Among the Thugs

The Stretford End . . . is a kind of academy of violence, where promising young fans can study the arts of intimidation. This season the club installed a metal barrier between the fans and the ground. It resembles the sort of cage, formidable and expensive, that is put up by a zoo to contain the animals it needs but slightly fears. Its effect has been to make the Stretford terraces even more exclusive and to turn the occupants into an elite.

THE WEEKEND AFTER my visit to Turin, I took the train to Manchester. Manchester United was at home to West Ham, the East London team, and I had been told to come up for the match. I had been accepted. I had been accepted for the simple reason that I had travelled with the supporters to Italy and had been with them when it had ‘gone off’. I had witnessed an experience of great intensity and—like the other supporters returning to tell stories to the friends who had remained behind—I was among the privileged who could say that he had been there.

I arrived just before noon and got to the Brunswick in time to meet some of the people I had heard about. There was Teapot and Berlin Red and One-Eyed Billy and Daft Donald. Daft Donald was the one who had tried to reach Turin but never got past Nice. Daft Donald showed me a canister of CS gas. He said that he always travelled with a canister of CS gas. It stuns them, he said, so that you can then take out their teeth without any resistance.

I spotted a lad named Richard, whom I recognized from Turin. He was flicking through an envelope of photographs that he had picked up that morning from Boots, surrounded by four or five of his friends. They had stayed home; Richard had gone, although he told me later that, because he had gone without first getting permission from his boss, he had probably lost his job—assembly line work at a machine factory. The reason he could say only that he had ‘probably’ lost his job was because, three days later, he still hadn’t showed up for it. But for the moment it didn’t matter; he was a celebrity: he had been in Italy when it had ‘gone off’.

For Richard, being one of the lads was the best thing a person could be. He became serious and a little sentimental when he spoke about it. The shape of his face changed; it seemed to soften and round out, and his eyebrows knitted up with feeling. ‘We look forward to Saturdays,’ he said, ‘all week long. It’s the most meaningful thing in our lives. It’s a religion, really. That’s how important it is to us. Saturday is our day of worship.’

Richard wanted to explain to me what it meant to be a supporter of Manchester United. I didn’t know why at first—whether it was because I was an American and was thus ignorant about these things, or because I was the journalist who might put the record straight, or because I was the most recent member to be admitted into the group—but Richard wasn’t the only one. Other people went out of their way to do the same: they wanted me to understand. All day long people stopped me to illustrate, to define, to comment upon the condition of being one of the lads. I cannot remember meeting people so self-conscious about their status and so interested in how it was seen by others. They were members of something exclusive—a club, cult, firm, cultural phenomenon, whatever it might be called—and they valued its exclusivity. They were used to the fact that the world was interested in them and were accustomed to dealing with television and newspaper journalists in a way that few people, however educated in media matters, could hope to be. It was a perverse notion, but they believed that they were involved in an historical moment, that they were making history. And now that they didn’t have to hide from me that their thing was violence—now that the pretence of being a good supporter could be abandoned—they all wanted to talk about it.

This put me in an awkward position. What was I meant to do with what people were telling me? I was uncomfortable with the idea of writing in my notebook in front of everybody. I knew that I couldn’t pull out a tape-recorder, that something so blatant would destroy the trust. So what did that make me? Was I the reporter or had I been genuinely admitted to the group? And if I had been admitted, should I be explicit about the fact I would be writing about the very people who were befriending me? In retrospect, my confusion, that I was suddenly unsure of my role, was a symptom of the way a group of this sort works—the way it takes you in, proffers support and expects loyalty—and I resolved the matter in a simple way: I avoided it. I ended up excusing myself constantly to get into one of the stalls in the lavatory, where I then sat down and, secure in my privacy, scrawled down everything I had been told. I was being told so much that day that I was having to disappear with considerable regularity—there is only so much you can hold in your head—and I finally had to own up to having stomach problems.

I re-emerged from one lavatory visit to discover a lad who looked exactly like Keith Richards. The likeness was uncanny. What’s more, it wasn’t Keith Richards at just any time of his life; it was Keith Richards during the worst time. The lad had the same long, leathery, lined face; the druggy offhand manner; the endless cigarettes; the dazed and exhausted appearance of sustained personal abuse. He, too, had been in Italy, but I didn’t remember seeing him there. That, he said, was because, through the whole match, he had sat at the bottom of the stairs with his head between his legs vomiting upon his feet. He showed me his boots, still caked with the dried splatterings of the horrors that, at one time, had been contained in his stomach.

The Keith Richards lookalike was disconcertingly self-aware. He knew what a journalist was hoping to find in him and that he provided it. He worked in a factory, making soap powder. ‘The perfect profile of a hooligan, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘He works all week at a boring job and can’t wait to get out on a Saturday afternoon.’

He sneered. It was a wonderful sneer—arrogant, composed, full of venom. ‘So what do you think makes us tick?’ he asked. ‘If we,’ he said, not waiting for my answer, ‘did not do it here at football matches then we’d simply end up doing it somewhere else. We’d end up doing it on Saturday night at the pub. It’s what’s in us, innit?’ He had an intense, but rather practised, look of contempt.

Keith Richards was interrupted by Robert. Robert was the one who arrived in Turin by an expensive taxi from Nice. He was also the one who had been telling people in Italy that I worked for the CIA—such was the threat to international stability that the supporters of Manchester United represented. Robert had concluded, even if only tentatively, that I probably wasn’t CIA—he was not entirely certain—and that, regardless, I was a good geezer.

Robert was tall and Irish and good-looking and could not take too many things too seriously for too long. He had been listening to Keith Richards’s account of the violence and thought it sounded a little too earnest. ‘All that’s true,’ he said, ‘but you’ve got to see the humour. You can’t have violence without a sense of humour.’

I fell in with Mark, the British Telecom engineer whom I had also met in Italy. Mark was of a philosophic disposition. ‘I’ve been going to matches for years,’ he said, ‘and I still can’t put a finger on it.’ Mark was trying to describe the essence of the thing.

‘During the week,’ Mark continued, ‘they’re nobody, aren’t they? But then, when they come to the match, that all changes. They feel like Mr Big.’ The implication was that Mark—skilled job, career prospects, pension-fund, wife, future family—was different, that he was somebody. Somebody or nobody, the experience wasn’t any less intense for Mark. ‘Every now and then,’ he said, ‘even for me, there is something spectacular, something that makes you feel different afterwards. The Juventus match was like that. That was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.’

He described Italy. ‘You remember the moment we entered the ground? Everybody started throwing things at us—bottles, cans, stones, everything. I’ve got a scar on my forehead from where some Italian jabbed me with a flag-pole. There were only two hundred of us. It was us against them, and we had no idea what was going to happen. There was so many different feelings. Fear, anger, excitement. I’ve never felt anything like it. We all felt it and every one of us now knows that we have been through something important—something solid. After an experience like that, we’re not going to split up. We’ll never split up. We’ll be mates for life.

‘I will never forget these blokes. I will never forget Sammy. For as long as I live, I will be grateful that I could say I knew him. He is amazing. He’s got this sixth sense that keeps him from getting caught, and he knows, somehow, when something really big is about to go off, and that’s when you find him there at the front. If there was a war, Sammy would be the bloke who’d return with all the medals. He’d be the hero. It’s funny, isn’t it? Sammy could be put away for years if they knew even half of what he’s done, but if he did the same things in a war you’d see his picture in the papers.’

I was greeted by Steve. Mark may have been right, that football provided meaning for supporters whose lives were otherwise empty, but many supporters had their lives remarkably well sorted out—at least financially: they had money and prospects of getting more. Steve was one. At the age of twenty-two he had a colour television, an expensive camera, a video player, a car, a van, CD and stereo equipment. He was married—his wife was a hairdresser—and was about to secure a mortgage for the purchase of his first home. He lived in one of the southern commuter-belt garden cities not far from London. Like Mick, Steve was an electrician, but, unlike him, Steve was self-employed and running his own business, was already fully informed about the rhythms of cash flow, tax fiddles and the tactics needed to deal with the VAT man. He had opinions about most things and a gentle way of expressing them.

Steve had been on that early-morning coach that took me up to Manchester airport. I had spent quite a bit of time with him already. I would spend more. In fact, for a while, I went out of my way to spend time with Steve, if only because, being articulate and intelligent, he was good company and because I always believed that he would be able to reveal something about why he, of all people, was attracted to violence of this kind. If the Daily Mail had been asked to create a twenty-two-year-old working-class lad with his life sorted out, it could have presented Steve.

There was the language he used. I mentioned Sammy, and Steve would say: ‘Ah, yes, Sammy. Me and Sammy go way back.’ I mentioned Roy, and Steve would say, ‘Ah, Roy. I’ve known Roy for years.’ Steve was only twenty-two. These phrases were an old man’s; they sounded like his father’s. And when he talked about the violence, he could have been assessing a small business’s marketing problems. ‘We’ve got one of the best firms in the country—as you carry on with your research you’ll find that very few clubs get the support that Manchester United gets every Saturday—and the last time we played West Ham in London our boys filled three tube trains. There must have been two thousand people. Two thousand people had come to London from all over the country with the sole purpose of routing West Ham. Those are very big numbers. But then nothing happened.’

Extensive preparations had gone into Manchester United’s last meeting with West Ham—coaches had been hired, with complex routes into the city to evade the police, the arrival times staggered so that everyone did not appear en masse. ‘Our trouble,’ he said, ‘is one of leadership. We have too many leaders, with the result that we have no leaders at all. We’re always getting dispersed or split up. West Ham has Bill Gardiner—I’ve known Bill since I can remember—and you will see him later today. He is always the first man out, flanked on either side by his lieutenants, with everyone else behind. And what he says, goes. He is the general. He doesn’t fight much himself any more—when it goes off, he tends to step back and disappear into the crowd—because he can’t afford to get arrested.’

Problems of leadership, organization, ‘big numbers’, a hierarchical command structure: the technocrat phrasing did not obscure that what Steve was describing was a civil disturbance involving several thousand people. Every now and then, I would would butt in with a ‘why?’ or a ‘how?’, but Steve would simply say something like, ‘It’s human nature, I guess,’ or ‘I don’t know, I never really thought about it,’ and then he would be off describing one of the current tactical problems. And in this, he had very developed views.

His essential complaint was that football violence emerged out of such a coherently structured organization that the authorities should just leave it alone. The members of each firm knew those from all the other firms—without a moment’s hesitation, Steve could also run through the leaders of Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal, Millwall and Nottingham Forest—and, in their ideal world, they should be allowed to get on with fighting each other without unnecessary impediments: ‘We know who they are; they know who we are. We know they want it and so do we.’ It was a matter of freedom and responsibility: the freedom for them to inflict as much injury on each other as they were prepared to withstand and the responsibility to ensure that others were not involved: with some pride Steve mentioned watching a fight on the terraces that was interrupted to allow a woman and child to pass, then promptly resumed.

Steve blamed most of the current troubles on the police. ‘The police have now got so good,’ he said, ‘that we’re more constrained than before. We just don’t have the time that we used to have. The moment a fight starts we’re immediately surrounded by dogs and horses. That’s why everyone has started using knives. I suppose it might sound stupid but because the policing has got so good we’ve got to the point where we have to inflict the greatest possible damage in the least amount of time, and the knife is the most efficient instrument for a quick injury. In fact these knifings—because there is so little time—have become quite symbolic. When someone gets knifed, it amounts to an important victory to the side that has done the knifing. If the policing was not so good, I’m sure the knifings would stop.’

People were leaving Yates’s. Steve said it was time to get moving, and I followed him outside. Talking to Steve was a curious experience. Everything was exactly the way it was not meant to be. The police were bad because they were so good. Knifings were good because they had the potential to be so bad. The violence was good because it was so well organized. Crowd violence can be blamed not on the people causing it but on the ones stopping it. In themselves, these would be curious statements to consider. What made them particularly unusual was the way Steve presented them. He was rational and fluent, and had given much thought to the problems he was discussing, although he had not thought about the implications of the thing—that this was socially deviant conduct of the highest order, involving injuries and maiming and the destruction of property. I don’t think he understood the implications; I don’t think he would have acknowledged them as valid.

Everyone left Yates’s and made his way on to the High Street. There were about a thousand people, milling around ‘casually’, hands in their pockets, looking at the ground. The idea was to look like you were not a member of a crowd, that you just happened to find yourself on the High Street—at the time that a thousand other people happened to have done the same.

The next London train was due at one forty-two, a matter of minutes, and it was known that the West Ham firm would be on it. The Manchester United firm intended to meet it and had a plan. From Yates’s, the High Street led straight to the ramp of Piccadilly station, and, at the agreed time, everyone would charge up the ramp, burst through the station entrance and attack the West Ham supporters as they were coming off the platform. I thought that the plan was preposterous, but, if it could be pulled off, it would be spectacular—in the sense of a spectacle that was extraordinary to behold. I tried to remember the station. The police had been there this morning when I arrived but not in numbers great enough to have stopped a thousand supporters crashing through the station’s entrance with the momentum that would have built up and been sustained over the length of the High Street. And that was what had been described to me: that everyone would charge up the ramp at full speed. I remembered the shiny floors—I had noticed someone washing them—and imagined the fight that would break out. For some reason, a very vivid image of blood arose in my mind. The blood was deep red and had formed into a thick puddle and sat, swelling, jelly-like, on that shiny white floor. The image would not go away.

I found the plan breath-taking to think about—genuinely breath-taking in that I could detect my own anxiety in the way I was now breathing—but also exciting. I didn’t want to miss it and intended to be as close to the front as I could get. I wanted to experience this thing fully.

Another minute, and the supporters drifted into the middle of the street. There was still the studied casual look, but it couldn’t be maintained. As the clusters of people came together, a crowd was being formed, and, as it was in the middle of the High Street, it was conspicuous and intrusive. The crowd had blocked the path of a bus, and the traffic behind it started to build up. Someone tooted his horn.

I found myself in the middle of the group, which was not where I wanted to be, and I tried to work my way to the front, but I was too late. The crowd was starting to move; it had started off in the direction of the station. It proceeded in a measured way, nothing frantic, at the pace of a steady walk. I could see the confidence felt then by everyone, believing now that they were actually going to pull this thing off. The pace accelerated—gradually. It increased a little more. Someone started to chant, ‘Kill, kill, kill.’ The chant was whispered at first, as though it were being said reluctantly. Then it was picked up by the others. The pace quickened to a jog, and then a faster jog, and then a run.

Half-way up the ramp, the group was at a full sprint: a thousand people, running hard, chanting loudly: ‘KILL, KILL, KILL.’ I was trying to calculate what was in store. The train from London would have arrived by now if it was on time, although it was possible that it was late and that we would burst through the station doors and find no one inside. But if it was on time, the West Ham supporters would be clearing the ticket barrier and heading for the main waiting area—that shiny floor where I kept seeing a thick, coagulating puddle of blood.

I couldn’t see who was leading the group or what was up ahead. I had people on all sides of me and couldn’t get past them, but we must have been within yards of the entrance. They were going to get away with it, I thought. It was about to happen. It would only be a few seconds more.

And then suddenly something had gone wrong. I crashed into the person in front of me: hard, bumping my nose. He had stopped and turned with cartoon-like speed, his legs whipping round, while the momentum of the run carried the rest of his body forward. He had a look of intense panic on his face, his hands flapping in the air, grabbing at anything, everything, me, the person next to me, the railing. His eyes were wild with fright. He was desperately trying to run back down the ramp. So were the others. I was turned round by the force of the people in front and then had to concentrate on not falling. I don’t know what had happened; I could hardly think about it because we were running so hard. Someone was squealing: ‘Dog! Dog! Dog!’ I didn’t understand this. The moment before they had been chanting ‘Kill, kill, kill.’ Now they were screaming: ‘Dog! Dog! Dog!’ It was only when I reached the bottom of the ramp that I understood what had occurred.

The police had known all along what was taking place and simply waited for it to unfold. They had judged the moment with precision and had placed two dog-handlers on the other side of the entrance to the station. As the first supporters pushed open the doors, they would have been greeted by two husky German shepherds going for their throats. Two dog-handlers—there were no other police—had turned back a chanting mob of a thousand people intent on violence.

The dog-handlers then came hurtling down the ramp. One supporter fell and the handler let the dog run over him. The dog went for the arm, biting into the flesh. I recognized the handler, a big man, with an Old Testament beard, whom I had seen on previous trips to Manchester. This was his beat, and he was very practised at it. He then jerked the dog up off the supporter and went after the next one, who had also tripped up, and the dog was allowed to run up over him, tearing noisily at his sleeve. And then he was off again.

The supporters had split up and were scattered in all directions. Other police arrived, but not in big numbers. This was the dog-handlers’ show. I ran fast and hard—I was determined not to be part of it—and so I missed the appearance of the West Ham supporters. I did not notice them until they reached the bottom of the ramp.

There were about five hundred. They had walked down in three columns. Once they reached the High Street, they stopped, still in formation. At the front was a big, broad-shouldered man, about thirty-five. This was Bill Gardiner. He stood there, feet planted apart, crossed his arms and waited. Next to him were his lieutenants, who had crossed their arms, their feet already apart, and waited. They were all dressed in the same manner: jeans, open leather jackets, T-shirts. Many had the same scar on their faces: the serrated hook across the cheeks, a knifing scar.

There were no shoppers or traffic, and the West Ham supporters remained in the middle of the High Street, waiting. People started throwing stones and bottles—arching high in the air, hurled from the different, scattered positions where the United supporters had found themselves—and the glass broke around the feet of the people in front. No one flinched. They stood there until the police had cleared away all the United supporters.

And then it was over. The police appeared with their horses and escorted the West Ham supporters to the ground, and that was that. But, according to the rules of engagement, West Ham had humiliated the supporters of Manchester United. The language—rich, as usual, in military metaphors—is important: the firm from East London had entered the city of Manchester and had taken it. They had made a point of showing that they could take whatever liberties they wanted to. They had walked into the city as if it had been their own.

There were skirmishes throughout the day—outside the ground just before the match; outside the ground just after it. A tram ran from Old Trafford to Piccadilly station, and the West Ham supporters were put on it by the police. Sammy, knowing the routine, had taken a hundred of his ‘troops’ to one of the stops. He came charging down the stairs of the station, his lads just behind him, filling up the staircase, their chant—‘Manchester, la-la-la, Manchester, la-la-la’—echoing loudly. When the tram approached, Sammy ran up to it and pulled apart the doors with his hands. And then he stood back. The station was ringing with the noise. There were not many police, only two or three buried deep within the carriage and unable to get out.

The moment had come and gone. It was not meaningful, except for me and only in one respect. Just before the tram pulled up, Sammy turned round and surveyed the supporters he had brought with him. He did a head count, one by one, looking everyone straight in the face. I was included in the head count. Sammy shook his head and cursed, realizing he had made a mistake. And then he looked at me again, stared, and counted me in. I was pleased.