Sweet & Tender Hooligan

A poem to make sense of my confessional blog post found here: https://thesoundofbobelle.blogspot.com/2025/02/my-dad-was-sweet-tender-hooligan.html,

Here in the mirror’s crack of memory, I excavate
the archaeology of fatherhood
each bone a contradiction,
each shard a swastika wrapped in bedtime stories.

Daddy was a sweet and tender hooligan,
singing Screwdriver lullabies,
teaching me to salute the wrong gods
while tucking me in with calloused hands
that threw bricks at Pakistani families
but never at me.

The rabbit hutch childhood blooms like barbed wire,
Birmingham Catholic ghosts haunting adoption papers
burned like book pyres, like synagogues,
like bridges between who we were
and who we pretended to be.

I am the daughter of a failed fascist,
Roma blood wrestling Aryan mythology
in the petri dish of my DNA
a beautiful stalemate,
a genetic ceasefire
where olive skin conquered blue eyes
but his jawline claimed the throne.

Upton Park stadiums echo with our last conversation,
football chosen over Christmas dinner,
West Ham over family—
because teams don't divorce you,
don't grow up antithetical,
don't become red flags waving
despite all your swastika bedtime stories.

When you can't speak, write,
my Irish friend whispers
(oh the irony, daddy,
that your daughter loves the 32,
loves Irish rebel songs,
loves everything you taught me to hate)

But you gave me The Clash,
White Riot playing like thunder
while you missed every beautiful irony,
every rebellion brewing
in your own daughter's revolutionary bones.

Seven years of silence before the deathbed call—
He's dying, he wants to see you...
and I choose dignity over pity,
respect over reconciliation,
because we understood each other
in that bone-deep way that only comes
from sharing the same impossible contradictions.

No photos remain except digital ghosts,
Google searches and BNP archives,
1993 election specials where you stood
like a scarecrow next to Derek Beackon,
putting me in crosshairs
while promising shelter
the sweet and tender paradox
of loving a man who made me everything
he taught me to destroy.

Today I grieve not the fascist,
not the father,
but the understanding
that mirror-recognition of two people
who knew exactly who the other was
and chose love anyway,
chose distance anyway,
chose to let the contradiction
live and breathe and die
without apology.

In the midst of life we are in debt
to the sweet and tender hooligans
who create us in their antithesis,
who teach us revolution
by showing us exactly
what we refuse to become.

Comments

My Dad Was A Sweet & Tender Hooligan...

Dad (Right), with Derek Beackon campaigning on the Isle of Dogs, 1993. ... A Failed Fascist & Father. There is so much confusion around exactly who I am. A Romani woman who was a child of a Neo-Nazi father. A Neo-Nazi father who, despite all my philosophical protestations otherwise, probably has been the most impactful influence on me. An anti-racist activist whose voice shakes in the guilty shadow of childhood memories of pride performing adult encouraged Sieg Heil salute. Yet, I owe a debt to my father. I am who I am, whatever that is, because he was who he was. Not that I think he knew who he was either. Adopted by a Birmingham Catholic family and no traceable adoption records must have have him an existential void that he tried to fill with fascism. Finding a family in West Ham football hooligan gangs, singing his rage out to Screwdriver, finding a uniform to wear in the worse sides of the Skinhead movement. The only stories I heard about this childhood was a ...

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