Among the Thugs

by Bill Buford

  Rangers scored the first goal before the first half was over. Then, at the outset of the second half, Rangers scored again. With fifty minutes gone, Celtic was behind two-nil.

  It was early days—I had not been to many matches—and I had no way of measuring what I was seeing. I knew that this spectacle—the stadium full of sectarian intensity, sixty-six thousand supporters, half in blue, half in green—was unlike any sporting event I had ever attended. With hindsight, I can see that I did not appreciate the weight, the gravitas, of the occasion: Rangers and Celtic; Protestant and Catholic; the Cup Final. And Celtic losing two-nil.

  The Celtic goal, when it came, came quickly—there was an opportunity; it was taken—but it was difficult to say what had occurred. It had happened with such speed that no one knew who had made the shot or, even, at first, that a shot had been made. There was silence—stunned, incredulous silence. Dead time, frozen time, no time, neither goal nor no goal. No one could register the fact of it, as if sixty-six thousand people were playing the moment over again in their minds, checking their perceptions: was that a goal? is there a penalty? is the flag up? is the ball in the net? Proof: the ball is in the net. Check again: yes, it is there. The ball is in the net. The unnatural deed is done. The goal is a fact.

  And then, after the silence, the explosion. There was room and space around me, and the crowd, erupting, swelling, rose inches into the air. A stranger, who moments before had looked menacing and aggressive, grabbed both my hands. Another one embraced me. I turned and was kissed on the cheek. I was embraced again. Everybody was in motion, when suddenly the movement was more than what I understood and I was tumbling forward, everyone was tumbling forward, falling down the steps of the terrace. I rolled down several steps—five, six—and when I looked up there was no one standing. Everyone had fallen and yet the celebrations continued. People got up on to their knees and were shouting. Still jubilant, there were others, rolling around, kicking their feet in the air, screaming with bliss, as though in a fit.

  The police unlocked the gates and came running up the aisles. I thought there had been trouble, and it was only later that I realized that the police had rushed up to collect the injured. There were five stretchers. One supporter broke his leg. Another, from the way he was writhing and grabbing his side, appeared to have bruised or broken his ribs. The other three supporters had head injuries. One was unconscious.

  The police returned to their positions at the bottom of the aisles and locked the gates.

  In the ninetieth minute, at the moment when defeat appeared inevitable, Celtic scored another goal. Again, could I have appreciated the significance? Rangers and Celtic; Protestant and Catholic; the Cup Final. And Celtic had equalized in the last minute of normal time.

  It was the second time that the police had to unlock the gates. Once again, there were injuries, so many that there were not enough stretchers. Several people were taken off on folding metal chairs—the back of the chair held by one policeman, the legs by another, the injured supporter flopped over it, head dangling dangerously. Others were placed on the advertising placards that encircle the pitch. One casualty disappeared atop a promotion for Marlboro Lights.

  The police returned to their positions at the bottom of the aisles. The gates were locked.

  Nothing like this happens at any other sporting event—anywhere.

  I offer one other illustration from another Scottish Cup Final, also between Rangers and Celtic, and also played at Hampden Park in Glasgow. The crowd had worked itself into such a state that by the end of the match thousands had run on to the pitch and proceeded to uproot the goal posts. The newspaper account said that

  Mounted constables arrived, and in the mêlée that followed more than 50 persons were injured. When the barricading was broken down, the rioters piled the debris, poured whisky over it and set the wood ablaze. The flames spread to the pay-boxes, which were only 20 yards from a large tenement of dwellings. Great alarm prevailed, particularly when the firemen were attacked by the mob, and prevented from extinguishing the fire, for no sooner had they run out the hose than the crowd jumped on it, and, cutting it with knives and stones, rendered the efforts of the firemen useless.

  The wooden seats caught fire and went up in flames. More police arrived, but when a supporter was arrested, the rest of crowd responded angrily, rescuing the arrested man, stabbing two policemen and injuring many others. The fighting continued. It spilled out of the ground, and every street lamp in the area was broken. A constable was stabbed in the face.

  There are two points about this act of violence that are of interest: first, it is the first recorded incident of serious crowd trouble in the history of football. It took place in April 1909. Previous incidents had been mainly small acts of vandalism directed at officials for cancelling a match, or attacks on referees for making bad decisions. This was the first crowd riot: the Scottish football league was twenty years old.

  The second point is the apparent cause: for the second Saturday in succession, the match between Rangers and Celtic had not produced a result; for the second Saturday, the match had ended in a draw. The crowd could not endure another match ending without victory or defeat—without release.

  The first period of extra time ended, and there were still no goals. One fifteen-minute period remained, but I was resigned to a draw. I’m sure that the nine thousand Cambridge supporters were resigned as well.

  Everyone except the members of Cambridge United team itself. They were playing as if they believed they could win; they appeared not to have realized that they did not have the stamina to carry on, that their style—consisting of long passes, pitch-length sprints and maximum exertion—was a particularly exhausting one. After one period of extra time and no substitutions, it would have been reasonable to have played defensively, to have accepted a draw. Instead the Cambridge United players appeared more determined: more long balls, more pitch-length sprints, more brutal exertion. They had drawn upon some inexplicable reserve of adrenalin, and mid-way through the final period of extra time, United looked like it might score.

  It began with a corner. The wind, which had been severe all night, was now blowing with the force of a gale, and the ball, kicked high, had got caught and hung in the air. Everyone could see the prospect of the goal—again that physical appetite, wanting that goal, craving it—and the ball dropped for a perfect header. And the perfect diving save.

  There was another corner, on the opposite side, and although not directly against the wind, it could not take advantage of it. But it was a good kick, headed on for another chance and—another impressive save, this one pushing the ball over the net.

  There was another corner. And so it went on. There were six corners. One side, then the next; one side, then the next. Each time the expectation of a goal grew greater. But each save or deflected pass or blocked header merely confirmed what I had already been convinced of: there would no score.

  In the last minutes, the Millwall keeper started stalling for time. Even he had accepted the draw, not wanting to ruin the chance now, with so little time remaining, of a replay. He dribbled the ball round the penalty box, ventured to its outer edge, returned, and then out to the edge again, where he passed the ball on, turned and returned to his goal. He did not realize that the ball was about to be passed straight back to him.

  So when the goal finally came, it was a fluke, a mistake, a miscalculation with no time remaining to correct it: a back pass to Millwall’s goalkeeper when he wasn’t there to receive it. You could hear the Millwall players screaming. A sloppy ball, overstruck and misdirected, rolled slowly, slowly, slowly into the goal. And then time ran out. Millwall had beaten Millwall by scoring against itself.

  The expected jubilation followed. It didn’t matter how the goal was got; what mattered was that there was one. Cambridge United would be going on to the quarter-finals.

  I made my way back to my car. It was illegally parked outside a petrol station on the Newmarket Road, and when I got to
it I discovered that, by a surprising coincidence, the car parked next to mine, also illegally, belonged to the very man who had been standing next to me in the ground—the one with the wrinkled face and the strong smell of American cigarettes. We acknowledged each other in a friendly sort of way, but one involving the smallest possible physical gesture. I think I raised an eyebrow, my left one, slightly. I think he might have lowered his chin, just. And that was right: a conversation now—even a simple greeting—would have been hugely out of place.

  DAWES ROAD, FULHAM

  I was reading the morning newspapers in the coffeehouse in Ober Sankt Veit. I can still feel the indignation that overwhelmed me when I took hold of the Reichspost. There had been a shooting in Burgenland, workers had been killed. The court had acquitted the murderers. The judgement was designated, no, trumpeted, as a ‘just verdict’ in the organ of the government party. It was that mockery of any sense of justice rather than the acquittal itself that triggered an enormous excitement in the workers of Vienna. From all parts of the city, the workers marched in closed processions to the Palace of Justice, which with its sheer name embodied injustice for them. It was a completely spontaneous reaction, I personally felt just how spontaneous. Taking my bicycle, I zoomed into the city and joined the procession.

  The workers, usually well disciplined, trusting their Social Democratic leaders, and content that Vienna was ruled by them in an exemplary fashion, were acting without their leaders on that day. When they set fire to the Palace of Justice, Mayor Seitz, standing on a fire engine, tried to block their way with his right hand raised high. His gesture was futile: the Palace of Justice was burning. The police were ordered to shoot, ninety people were killed.

  That was forty-six years ago, and the excitement of that day still lies in my bones. It was the closest thing to a revolution that I had physically experienced. A hundred pages would not suffice to describe what I saw. Since then, I have known very precisely that I need not read a single word about what happened during the storming of the Bastille. I became a part of the crowd, I dissolved into it fully, I did not feel the least resistance to what it did. I am surprised that I was nevertheless able to grasp all the concrete details occurring before my eyes.

  Elias Canetti

  The Conscience of Words (1976)

  WHAT HAPPENS WHEN it goes off?

  It was around one o’clock, and Robert wanted to show me; he wanted me to see the event close up. Something was going to happen, and Robert didn’t want me to miss it. Since eleven that morning, the Manchester United supporters had been gathering at the Manor House—a large, rambling Victorian pub and snooker club in north London—and there were now so many people that the pub had run out of glasses. People were standing on the snooker table because there was no more room on the floor, and others were shouting for drinks from outside because they couldn’t get through the door. And then, in an instant, the pub was empty, and everyone was in the street, heading up the Seven Sisters Road, on their way to Tottenham.

  Everyone except Sammy, who wouldn’t be showing up.

  Sammy, Robert was whispering, is said to have killed a man, and there are people out to get him. They will always be out to get him—this year, next year, for ever. Whether he did it or not doesn’t matter. They think he did it.

  The pace was brisk, and Robert held on to my sleeve, tugging me along, urging me on, guide and bodyguard, making sure that I was in front, that I wouldn’t miss what was going to happen, and, at the same time, looking out for trouble.

  They’ll come at you from nowhere, Robert said. Snipers. Knife merchants. They cut you up and then they’re gone.

  The police appeared—vans, accelerators pressed melodramatically to the floor, their engines whining, coming up from the side-street where they had been waiting for the United supporters—and everyone stepped up the pace slightly in response.

  On our right were tower blocks. On our left were tower blocks. It could be Warsaw or a suburb of Moscow, except that everything else was so inimitably characteristic of north London—the film of filth that settled on your skin and the grime from the exhaust fumes and the litter slapped by the wind up against the walls. We passed a doctor’s surgery, its doors and windows boarded up, and several buildings black from smoke, with bits of things spread out on the pavement in front: a broken plastic chair, a bed sheet, a pink rubber boot, crinkly empty packets of all kinds—crisps, peanuts, nappies, digestive biscuits, the yellow tissue paper of a cheeseburger. There were bits of plastic—red plastic, clear plastic, white plastic, plastic cups, plastic containers—and food tins and drink tins and endless cigarette butts. Across the street, there was an ice cream van, and I spotted a prostitute hiding behind it, sitting on a low wall, out of view.

  Fast now, Robert said, shooing me along, telling me to keep up.

  We pressed on, a steady pace, past shops that had been locked away behind metal shutters and wire-mesh cages, small shops, all of them single units—fish’n’chips, kebabs, motor parts, take-away chicken, a café open six a.m. to four p.m., a sandwich shop, a belt shop, a shoe repair shop, new and used furniture bought and sold, GOOD BUYS, a newsagent, another shoe repair shop, an evangelist church, life insurance, women’s clothing, cans of household paint (only white emulsion, a lorry-load of white emulsion)—and we then crossed the entrance to the Seven Sisters underground station.

  That’s where it happened, Robert said. That’s where the man was killed.

  A supporter’s back had been broken, and Robert described him twitching and moaning, legs flapping, unable to stand up.

  It was very, very bad, Robert said, and it was probably because I had never heard Robert describe anything he had seen as very, very bad—when I would have described virtually everything he had seen as very, very bad—that I knew this use of ‘very, very bad’ to be a terrible understatement. Two hundred people were involved in a fight on the escalator leading down to the trains, and with Tottenham fans racing up the moving stairs as the Manchester United fans came racing down, someone hit the emergency stop button, and everyone tumbled. Several people were knocked unconscious, and there were many bones broken—arms, legs, the floppy man with his crushed vertebrae—and the traffic along the Seven Sisters Road was backed up from the ambulances that were called in. At the bottom, once everyone had got up, was the dead man.

  That’s why Sammy is not here today, Robert said. It doesn’t matter that it was never proved in court. He can never come to Tottenham again.

  The Seven Sisters Road ended in a T-junction just past the tube station, and the long line of United supporters bent round to the left, going up the High Road in the direction of White Hart Lane. And then, on the other side of the street, I saw them: the Tottenham supporters, hundreds, more than a thousand, as many, certainly, as had arrived that morning from Manchester. They, like the police, had been waiting for the United supporters, and—this was why Robert kept pushing me up to the front—the United supporters had known they would be there.

  Be ready, Robert said, whispering again, as if the supporters on the other side of the High Road might hear his instructions above the noises of the traffic and the police who were filling up the street with their vehicles and animals.

  Any moment now, Robert said. And the walk-run was now verging on a sprint, the two parties, spread across several blocks of the High Road, moving in tandem, trying to get ahead of the police, waiting for the moment to cross.

  A dog-handler came racing up alongside the pavement arid cut across our path—eight of us now at the front of the crowd, Robert seeming to lead it. The dog-handler was out of breath. He knew what was going on, all the police did, and he would have been dispatched to get to the head of the group to slow it down and prevent it from getting beyond control. He was agitated and jumpy and you could see in his eyes that he knew that at any moment he might find himself in the middle of a riot. He had grabbed his dog by the collar so that, with his other hand, he could use the full length of his chain-leash like a whip. />
  Get back, he shouted, swinging his chain-leash above his head, cowboy style. Get back, and suddenly my face was stung—a sharp, bright pain across my jaw. The dog-handler had taken to snapping his chain-leash into the faces of the supporters, including my own. I was indignant and shouted at the policeman by his badge number.

  We’re just minding our own business, I said, we’re just minding our own business on our way to a football match. What gives you the fuckin’ right to hit me?

  He twisted round to look at me, and his face betrayed an expression of bewilderment and incomprehension, and I could see that he couldn’t make sense of what he had just heard: an American shouting out his badge number.

  Tell him you’re from the press, someone shouted at me from behind my shoulder. Tell him you’re going to report him for police brutality.

  The policeman dropped his chain-leash to his side and trotted along, led by his dog, and continued staring back at me, his head still twisted round.

  Go on, the others were now shouting, tell him you’re going to report him.

  I have gone too far, I remember thinking. I have let myself become one of them. Here I am, being whipped by a policeman, arguing with him, being urged on by the supporters behind me—by the supporters behind me? By the one thousand supporters behind me: here I am at the front of a crowd, among the people leading it. And then something happened behind us—somebody had crossed the street—and the two long lines, the United supporters on one side, the Tottenham supporters on the other, momentarily converged, a roar going up.

  Watch out now, Robert said, watch out for knives. It’s going to go off.