Among the Thugs

by Bill Buford

  The other important member of Mrs DJ’s team was her elder son and his American wife, whom, for the same legal reasons, I will refer to as DJ the elder and DJ the sister-in-law. DJ the elder and DJ the sister-in-law were never separated; on the contrary, they were invariably to be found holding hands. They did this without the least sign of affection—as though it wasn’t a hand one of them was holding but a carrier bag. Affection, I concluded, wasn’t the point; holding hands was the equivalent of a badge or a uniform: it identified them as their own unit—a team within the team.

  DJ the elder looked about as different from his younger brother as an elder brother could: whereas DJ was tall and broad-shouldered, DJ the elder was short and small-framed and looked not unlike a tiny version of the young Paul Simon. Whereas DJ spoke in a flat, East-London accent, DJ the elder, having recently moved to New York, had obviously been under considerable pressure to abandon the way he had been brought up to speak in favour of a coarse twang that was somewhere between Brooklyn and Boston and as exaggerated as a jumbo hot dog. And whereas DJ’s professional activities were, if described generously, ‘unconventional’, DJ the elder was nothing less than the straightest and the most narrow, having secured a position in a small firm specializing in international commodities. DJ the elder wanted me to understand that he was successful.

  The team proper was completed by Alexandros Lykourasous, the most prominent lawyer in Greece, currently involved in defending the president of the country against accusations arising out of a recent banking and bribery scandal. Lykourasous was tall, moustachioed and charismatically flamboyant: the perfect trial lawyer, married to an actress, a poet in his spare time, a devoted reader of Patrick Leigh Fermor, a high-society figure of considerable power. He was accompanied by an assistant and they had both flown in from Athens earlier in the week.

  The second team was led by Michelle. Michelle was DJ’s fiancée—blonde, attractive, quick-witted and incapable of being surprised by what the world revealed next. She had come with her father, Jim. Jim had made the trip for the simple reason that he could not conceive of remaining behind when such an important matter was being decided. His love for his daughter, which was simple and absolute, extended naturally and uncritically to the man she wanted to marry. Jim was large-boned and solid and very dependable. He had very big hands and chunky large fingers, and spent much of his time, hunched over, staring at them, saying nothing. Beside him you would find Robert.

  Robert was the friend who had been arrested during the European Championship in Germany: he was the reason DJ and I never met up. Robert had in fact only left Germany a short while before, having served nine months of a prison sentence, living on a diet of brown bread and vegetable soup and subscribing to a daily routine whose highlight was sleeping for fourteen hours at the end of it. He had been convicted of damaging a police car, which he said he didn’t do, and I’m inclined to believe he didn’t. When apprehended, Robert was regaining consciousness after having been ambushed by German supporters armed with crowbars, golf clubs, knives and flares, and had been hit so powerfully in the chest that he thought he had been killed. He blacked out. As Robert told stories of this kind I found myself actively wishing to protect him: he wasn’t built to withstand anything more physical than a slap across the face. Although he was in his twenties, he could pass for fourteen. He was slight and delicate and punishingly shy. Being in Greece, particularly in the company of DJ’s family, had rendered him particularly uncomfortable. Out of an evident need for reassurance and direction, he tended to look over at Michelle’s father and be influenced by whatever he happened to be doing. If Jim loosened his tie, Robert loosened his; if Jim sat down, Robert followed; if Jim thought it was acceptable to have a beer, then Robert ordered one as well. By the end of my stay there, Robert was completing Jim’s sentences before he reached the end of them himself.

  I had, in these two teams, the two lives of DJ.

  There was a third team, the one supporting Martin Roche. It included his wife, a skinny freckled woman—not unlike Sissy Spacek on a diet—who was an expert in the cheque racket (stealing cheque-books, buying goods, returning the goods for cash); their eighteen-month-old baby; and his grandmother. Martin Roche had sandy hair and pop-star good looks that were marred by his hardened, chillingly unexpressive eyes and by a ruby crescent across his cheek, a deep knife wound that had been inflicted when he was pinned to the ground and autographed by a number of Arsenal supporters. The scar was very conspicuous and was commented upon by the judge. So, too, were the five convictions that the court discovered on Martin Roche’s record. The court failed to discover, however, that Martin Roche was not Martin Roche: the passport bearing that name was one of many false documents supporting several different identities. The identity of Martin Roche had been chosen because it had so few convictions attached to it. The name, however, that stuck in my mind was the nickname that he was known by in London: the knife merchant.

  Martin Roche had neither an Athens lawyer nor a support-team whose members were dressed up in elegant suits and ties, nor for that matter a suit and tie for himself. But he was in a better way than the third defendant, Andrew Cross, the one who brought the police round to Martin and DJ’s hotel. Andrew Cross had no support of any kind and every evening was obliged to wash the one shirt he possessed. His mother, who was not present, had refused Cross’s request for a loan of a hundred pounds and reprimanded him for having reminded her of his existence. She would be happiest, she was reported to have said, if Cross was sent down for a very long time and never returned to England.

  The trial lasted two days. On the first morning, DJ and Martin Roche entered the witness box shoving each other. Martin had called DJ a cunt; DJ told Martin to fuck off. They were close to blows; by lunch time those blows were delivered, and DJ’s lip was ruptured and his nose broken and his beautiful Valentino suit badly stained: before the judge, their two faces were now equal. By evening they were being kept in separate cells. The next day, I noticed bruising along Andrew Cross’s neck during his cross-examination. Someone had tried to strangle him.

  There was a break for lunch, and the two teams—Mrs DJ’s and Michelle’s—went out looking for a place to eat. In general the two teams tried to keep apart, but there were bound to be moments when we were all thrown together, regardless of how difficult those moments turned out to be. In the event, they were very difficult. DJ the elder was made uncomfortable by his younger brother’s friends. The night before he had refused to shake Robert’s hand when introduced to him and, arriving last for lunch, discovered that he had no choice but to sit between Robert and Jim. DJ the elder asked Robert, the smaller of the two men, if he would move his chair as far away as possible. This was not a gracious request and it was not made in a gracious manner.

  Hey, you, what is your name, again? DJ the elder asked.

  Robert.

  Roger? DJ the elder said, confused. I’m sorry, what was that you said?

  Robert.

  Oh, yes, Robert. I’m sorry. I’ve been in America so long I have trouble understanding your accent. Robert. I see. Tell me: how long did you say you’ve known my brother?

  I didn’t.

  Oh. Well, how long has it been then?

  Five years.

  Five years. Really? You’ve known my brother for five years? Isn’t that interesting? Anyway. Listen—I’m so sorry. Tell me your name again?

  Robert.

  That’s right. Really, I’m very sorry. It must be the jet lag. I travel so much but I’ll never get used to it. Listen, Robert, would you mind moving your chair away from me. It’s the air. I need air and you’re in the way.

  Robert got up and found another place to sit.

  DJ the Elder turned to me and said: You know, Bill, it’s the strangest thing but since moving to America, I have met a greater variety of English people than I ever would have met had I stayed in Britain. It really is very interesting. I’ve meet people from East Acton, from Hackney, even from Romford.
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  Later, when ordering, neither Jim nor Robert understood the menu, and it was left to DJ the elder to explain moussaka and calamari to them. This was painful to listen to, and, in the end, I’m sure that neither Jim nor Robert understood a thing about moussaka or calamari. Jim and Robert decided that they were not hungry (actually Jim decided that he was not hungry; Robert realized that he was not hungry, after all), and they both ordered diet Cokes: that is, Jim ordered a diet Coke, and Robert thought that he would have one, too. DJ the elder spoke to Robert one more time before the afternoon was finished. He continued to have trouble understanding the accent and had to ask him to repeat his name.

  Mrs DJ, meanwhile, had become very distressed that Jim, and therefore Robert, were having nothing more than a diet Coke. She remonstrated heavily with them both, but it made little difference. Her pledge to pay for the meal—and the drinks—didn’t help.

  The best food on the island, Mrs DJ said, turning to me for no reason that I understood, was at Alexis’s. Mrs DJ had mentioned Alexis’s several times before and she reassured me that if I stayed through to Friday night she would add my name to their reservation.

  Jim, she said suddenly, do you like lobster?

  I have never had lobster, Jim said.

  Oh, it doesn’t matter, she said. I’ll get Alexis to fix you something special. I’ll get him to put fish in batter and then fry it. Like fish and chips. You like fish and chips, Jim, don’t you?

  Jim had to admit that he liked fish and chips.

  DJ was freed; both he and Martin Roche were let go with a £2,000 fine and an eighteen-month suspended sentence, nine months of which had already been served: they were, thus, found to be not wholly guilty, nor wholly innocent. Their companion Andrew Cross had done the decent thing and changed his story. He had, he said, never seen either DJ or Martin Roche before, although he was inclined to agree with the judge that it was a coincidence, here on the island of Rhodes, to meet up with Martin Roche, a stranger, from Romford. Andrew Cross was also from Romford. And, yes, he was also inclined to agree with the judge that it was also a coincidence that DJ, another stranger, lived only a mile or two from Romford as well. Cross apologized to the court for wrongfully accusing his newly-met companions, these strangers from the Romford area; he had panicked. He was, he said, the only one involved in the counterfeiting racket.

  And the wallet that was found on the ground outside the hotel room of DJ and Martin Roche?

  Cross had no idea where it came from.

  Cross was found guilty and sentenced to three years. Everybody agreed that he was a strange, lonely, evil man.

  When DJ was freed, he chose to retire to Michelle’s room in the Grand Hotel Astir, along with her father, Robert and me, but the effect was to estrange one team of his followers, and several attempts were made to invite DJ up to his mother’s suite. At one point DJ the elder, with DJ the sister-in-law in hand, came down to pay a personal visit, but the discomfort, made manifest on his face the moment he stepped in the room, was insupportable, and he and DJ the sister-in-law beat a rapid retreat. Later, a porter appeared with a request from Mrs DJ herself. A porter was required because the telephone was always engaged: DJ, out of prison for thirty minutes, was on the line to London. He was already making deals; he was back in business.

  I suddenly did not like being there. The feeling emerged like a rash or an allergy; something in me was protesting vigorously: this isn’t my world, and I have seen too much of it. DJ was sharing confidences with me that I didn’t want to hear. He was telling me stories that I didn’t want to know. I had always regarded DJ as problematic—I liked him too much to write about him—and now, with Jim sitting outside on the balcony staring at his hands, and Robert nearby doing the same, I was listening to my clippings file come alive again. What was I meant to do with what he was telling me? Why didn’t he stop? I wanted out. I had reached some kind of limit.

  I excused myself—I said I had to make some phone calls—and went to my room.

  And I sat there. I wanted to leave but my flight was scheduled for the next day. Tonight was the celebration dinner at Alexis’s.

  Surely I wouldn’t want to miss that? I asked myself.

  Surely I would, I answered.

  I phoned the airport. The last flight left in an hour, and I managed to get on it.

  DJ wasn’t a bad case. He didn’t bite out people’s eyes; hadn’t stabbed anyone, as far as I knew; wasn’t interested in killing. That kind of violence wasn’t his thing. There was nothing about him that compelled me to leave. I had simply had enough. I knew that it was right to get off the island, that I didn’t want to be there for another minute, even if I was not entirely sure why. There is a tendency, in any analysis of violence, to look upon it in one of two ways: as a deviation from the past or as a continuation from it. Either the violence of ‘today’ is symptomatic of the rot of our times (our urban blight, the loss of our faith, the disintegration of our families, the want of discipline in our homes) or the violence of ‘today’ is fundamentally no different from what it was yesterday: there is always violence in one form or another. The first view, the more obviously sentimental one—with its implicit nostalgia for a golden age—seems to be especially prevalent in Britain if only because the self-image of the British as civilized and law-abiding is still, remarkably, so deeply rooted in the culture. It is the modern and modernist view that sees violence as a continuation: that it is a manifestation of inherently unchanging patterns—sociological, biological, psychological—something, in any event, beyond our controlling. The modern, modernist view notes that England has always been violent, that its working class has been especially so and that there has been trouble associated with the game of football since it began.

  The truth, I feel, is not to be found in any thinking so obviously exclusive and categorizing. It is not the case that the violence is either a deviation or a continuation, but that it is both deviation and continuation. It is not: either . . . or . . . But: both . . . and . . . and . . . and . . .

  I believe in the modem behavioural models of our conduct, and much of this book has set out to prove their validity: that the crowd is in all of us. It isn’t an instinct or a need—being in a crowd isn’t necessary to our being complete human beings—but, for most of us, the crowd holds out certain essential attractions. It is, like an appetite, something in which dark satisfactions can, be found.

  But it is also possible both to acknowledge the validity of certain universal determinist models and recognize difference as well: that society is shifting and rearranging itself in important political and economic ways as much as it is being governed by its own constants. Yes, there has always been working-class violence, especially associated with the game of football, but it is also true that the last generation—and possibly the last two generations—of young working-class supporters have appropriated the violence in a way that is distinct and distinguishable.

  The generation is different, and I spent—I wasted?—three years confirming it. It wasn’t only John Johnstone and his Millwall mates; or Tom Melody and the lads from Croydon. It was also the ones in Leeds, in north London, in west London, in Reading: I have withheld their stories if only because they repeat so many others. On my street, in the university town where I live, my neighbour is keeping a scrap-book of the violence: my neighbour. Another has a video collection. Two streets away is the lad who tipped over a chips van, causing a fire in the middle of a Leeds match. I had spent time, too much time, with all of them, wanting to discover something new. I wasn’t finding it. And, finally, I could see that I wasn’t going to find it in DJ either. I was ready to stop looking.

  I got a flight to London the next morning and arrived around lunch time. It was an April Saturday afternoon, sunny and warm, the beginning of spring. Half-way home, I turned on the car radio and was reminded of the FA Cup semi-finals. The first one was between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, and it would be a good game. I thought I could get home in time to see it on te
levision.

  I didn’t make it. I was still on the road when the match began, and after two minutes the radio commentator said that something was wrong. There was trouble on the terraces behind the Liverpool goal. There was a sad, not-this-again feeling in his voice, a quality of resignation, that the supporters, especially those from Liverpool, were sacrificing a game of football to pursue their own violent entertainment: again. The play continued, but you could tell that the commentator was not watching it, that he was trying to figure out what was happening on the terraces. He couldn’t definitely say that it was crowd trouble, but it was something serious, and the police were gathering near the spot. And then, in an instant, that was it: the game was over. The referee had been told by the police to stop play. That was about the time I arrived home. The stadium was about to become the most famous in the world.

  I recently came by a copy of a video made by the West Midlands police, and it provides a useful way of examining what happened that day. The West Midlands force had been asked to carry out an investigation to decide whether criminal proceedings should be brought, and the video formed part of their evidence. It is a compilation drawn from at least seven different cameras. Since the deaths in Heysel Stadium, most grounds have closed circuit television, and video operators have been trained in filming crowd trouble.

  The first video sequence, made a short time after the event, is background information; it shows the visitors’ entrance on the west side of the stadium and the arrangements for the supporters inside. A voice points out the seated section upstairs and the terraces below, paying particular attention to ‘pens’ three and four. ‘The pit’ is the area at the bottom of the ‘pens’, just before the perimeter fence. The fence itself is a high one—taller than a tall man—and is made of chain-link steel and bent back towards the terraces to prevent people from going over the top. Each ‘pen’ has a small, locked gate. I have mentioned elsewhere that the experience of standing in the terraces is a herd experience, but I had not known, until watching this police video, that the accepted language used to describe the supporters’ arrangements—pen, pit—is borrowed from livestock farming. I also hadn’t known that the accepted term for the fencing is ‘caging’ or ‘the cage’.