With the grisly prospect of further BNP success in this week’s council elections, FUN-DA-MENTAL say it’s time to stop being wet liberals and chose your side – and weapons if necessary. Iestyn George joins the Dog Tribe in London’s Brick Lane, scene of inflammatory BNP behaviour in recent months.

ANOTHER sunny day in the narrow streets of east London. Yards of lavishly coloured silk billow from doorways of clothes shops as traders exchange pleasantries with passersby and banter with store owners opposite. Fifty yards away, the dense chatter of half a dozen different languages reverberates around the local café, its windows enticing customers with a myriad of multi-coloured eastern delicacies. Across the road stands the police station – its windows rammed with righteousness in the form of anti-racist posters and help sheets. A group of Asian kids gather opposite, chatting to some older white blokes.

Suddenly, a car draws up, virtually mounting the kerb in an attempt to halt their path. A squad of uniformed police appear from nowhere, ignoring the whites and aiming straight for the young Asians. Toe-to-toe, chest-to-chest, they confront their quarry: “What are you lot up to, eh?� says one as he jabs a sturdy finger into the shoulder blade of a defiant 14-year-old. “ID – now!� spits another. A plain clothes officer arrives on the scene and by means of explanation gives the onlookers a smile of assurance: “You get a lot of gang violence around here,� he shrugs. “We’ve got to keep an eye out. They’re always at each other’s throats.�

WELCOME TO Brick lane, the real-life setting for Fun-Da-Mental’s new video for ‘Dog Tribe’. The idea was to follow last November’s epic ‘Countryman’ with a more confrontational statement of intent, prompted by the savage beatings handed out to Quudus Ali, Chadik Malik and Imran Khan, and the gradual acceptance of the poisonous BNP as a legitimate political force. Fun-Da-Mental want to make the point that if the authorities won’t protect people – be they Asian, black or white – from racist meatheads, then they’ll have to accept the inevitable violent consequences. That was the plan, only the police keep getting in the way. On consecutive days, band leader Propa Ghandi (better known as Aki Nawaz), his partner Blacka D and new rapping cohorts MC Mushtaq and Hot Dog are pushed around, questioned and intimidated – by the very same force that ‘protects the democratic right’ of the BNP to distribute racist literature along the same stretch of road; an arm of the law which itself is riddled with inconsistencies of policy and inaccuracies of judgement.

Only two weeks ago The Crown Prosecution Service made the decision to drop the case of teenager Stephen Lawrence, who was beaten to death within a mile of the BNP headquarters in Welling last year, due to lack of evidence. Yet, when it came to investigating the murder of Keith Blakelock nearly a decade ago, the CPS went to absurd lengths to ‘get a result’, randomly picking out Winston Silcott from a crowd of over 60 people at the scene of the crime. The ruling was eventually overturned, but go tell a young black kid about community policing – and watch him laugh in your face. Later in the day, the video makers mock-up a scene in which Aki is badly beaten up by a gang of racists. Noticeably, the police find no reason to come hurtling to the rescue, sirens blazing. The irony registers with Aki but it’s far outweighed by the experience of being set upon, albeit for the cameras.

“Imagine what it must be like to have 20 people beating you with their fists, kicking you in the head, just because of your colour,� he says, his blunt Yorkshire accent emphasizing the point. “I was bloody terrified even though those people are my friends and I knew what was coming. There must be a part of your brain which just goes into panic mode. And just think if you’re lucky enough to survive a real attack, you’re going to carry that memory with you when you walk home every single night.�

The make-up is both impressive and horrific. Aki’s nose is made out to be busted beyond repair and his cheekbone and eyes look densely bruised. Even though everyone on the set is perfectly aware that there is no actual damage, they can’t help cosseting him with sympathy, asking him if he feels OK.

“All the time I was photographing him, I kept thinking ‘you poor bloke’,� says NME photographer Kevin Cummins. “That’s nothing compared to the reality,� retorts D. “Have you seen pictures of the damage they did to Muktar Ahmed? I’ve never seen anything more sickening in my life.�

What about the recent palaver surrounding pictures the newspapers printed of three Afrikaaners being murdered, while a photographer stood by documenting the event? (Alwyn Wolfaardt was fatally shot while leading an attack by 700 white supremacists on a Bophutswana township last month.)

“To be honest, I thought it was brilliant,� says Aki without drawing breath. “I laughed my head off. The media had this big moral debate over whether the photographer should have stopped it happening. Instead of just taking pictures. Why the hell should he? We’ve seen countless pictures showing black people being murdered and no-one’s asked any questions about morals then. I don’t say ‘one settler – one bullet’, I say ‘one settler – ten bullets’. Those people have fucked up that entire country.�

SIX MONTHS ago, it looked like the world had lost Fun-Da-Mental forever, following the acrimonious departure of rappers Goldfinger and Lallaman to form Det-Ri-Mental. ‘Countryman’ wasn’t a hit in the UK, but it found the unlikeliest of bedfellows in Bryan Adams and Aerosmith on the normally ultra-conservative MTV Europe and was their first taste of genuine commercial success in India and Pakistan.

Then it all went horribly wrong. Depending on who you were talking to at the time, either the rappers were caught under the heady spell of stardom, getting carried away with themselves and disobeying the band’s anti-drink and drugs stance. Or Aki became power-mad, creaming the profits and ripping off his own band members. There’s probably only a little truth in both allegations but it did seem that on the verge of genuine success, the band had pressed the self-destruct button. “I think some people within the media were quite happy to see us falter,� claims Aki, with more than a hint of paranoia. “People seemed to go out of their way to trivialise the split, to make us all look silly, childish and stupid. We’ve got no problem at all with people taking us to task, but if you’re going to knock Fun-Da-Mental, do it constructively.

“It was pathetic when people dismissed us out of hand, saying here was a band that talked about unity in fighting racism who couldn’t even keep it together themselves. For fuck’s sake! Families and friends fight all the time, so what’s the big deal? Fun-Da-Mental’s stand is no weaker because of the split, neither is Det-Ri-Mental’s. We’re still here fighting. Which is more than most fuckers can be bothered doing.�

With new rappers MC Mushtaq and Hot Dog added to the rather sorry line-up of Aki and D that performed live at the tail end of last year, there’s no doubt that Fun-Da-Mental will continue to chop and change their line-up to accommodate new people and new ideas. There are guest appearances from former Collapsed Lung rapper Nihal and Trans-Global Underground’s Neil Sparkes on the yet-to-be completed album, and Aki himself hasn’t ruled out walking away from the band if the time is right.

“This isn’t your average ego-stroking band thing,� he says, matter-of-factly. “Fun-Da-Mental is like a house without doors or windows. People can come and go as they see fit. The problem with Lallaman and Goldfinger was that the whole thing became blown out of proportion. In the end it became (how can I say this?), detrimental to Fun-Da-Mental.� He looks up to the heavens and laughs. “No pun intended.�

“The BNP’s got your card marked, you bastards. We’re gonna burn your building down, you fuckheads. C18 is watching you, you communist, nigger-loving, Paki cunts. Fucking dickheads, we’re gonna hang you for burning the British flag. You’ll hang from every flagpole in Britain for burning the Union Jack, you bastards.� Answerphone message from a racist, featured on the intro to ‘Dog Tribe’

WITHIN THE uncompromising beats and edgy scratching of ‘Dog Tribe’, there’s a chaotic relevance to Fun-Da-Mental that’s special. Let’s face it – the ‘90s have been the last hiding place of the worthy but dull. Be it the vapid ‘I see your point mate, but I’m still voting Tory’ worldview of Phil Collins to the pathetically idealistic brow-furrowing of The Levellers, when your best stab at de-stabilising the central forces of capitalism is having a go at four masked turtles named after Renaissance painters, you know you’re in trouble.

Fun-Da-Mental can, from time to time, be similarly lumpen in their delivery, but in the same way that The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’ and Costello’s ‘Shipbuilding’ perfectly captured Britain’s decline under Thatcher, ‘Dog Tribe’ is more likely than most to be seen as the most accurate documentary for 1994.

“When we wrote ‘Dog Tribe’,� explains D, “it was just this fantasy about members of the community who’ve had enough beatings, enough of their neighbourhoods being terrorised and who’ve decided to fight back. A loose organization that people can identify with, but has no political affiliation, like a street-level Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

“Now, looking about us, even over the last six months we see things getting worse. You see people ten years younger than us and they’ve got this look in their eyes. They’re not going to accept things and keep quiet.�

“I’m sure Enoch Powell said it for very different reasons,� adds Aki, “but he was right; there will be blood on the streets.�

Who can blame people for losing faith? What hope can there be in the political process as long as the rival parties continue to pathetically court ‘the racist vote’ on the Isle Of Dogs? What faith can people have in the media as long as TV documentary-makers keep churning out their aimless, unchallenging documentaries on the ‘rise of the far-right’ in order to titillate the viewing public? What trust can they have in a system of law and order that turns a blind eye on crimes against members of their community, time and time again? Aki and D see The Dog Tribe as the only uniting force capable of tackling the problem on street level.

“There are too many anti-racist organisations which are affiliated to political parties,� claims Aki. “The Socialist Workers Party just bore the pants off us to be honest. We get invited down to conferences and meetings and it’s obvious from the start that they’ve got no idea what it’s really about. They use terms like ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘our British Asian brothers’ – they’re miles behind.

“It’s probably a bad thing for me to say, but there are only a minority of white people who are cool – who actually understand what’s going on. The majority of them are just fools. Even the most educated, liberal people can miss the point completely. Most people aren’t really prepared to listen, they just want to tell you how much you’re suffering and how sympathetic they are.�

Even Fun-Da-Mental have got caught up to a certain extent in this no-man’s land of political correctness. While they’ve broadened people’s musical horizons by using samples from across India and Pakistan, their audience still consists of predominantly male, white, middle class people. So you’re damned either way.

“We find it very hard to get Asian people into the venues that we play. They just won’t come, probably because of incidents from the past. There were about 30 Asian punks around when I was younger, but later when we used to go clubbing we’d get hassled at the door and half of us wouldn’t even get in.

“But sometimes it does get too much, all this struggle just for a bit of plastic – it’s trivial, it’s bullshit. But every time I feel that I’m pissing in the wind, I have to think that the problems we have just gives me more strength – it means we’ve got more stuff to deal with. And maybe you’ll get a letter from someone telling you what you’re doing is important to them and it gives you a better sense of perceptive. They’re not just fan letters, these, not like a pop band get – they mean you’re connecting with people. They feel someone’s representing them, without using any of that intellectual rubbish.�

AKI AND D have already had their pictures published in The Nationalist (a piece of white-power propaganda that sets out to target individuals for attacks) and are in no doubt that, one day, they’ll get theirs. It’s the sort of stuff that’s going to give you a slightly different perspective to life than your average workaday indie band, whose lasting dream is to secure an elusive Top Of The Pops appearance.

“Frankly, I’m more worried about being murdered by Combat 18 than I am concerned about what our chart position is,� admits Aki, without the merest hint of irony. Quite obviously, Fun-Da-Mental aren’t all about making friends and influencing people – they’re here to annoy and irritate racists and shake us out of our lethargic white liberal comas before their vision turns into a real nightmare.

SCUM AS YOU ARE “People whose freedom must be curbed are the pressure groups, the media and the trade unions.� – John Tyndall, BNP leader, 1977

‘FREE SPEECH’ for Nazis means the right to intimidate, the right to harass and the right to spread hatred of racial minorities.

The BNP are a Nazi party. Their strategy is two-fold – to gain control of the streets through terror whilst presenting themselves at the ballot box as a respectable, democratic political party. Here’s what they really amount to:

• John Tyndall, BNP founder: served three prison sentences including one for the incitement of racial hatred. Tyndall has claimed that the recent Nazi desecrations of Jewish cemeteries were done by Jews themselves “probably to win sympathyâ€?.
• Warren Glass, BNP candidate in Hounslow: accused of violent disorder after Nazis attacked women and children by hurling metal chairs at a political meeting.
• Tony Lecomber, BNP organiser in Redbridge: served three years for “unlawfully woundingâ€? a Jewish teacher. Jailed in 1986 after blowing himself up with a homemade bomb. Convicted of making grenades, detonators and petrol bombs.
• Phillip Andrews, International Third Position (ex-NF) candidate in Hounslow: 1986 conviction for grievous bodily harm after an attack on a black police officer.
• Kevin Scott, BNP candidate in Sunderland: convicted of assault at a political meeting. Found guilty of “threatening behaviourâ€? in 1993 after an incident in which a glass was thrown at a black customer in a pub.
• George Callow, BNP candidate in Tower Hamlets: several convictions including one of throwing fireworks and shouting anti-Semitic abuse at a parade.
• Christian Jackson, BNP candidate in Calderdale: accused in 1988 of organised football hooliganism.
• Robert Jarvis, BNP “law and orderâ€? candidate in recent election in Loughton, Essex: conviction for violent behaviour.
• Richard Edmonds, BNP National Organiser, and John Morse, editor of the BNP newspaper British Nationalist, will be on trial at the end of May on charges of violent disorder relating to an incident following the election of Derek Beackon where a black man was glassed for being in the company of a white woman.
• Derek Beackon, elected BNP councilor, Isle Of Dogs: in September 1993 he told the Evening Standard newspaper: “I am going to represent the white people. I will not represent Asians. I will not do anything for them. They have no right to be in my great country.â€?

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