1976

It was fitting that the oppressive heat of a humid and cloudy June day made the scene smell even more odious than usual. I walked away from the boys’ toilets leaving my mate to the retribution of those targeted by bigots and racists. It was fitting that warnings ignored were dealt with this way as there was no other.

When we played, shoplifted, shot pigeons and shot other boys we were at one and so not considered that class, race and old ideas might separate the bond that held us so tight. When we laughed, we laughed together and all there was, was.

Steven, the white middle-class boy who boasted of his father the company director, Syed, the working-class Pakistani boy and me the native worker variety were as one, until the poison came in and threatened all of us; pitting class against class, skin against skin, soul against soul in the on-going pitiless war for resources on mother earth.

When we covered our exercise books with Nazi symbols and anti-Jewish slogans, there was nothing to come between us. Our childish enthusiasm for the enemy of the last war became tempered by another force seeping into our world taking our country’s flag to rally those disaffected with life and turn us into Webster’s little helpers.

Syed said nothing when Steven called him a Paki and I said nothing to defend him. Nothing cowed Syed. Once he smashed to pieces a lad who had beaten me in a fight. I didn’t ask him to but he did it anyway to demonstrate his loyalty to our friendship. I didn’t know why he didn’t respond to being called a Paki as I never asked but perhaps it wouldn’t have been the word but the way you said it: Steven just didn’t have enough menace in him.

When the National Front infiltrated our fathers, and sons wore their badges with pride, the contradiction between the reality and what they wanted was lost on some but painfully real to others. London was tense and everything was changing. I couldn’t stand it any longer. We were all wrong; Blacks and Asians were amongst us, friendships made and couldn’t be ignored.

“Yer know you can’t keep on saying those things and saying you support The Front. It’s gonna get yer into trouble and I don’t like ‘em anyway. Stop it or I ain’t gonna ‘elp you.”

Steven didn’t say anything but just looked at me. I was white and that solidarity of race had convinced him that moving from supporting The Tories to supporting The National Front was as natural and inevitable as writing ‘Gas the Jews’ in our text books. I let the right people know that I wasn’t part of them. I wasn’t a Fronter and that was it all it took.

And that day when our friendship ended, Syed, Steven and I, was just another day of mischief at school; another day where the haul from the local shops brought us in some more cash. Syed had to go home early and so left us. Steven and I mucked around for a while then a last piss before the journey home.

As we entered the toilets, Steven was pushed to the opposite wall to the door.
“He’s alright,” said someone to me.
Another of the black kids told me to fuck off.

I looked at Steve, his face now ashen and even whiter than usual and saw the fear in his eyes. I turned and left to the sounds of thuds, muffled yelps and cursing West Indian style.

There could be no going back.