Hooligans: 1. A Different Ball Game

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts You're about to listen to Gangsta Presents, Hooligans. Episode will be released weekly, wherever you get your podcasts. When if you're in the UK, you can listen to the full series right now, first on BBC Sounds. A quick warning, this podcast contains strong and racist language, descriptions of violence and some content you may find upsetting. Fifty-side four answers for the bar, Tony A. Brilliant! My name's Tony Belldue, I die hard at the front, I didn't choose, I was chosen. And I also used to punch people in the face as a professional boxer. I love fighting, I enjoy, I thrive in the pressure, I'm living in underdog. I was only 12 when the only man told me I was a tall punch, and that led to a career that played out in some of the biggest arenas in the UK. I'm going to take them through it, but if he wanted as much as me, he'd end up one of the best fighters I've seen. I have 30 wins and 20 of them were by way of knockout. I've had to get through fights with Clathridge, broken hands. In the ring, the rules, and respect. Round four! In this podcast though, I'm here to tell you about a very different kind of fight. We hated them, we hunted them, we batted them, it's a way of life, and nothing got in the way of football. I'm talking about the brutal bloody battles where punch and bellow the belt was a way of life. Though we've used to be beaten by anyone, and if I go down, I get up again, and I get up again. The dark side of football, something they call the English disease, who veganism hasn't exactly gone away. A large number of supporters from both clubs were involved in fights and flares we used in the disturbance. The behaviour of the fans involved was dangerous and inexcusable. And there is serious disorder here with fans on the fields. Titchens boiling over. So, men up, I watch a beer. Back in the 70s and 80s, it was on another level. 300 of them launched one of the most savage attacks on police ever seen at a British football ground. We were here from the men and the women who were bruising for a fight in the name of the fans they belonged to. I was on a one way track, it was like when the trains that were out of control, all I could see was the firm. If you're going to drop them not on somebody, you've got to get it right. If you get it wrong, you could come up with words. The headhunters, the young governors, the intercity fan and the zealos, and so many more. All I saw was a bunch of affers because Roensy was me. Good, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. They just kicked off. It was absolute chaos. We bat the damn day bat the doors. Nobody does me because they know what the consequences are. And the consequences of anyone is dire. A crack down by the authorities to clean up the tainted reputation of England's most popular game. They're only three ways of trying to deal with it. Either persuasion, prevention or punishment. Everyone was outraged, Mrs. Thatcher was outraged, and she said, "I want action within a week." The undercover police officers who risked everything to infiltrate the gangs. I was sitting there thinking, "We're going to have to do something here." And it's probably going to end up in us getting really badly hurt, if not worse. From the players on the pitch, for me they were really a football club, but also football. And then I thought they were destroying the game I loved to their fans on the tethesis. Hooliganism was a massive part of football. It was as much a part of football as offside. The police were utterly untrusting of football fans and saw them as scumbags. And those who paid the ultimate price. It's been death year and awfulness and violence and sheer terror. He didn't even have time to take his hands out of his pockets. He just slumped back. You know he was dead. This is the inside story of Britain's football hooligans from the people who lived and breathed it on all sides. From BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 5 Live, I'm Tony Belly and this is Gangsta Presents Hooligans. Episode 1, a different ball game. I love these sand in the mornings when I come over to them. But all of a sudden instantly they're like kids waiting for sweet. This is our cockney out as he's best known. He's tall, stocky and he towers over mocks people. He's got hands like shovels painted with faded tattoos. They've got to do their job. They've got to earn their cakes on their own. These days he's happiest when he's turned into his chickens in a shrubsor countryside. But it hasn't always been this way. I'll grow up in Chelmsleywood, a massive house in the state. You've probably passed it on the M6 just to the east of Birmingham, the locals call it the ward. I can describe it as if you were a rat. You would love it because it's all little alleyways and it was notorious for little gangs. I'll move there in 1974 and he was only 14 years old. I was living in London. I come from quite a big family. I was the youngest one of eight and unfortunately I was a little bit off the rails after my brother died in 1971. I've run away from there. I come to Birmingham to live with my brother and his wife. And they took me on and I thought it was great. The lads on Chelmsley would have different ideas after about two weeks. We had eggs and bricks, slung at our windows. And young lads from the age of eight, up to 15, singing companies, scum, get out of brum. They didn't like companies, no brum is like companies. That's just always been a thing. But one day some of the lads on the estate took them under their wing. One certain person said to me, "Why don't you come to the game with us?" And I said, "What game's that?" He said, "Bermingham." And I went, "Yeah, okay then, I'll give it a go." You're in the amongst all the lads, you're getting pushed, you're getting pulled, you're getting shoved over. But some of it wasn't even about watching the game. Even from that early day, it was about being there and being part of that 30,000. It was in the ground. It's not all about the football. It wasn't long before Cockney Owl and others got organised. Ten from funds to a fair. In Al's case, he was part of the happy, trooper bootboys. It just grew and grew and it's almost like an extended family. Or you've got two families, you've got your brothers and your sisters, your wives and your husbands and kids. But then you've got another family, which is football. And when you're in trouble, you've got someone you can turn. If you don't want to go to your families, it's as simple as that. I just fell in love with it. I've never took a drug in my life ever, but I was addicted to it and I couldn't stay away from it. It was just a way of life. More from Cockney Owl later. For now, we're heading 130 miles south to meet someone else whose life hadn't got off to the best of stance. I had a sister who died at the age of four with leukemia. And my mum and dad took it really badly. Bill Gardner, he's 70 years old, he's huge, and my mountain. But his childhood was plagued by bullying and abuse. My mum used to whip me with lumps of wood, lumps of rubber, plastic. You know what ever she could get her hands on, she would hit me with one night she was having a really bad turn and she started coming through the door with a bread knife like the scene from the shining. And my dad was crying and he said, "You've got to go for me." Bill he said she's going to kill you otherwise. And as I got older, I didn't feel wanted, but Bill did find somewhere he belonged. And that was on the terraces of up them park, home of the hands. When I went to West End, they always made me feel at home. There was a lot of us I felt that was in the same boat. A lot of us were looking, what I was looking for, which was the family. I remember going back on the train, everyone was singing and it was scarves and lots of colours. And when you're a little kid, it influenced me. You know how I liked it? I wanted to be part of it. Bill went on to become a terraced legend to some, public enemy number one's, your others. Some still call him the top man. Oh Mr Westam, just do not call him a hooligan. I never saw myself as early in whatsoever. I saw myself as a person that loved football, loved West End, wanted to go at the game, wanting to go with me friends and I would go. And if they was attacked or if we was attacked, I would do my best to help. Never an hooligan, hooligan is somebody who smashes things up and breaks things. I've never done that. He didn't marry the scrap though. If somebody wanted to fight me, I'd fight them. And in the 70s and 80s, there was no shortage of opportunities. A way supporters used to be attacked nearly everywhere in this country. Some places worse than others. And you actually decide what you wanted in life. Did you want to go? to the game. On his way to the Millwall game he was savagely attacked by thugs from London. Or give up and go on. I never give up on anything. The government is horrified by the extent of football hooliganism and that the country is getting itself a bad name. The lead supporters left over the crash barriers behind me here ran into the central reservation and began hurling bricks and stones at the Sunderland buses. Sometimes we did well sometimes we didn't do so well but they know everyone knows nobody done us and nobody done me. So what motivated young Bill and Cochney Alta again involved in the bother that they did? Why did they, plus to the hooligan jagoong to meet in this episode, feel the need to take lumps out of rival fans. And Dr Martin Newton, a cognitive anthropologist and psychologist at the University of Greenwich. Martha's done loads of research on football fans so listen up. The way that we, the port football was very much the way that our ancient tribes operated. And we see it in the language of football, a pack and defend and being up against a war and tribe and defending one's territory and really going in it together to support what it perceived as brothers and arms. Any attack on the group is like an attack on yourself and this fusion evolves to keep small tribes together through thick and thin like they're going to lay down their lives for you. So there you have it. Might I get that sense of togetherness and having people fight your corner? That's the part I can relate to from the boxen days. When you win, you win together. Hooliganism's been around since football started and it's still happening to this day. He seems to England's opener in Marseille of Castell Kvoud over this tournament. Fans behaviour could get their teams thrown out before it was more trouble. 10 minutes into the game, this fan ran onto the pitch and punched Aston Villa-Player Jack Reelish. We went very hard to get here and I'm appealing there for to all our fans just to have a trouble. Many believe British football's problems with Hooliganism have been largely eradicated. This season, marred by several incidents of disorder and racial abuse has given course to those. It's still going on, but back in the 70s and 80s it was at its height. It started to ramp up in the swing in 60s when young people were given a voice and I freed them that their parents never had. There was a rebellion and that emerged on the football terraces too. Sports journalist John Keith. Into the late 60s there was always violence on the football trains, so the seeds of it were there. It was more on the trains and outside the grounds than in the stadium. I think that the 50s had been very peaceful up football grounds, but in the 1960s it did start to change. It was getting quite serious. Sutter alongside John is Charlie Beaches, a man who describes himself as a recovering journalist. If you went to someone like Mill Wall, there would be a line of police horses down the middle of the road and people lobbing stuff each other and you thought this is really weird and there was a sense then you felt to use the word kicking off. You did feel it was kicking off, people acting like complete dickheads. By the 1970s, Hooliganism was an epidemic. It was kicking off everywhere and Cockney Al was up to his neck in it. You've got two choices. You turn them around or you stand on fire. Once you get involved, you expect it to get involved every week and that's what happened to me. I was 15 and we played West Ham on the night time at Birmingham and West Ham come out of the New Street station and quite a lot of people feared them. Well because I was some London, he didn't bother me to see 200 Cockneys come running out of the New Street station so I've run through air lot and just running to West Ham. That was my first major fight and then it just grew from there. There's every chance Cockney Al came to blows with Mr West Ham himself, El Gardner. I think I've had over 400 fights in my life and I never got beaten. I've never had the fear that normal human beings have. I was never frightened when I was with my mates at West Ham. They all knew they could rely on me and I would never leave them alone and if one of them went down I would pick him up and I would still do it today. They become my family and it was a family I never had. West Ham's most notorious and feared mob was the Intercity Femme. They were named after the trains the fans travelled up. The rail network had opened up opportunities for football supposed to travel anywhere in the country to follow their teams but on board it wasn't all car games and cheesebodies. When we were 16 and we all had jobs we would then start going on the train constantly and that was from 77 to 85, 86 Birmingham City were known on the trains. Being packed on the trains like a tennis arcade deans was all part of the bus for the travel and fans but for the hardcore like Cockney Al it was just a warm-up for when they arrived at their destination. Chelsea was always a battle and you'd be battling from full and broadway all the way there in the road. You know West Ham you couldn't get a train station there at West Ham attacking you but we was notorious for landing whether it was Preston White or Millwall away or West Ham away or Chelsea away on the trains and we was notorious for it. I'll introduce myself as some smirk but most people know me as Fireman Sam. I was Manchester's first Black Fireman 1978 2008. I got my nickname before the program actually came out. I used to just say yeah I'm fireman Sam in colour. Very good Sam, very good. So I grew up in Stockport in the late 50s basically a mummies boy. I was did the washing on a Sunday morning at the London Fowler while I read the black pages of Sunday Express. So I used to get bullied. I was the only black lad in the secondary school and as a kid you didn't really understand that you just knew you were different but then again when you was called a monkey and they wasn't called a monkey and this is a five six year old kid I'm talking about bullied till I was 14 which is our discovered fighting which is our discovered football oligonism. From 11 years old Sam started tagging along with a group of lads who'd gone watchman United. It went from going once a month to once a fortnight to every week home in a way and it just escalated from that era and it did escalate fast before he knew it. He was on his way to my backyard in Liverpool. We get up to last what mile from line through. I pulled the cord in my carriage. I started to pull the cord in his carriage. Train stopped. We all jumped down on the line covered in oil and what the last hour for mile to the station. No one the scouts will be waiting for them. He got off early. Safety in numbers and the elements of surprise or so do you thought. The place now are looking down the line and they can probably just see 800 people just walking up. So the purpose was to stop on the tracks, searchers and then throw us out knowing full well that Liverpool are waiting outside. I had a brand new adieu just go on. Got it all slashed on the steps on the sink to your guitar. You're just running from scouts until we got a mob and then it was absolute chaos. We batted them. They batted us and that's all it was all done. Against the backdrop of racism, discrimination and disadvantage, Sam wasn't the only young black man to find the community he could relate to on the terraces of Manchester. Yes, Robert. I know he used to run on Sunday. Rodney Rodin and Sam Smart haven't seen each other in over a decade. He's got on the red side, I'll still on the blue side. Keep in touch with him. But back in the day, they wouldn't be more interested in run-ins than reminiscent. You see, Sam was from the red side of the city. Rodney was from the blue and he was part of City's notorious fair, the young governors. The rivalry. It was always Liverpool and Lod and then it was always City. That's my generation. So in the 70s, Don Revies leads with a team to be Liverpool. It was just a mank scouts thing. Don't get me wrong when I was about but we're all contended with City on Saturdays. Yeah, we hated United because like there was hundreds of them. So that's why we never used to like them. Do you say like the cocky because they had boys from all over the country joined up with them. So we used to hate them. When you sit now and see two grown-up blocs sat across the table from each other and then you just think them two bloats for a year ago were property anyways and you just think why to somebody who wasn't in that era it's hard to explain it doesn't matter whether it's Manchester Liverpool London Birmingham Bristol it's what a working class lad lived for in them days. While Simon Rodney was throwing themselves into organised mayhem every weekend there were others who just wanted to enjoy the game. I feel very lucky that I was able to live through a time when you could write about football and be so close to the people involved and what they really felt and thought and how it was going magical. Meet Amy Lawrence she's been a football journal for 30 odd years. Her social media tells you all you need to know about it. Football writer, music lover, nostalgia, wallower, old and an arsenal addict. I was just a little kid in the 1970s when I got taken along to Arsenal and it was one of those absolutely stunning moments in your life where you you feel time stand still. I'll always remember the feeling of walking almost from the darkness into the light. The noise and the people and the swearing and the energy it was just captivating to me. Following the gunners in the 70s and the early 80s though you had to be on your guard. I remember going to certain grounds in particular where you knew that you had to be really careful as an away band either getting there or getting back. If you got isolated and you were in a waste porter there won't often be little groups of home fans looking to try and out you and they'll be all sorts of things you could be exposed by your accent. So you had to keep your wits about you if it was something you didn't want to be a part of and you could be unlucky and get caught up in it because suddenly it could just change in a millisecond. And it won't surprise you to know that this fella reveled in it. Another day I'd asked an off front who says it was more interesting than what was happening off the pitch than on it. Sex pistols frontman John Lyden aka Johnny Rotten. He's described how we loved the thrill of being in the middle of the aggro on the terraces but it wasn't just happening at Arsenal. The hooliganism was a massive part of football. It was as much part of football as offside. DJ Trevor Nelson, Chelsea fan still remembers the tension when visiting Stanford Bridge as a schoolboy. When you went to a game you knew there was an edge. It wasn't about oh I'm scared we're going to lose this game. No and can I say for someone as Marlman as me there's a little bit of me that liked it. I'm really sad and almost ashamed to say it. There's a little bit of me a young me that liked the idea of not getting involved in violence but surviving it, getting out unscathed. Tales of fistfights were talked about by seven as classmate's fierce thing on Monday morning. In the playground at school we'd always seek the boys out who went to football every week. What's a game like? What's it like? What's this? And to be fair the first thing that normally came back was the violence. Some guy who went to Arsenal Tottenham at Saturday coming to school with a black eye or a busted farm gonna smash this glow and a head he'd come up to me and we're like wow this is viral. I'm going to tell the guy in 4B what you just told me. And so football hooliganism had its own disciples that went around spreading the gospel. Which lead us nicely to this Sunday morning chair service in Radeen. Suddenly the pastor is a man called Mark Alley. Faith has been a central part of Mark's life for the past 25 years. Sloughborn and bred, he says he was a shakit grownup and that he found the heart to fit in. My mum became a born-again Christian and life changed very rapidly at the age of 5 for me and my brother. We started going to Sunday school which I hated because I wanted to play football on a Sunday but my mum you know was insistent that me and my brother were gone and we weren't going to play football. But Mark had other ideas. My dad was a massive Chelsea supporter and so it was the first game of the season and it was against Everton and I can't remember if it was 78 or 79 but it was massive. You know me and my brother I was 8 or 9. My brother was about 5 or 6 but just getting on a train from Slough, getting out Stamford Bridge, seeing a police officer, the dogs are smells, the sounds it was like mesmerising. And I thought what's happened here? You know we were young I think my brother was crying it was an upsetting time and my dad said oh there's been trouble in the tube station. Years later I found out the Chelsea led to Dan Bush Everton so it sticks in my memory but I couldn't remember too much about the football but all I could remember was the trouble. There was a fear and an intrigue they kind of went together and I kind of wait to go to football again. You might be thinking that shy Sunday school kid was dreaming of becoming a footballer but he wasn't. He wanted to join a different congregation. They had said at 1415 Mark would you want to be? I would have said I want to join a football gang and I want to be a footballer who would be going to be. It was my life. You know some athletes have their pre-match routine but I would listen to a song by Joy Division called "Atmosphere". It was like everything against what you should be listening to really but it kind of gave me that mood that I needed to get to football with. By now the authorities have lost patience. Trash trains, fights in the street, the mobs rule the terraces. Coming up. We used to get that control. It was every major city here at the club. Had a hooligan element. There were throwing billiards balls into the director's box and people were getting cut. This was something else. This was the most menacing ever. Anything that people could get their ends on was used as a missile or a running button. There was a level of violence which was normal but that match made me just felt like they really wanted to hurt me. I'm Tony Bellew and you've been listening to Gangsta Presents Hooligans. You can listen to all of the episodes from the series right now first on BBC Sounds. In Northern Ireland from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers. Men and women accused of passing information to the police and the British army. But the man who often found tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the code name, steak knife. These were really sea agents. I'd had the family agents. Just how was one man allowed to lead a double life for so long? It's not like James Bond. It's not a black and white situation. When lies are still being told to this day, who do you believe? I wouldn't even know where to start and I'm with the IRA. Steak knife, listen now on BBC Sounds.