I was a neo-Nazi... now I’m helping heal city
FORMER FAR RIGHT ACTIVIST BACKS #WESTANDTOGETHER CAMPAIGN AS HE JOINS ANTI-EXTREMISM PANEL
A FOUNDER member of a notorious neo-Nazi organisation has spoken of his dramatic turnaround – as he heads to Manchester in a bid to stamp out extremism.
Nigel Bromage was a naive teenager when a stranger outside his school gates changed his life forever.
That one encounter led to the 15-year-old son of trade union activists becoming a founder member of violent skinhead group Combat 18, and spending 20 years at the heart of the far right movement.
By the time Nigel saw the light he had lost his wife, his home – and once-close allies had murdered someone amid bitter infighting.
In fear for his own life, he left his home town for a diverse neighbourhood. It was a key moment in his journey from neo-Nazi to anti-fascist campaigner.
Nigel, now 53, has been appointed to an advisory panel which will help Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham develop an anti-extremism strategy.
This week, the M.E.N. launched the ‘We Stand Together’ campaign – a drive to make our city a more peaceful and harmonious place to live.
Nigel is backing our campaign – and told us his story as he prepares to come to Manchester with a team of researchers. He aims to go into estates and talk to people in areas where it is feared far right activists will try to exploit the Manchester bombing for their own gain.
Nigel, from Birmingham, has a unique insight into the threat, because it was a terrorist incident that led to him being ‘groomed’ as a fascist.
“I got involved in the far right because I was very anti-IRA,” he said.
“This was just a few years after the Birmingham pub bombings. People were still angry.
“I got a leaflet from a group called ‘Birmingham Against the IRA’ handed to me at school. I’d seen so much on the telly about the IRA and the bombings. Something clicked inside me.”
Nigel began attending meetings, and found ‘pensioners, women and children, and ordinary working people’ beside him. “They pushed the community side,” he added.
“It was very much about being proud to be British and standing up to the IRA. Living in Birmingham I was into reggae music, and had black and Asian friends – never at any point did they say you can’t listen to that or hang around with those people.”
After six months, Nigel was handed an envelope by his recruiter. Inside was a membership card for the National Front. The anti-IRA aspect had been used as a recruiting ploy, to show youngsters like him they were ‘ordinary British people,’ he said.
Nigel said: “The more I got into it, the more my old friends got replaced. I was groomed.”
Nigel’s mum was a hospital auxiliary, and his dad was a car-maker at British Leyland. Both were shop stewards and Labour Party activists. “They took advantage of the fact my mum was dying of cancer,” he said.
“They did her shopping, took her to chemo, they really involved themselves in my family life.
“Then they started saying that my mum would have the drugs she needed if we weren’t sending aid to India and Africa. They said ‘look at your mum suffering when she’s worked all her life.’ That changed my way of thinking.”
Nigel soon became a fixture on National Front marches, as he ‘took in all the lies, and believed the philosophy.’
At the age of 18, he shaved his head. Nigel later began to find the NF and its focus on elections and marches ‘too respectable.’
He joined a group called the British Movement, which was focused on far right activism in communities, and became senior organiser and recruiter. As his taste for ‘direct action’ grew, he made links with disaffected BNP members from other parts of the country.
Together they formed a new group, Combat 18. The group now has chapters across the world, and has been linked to extreme violence, including murders.
“It was about trying to create white homelands, white-only areas where we would be the police force.
“My dad was killed in a car crash when I was 23, my mum had gone, I had no brothers or sisters, the far right became my family – and I would have done anything for the movement.” Nigel went from being the West Midlands organiser for the group to being on its National Council.
“I have to hold my hand up in shame – if you’re a leader, you have to lead by example,” he said.
“I got involved in acts of violence. Everything from anti-IRA demonstrations, to basically attacking meetings of political opponents. “I never got involved in any indiscriminate racial attacks, it was people in power we felt were the enemy. But it got very violent.
“I was married and my wife didn’t support my beliefs. She gave me an ultimatum and I chose Combat 18.
“I told her ‘I love you very much, but I’m a soldier and I have to put my country first.’ I left my wife and my house.”
Nigel describes the loss of his wife as the first ‘chink in his armour.’ He began to be sickened by the ‘horrific’ violence, which in 1997 spilled into infighting.
Two senior members of the group ended up killing another member in a
The far right is offering no alternative to working people Nigel Bromage
stabbing. Nigel had been arrested a number of times for street violence and had been lucky to avoid conviction. He started to question whether they actually had a philosophy beyond racism and violence.
In the late 1990s he decided to leave the ‘echo chamber.’ Fearing his desertion would cause ‘violent repercussions,’ he moved to Newham – an ethnic area of London where he thought none of his colleagues would find him. “It brought me back to sanity,” he said. “It was somewhere I could re-evaluate myself and start a new life. I stayed with a gentleman above a shop called Mr Khan. We spoke lots about religion and politics.”
Nigel went back to the politics of his parents and ended up joining the Labour Party before coming clean about his far right past, and starting the anti-extremism group, ‘Small Steps Consultants.’
He dedicated himself to community work, to ‘try and make recompense’ for the damage he did to ‘a lot of communities across Birmingham.’
“Now, it’s very much about promoting a working class ethos,” Nigel added. “Wherever there’s poverty or injustice or lack of services, it’s about trying to look for solutions, and not creating problems. I think the far right has seen a big resurgence against Europe. Manchester is like any big city, the far right is growing and we have to tackle it.
“That’s why I lend my support to ‘We Stand Together,’ it’s a fantastic aim. The far right is offering no alternative to working people.
“They use genuine concerns for their own means, but don’t care about people.
“They don’t care about your family, your children, it’s the cause above all. But you don’t need them to be patriotic. You don’t need them, or to be a racist, to be proud to be English.”