Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs Read Online Free PDF Page A

They also followed the supposedly official initiation ceremony during which a bucket of dung and urine is collected and then tipped over the head of the new member. The mixture is worked into their jeans and patches and thereafter, the items, dubbed ‘originals’, can never be washed. They have to be worn until they are literally falling apart and are then worn over other clothes to further extend their life.
    Although the ceremony is detailed in Hell’s Angels , suchpractices were never as widespread as the journalist was led to believe and by the 1970s most bikers had significantly cleaned up their acts. No one in the Pagans had any wish to be defiled or degraded. When they saw the Ratae wearing their filthy jackets, they thought they looked stupid. With two completely opposed ideologies, it was clear the two clubs were never going to get along.
    The Pagans chose blue and white as their colours and announced from the start that they had no alliances. They had no desire to be Hell’s Angels or part of any other, larger club. Their commitment was to bike riding and partying and to being themselves, which meant being ready to honour and protect their club’s colours at any cost. To be a member of the Pagans was to live the life of a hedonist twenty-four hours a day.
    Warwickshire had been more or less unopposed when the club started up, but there were still plenty of opportunities for fighting. Any side patch or MCC deemed to be too big for their boots would be taken out of the picture and any club daring to wear the Pagan colours would have hell to pay. By the mid-eighties, membership of the Pagans had grown to around twenty-five, many of who, like Boone, hailed from upmarket, well-to-do towns in the county like Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare.
    Their neutral stance meant that the Pagans could party with anyone. The Hell’s Angels one week, the Cycle Tramps from Birmingham the next, the Scorpio from Cornwall whenever they were in town. They had even partied with the Ratae. Boone had been a lowly prospect at the time and not privy to what had been going on at the higher levels of the organisation, but he recalled a tense evening with thedeep animosity between the two sides smouldering away all night. He felt like a schoolkid being told to play nice with the kids from across the street while their parents did their best to make small talk.
    The experience was not to be repeated. The next time Boone heard anything about the Ratae was when their prospect turned up inside the club’s territory.
    Scout’s vision for the future was crystal clear: it was going to be an absolute bloodbath. He wanted far more than just simple revenge: he had decided that the Pagans should be taken out completely. The Ratae were going to wipe their rivals off the face of the earth and assume control of Warwickshire in one fell swoop.
    Bikers from all corners of the Ratae empire, including gangs from Lincolnshire and Norfolk, were drafted in to join the attack and by the time the convoy of cars and vans and bikes reached the outskirts of Coventry, there were more than eighty of them. Once in the city centre they immediately sought out members of the Slaves, the same gang they had previously clashed with.
    The local MC was no friend of the Ratae, but they didn’t exactly see eye to eye with the Pagans either. The Warwickshire gang significantly outnumbered and outgunned the Slaves and the two clubs had existed in a state of cold war for some years. Thanks to their healthy fear of Scout in particular and the rest of the gang in general, the Coventry boys did not hesitate to explain exactly how to get to the Pagans clubhouse in Leamington Spa, seizing the chance to build bridges with the Ratae and potentially rid themselves of an enemy at the same time.
    The arrival of the massive convoy had not gone unnoticed by Coventry police, who initially believed that the Ratae had come to town to war with the Slaves. By the time