The Life and Times of Nicky Crane

Vinny Hunt, 22nd Dec 2013

“Adolf Hitler was my god. He was sort of ,like, my Fuhrer. My leader. And everything I done was for him.” The eloquently spoken words of Nicola Vincenzo Crane whom I have stumbled across several times and each time found new and intriguing nuggets of information on. So I have done a bit of research, borrowed a lot of other people’s research and compiled it here in this original(ish) account of the fantastically ironic double life of Neo-Nazi Nicky Crane.

As his name implies, his background is not what you’d expect from a British Nationalist and Aryan warrior. Born to Italian parents in May 1958 Crane soon found a surrogate family in the South East London Skinhead scene that had developed something of a reputation for extreme violence particularly in the crowds of bands such as Sham 69 and Bad Manners.

From this unorganised and apolitically motivated gang of dissatisfied working class youth Michael McLaughlin, leader of the openly Neo-Nazi British Movement (BM), began to amass a fearsome following.

Crane rose through the rankings of the BM and in 1978 was appointed Kent organiser making him responsible for recruitment and for planning the logistics of the party’s next attack on minority groups. He was also inducted into McLaughlin’s person corps of body guards known as the ‘Leader Guard’. Drilled at paramilitary style weekends and dressed all in black their sole purpose was to intimidate political enemies and minority groups. Over the three years that followed Crane built a notorious reputation for brutal violence even among other far right groups. After attacking an unfortunate black family with broken bottles in East London a judge branded Crane as “Worse than an animal”.

Predictably, Crane was incarcerated several times, most notably in 1981 after the BM members waited at Woolwich Arsenal train station and attacked a train of black passengers as it arrived, killing two of them. “By appearance and reputation he was the epitome of right wing idealism” writes Sean Birchall in his history of the BM. However, unbeknownst to his right wing brothers Crane was living a dangerous double existence.

It was a Thursday night at Heaven, a gay night club below London’s Charing Cross station. Underneath the venues arched roof stood a young man, up from Brighton known to his peers as John G Byrne.

John G Byrne looked across the dance floor and caught sight of a man he had never seen before.

The stranger was tall, shaven headed and tattooed. Byrne introduced himself.

It was Nicky Crane fresh out of prison.

According to Byrne’s later writings Crane had thrown himself as enthusiastically into the London gay scene as he had the dark world of Neo-Nazism.

The contradiction of being a gay Neo-Nazi was not lost on Crane. Especially since he was not your average skinhead. He was the skinhead pin up boy. His face appeared on Punk bands album covers, T-shirts sold in their thousands and bedroom walls around the country were plastered with his snarling face.  In order to maintain his cover and retain his hard earned prestige among Crane often appeared with a Skinhead girls with whom he claimed to be romantically involved, none of them lasted long but it was a tactic that appeared to work, at least in the short term.

The 1980’s saw continued violence toward left wing activists, on one occasion he and his gang set upon a solitary activist on the tube. “Me and a few mates beat him really badly,” he said “even though he wasn’t moving we kept on jumping on his head. I think he survived. It must have been a miracle.”

After the collapse of the BM in 1983 Crane remained in the hearts of the far right by touring with Nazi punk band Skrewdriver where he played no instrument but was certainly considered part of the act. Think Bez of the Happy Mondays but replace the maracas and gormless stare with Nazi salutes and an angry glare.

For the first time in 1985 Cranes two lives were to intersect when Anti-Fascist magazine Searchlight ran a report on Crane ending with the sentence “On Thursday nights he can be found at the Heaven disco in Charing Cross”.

Heaven was well known as a gay club round London. Crane had been outed. Though he somehow managed to avoid his comrades turning on him, many refused to believe a committed Aryan soldier could be gay and even if they did believe the rumours none were willing to confront him on the matter. Surprisingly the gay community were less willing to ignore Cranes Neo-Nazi affiliation and he was pushed to the fringes of the community. His strange double life was quickly eroding.

Soon evidence began to emerge that perhaps Crane was losing enthusiasm for the Nazi cause, after he received a beating from an anti-fascist mob at the Bloody Sunday march in 1990 he gave evidence in court. Compliance with the system is something that would have happened under no circumstances in his fascist days.

Eventually Crane made the decision to end his double life once and for all. This is what led to his participation in channel 4’s documentary ‘Out’ in which he insisted he had abandoned Nazi ideals as they were hypocritical to his true feelings. The following day the Sun newspaper lead with the unsurprisingly blunt headline “NAZI NICK IS A PANZI”. Their rhetoric was echoed by Ian Donaldson, lead singer of Skrewdriver and leader of the far right movement who said “He’s dug his own grave as far as I’m concerned. I feel betrayed and I want nothing to do with him.”

In 1993 to coincide with the end of an era where the far right hoped to gain political influence through violence, Crane died of AIDS and Donaldson died in a car crash.  Soon former skins had abandoned the boots and braces for the rave scene.

To conclude I want to use a quote from an article by Jon Kelly from the BBC “It’s unlikely Crane reflected on his place at this intersection between all these late 20th Century subcultures. He was a man of action, not ideology but he certainly left a mark on all of them.”