could affect change. "I was standing in the library watching people getting their heads kicked in for attending a debate and discussion. I thought: I'm on the wrong side." After Collins was hailed by his NF and BNP colleagues as a hero for the attack at Welling, he found himself in a phonebox calling Searchlight. One by one, he told the magazine the names of the people who had carried out the violence. A polite Geordie voice thanked him. "Everything sort of changed at the moment," he says. "But my intention wasn't to be a spy." Over the next few months he rang Searchlight a handful of times. Some days, he became so confused he had to steady himself in front of the mirror with the words: "I am still a National Socialist, I am still a white Aryan, part of the master race." Before long, Collins was passing secrets face-to-face that would lock away violent fascists and help cause the early 1990s far right to implode. Searchlight paid him in book tokens so he could educate himself. His role as a mole led to direct threats to his life and a trip to Australia, hastily arranged by Special Branch, where he lived in hiding from 1993 to 2003. He came back to take part in Dead Man Walking, a BBC documentary that brought him back into the open. In the eight years since his return he has worked full-time for Searchlight, where the deep friendships forged during his years