Nicky Crane

Nicholas "Nicky" Crane, (1958-1993) British neo-Nazi and homosexual. His case demonstrates the falsity of the idea that Nazism is incompatible with homosexuality.

Background

Crane was born on 21 May 1958 in Bexley, south-east London, to a lower-middle-class family with ten children. His Italian mother, Dorothy née Ambrosio, originally named him "Nicolà Vincenzo". They soon moved to Crayford, Kent. As a teenager he was drawn into a gang of "skinheads," disaffected working-class white youth. He then joined the openly neo-Nazi British Movement, led by Michael McLaughlin. He became the Kent organizer and was one of McLaughlin's personal corps of bodyguards. Six feet two inches in height, and covered in tattoos, he was an intimidating figure.

Crane told a TV interviewer in 1992 ""Adolf Hitler was my God,"". His occupation at this time was as a refuse collector.

Criminal Convictions

In 1978, he was convicted for taking part in an assault on a black family at a bus stop in Bishopsgate, east London, using broken bottles and shouting racist slogans.

The following year he led a mob of 200 skinheads in an attack on Asians in nearby Brick Lane. A similar attack took place in 1980 at the Woolwich Odeon and in 1981 Crane was jailed for four years for his part in an ambush on black youths at Woolwich Arsenal station. As the sentence was read out, his supporters in the court made the Nazi salute. He served three jail terms, the last in a top-security prison on the Isle of Wight.

In 1981 a photograph of Crane, with shaven head and muscular torso, appeared on the sleeve of a punk-rock record Strength Through Oi, and made him into a punk icon, literally a poster-boy.

In June 1984, Crane and his BM supporters disrupted a pop-concert held for charity by permission of the Greater London Council, and started a major riot.

Homosexuality

In April 1985, a magazine called Searchlight did an article about Crane's violent activities and mentioned that he was a frequenter of the Heaven disco in Charing Cross. This was a well-known homosexual meeting-place. Far from hiding his inclinations from his Nazi friends, Crane set up a group of homosexual skinheads.

In 1986, Crane and a bunch of his homosexual skinhead friends attended a "Gay Rights" March in Kennington, London, where their Nazi tattoos and affiliations caused considerable friction with other participants.

Crane starred in a series of skinhead-themed homosexual pornography videos.

Music business

In 1987 Crane joined with Ian Stuart Donaldson, singer of the neo-Nazi rock band Skrewdriver, to set up a group called Blood & Honour. It was a music club for White Power supporters and ran a highly profitable mail-order business supplying skinhead and punk paraphernalia.

Targeted by Antifa

January 1990, Crane was spotted at a Bloody Sunday commemoration event in Kilburn, north-west London, and was beaten up by three Antifascist activists. They were later caught and jailed.

Later life and death

Crane worked in London as a bicycle courier and lived in a bedsit in Soho. On 27 July 1992, he appeared on a Channel 4 TV program to discuss his homosexuality and said that he had changed his former racist views. Although he admitted his homosexuality, he did not mention the fact that he was by then HIV-positive.

On 7 December 1993, Crane died of broncho-pneumonia, a side effect of AIDS.

See also Ernst Rohm, Michael Kühnen, Michel Caignet, Kenneth Mieske, Martin Webster.