Focus: Inside Britain's neo-Nazis

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One man's war against his demons

When Matthew Collins became sickened by his far-right BNP comrades, he betrayed them. He tells Rosie Boycott his story

Sunday March 10, 2002
The Observer

Matthew Collins knew he was taking a big risk when he agreed to appear on a TV programme to expose Combat 18, the far-right terror group that began its life as a security wing of the British National Party.
As a mole for four years, he had secretly passed information to Searchlight , an anti-fascist magazine, about his work for the National Front and the BNP. Being caught would have cost him his life.

Although an actor was used to tell his story, police warned Collins his life was in danger just two days later. 'They're going to shoot you. Your former friends in the National Front and the BNP would like nothing more than to see you dead,' a Special Branch officer said.

After telling the police all he knew, the 21-year-old was given a fixed residency visa for a Commonwealth country and put on a plane to a new life. 'I'd left behind my family, my job, my girlfriend, everything that was dear to me. I was terrified - not just in terms of what I had left behind, but what I actually had to do now, all on my own.'

Collins will tell me his story tomorrow as part of a new BBC2 programme called Life etc which features people who have had to confront tough, often unthinkable, situations. He returned to Britain under a cover name to tell his story because he fears that the far Right is becoming a stronger presence every day.

He grew up in a tough, deprived part of south London with high unemployment. When the National Front started handing out leaflets they found a willing recruit. 'The far Right breeds in areas of greatest social deprivation. The main political parties don't bother to get their hands dirty with areas like where I grew up. Our votes don't count.

'I probably hate the Labour Party most, because they are meant to be for the working man. In fact, they despise us. They're a disaster and a failure and very middle-class. The NF and BNP understood that - they gave a voice and a direction to all that anger, all that pointlessness and waste.'

One edition of the BNP newspaper had an obituary of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess. 'It was dangerous and exciting. So I got in touch with them.' They invited him to a meeting at a pub in Bromley, where he was told that the Holocaust was a hoax and the Jews were poisoning water supplies.

Collins was sceptical but he liked the camaraderie. He liked being 15 and drinking in the pub with a bunch of older blokes. Soon he met Richard Edmonds, a former teacher whose home in Welling served as the BNP headquarters. Edmonds took Collins under his wing. He said: 'They were good to me. I belonged, I felt included, part of it.' There is no suggestion that Edmonds sanctioned, or even knew about, the later threats against Collins.

He became a full-time employee of the BNP - writing the press releases, working directly under the chairman. 'I was privy to a lot of information. I was the person who always answered the phone.' He was, he admitted, mixing with 'psychopaths, dirty old men, football hooligans, thieves, Jew-haters, black-haters, people that went on to become involved in murder, with supplying firearms.'

He went on marches and regularly got beaten up. In his eyes, everyone who wasn't inside the exclusive club was the enemy. Blacks, Jews, immigrants of all kinds, but their most virulent anger was reserved for the anti-fascist action groups, members of the Socialist Workers Party, and often the police.

Belonging to the group gave him a feeling of power. 'If you went into a pub, people would automatically know and they'd look into their beers or turn away. I thought I was morally right. I felt untouchable. A lot of the people involved had unhappy childhoods, no brothers or sisters, not much hope. In the group we felt empowered with family spirit.'

Collins served his masters well. He appeared 'quite presentable and reasonably artic ulate' in comparison with his colleagues. He was almost too successful - more seasoned members began to resent his rapid promotions and his closeness to the older leaders.

His rejection of the far Right and all it offered came in 1989. In what was dubbed 'the battle of Welling library', 40 men viciously attacked a group of elderly people who were protesting about the BNP setting up their head office in that area of south London

Collins was unaware that his superiors had drafted in a squad of football hooligans from Essex to help foment trouble. 'When we got to the meeting it was just a whole lot of old women. I saw an elected official of the BNP with a motorcycle helmet in one hand and a hammer in the other.

'People were kicking and punching, I was too, I hit someone in the face. They fell down. People were stamping on fallen bodies. They picked them up off the floor and hit them again. I'd been involved in lots of fights but I'd never seen anything as terrifying and pointless as this.

'I left and ran off - feeling physically sick. I sat in my bedroom for the rest of the evening, I couldn't believe anyone wasn't killed.'

Nine people ended up in hospital. Two days later, still frightened, he went back to the local BNP headquarters. 'They were sitting around, talking about how they'd bashed those Reds and those Pakis. But they weren't - they were women. Old women.'

Collins was asked to contribute towards a fund for the four men who had been arrested after the attack. 'I thought, this is unbelievable, and it set me thinking. These were the same people who'd told me the Holocaust didn't happen and now they're telling me what a wonderful thing it is that 40 grown men attack a meeting of women. It had been so violent they didn't even show it on the TV.'

It was time to act. Scared and bewildered, he phoned Searchlight , the anti-fascist magazine and organisation set up by a man called Gerry Gable. By carrying on with his BNP activities and talking to Searchlight he could provide intelligence that might help to combat fascism.

'I couldn't just quit. It was my life. I'd forgone everything for the far Right by this time. They were my only friends, my social life, everything. They were psychopaths, but they were my friends.'

He began taking enormous risks, often phoning the Searchlight office from his desk at the BNP head office. 'The party knew they had informers in their midst. Suspicion alone had led to broken legs or arms, being beaten unconscious, setting fire to your house, breaking all your windows. I felt scared for my family, but I had to do it.'

Gable soon wanted a face-to-face meeting. 'We used to meet in the various museums around central London. They gave me the pseudonym Brian. The first meeting was terrifying. Searchlight was the most hated and despised magazine. There were stories in the far Right that Gable was a baby-eater, an evil person who hated the white race.

'When I met him I thought he was a pretty normal bloke. We had tea and scones. It was clear that I knew a great deal about the Right. I realised he must have other agents in the organisation and I felt comfortable with that.'

Gable's relationship with Collins soon became paternal. He would give him books on poetry and art which Collins would put at the other end of his bookshelf from the books Richard Edmonds had given him on Holocaust denial and other right-wing tracts.

He passed on names of people who'd been involved in particular incidents, dates of forthcoming demonstrations, told who was attending branch meetings, identified people in photographs and once gave details of a plan to desecrate Jewish graves. Gable paid him in book tokens.

'I was scared all the time. I cut down my drinking with the Nazis - I'd just have shandy so that I didn't slip up. Then I pretended that I'd had a religious conversion so that I had an excuse not to turn up to demos on Sundays.'

Collins resigned from his full-time employment and got work as a security guard, but carried on being the chairman of the South London BNP. He would sit in its offices going through the files, late into the night. No one suspected him. He was still only 19.

Despite his work informing on the BNP, he was also instrumental in exposing Combat 18, the far Right terror group that began life as a 'security wing' for the activists and which also had links with loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. Collins took part in the World in Action documentary which resulted in his forced exile from Britain and his information led to the arrests of three men.

His recent trip to Britain was his first in many years. He visited his mother and went to a football match. He misses home but thinks little has changed. He is also alarmed at the growing support for the BNP in flashpoint areas such as Oldham and Bradford.

'Politicians ignore the underclass that I grew up in, the people joining the far Right in places like Bradford and Oldham, at their peril. This isn't going away.'

I don't know Mr Collins but why has the photograph of his daughter been allowed to be posted on here? IMC should remove it.