Families Flee Neo-Nazi Rally

Families living in a sleepy Somerset village were forced to flee their homes when a scooter festival turned out to be a Neo-Nazi gathering.

“It was like a miniature Nuremberg rally,” mother-of-two Sarah Gooding told BBC News.“I ran inside, burst into tears and said to my husband, ‘We’ve got to go, I don’t feel safe.’ Our daughters were really, really frightened. They were in tears as we were packing our bag to flee.”

Villagers at Redhill expected a scooter rally and were horrified when about 800 people turned up draped in Nazi flags.
“It was disgraceful behaviour. I was very upset that anyone can hold those views after what’s happened in the past. I found it incredibly distressing and so did my family,” said Debbie Johnson, another Redhill resident.

The two-day event at the end of September, which was organised by a record company called ISD, was a memorial concert for the 15th anniversary of the death of the former lead singer of a band called Skrewdriver.

But North Somerset Council, which granted it a temporary license, didn’t realise Skrewdriver was a neo-Nazi band and that ISD describes itself as the world’s “oldest and most dependable White Nationalist Movement CD label.”

Avon and Somerset Police received dozens of complaints about festivalgoers swearing and urinating in people’s gardens.
Some of the crowd reportedly marched through the street chanting, “Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.”

“If I knew that this would happen I would never have allowed it,” said Ian Saunders, the manager of The Bungalow pub who had agreed to let the scooter fest take place on a two-acre site adjoining the premises.