiled; he’d heard the exact same joke told about parts of Coventry many times. ‘My father was second-generation Jamaican and only retired as a consultant gynaecologist last year. He was the most well-spoken man in the street. My mother is still an education officer for the council and I’ve never heard them exchange an angry word. They sent me to the best school in the area and I went to university in Manchester and got a first in History.’

‘Oh.’ Warren wasn’t entirely sure where this was going.

‘Mum and Dad did their best to shield me from everything of course, but they couldn’t be there in the playground at school, or on the bus on the way home. It got a bit better when I joined the local sixth-form college; I wasn’t the only mixed-race kid anymore and most of the real racists never made it that far.

‘By the time I went to university, I figured the worst of it was over.’ He snorted. ‘The first time somebody threw a stone at me and shouted at me to “fuck off home”, I pledged not to wear my Liverpool shirt in Manchester again. The second time I heard it, I wasn’t wearing my shirt and the penny dropped.

‘I phoned my parents and asked right out how bad the racism had really been when I was a kid. I was shocked by their response. Dad had always said he didn’t like golf, so he didn’t play with the other consultants. In reality, he was never invited. When he took over the running of some clinics, about a dozen patients asked to be transferred, claiming that they weren’t comfortable being examined by a man. Dad’s predecessor had been an old, white guy.

‘I remember our car was always being vandalised. My parents shrugged it off; car crime in Liverpool was an epidemic. I don’t know if I was naive or in denial but I never twigged that ours was the only car in the street that was attacked, and that we were the only non-white family.

‘Nobody was ever racist to Mum’s face, but when I was born she was the only mother in her birthing group who didn’t stay in contact with the rest. At playschool, I was never invited to birthday parties.’

‘So when did you join the police?’

‘After university. I’d joined a couple of protest groups but we never really felt we were achieving anything. Some of my mates wanted to go down the direct-action route – getting stuck in against the BNP – but it didn’t seem the right approach.

‘Then one day we had a talk from a police commander in charge of race relations. Until then, I’d kind of gone along with the idea that the police were almost as bad as the far-right. Full of old-school bigots at the very least willing to turn a blind eye. The Stephen Lawrence inquiry was just wrapping up and the police were being branded as institutionally racist.

‘But I had trouble squaring what I was hearing from this police officer with what I was hearing on the news, and what I was being told by the people I was going on marches with. So in the end I attended one of the force’s recruitment days and decided that whilst the police were far from perfect, it was better to be inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.’

‘So how did you end up down here?’

‘Career advancement. I was stuck on sergeant up in Liverpool with no vacancies on the horizon, whilst Hertfordshire was building up its Hate Crime Intelligence Unit. My missus is a schoolteacher and had no particular ties to Liverpool, so we decided to move south.’

The tale sounded familiar to Warren and he said so.

Garfield raised his mug and clinked it with Warren’s. ‘Here’s to Hertfordshire Constabulary and understanding wives!’

Warren’s conversation with Garfield had given him much to think about. The man’s hypothesis about the BAP’s motivations was intriguing. He looked at his watch. It was already after 9 p.m. The first twenty-four hours were over. Every fibre in his body wanted to go to bed, but he decided to speak to the team one last time before he left. It was a bad habit and his wife would tell him off – that was what email was for, she always said – but experience told him that small, important details that might come out in conversation may not be recorded in an email.

Heading back upstairs, he entered the section of the building allotted to CID. It might have been late on a Sunday evening, but the office was still packed.

Dusk at this time of year was perfectly timed for the candles outside the Islamic Centre to appear on the late-night news. Earlier in the evening Tony Sutton had tuned the wall-mounted screen at the back of the office to BBC News with the sound turned low. Now he turned it up, switching off the garbled automatic subtitles.