Author: Jan Raabe | Date: November 2005

Blood and Honour stages gigs across Europe

Nazis stand silently and reverently in a deserted factory building near Dresden in darkest Saxony. The shouting and bawling has stopped and some of those present even straighten their backs in quasi-military fashion, while a hymn is played to honour Ian Stuart Donaldson, the late Skrewdriver band leader turned international nazi idol, killed in a road traffic accident on 23 September 1993.

The date is 3 September 2005 and this ritualistic scene was to be repeated over the following weeks at a series of Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial concerts, organised by the nazi Blood and Honour (B&H) movement all over Europe.

Because B&H was banned in Germany in 2000, the nazis were not able to advertise the concert openly for fear that it would be stopped. The event was therefore organised conspiratorially to take place well before the anniversary of Donaldson’s death and was attended – unusually for a bonehead event in Germany – by just 350 participants.

The Belgian concert, staged on 10 September by B&H’s so-called Netherlands and Flanders Division, was next. Its organisers bleated, “Unfortunately there had to be a memorial though each of us would rather see Ian Stuart still leading this fine movement to victory”. A 600-strong mob listened to Warlord and Section 88, both from England, and Faustrecht and White Resistance, from Germany. The police were present but did not intervene.

A week later, 3-400 nazis gathered at a pub in the small town of Krtetice near Ceske Budejovice in the south of the Czech Republic and heard Titkolt Ellenalas (Hungary), Razors Edge (England) and Oidoxie (Germany). Oidoxie managed to whip up the audience to the extent that shouts of “Sieg Heil” could be heard outside the pub. This resulted in the police warning that they would enter the building and break up the concert, whereupon the organisers threw in the towel, preventing a performance by the home-grown Czech band, Conflict 88.

In contrast to the intervention by the Czech police, the police chief in Brig, Switzerland, faced censure for not breaking up another 3-400-strong B&H concert staged the same day. “Hate against Jews while the police stand and watch. That’s enough!” commented a local newspaper.

The Swiss B&H Division had invited the American band Tear Down. Together with Amok and Helvetica, both from Switzerland, Sleipnir and Feldherren, from Germany, and Ultima Frontiera (Italy), they were able to incite the nazi mob with impunity.

In Slovakia, despite an expanding nazi bonehead scene, the memorial concert, also on 17 September, attracted only 200 people. The relatively low numbers may have been the result of competition from other nazi concerts on the same day in southern Germany. Although two notorious UK nazi bands, English Rose and Pure Blood, were on the bill, the hate-filled atmosphere only reached its full nadir when Feher Torveny from Hungary, Imperium from the Czech Republic and Skullscrusher from Slovenia took the stage, enabling the audience to relish “songs” about killing Jews.

In Austria, the main organiser of the memorial concert on 24 September publicly criticised the audience, declaring: “I have to say that is it very embarrassing that somebody has to shout into the microphone in order to get some people to shut up”. His beloved Führer did that all the time! But no wonder the nazis were rowdy. The police had allowed the owner of the first concert venue to cancel the contract, then the lead singer of the Finnish band Mistreat got fighting drunk. Enthusiasm was only restored when the UK band Razors Edge played “Streets of Oldham”, a modified version of Ralph McTell’s “Streets of London”.

In the UK, the American group Youngland topped the line-up, frenetically celebrated while the ageing veterans of British nazi music – Brutal Attack, English Rose, Pureblood, Warhammer, Avalon, Legion of St George and Strikeforce – were left standing. The organisers from B&H Central Division, nevertheless, pronounced themselves satisfied with the event.

Not to be left out, 200 nazis responded to an invitation of the Ukrainian B&H Division on 24 September in Kharkov with a bill headlined by Kolovrat (swastika) from Moscow. The other bands treating the boneheads to their racket were Molot from neighbouring Belarus, three outfits from the Ukraine, and Odessa – the first German nazi band to play in the country.

It was left to the Hungarian nazis to stage the final event of the series with a gig near Budapest, at which the Hungarian bands Hunor, Titkolt Ellenallas and Feher Torveny played, as well as Imperium. Top billing, however, went to the Legion of St George.

The fact that the nazis were able to stage ten international concerts within a month, of which at least nine were directly organised by B&H, indicates that although in decline in some Western countries and banned or facing bans in others, the nazis’ structures remain intact.

B&H concerts attended by up to 600 people are not unusual, especially in the former East Bloc countries, where a white power music scene has emerged mostly led by B&H. These countries have relatively lax laws and the police do little to crackdown on these menacing activities.

While B&H’s English Division is still seen as the movement’s leading unit, because the organisation started here, international bands such as Kolovrat, Tear Down and Juden Mord are starting to draw more and more attention.

There is no doubt that B&H in Germany has the biggest mobilising potential and commands by far the most support, but the ban is an inhibiting factor, forcing official B&H concerts to be held abroad. German nazis attend these events just outside the country’s frontiers in large numbers. Despite the ban, numerous former members and activists of the German B&H division are still highly active.

If white power music undergoes a resurgence – with B&H at its centre – it could become an even more important vehicle for the nazi political message, most of all in the former East Bloc.

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