What’s Derek Turner up to right now?

Long ago, in fact it was the 1980’s, some Nazi chums and I attended the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the National Front (NF).

Such meetings were quite serious affairs back in those days and everybody made a special effort (no matter how hard it was,) to wear clean underwear and a collared shirt.

Probably due to their being no child protection register, the NF was able to squeeze as many as two hundred people into one of those annual and general meetings.

I recall this particular meeting beginning badly when an oddly shaped American Nazi and self – proclaimed ‘civil rights’ lawyer was accused of being ‘over familiar’ with some of the NF’s shaven headed youth contingent in the lavatories at the back of the hall. The lawyer, whose name was Richard Barrett, was removed from the meeting, but because he was white and presumed to be rich, no more was said about this “unfortunate” incident.

The NF was – as it always has been, particularly moronic. On the cusp of another violent split, it wasn’t long after the meeting started that everybody got bladdered and started looking for anybody to have a fight with.

The next individual to cause discombobulation was a man who arrived late to the meeting and came dressed as somewhat of a “dandy”.

That man was one Derrick Turner. Turner was, according to Searchlight, leader of the National Socialist Party in Ireland – also known as the Social Action Initiative.

According to Searchlight Turner had moved to London in 1988 and changed his name to Derek (Turner). As well as working at the (Apartheid) South African embassy, he was desperate to ingratiate himself with British Nazis.

As you can well imagine, a strangely dressed Irishman at an NF meeting was definitely cruising for a bruising.  And despite half the NF’s membership having at least one Irish parent or Grandparent, Turner was impolitely asked to leave and take his straw hat and blazer with him back up the Serpentine and on whichever pedalo he sailed in on.

Such an inglorious introduction to the British far right did little to dampen Turner’s enthusiasm and he has made somewhat of a name for himself on all kind of fora, even for a time as the editor of petty magazine Right Now.

Turner had has been relatively quiet of late (thank goodness).  He appears to have fallen in love with Lincolnshire and now describes himself as some kind of simple writer – at large.

One of his novels, ‘Displacement’ is (according to the blurb) about a young man “at the bottom of London’s pile – working-class and white, poor and uneducated, ignored and alienated.” Maybe it’s his version of The Turner Diaries?

One person to fawn over Turner’s novel was none other than former Sun television critic, Garry Bushell. Bushell wrote that it “Powerfully and memorably evokes a threatened subculture in a rapidly altering London, as the Cockney is pushed to the edges of English life.” But, to be fair to Bushell and Turner, Frank Field also described it as “a novel that engages in a non-stereotype manner to face fairly the issues of Britain’s white working class.”

There’s obviously some kind of elephant in the room, I’m missing.  Turner’s new book – about the beauty of living in (near monoracial) Lincolnshire has even been given a lengthy review by The Guardian, whose Sunday title The Observer once patted itself heavily on the back for revealing Turner’s politics.

I dunno. I always mention my Nazi past when writing a book…