TONY WAKEFORD, SOL INVICTUS & ABOVE THE RUIINS: WITH A BIT OF BOYD RICE & FASCISM

Wakeford's Wiki Wars: Time for truth?

In early June 2007 Tony Wakeford (proprietor of Tursa Records etc.) appears to have become rather anxious about some additions to various Wikipedia (the user generated online encyclopedia) entries about him and his 'musical' projects. Several suffered curious deletions by a Wiki user going by the name Tursa. Here is one of the shorter entries prior to these cuts:

"Above The Ruins were an English band fronted by Tony Wakeford. After being asked to leave Death In June, Tony Wakeford formed Above the Ruins and released one album, "Songs of the Wolf". The album's sound was similar to the dark post-punk of early Death In June. Wakeford then changed the name of Above The Ruins to Sol Invictus in an attempt to disguise the origins of the project in the fascist (British) National Front; the only Above The Ruins line-up of Wakeford, Ian Read, Gary Smith and Liz Grey are featured on the first Sol Invictus album "Against The Modern World". After the first Sol Invictus release Gary Smith left but continued playing in No Remorse; Liz Grey also left after this first Sol Invictus album. The group also contributed a track to the (British) National Front benefit album "No Surrender vol 1" alongside the Nazi groups Skrewdriver and No Remorse."

Wiki user Tursa (presumably "Too Thick To Rock" Wakeford but if not him then certainly someone closely involved with him, such as his wife) cut the following:: "Wakeford then changed the name of Above The Ruins to Sol Invictus in an attempt to disguise the origins of the project in the fascist (British) National Front; the only Above The Ruins line-up of Wakeford, Ian Read, Gary Smith and Liz Grey are featured on the first Sol Invictus album "Against The Modern World". After the first Sol Invictus release Gary Smith left but continued playing in No Remorse; Liz Grey also left after this first Sol Invictus album." Wikipedia (which allows access to old edits and discussion of them) provides the following information about this: "Tursa contributions to Wikipedia 09:01, 3 June 2007 (hist) (diff) Above The Ruins (All deleted as untrue. No one apart from Tony Wakeford was in atr and Sol.)." Since Wakeford at one time disingenuously claimed he hadn't been in 'atr' (Above The Ruins), I am disinclined to believe it when he and those around him claim that the line-up of Above The Ruins and early Sol Invictus did not coincide. Before it appeared on Wikipedia, the information about the Above The Ruins line-up could already be found on openly Nazi sites including one run by a member of the band Brutal Attack, who precisely because he is a fascist scumbag is in a position to know the score on this (and isn't particularly likely to get this sort of detail wrong, since both he and Gary Smith are prominent figures in the tightly knit London Nazi 'rock' scene). Tursa doesn't say who beyond himself (I'm assuming here Tursa is Tony Wakeford) was in Above The Ruins, a curious omission on the part of someone challenging previously available information on the band's line-up (you can only be certain about who wasn't in Above The Ruins by knowing who did play with this 'musical' abomination).

Likewise, Tursa has clearly got it wrong when (s)he writes 'all deleted as untrue', since the original Sol Invictus bassist Gary Smith did indeed simultaneously play with both Wakeford's band and No Remorse, before leaving the fat man's group to concentrate solely on overtly Nazi 'musical' propaganda (and Smith presumably left on good terms with his former band mates since 'Sol' get a 'thank you' on the back cover of the first No Remorse album). In relation to Wakeford's membership of the British National Front, since 14 February 2007 both he and his cronies have claimed all over Wikipedia and elsewhere that: "Wakeford has had no connection or interest in such ideas for 20 or more years." However, if this is true, it is difficult to explain why Wakeford still maintains ties to occult fascists who are grouped around David Myatt (of Combat 18 split The National Socialist Movement and Nazi 'male mysteries' group The Order of Nine Angles, which is called by many non-Nazi occultists The Order of No Members both because of the paucity of followers and due to the few there are being 'a bunch of cunts'). However, Myatt acolyte Richard Moult contributed the art work to Wakeford's "Into The Woods" album. Likewise, Gary Smith's love affair with Nazism is well documented via his membership of No Remorse, while Ian Read's interest in both fascism in general and more specifically The Order of Nine Angles runs even deeper than Wakeford's; and it is less than 20 years since Wakeford stopped playing 'music' with either of these two talentless creeps.

One European Nazi music website gives the original release date of the "Songs of the Wolf" on cassette as 1984 (most other sources suggest 1986 and the 1984 date looks to me like it is disinformation originating from Wakeford's circle), and another creates the impression that Above The Ruins was initially a side project from Death In June. This makes sense when one understands how Death In June front 'boys' (they're too immature to be described as men) Doug Pearce and Tony Wakeford ran their previous band Crisis; Pearce had joined the International Marxist Group which enabled his pop combo to bag Anti-Nazi League concerts, while Wakeford was a member of the Socialist Workers Party which got them on the bill at Rock Against Racism and Right To Work events. Pearce and Wakeford's manipulation of Trotskyite organisations to develop and promote their 'musical' 'careers' in the late-seventies was extremely cynical. And that despite the fact that Wakeford, who was illiterate until he was in his early twenties, was taught the rudiments of reading and writing by a school teacher he met through the SWP.

Moving on, it seems that Wakeford maintained a close personal relationship with Death In June members Doug Pearce and David Tibet even after leaving this group due to his membership of the National Front having become a matter of public knowledge. The following is conjecture on my part, but given all this I am left wondering if it was decided within Death In June that one of the group should join the National Front to further their 'musical' 'careers' among far-Right circles, and that if this membership should be publicly exposed then that person would have to leave DIJ so that it could continue to operate in a less restricted arena than that afforded by the Nazi 'music' scene. As I've learnt more about the political history of Death In June and Tony Wakeford, I've become increasingly uneasy about David Tibet's role in that group and Wakeford's attempts at 'post-fascist' rehabilitation. Indeed, I now feel that David Tibet has as much apologising and explaining to do as Wakeford - and possibly more.

Pearce, Wakeford and Tibet have played key roles in spawning a 'neo-folk' (AKA 'dark' or 'apocalyptic' folk) 'music' scene much of which is openly fascist, and despite the tendency of this trio to remain coy about their own right arm problems, the younger bands that look up to them like Waldteufel and Von Thronstahl share their obsession with Nazi imagery. All of these saddos need reactionary politics to help sell their 'music', the tracks they release are so dire they wouldn't reach the dizzy heights of 500 (and sometimes even a few more) copies sold without the frisson of fascist gimmickry. And as the Sol Invictus inner circle knows only too well, Wakeford needs every penny he can get from sales and concert appearances so that he can pay off his credit card debts (he isn't bright enough to understand how credit works, hence his endless and tuneless lyrical references to 'usury' and 'gold' - he should read more Marx; oops, I nearly forgot, lard arse still finds reading joined up writing a bit of a challenge).

To conclude, if Wakeford and Tibet are not fascists (or are no longer fascists) then they need to be seen to make a clean break with their past (which also entails being up front and honest about it). This is their problem and they could sort it out themselves if they wanted to, but it appears they don't want to sort it out. Instead they prefer to lie about their own and each other's pasts. Draw your own conclusion but personally I hope this pair of jerk offs just drop dead (not too unlikely in Wakeford's case since he is so obese it is causing him serious medical problems).

Stewart Home 4 July 2007.

Note: I haven't given names or urls for various Nazi sites mentioned above; although they aren't difficult to find, I prefer not to provide them with the oxygen of publicity. In the interests of research I also listened to both "Songs of the Wolf" and the Above The Ruins track on "No Surrender" - and let me assure you this was a truly pathetic experience. Nazis are no fun and they certainly don't know how to rock, or even how to to sing in tune...

BOYD RICE ON DAVID TIBET, DEATH IN JUNE & ABOVE THE RUINS: From "Race and Reason", an American neo-Nazi cable TV show put out by White Aryan Resistance in the mid-eighties.

Tom Metzger: You know a lot of these racialist type singers in bands in Europe and Britain, could you mention a few? I know that you know the skinheads and you've mentioned some others...
Boyd Rice: Yeah, there's a guy known as David Tibet who has a band called Current 93 whose moving more and more towards racialist stuff and he's friends with some people called Death In June who are very racialist orientated and we were, there actually Death In June is quite popular now. And there's another electronic band called Above The Ruins which there's a guy in it who is in Skrewdriver, that's a British skinhead band.
Tom Metzger: Now is that group more like National Socialist orientated or fascists or what?
Boyd Rice: Which group?
Tom Metzger: Well the last group Above The...
Boyd Rice: Death In June? Oh Above The Ruins...
Tom Metzger: Above The Ruins.
Boyd Rice: Oh I haven't really heard Above The Ruins yet, I've just heard of them, but I know there's one guy from Death In June and one guy from Skrewdriver, so I assume its fascist.
Third man also identified as Tom: I have to interject there, electronic music is very white just by its very nature, you don't see too many non-whites listening to that, it seems intrinsically white to me...

While I've seen this, I don't know the exact recording or broadcast dates which are circa 1986. It would seem this interview is the original source for the rumour that Nazi bonehead Ian Stuart of Skrewdriver was in Above The Ruins. That said, while Tony Wakeford was politically close to Ian Stuart at this time, I have seen no convincing evidence that they actually played together. Boyd Rice does not say who from Skrewdriver plays in Above The Ruins, so even if he is correct on this detail it doesn't follow that Ian Stuart was in the band because it may be another member of Skrewdriver who is being invoked. It strikes me as possible that Rice is confusing Skrewdriver and No Remorse, and that he is referring to Above The Ruins bass player Gary Smith who was simultaneously playing with Wakeford and Nazi skinhead band No Remorse. However, since Ian Stuart ran a number of side projects to his main band Skrewdriver, it remains possible (although to me it seems unlikely) that he had some involvement with Above The Ruins. This interview also makes it clear that Rice who worked closely with David Tibet, Doug Pearce and Tony Wakeford over many years, was at this time a racist and a fascist (and I suspect he probably still is, since - to give just one example - he's never adequately explained or apologised for his involvement with the American Front).

For those who want a glimpse of the domestic lives of these musical Nazis, then Lisa Crystal Carver's memoir "Drugs Are Nice" (Snowbooks, London 2006) provides an outline of the time she spent living with and financially supporting Boyd Rice. Amazingly it isn't until after narrating how Rice was jailed for assaulting her that Carver finally calls this alcoholic failure an 'unemployed fascist'. Before and to an extent even after Carver came along, Rice depended on financial handouts from his mother.

In her memoir Carver describes returning to the windowless basement flat she shared with Rice and their baby son Wolfgang after a holiday she'd taken without him: "In the centre of each room there's a puddle of light from a dangling bulb left on twenty-four hours a day, but light can't bounce off black walls or a red ceiling. Or a carpet of discarded black clothes and MacDonald's wrappers. It looks how it did the first time I came here, only worse. I make my way through the rooms with Wolfgang in my arms, my mouth hanging open. I reach the kitchen. The sink is filled with crusty dishes. The coffee pot is on and the coffee has burnt down to a thick black sludge on the bottom. Vodka in the freezer, no food in the fridge. The cat has no water. Now the bathroom. Shit covers the toilet bowl, inside and top. It's not only really gross - it makes no sense. How does someone get so much shit all around? The ring in the bathtub is thick and black. Both sink faucets are broken and running freely... I open the door to the final room. A giant Nazi flag is taped to the wall. Right next to the Tomorrowland Disney poster. I clear a spot on the floor for Wolf to play, give him some toys, and I sink down onto the futon beneath the Nazi flag..." (pages 145-6).

I have heard descriptions of Tony Wakeford's south London council flat which are every bit as disgusting as this. I've also been told a woman who was staying for a time in Wakeford's spare bedroom was so appalled by the mess she set about spring cleaning. The toilet was in such a state she coated it with caustic soda and went to bed intending to clean the caustic soda and encrusted shit off in the morning. Wakeford got up in the night and sat down on the toilet, because he is so fat he sank down and got caustic soda all over his balls, causing him to scream in agony for hours. This incident may even have been the inspiration for the Whitehouse song "My Cock's On Fire".

Additional information on Boyd Rice and his fascist friends added 7 July 2007.

More Shit on Wakeford (total trivia)

The following is strictly for those fascinated by the fact that gobbling down huge quantities of junk food appears to bring on irritable bowel syndrome in middle-aged men with a stiff right arm problem. A supposed friend of Wakeford's reports that she fairly recently visited the toilet in his flat and was revolted to see a quantity of fresh shit smearing both the pan and the seat - the individual who told me about this concluded that either Wakeford: 'just wasn't bothered about personal hygiene, or he was too fat and out of condition to turn around to properly clean up in so small a space, and in the latter case this might also account for his large framed picture of Julius Evola having been broken and removed from the wall..."

AND WAKEFORD CAN'T STOP LYING...

Until very recently, when the evidence became so overwhelming that he was forced to admit the truth, Tony Wakeford would deny he'd been in Above The Ruins and instead constructed alternative histories of the period in which he was not only a National Front activist heavily involved in fascist street violence, but simultaneously a leading Nazi 'musician' (well there wasn't a lot of competition, so by default Wakeford was one of the Front's best punk squealers, oops, I mean screamers). There follows just one example of Wakeford being extremely economical in dealing with the truth when detailing his life in the mid-eighties, it comes from "England's Hidden Reverse" by David Keenan (SAF Publishing, London 2003, pages 173-4): "I was dealing drugs and had got heavily into the whole seamy South London gangster scene," Wakeford confesses. "We were selling weights of dope the size of a concrete block and my partner had a gun. It wasn't big stuff but it was big enough to end in tears. It was getting worse and worse and I woke up one morning thinking, if this carries on then I'm going to end up dead. I was so pissed off with Death In June for so long that I couldn't imagine doing my own music again. But I realised that music was about the only thing I was good at. So I went into town and bought an acoustic guitar and came back and started writing. It was just one of those moments, you know? If I hadn't got that guitar that day, I'd be in prison now or dead. The first stuff that I wrote became the first Sol Invictus songs."

Ah, it's like Above The Ruins never happened, but we know it did, and since in the recent past - as this citation demonstrates - Wakeford couldn't be trusted to tell the truth about his own involvement in the Nazi 'music' scene, there is absolutely no reason to believe him now when he claims that Above The Ruins and Sol Invictus aren't the same band; he is desperate to hide the origins of Sol Invictus in the fascist (British) National Front - and while the name changed and after the 'first' Sol Invictus album was recorded (really the second Sol Invictus album, the first is "Songs of the Wolf" credited to Above The Ruins) the line up started to change too, it seems the political song remained the same. And as long as Wakeford refuses to be honest about his past, his claims that he is no longer involved in fascism simply don't wash (especially when he deals with those he works with on 'musical' projects being exposed as fascists by deleting his online references to them; that said, these clumsy attempts to hide this problem come as no surprise from a man who recorded "The Guilty Have No Pride", an aptly crass title for a piece of 'musical' junk). If Wakeford is serious about putting his 'past' behind him, he needs to stop lying and provide a detailed account of his involvement with fascism, including his very active participation in fascist violence and the Nazi 'music' scene. Once he's done this and apologised for it, then and only then, it might be possible to take seriously any claims he might make about not being a fascist.

From David Keenan's book on "neo-folk", with an aside on Tibet and Wakeford's curious friends....

"After returning from Iceland (early 1988), (David) Tibet (of Current 93) briefly moved in with Paul Donman. until a room came up in Tony Wakeford's flat.... Until now Wakeford had been playing bass for Current 93, but with Pearce out of the country for long stretches with Death In June, Wakeford stepped in to work up music for Tibet's lyrics on acoustic guitar. In the meantime, Current took a sidestep from the new folk sound of "Swastikas For Noddy" to release their heaviest and most rock-relevant album, "Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow", where Wakeford's electric bass and Pearce's incongruous drums leave parts sounding almost new wave.... In 1988 housemates Tibet and Wakeford came up with a mini-album, "Earth Covers Earth"... " "England's Hidden Reverse" by David Keenan (SAF Publishing, London 2003, pages 173-5).

...and we'll follow with a little more from David Keenan after providing background on two of those he'll be mentioning that is missing from his text (I understand this may be due to David Tibet phoning Keenan's publisher and suggesting certain parties - not Tibet himself - might sue if various pieces of information he'd seen in the manuscript copy were not removed from the printed edition). From an article in the anti-fascist magazine "Searchlight" entitled "Give Me That Old Time (Nazi) Religion...": "One of Britain's weirdest pagan fascist cults, the 'Odinic Rite', has become a registered charity... run by ageing fascist John Yeowell from his home in East London... A key lecturer at his occasional 'moots' or gatherings, often held in London's Conway Hall, is Richard Lawson (best man at Tony Wakeford's wedding circa 1999), whom "Searchlight" recently exposed as a key speaker at the Iona/Scorpion conference in London ("Searchlight" also exposed Above The Ruins/Sol Invictus member Ian Read as organising security at Iona events).... Another interesting speaker at the Iona conference was Freya Aswynn... Freya Aswynn uses her phoney name because she is wanted by the Dutch police: she is also closely linked with former British Movement activist Alan Winder, an associate of Tony Malski, the man who plotted to bomb the Notting Hill Carnival in 1981. More recently the unlovely Freya has orchestrated a campaign of pickets, letters and trouble over a decision to give a black singer a role in a Wagner opera. Yeowell is scared that the antics of this witless woman will cost him his charitable status..." ("Searchlight" May 1989 - number 167).

Returning to Keenan, who is writing about the mid-eighties (the exact year isn't immediately apparent but either 1987 or earlier), he says: "...Freya Aswynn, a dedicated priestess of Odin... had a spare room in the house she owned in London's Tufnell Park, and very soon (David) Tibet was ensconced in her former Odinic Temple, which became his bedroom... Douglas Pearce (Wakeford's old bandmate from Death In June) moved into the room next door... Ian Read, a musician and student of the Northern Mysteries, lived on the other side of the corridor..." "England's Hidden Reverse" by David Keenan (SAF Publishing, London 2003, pages 148-9).

After both recording with and playing live in the bands Sol Invictus (aka Above The Ruins) and Current 93, Read went on to form the group Fire + Ice. Freya Aswynn also appeared either live and/or on records with - among others - the bands Current 93 (run by David Tibet) and Death In June (run by Douglas Pearce). These bands also frequently appeared together as a concert package in the nineteen-nineties.

TONY WAKEFORD'S LIE MACHINE...

As indicated above, Tony Wakeford and his immediate circle of fascist friends are very active on the web promoting themselves and simultaneously covering up a staggering quantity of Nazi involvements and connections (see above for more on this). I've seen material about Wakeford and his chums all over the place; the number of Wikipedia entries for them is ridiculous (with individual entries for Sol Invictus albums etc.) and these remarkably similar pieces of writing (often word for word the same) can also be found elsewhere, such as in the Above The Ruins entry at Last.fm: "After being asked to leave Death in June, Tony Wakeford formed Above the Ruins and released one album, Songs of the Wolf. The album's sound was similar to the dark post-punk of early Death In June. Wakeford then took a few years off to study magic and politics, and when he returned to making music in 1987 it was under the name of Sol Invictus."  The claim that Wakeford took time off from making music is an outright lie and the study of politics and magic alluded to here was alongside fellow fascists such as Ian Read (of Wakeford's Above The Ruins/Sol Invictus band) in organisations such as a National Front splinter group called  IONA and The Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT). For a reference to Wakeford's involvement in the IOT see "England's Hidden Reverse" by David Keenan (page 173); for more about IONA see above.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Ian Read, he became leader of the English IOT "in the early 1990s after founder Peter Carroll stepped down as leading Magus. Read is currently the editor of the IOT's Chaos International (magazine)." The same Wikipedia entry on Read states he: "began his musical career with Current 93 and contributed vocals to the tracks, Benediction and Malediction on the 1987 album, Swastikas for Noddy as well as Loony Runes, recorded in 1990. He aided Douglas P. on the Death In June album, Brown Book and appeared on Crooked Crosses for the Nodding God, a reworking of Swastikas for Noddy, with new tracks and arrangements. In 1987 Read joined Tony Wakeford's Sol Invictus along with Karl Blake. Read recorded three albums and an EP with Sol Invictus before leaving to form the band Fire + Ice in 1991." Read's contribution of Death In June's "Brown Book" was to sing "The Horst Wessel", a Nazi song. Likewise, we see in this Wikipedia entry another part of the ongoing cover up of the simple fact that Sol Invictus are a continuation of Above The Ruins; since while Read and Wakeford are on the first album credited to Sol Invictus and entitled "Against The Modern World", Karl Blake (who like some other later members of the group isn't a Nazi and doesn't play on “Against The Modern World”) wasn't recruited into the band until after Gary Smith and Liz Grey who do play on that album had left the group (circa 1988). To restate this simply, Ian Read didn't join “Tony Wakeford's Sol Invictus along with Karl Blake”, Read was in the band before Blake joined it. This sort of slippage is typical of the way in which Wakeford's circle attempts to cover its fascist involvements. Hopefully once the group of people responsible for the avalanche of fascist propaganda which has engulfed the Wikipedia are blocked from that resource for this vandalism, these inaccuracies can be corrected (and anyone who wants to review them will have to look at page histories rather than the current pages).

Curiously, the Ian Read ('musician') page on Wikipedia currently also contains the following: "Most recently, he has been involved in musical projects with the bands While Angels Watch, Darkwood, Forseti and Sonne Hagal, the latter two projects in which he sang vocals in German." Well, let's look at the first of these bands, While Angels Watch, since there is an online interview with Dev of the group conducted by Peter Savelkoul of the fascist Above The Ruins webzine (this interview is easy enough to find; I don’t provide direct links to scum): (Peter Savelkoul): “What work did you do with Patrick Leagas, Gareth Smith and Alan Jeffries? (While Angels Watch): We used to write and share experiences and at the time we all lived together. In 1985 an opportunity arose to perform at a one day festival event in London which we all did together - that was the birth of While Angels Watch. Patrick went on to present Sixth Comm to the world and I played guitar on the first album (Content With Blood). Gary went on to join the first line-up of Sol Invictus (with Tony Wakeford and Ian Read) and Alan used to play the WASP!” So nothing about No Remorse or Above The Ruins when Gary Smith is mentioned; these people all help each other cover up their pasts (and present). Rumour has it that Wakeford's girlfriend of the mid-eighties also played on at least one early Sixth Comm release with the original Death In June drummer Patrick Leagas, I guess it was a 'family' affair. Patrick Leagas has played with While Angels Watch as recently as 2005, and Ian Read’s connection to the band has already been noted. While Angels Watch are also involved with fascist activist Troy Southgate and his band HERR; eight years ago anti-fascist investigators suggested to me that Wakeford and one of his fans Mike Shankland were part of Southgate's attempts at Nazi regroupment under the rubric of “Anarchist Heretics” (i.e. national anarchists AKA fascists).

In the “Dark Life Fanzine” (also online and easy enough to find, I won’t link to scum), the same Mike Shankland writes about the While Angels Watch CD “Dark Age” “taking the Dark Folk scene by storm”; like wow, maybe the pre-orders on this reached double figures, although it was still issued in a limited edition since only about a dozen people are interested enough in these musical abominations to part with hard cash for them! The “Dark Age” platter features a line-up that includes two recent Sol Invictus members (Matt and  Jane Howden) and one old member (Ian Read). The connections between the initial eighties line up of Above The Ruins/Sol Invictus and While Angels Watch (featuring Patrick Leagas when he was still around Death In June; Leagas didn't fall out with band mate Doug Pearce until several years after his June 1985 departure from their joint group) demonstrate that the idea that relations between Wakeford and his ‘former’ band mates were ever really broken off is a myth. Wakeford remained close to Death In June even after he’d ‘left’ the group, and beyond the fact that Wakeford had joined the National Front, virtually everything else Douglas Pearce of Death In June told me about this at the time (1984) has turned out to be a lie.

Likewise, the last time I spoke to David Tibet (about eight years ago, after running into him by chance), he told me that Wakeford had really sorted himself out with regard to his fascist involvements, and to illustrate this Tibet told me some stories about going with Wakeford to a "Rock Against Communism" festival featuring Skrewdriver and various other Nazi ‘rock’ bands. I was left wondering what Tibet thought he was doing at this fascist event, which took place at a time (mid-eighties) when I’d been told no one involved in Death In June (as he still was, although I didn't know him at that time) was having anything to do with Wakeford. I am now also left wondering whether perhaps Above The Ruins were on the bill at this "Rock Against Communism" “meet”; incidentally, this particular “rally” was a spectacular financial success, not due to the bands attracting much of a crowd but because the National Front organisers acquired some out of date beer, and sold it to the small bonehead audience at a huge profit since they didn't give a toss about the fact that as a result their followers would became violently ill (yes indeed, most of the fascist cadre present ended up either puking or with the shits).

Moving on, I was introduced to Tibet by a third party in 1991, he then suggested meeting for a drink; when I subsequently rendezvoused with him, a number of his anarcho-punk acquaintances (from Flux of Pink Indians etc.) were present and one in particular was fawning over Tony Wakeford (who I didn't know would be there). Tibet had already told me Wakeford was now “alright” and that I shouldn't refuse to speak to him should we run into each other (I’d checked this out with Anti-Fascist Action who’d told me they had nothing on Wakeford). The anarchists who were around when I went to meet Tibet being so friendly toward Wakeford made it look like he was okay, although in retrospect I feel I was set up. I knew Wakeford had been in the National Front, and Tibet gave me the impression his anarcho-punk friends did too, but I now have my doubts about this. Similarly, Tibet never volunteered such basic information as the fact he’d lived with Wakeford, and the first time I learnt about this was a few months ago when I read it in David Keenan’s book “England’s Hidden Reverse” (I didn't know Pearce and Tibet had lived together with Freya Aswynn and Ian Read either until I read it in this book) – and I'm not the only person to feel I was lied to and kept in the dark by Pearce, Wakeford and Tibet (who it seems to me acted in concert).

In recent years external pressure applied to Wakeford by anti-fascist activists has forced him to make a couple of ridiculous statements about his politics. For example in a short text posted on 19 January 2005 and produced as part of an unsuccessful rear-guard action to prevent German Sol Invictus concerts being cancelled, Wakeford stated: "I have been asked if I would make a statement regarding some accusations that have been made. In the past I have always refused, as I knew that anyone who works with or knows me would be aware of how untrue these accusations are. However, I have been told that it would help if I did made things clear. I and Sol Invictus have no interest in or connection to any totalitarian ideology and that includes Nazism.” As if having been a member of the National Front didn't demonstrate an interest in and connection to Nazism! Indeed, even the line Wakeford takes on this was developed by the faction of the NF he exited that organisation with (which went on to group itself around the fascist “Scorpion” magazine – a publication which gave Wakeford’s “Songs of the Wolf” album a rave write-up when it was released - and IONA), and who by the late-eighties were using the come-on that they were ‘against all totalitarianisms” (but especially communism and all other ‘threats’ to what they euphemistically called “European particularity”, i.e. white supremacy).

Wakeford’s claim “that anyone who works with or knows me would be aware of how untrue these accusations are” (i.e. that he is or at least was a fascist) is a bluff, since leaving aside his fascist friends, those who knew Wakeford and then began to suspect these ‘accusations’ were true (as indeed they are) – such as me, and for example, former Sol Invictus member Karl Blake – no longer have anything to do with him precisely because of his utter failure to make a clean break with far-Right politics. The fact that Wakeford is happy to keep his openly fascist “Songs of the Wolf” album available (and even if this was only so that he could make money from its sale that would be reason enough to castigate him, but there is more to it than that), is on its own pretty conclusive evidence of his lack of sincerity when he claims he is not a Nazi..

It may be useful to mention here that there are different ways to define what a Nazi is, and obviously if one is using the term in a restricted historical sense then only members of the original NSDAP (Hitler’s Nazi Party) are Nazis. However, most people are familiar with the concept of the neo-Nazi, and the fact that when someone born in the second half of the twentieth century is called a Nazi the term is not being used in its original sense. The term Nazi is now widely understood as referring to a white racist with an unhealthy interest in twentieth century ‘Germanic’ right-wing politics and 'culture'. In this sense Wakeford and those around him are Nazis; although they now choose to use different labels to describe themselves including “national anarchist”, “conservative revolutionary”, “national Bolshevik”, “neofolk musician”, “magus” (or Magnus to use Wakeford's habitual misspelling of this word) etc. One can see how they, and some of those who influenced them such as Hitler’s favourite author Ernst Junger, felt able put their hands on their hearts and claim not to be Nazis (which is not at all the same thing as claiming not to be a fascist – which they, like Junger, clearly are – Nazism is simply one variety of fascism). And at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what label you put on reactionary politics of this type – the people who embrace this authoritarian and racist bilge are scum!

ORIGINAL CONTENT OF THIS PAGE ABOUT WAKEFORD

For many people what is reproduced below will have been rendered redundant by the material above; however for the purpose of clarity and to help those doing detailed research into these matters, it has been left here (it has simply been moved from the top to the bottom of the page).

Tony Wakeford came up in conversation at a party I went to recently, which reminded me I’d once written him a letter I’d intended to make public if he failed to respond to it in a satisfactory manner. I first met Wakeford in the late seventies when he was a member of the Socialist Workers Party playing Rock Against Racism benefits with the Trotskyist pop group Crisis. I have many disagreements with SWP positions, but I've never let political differences prevent me from befriending members of this organisation. Indeed, to this day I know a number of people who belong to the SWP. Far-right organisations are, of course, a different matter. After Crisis broke up, Wakeford formed a new combo with Doug Pearce and Patrick Leagas called Death In June. I went to their first performance which was a Workers Against Racism benefit. One day Doug Pearce told me he’d kicked Tony Wakeford out of the band for joining the fascist National Front. Other individuals I knew corroborated this information. Pearce (who when I first knew him belonged to the International Marxist Group) would ultimately end up embroiled in fascist politics too, thus compelling me to break with him (but that’s a different story). At the time I learnt Wakedford had joined the NF, we lived in the same part of south London. Occasionally I would run into him by chance, on the street or else northern line tube trains. When this happened I refused to speak to Wakeford.

Eight years down the line I was told by a musician that Wakeford had realised he’d made a serious mistake and no longer had anything to do with the far-Right. I asked people who were active in Anti-Fascist Action if this was true, and they said they’d investigated Wakeford’s group Sol Invictus and could find nothing that would lead them to prevent him from performing in public. As a consequence, when I subsequently ran into Wakeford, I spoke to him. As Obi Egbuna put it in his book Destroy This Temple: The Voice of Black Power in Britain: “We live in a world of live and learn, and when a man is big enough to say he is sorry, you should be humble enough to say all is forgiven…” That said, by May 2000 I hadn't seen or spoken to Wakeford for some time, when out of the blue I received an angry phone call from him. He was upset about an article I’d written entitled We Mean It Man, which had been posted on the web at www.stewarthomesociety.org/dij.htm. In this piece he was only mentioned incidentally, with my critical focus being on Doug Pearce and Death In June. I was annoyed by Wakeford’s phone call, but upon reflection I thought I should send him a considered written response rather than simply suggesting he ‘drop dead’. Some of the matters addressed in the letter are now arcane, they concern failed attempts at fascist regroupment in which Wakeford may or may not have been involved. What got Wakeford so heated was the fact that I alluded to these matters in We Mean It Man by saying he ‘claims to have abandoned his former political positions’. I didn't then and still don’t know whether Wakeford's claims to have ended his involvement with fascist politics are true. Five years on from writing this letter, I'm aggrieved that after giving Wakeford the benefit of the doubt, and the opportunity to clear the air, he still hasn't done so. In public Wakeford continues to make mealy-mouthed excuses about his past behaviour. What Wakeford ought to do is stop whinging about having been ‘screwed’ by politicians, and instead act like a man by publicly apologising for getting involved with Nazi creeps, as well as frankly admitting he was a complete twit to do so.

Given all of the above, I think it is well worth making shame more shameful by making it public; so underneath is the full text of the letter I sent Wakeford in May 2000. I haven’t heard from him since then. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for an album of anti-Nazi and anti-racist songs from Sol Invictus with all proceeds being donated to anti-fascist groups, but if Wakeford has finally matured into an fully grown adult without my being aware of it, this is exactly the sort of magnanimous gesture he might make. Moving on, I was also disappointed by the antics of some of those who claimed to have evidence that Wakeford’s involvement with fascism was ongoing. I had hoped to get a debate going with those of them grouped around Hobogoblin magazine. I wrote We Mean It Man with the explicit intention of submitting it to this publication. Underneath the full text of my letter to Wakeford, I reproduce a very lightly edited version of the covering note I sent to Hobgoblin when I submitted We Mean It Man to them. I received no response whatsoever to this from either Hobgoblin or its sister publication in the US News & Letters. David Black, the individual involved with Hobgoblin of whom I am most critical, appears to have made a very small advance in his positions over the past five or so years. Therefore I have cut a few words of criticism from the letter which in the light of this minor evolution, might serve to place Black in too harsh a light.
Stewart Home, London 1st October 2005.

Letter from Stewart Home to Tony Wakeford 26/5/00

These aren't the best circumstances for re-establishing contact, and given the situation I can’t see either of us wanting to prolong this. You are obviously every bit as pissed off with me as I am now with you (the rude way you contacted me didn’t make me any more sympathetic towards you). Since I understand you want to clear this up, I’m enclosing some documents so you can see the way things stand. I haven’t had time to find all the stuff I’ve got that mentions you (I have folders and folders of material by Green Anarchist and their friends attacking me and it is very repetitious) - but enclosed is a small selection. Material of this sort can be found all over the place - even in US publications such as Anarchy and Fifth Estate. There are also loads of letters and flyers, not to mention stuff on the web and general gossip.

I’ve spoken to some of those involved in web debates about countering the current attempts at a so called “left/right synthesis” and said you’d speak to them about the various claims and counter-claims, but they don't want to have anything to do with you. They believe you’re involved with Anarchist Heretics because Troy Southgate of the National Revolutionary Faction (formerly the English Nationalist Movement) has given them that impression. As I understand it, your connection to Southgate and Anarchist Heretics is through Mike Shankland, and if Shankland has been suckered, then you should warn him off these people (I’ve no desire to have any contact with Shankland, but since you have already been in communication with him, you might as well make sure he knows the score). If Shankland is happily involved and understands what Anarchist Heretics is about, then having anything to do with him will mean that you’ll be perceived as being involved too. I’ll enclose some stuff by the people you are being linked to through Shankland - you ought to be able to see exactly where this is coming from. Summarising the situation, Southgate is the political organiser, Richard Hunt acts as the figurehead and fine tunes the ideology, Jonathon Boulter is the schemer and Wayne John Sturgeon is the padre in a desperate attempt to rehabilitate fascism under another name.

I had the impression that you’d moved away from all this stuff (Trees In Winter is about the last thing I can remember and to me that seemed a better direction for you, since you appeared to have broken with your past and were gradually removing the problematic content from what you did, which is something I thought worth encouraging). I’ve been told you’ve been doing new songs with titles like In Europa recently - I haven’t bothered going into a record shop to see whether I can confirm this but those who’ve been looking at you in relation to this attempt at a so called “left/right synthesis” tell me this is what you’ve been doing, and it makes you suspect in their eyes.. It also seems that your involvement with Death In June in the early eighties isn’t doing you any good either. I’ve been told that Douglas Pearce was kicked off World Serpent for some Nazi involvement he has, the person who told me this is generally reliable, I haven’t had time to check it out for myself since being told this a few weeks ago. Pearce’s on stage “jokes” about the nail bombs last year (reported independently to me by at least two different people who went to his London rally) go way beyond what is acceptable - so there isn’t any rush about checking other stuff out. From what I know already I wouldn’t want anything to do with Pearce. Much of the stuff that goes around associates you with relatively recent Death In June material. Green Anarchist must have mentioned Rose Clouds For The Holocaust (I assume they mean Rose Clouds Of Holocaust) as “your” hymn to the death camps about six times. As far as I know, you haven’t been involved with Death In June for sixteen years and had nothing to do with writing or recording Rose Clouds Of Holocaust. In the context of various debates that were going on, I felt it was useful to make my opinions about Death In June clear. Pearce doesn’t seem to be doing you any favours with the way he’s been going, since you are very much associated with him - regardless of the fact that, as far as I know, it is years since you’ve worked together musically.

I don’t know what you’ve been doing lately, and I’m not in a position to state with complete certainty whether or not you were involved in anything musically immediately after your departure from Death In June. When I asked you seven or eight years ago if you’d been in the band Above The Ruins, you told me they had nothing to do with you - if in the early nineties you were being straight with me about putting far-Right politics behind you, I can't see why you’d have lied to me about this. On the other hand, several people, including David Tibet, have subsequently told me you were in Above The Ruins, and I can’t see why they’d lie about the matter either. Since I have never had access to Above The Ruins records, or any primary material that might indicate whether or not you were involved in that band, it is impossible for me to take a fully informed position on this matter. Certainly, a lot of people (including Searchlight who said so in their November 1997 issue) believe that in the mid-eighties you were in a Nazi band called Above The Ruins. You told me you weren’t in Above The Ruins, but given the weight of opinion going the other way, these days I’m not entirely convinced you’ve been straight with me about this.

Personally, I wouldn’t have thought it that likely that you'd have played with Skrewdriver because their sub-HM racket appears to be at odds with your musical interests. But David Black of News & Letters UK seems to think you made an album with Skrewdriver and I’m not going to deny it on your behalf, because I’ve no way of knowing if it is true or not. When I’ve been attacked, rather than denying specific smears, I’ve often found it better to make statements of position (that way things can be moved forward). You might find it useful to do the same. In my opinion, the best way of making sure your past stays behind you, is to make clear statements in support of multiculturalism and anti-racism, and equally clear statements against fascism and xenophobia. Like I said, I think it unlikely you played with Skrewdriver but regardless of whether this allegation is true or not, being seen to have made a clean break with your past is going to do you a lot more good than denying a specific but groundless smear. You might also want to look into whether Patrick Harrington has been feeding (dis?)information about you to Larry O’Hara (David Black’s research about you appears to consist of whatever Larry O’Hara tells him to write).

I’m hearing a lot of different things. Certainly, when I ran into David Tibet at the Conway Hall last year, he told me you’d really sorted yourself out but that Pearce had lost it and got mixed up in some really unpleasant shit. On the other hand, from what I’d been told more recently by people involved in political debates and whose judgement on these matters I generally respect, it seemed quite possible you were mixed up in Anarchist Heretics. You have very forcefully told me this isn’t true. Since I am prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt in the matter of Anarchist Heretics, I trust the enclosed material (despite its unpleasant nature) is of some use in moving things forward in a positive direction for you. One possible explanation of why Southgate (and possibly Harrington too) are circulating “innuendoes” which are perhaps designed to discredit you, is because they want to compromise you into working alongside them. If this is the dynamic that is going on, then a clear and unambiguous attack on their politics can only weaken them and strengthen you. Making an attack of this kind is what I would do. My suspicion is that you’ll do nothing about the enclosed and simply let matters ride. However, I’d be very happy to be proved wrong on this. Ciao, Stewart.

Letter from Stewart Home to Christopher Ford at Hobgoblin 11/11/99

I enclose with this a submission to your magazine Hobgoblin about punk rock and anti-racism that deals extensively with the band Death In June. Your associate David Black appears to be very interested in this group and my analysis may be particularly useful to him. I concentrate on Doug Pearce since he is the mainstay of Death In June, he sells more records than the current bands of former members such as Tony Wakeford or Patrick Leagas, and I have access to a greater amount of material by and about him. It should go without saying that my analysis in many ways dovetails with – but also extends and updates - the investigation Anti-Fascist Action made into Death In June, Tony Wakeford and a number of other musicians connected to them. Assuming you have connections with anti-fascist activists and debates, you may recall that AFA concluded Death In June weren't involved in recruiting on behalf of fascist organisations and that AFA decided not to physically prevent them from performing live. That said, since these discussions took place coming on for ten years ago, I feel the publication of an informed critique of Death In June is long overdue, hence the enclosed submission.

You may also recall that on page 256 of the South End Press edition of Indignant Heart, Charles Denby relates a story about a lion and a jackass which he uses to illustrates how union bureaucrats operate. The same story might be used with regard to David Black and his pronouncements about various reactionary currents…, his attacks on Death In June play into this pop group’s hands. There are far more effective ways of attacking scams like Death In June than the methods adopted by Black, as I make clear in the enclosed submission. On a slightly different tack, Black appears to believe that Tony Wakeford is still active in fascist politics. If this is the case it would be helpful if he made any evidence he has more generally available. While - as will be obvious from the enclosed piece - I am critical of the products of Wakeford's music business career, I still consider it worth encouraging individuals who have broken with fascist political groups to maintain such breaks. It is, of course, possible that in Wakeford’s case I have been duped and if it can be shown that this is so, then it would be useful to know this in order to do something about it. Likewise, Black could write a companion piece to my article focusing on Tony Wakeford and Sol Invictus since various things he has written leave the impression that he believes himself to have a knowledge of this subject that greatly exceeds my own. Such an undertaking would also provide him with an opportunity to demonstrate that he’d learnt something from my submission. Yours sincerely, Stewart Home. CC News & Letters USA. ENC.

Documents released October 2005

Tony Wakeford Replies?

An email was sent to this website on 22 July 2006 purporting to come from Tony Wakeford. The sender wrote: "I never replied to your letter because I never got it. I have only just seen it on the net. As for the macho be a man stuff, what like you were at Acklam Hall?" The email address this was sent from and the content lead me to the conclusion that it is almost certainly genuine. While it is possible Wakeford didn't receive my letter, I view this as rather too convenient. However, if this email is from Wakeford (and I think it is) then he's seen my letter now and even after a six year cooling off period doesn't want to deal with the issues it raises. Draw your own conclusions; personally I'll continue with my policy of many years standing of having nothing to do with Wakeford. As for Wakeford's macho posturing (Acklam Hall is a reference to a fight that took place in Notting Hill in 1979 after I was attacked by a bunch of guys who were a lot bigger than me, and it was with the help of several dozen other people who jumped in that I avoided getting badly beaten up), all I can say is: 'meow!'

Incidentally, while Wakeford refuses to deal with the issues I raised in my letter, the rumours surrounding him multiply. I'd heard no gossip about Wakeford for a long time until my letter to him was put up here, after which I suddenly found my eyes and ears inundated with 'dirt' circulating about him. These rumours come from multiple sources and range from the assertion that until recently he had linked some of his own web pages to others put up by Troy Southgate of Anarchist Heretics, via the claim that the original Sol Invictus bassist left to join hardcore Nazi band No Remorse, to matters even more sinister. Among other things it is alleged that there is some 'connection' between Tony Wakeford, Ian Stuart (deceased 'singer' with Nazi band Skrewdriver), the Italian fascist terrorists responsible for the Bologna train station bombing, and a hotel in Kings X (north London). Further, there is supposedly a direct physical connection between this hotel and the fascist ideologue Julius Evola;, as well as a link between those who stayed there, the death of Roberto Calvi and a murder in Holland Park (west London). Yet other rumours connect Wakeford via former Sol Invictus singer Ian Read to politically dodgy goings on at a north London club. And I've been told that anyone interested in Wakeford's fascist activities should look out for the name Dave Waters, which is an alias used by the Sol Invictus front man. All of which makes it more - rather than less - pressing for Wakeford to address the issues I raised in my letter to him. My suspicion is that there is some factual basis to these rumours even if they distort matters. Regardless, for as long as Wakeford refuses to make a clean public break with his political past these rumours are bound to persist. And as a way of opening up the possibility of a more honest reassessment of Wakeford's shady past, I'd like to reveal that rather than starting his music career with the Trotskyist pop group Crisis as standard biographies of him claim, prior to this Wakeford was actually in a Status Quo style boogie band called Blackwater (obsessives can go looking through back copies of the Woking News & Mail for corroboration of this, there is an article headlined something like "Crisis Are All Set To Shock" dating probably from 1977 which makes mention of this - I have seen it but don't have a copy of the clipping). So now you know!

The two paragraphs above were added when this site was revamped in October 2006.

I am adding beneath a statement that went up on Tony Wakeford's website a couple of weeks ago. Make of it what you will:

"A Message from Tony. For the few who are interested in such things, Many years ago I was a (sic) once a member of the National Front. It was probably the worse decision of my life and one I very much regret. However, I have no connection with, sympathy for, or interest in those ideas nor have I had for around 20 years. A number of friends and musicians whom I work with (including my wife of 8 years), my bass player, my percussionist and engineer/producer, would be at best discriminated against or at worse dead if a far-right party took power. None of the artists I work with hold such views either, and I doubt they would want to work with me if they thought I did. I am willing to discus this matter privately with friends and associates and with those who are genuinely interested in my music or wish to work with me. However, this is the last public statement I plan to make on the subject. I am too fat to jump through hoops for people. In the end people will either have to believe me or not. Tony Wakeford. 14 February 2007."

My view is that this is better than nothing, although the statement could have been more fulsome, would have been far stronger if it had included an apology as well as regrets, and should have been made a long time ago. But better late than never.... Personally I don't want anything to do with Wakeford and I would urge others to take the same line, but unless concrete evidence emerges that he is lying when he says he ended his involvement with fascism 20 years ago, then I will provisionally accept the claims he makes on this score. However, since I am now convinced that Wakeford lied to me when he assured me he hadn't been in the band Above The Ruins, I remain sceptical of anything he says, and I am willing to further revise my position on whether he has or has not broken with fascism.

These further notes were added on 2 March 2007.

See the top half of this page for the latest information I have about Wakeford's ongoing fascist involvements.

We Mean It Man: Punk Rock & Anti-Racism or, Death In June not mysterious

The McGonagall Syndrome (on the intellectual and aesthetic failings of a sad man who enthuses about Death In June, Sol Invictus and neo-folk)

The Sound of Sadism: Whitehouse & the 'New' 'British' Art (post-aesthetic fascism)

Skrewdriver (chapter from book on punk rock Cranked Up Really High)

I Love A Man In A Uniform: From Fetish To Fashion & Back Again

Music