Blood & Honour / C18 in Australia

They’re a weird mob, these Nutzis.

A while ago I referred to the splits in Ian Stuart‘s painful legacy of bad muzak, otherwise known as ‘Blood & Honour’, but also as C18 (Combat 18: 1=A; 8=H; AH=Adolf Hitler). In Australia, the local franchise is loyal to B&H, and allied with the Hammerskins. So too, the tiny B&H/Hammerskins mob in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In Australia, B&H/Southern Cross Hammerskins organise an annual gig to commemorate Ian Stuart’s death; in Aotearoa/New Zealand, B&H/NZ Hammerskins organise an annual gig to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.

C18, on the other hand, exists only in Patrick O’Sullivan‘s fertile imagination.

Background

The Skrewydriver’s overdue death in 1993 resulted in a battle over his financial and political legacy. Initially, B&H came under the control of C18, a small mob of Nutzi headcases initially part of the BNP, but soon operating independently of it. C18 was established in the early ’90s, and led by a violent crank named Paul (‘Charlie’) Sargent. Charlie was a fascist, drug-dealing football hooligan, and good mates with Chris (‘Chubby’) Henderson, later lead shouter with Combat 84 (available locally through Deadset Music), as well as the former manager of the 4-Skins, Gary Hitchcock. All three were well-known faces in the Chelsea Headhunters, a fascist football firm.

In 1992, Neil Parish, the main bonehead behind B&H in the UK, was in all sorts of trouble — legal, drug, alcohol and familial. Good ol’ Charlie offered to take over operations while Neil did a spell, on the understanding that when he got out, things would revert to normal.

Duh.

Instead, with Neil safely tucked away behind bars, Charlie quickly moved to consolidate control of the business. In addition to discrediting poor ol’ Neil (an alleged “low-life thief and Jew informer”), C18 made its first public appearance at a Skrewydriver Xmas show, where Ian Stuart quickly accepted their presence. C18 then proceeded to rapidly replace the British Movement (BM) as thugs-of-choice on the neo-Nazi muzak scene. The final nail in the coffin occurred when Ian skidded off a road and to his death, and with it Ian’s ability to hold competing factions together.

The BM had been in decline for many years, and it was a relatively simple matter for C18 to end its association with B&H, one maintained most closely by Paul Burnley, lead shouter with the band No Remorse. Burnley himself was attacked in the squabbling over Ian’s lucrative legacy. Charlie’s sidekick Will Browning played a crucial role in these shenanigans, and it was him what established ISD Records in January 1994. Gary Hitchcock, the man credited with coming up with the name Combat-18, wasn’t happy with this development, as he’d secretly been appointed British distributor of the German neo-Nazi label Rock-O-Rama — which has since been transformed into the Belgian label Pure Impact (available locally through Deadset Music). Hitchcock eventually dropped out of the race for Nutzi $, and his place taken by Browning’s ISD Records…

Since then, there have been many ups and downs for the bloody, dishonourable criminals associated with B&H, C18 and ISD — notably, in 1998, Charlie Sargent’s conviction and sentencing to life imprisonment for murdering another Nutzi — but the schism between the ‘musical’ and the ‘political’ B&H remains.

http://www.bloodandhonourworldwide.co.uk/ The ‘musical’ mob. Closely tied to the Hammerskins and the only B&H group in both Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Also Austria*, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, Finland, France, Germany*, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain*, Switzerland, Ukraine, United States. * = Subject of a legal ban.
http://www.bloodandhonour.com/ The ‘political’ C18 mob. In Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Czech Republic, England, Holland, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Ukraine and United States.
Note that both tendencies appear to be present in the Czech Republic, England, Holland, Serbia and the United States.