Among the Thugs

by Bill Buford

  He had found the canisters on the ground. Shortly after the hand-gun was fired, tear-gas followed. The police had been prepared to put up with a march, if only because they were not in the position to stop it, but no one, including the police, was under any illusions about this crowd now. It was on its way to confirming everyone’s fears of what it would be. And so canisters of tear-gas were fired to disperse its members. And, on the whole, the desired effect was achieved, with most supporters immediately fleeing upwind.

  But not all.

  One inspired little scientist discovered that, with such a strong Mediterranean breeze coming off the port, he had only to step to one side of the brown cloud issuing from the canister on the pavement, grab it from behind—as if picking up a lobster—and throw it back at the very people who had fired it at him. It was like a revelation inverted: in an instant, the canister lost its mystery and power. It also lost all significance, except one: it became a new thing to throw at the police. The inspired lad then set himself the task of picking up one canister after the other and audaciously lobbing them back into the police ranks, confident that the police would not dare respond in the way that I thought, and feared, was the most obvious: by shooting him dead. It wasn’t until his fourth canister that he paused, a brown cloud issuing out of his fist, and turned to the other supporters—they were about a hundred yards up the hill, out of harm’s way, clustered closely together, a nervous flock—and urged them to join him. Actually it wasn’t the other supporters he addressed exactly; it was the entire nation. What he said was this: Come on, England. There was the familiar hesitation—first one supporter, and then another, and then several more—and then everyone came running back down the street.

  I had never seen trouble escalate so quickly. The firing of the hand-gun now seemed ludicrous; it had served only to inflame. The crowd that was now running back down the street was a different crowd from the one that had fled in panic from the tear-gas. It had become different the moment it started destroying property—the familiar border. It was liberated now, and dangerous, and had evolved to that giddy point where it was perfectly happy to run amok with a comprehensive sense of abandon and an uninhibited disregard for the law. It was running hard, the people in it angry and wild. They were screaming something. I couldn’t make it out—it was a some kind of aggressive howl—but its object was clear enough: it was the police.

  I watched one policeman. He was young—nineteen, twenty years old—with a narrow face and tousled, thick hair: his helmet had been knocked off earlier and was dangling by the strap round his neck. He was standing in advance of the police line, which had retreated behind him—twenty or thirty feet. Why hadn’t he joined the others? It wasn’t reckless bravery; he was too fidgety; there was no bravado in his stance. More likely, he hadn’t noticed that his colleagues had retreated—things were now happening very fast. He swung his head right and left and saw two other policemen on the ground—they were the only ones nearby—and he urged them to get up. He screamed at them and lifted one by the arm. I was standing off to the side, between the police and the supporters, who were close now, coming down the hill at full speed, stones in both hands. The supporters were not going to stop. They looked very frightening.

  One of the three policemen in the front went down, hit full in the face by a stone, and the young policeman noticed—with a flick of the head—that his partner had been felled. Now there were two. I was fascinated by this young policemen. He was shouting at the others—he still didn’t know how far behind him they were—calling for. support. But there was no support. It seemed to take an eternity for the supporters to reach him. Tear-gas canisters were being shot into the crowd, but were having no effect. I watched the young policeman’s eyes. He was frightened. His face was soft and brown, and every muscle—the way he was standing, or holding his head, or keeping his rifle in place before his chest—was expressing that he was afraid but that he was resolved, that he wasn’t going to back down, that he wasn’t going to run, that he was proud and determined, and then the first supporter ran straight into him and the policeman tried to smack him across the head with his rifle butt but the blow went askew, and then another supporter ran into him and a third and then the young policeman was hit with something, and he went down, falling underneath the feet of the English supporters, many, many English supporters. I saw him on the ground being kicked—I had a brief glimpse of him covering his head—and then I didn’t see him again.

  Stones were coming from several directions and everywhere the brown fog of the tear-gas. I heard a sharp, crisp sound—hard, loud, like concrete being dropped from a height—and I turned and saw that the supporter inches from me had been hit in the side of the head. I had seen nothing—not so much as a blur, but I heard it: it wasn’t the soft sound of a blow; it was the hard, hard sound of the skull. I was convinced that his head had been cracked; the blow was too sure. He didn’t understand what had happened to him or who I was or why I was interested in him. I led him off to the side of the street and propped him against a wall. He was talking to himself and had lost the colour in his face.

  The crowd was in its final stage: complete lawlessness. I had been in crowds of this kind before, but several features made this one unique. One was the object of its violence—the Italian police. The Italian police were different from Italian football supporters, or supporters from any country for that matter. You could not get away with beating them up like so many frightened fans from Reading or Southampton and hope that they would then scurry on home nursing their injuries. They might, to labour an old metaphor, lose the odd battle, but they were assured of winning the war: having now attacked the police, the England supporters were going to have to pay a penalty at some point.

  This was certain to be true because of the context—the other unique feature. There had been so much publicity predicting exactly what had now occurred, and there were so many people here to report its occurrence, that the Italian police were on the spot. In a way, they were on trial—or at least would have felt themselves to be—and had to show that they could contain this thing. No, there was no question but that the police would win the war.

  There was one last feature that made the violence unique. And that was its duration. It seemed like it would never end. You would have thought that, with all the pressure on the police, and with the vast reinforcements that would shortly come to their aid, they would have been able to squash this thing straightaway.

  I was standing by myself half-way up one of the hills, about a hundred yards in advance of the crowd. It had stoned a petrol station—the large plate-glass of its shop front had collapsed with a spectacular crash—and a policeman’s motor cycle had lost control and slid into the petrol pumps. I feared an explosion. A policeman had fired his hand-gun again, and it appeared that the police were regrouping below us.

  And then: nothing. We were left alone. There were no police charges or tear-gas.

  After a time, several people turned and started up the hill in the direction of the ground. The others followed. It was the natural thing to do, although, after so much violence; it was also a little strange. We walked over the top of the hill, the police behind us, somewhere on the other side. No one was running; there was no need. The police appeared not to be following.

  We walked on. I saw the Sardinian ruins, caves carved out of the brown Italian stone at the island’s high point. Further along I saw the cathedral—D.H. Lawrence had mentioned it. Lawrence had been at this very spot; he had written about the view. The Mediterranean was below. The day was still hot, and I was sweating.

  Then the police must have charged, although I didn’t see it. I was in the middle and knew only that everyone around me was running again—not the impulse run I had seen earlier, not a crowd run, but a run of fear, a sprint. I saw two people ahead of us in the street, elderly women, dressed in black, who were rushing quickly to the pavement, indignant but afraid. I saw little else. I noticed a wedding, the bride and groom and their friend
s rushing for cover. We must have been running through the cathedral square.

  The supporters around me were slightly hysterical, pushing people out of the way, recklessly trying to get up to the front. I couldn’t see the police behind us, but knew that they had to be close, and I didn’t like that. They must have decided to charge once everyone was out of view, to take the group by surprise. I kept thinking that the police had guns, and I didn’t want to get caught at the back of the crowd.

  I was running hard—everyone was running hard—and, once past the cathedral, we turned down a residential street. I didn’t know who was in front, but the crowd was clearly being led and this street was in the direction of the stadium. I smelled oleander and sage, and there were leafy trees along the pavement. Everything conveyed comfort and security and solidity. There were iron fences, gardens, balconies, ornate lamp-posts.

  The hooligans inglesi who appeared at the top of this elegant avenue, filling its width, running hard, must have been an incomprehensible sight. It was suddenly quiet; no one was singing or chanting or shouting. In fact there was only one sound, the regular, systematic noise of things breaking. The automobiles were new and expensive—BMWs, Mercedes, sports cars—but each one, by the time I came upon it, had already been damaged: the windscreen was cracked or had been blown out entirely; the side mirrors were gone; the door was kicked in. An older woman, large, matronly, confident, was shouting from her balcony, gesticulating, enraged, and then a stone was thrown and it missed her, and another stone, and a bottle, and a clay flower pot near her fell apart, and her window broke, and then more stones, many stones, one after another, until all of her windows—the sliding balcony window, the kitchen, the small one, which must have been the bathroom—were gone. I heard burglar alarms ringing.

  Then I collided with the people near me. Someone had brought the crowd to a stop. I didn’t understand why: the police were behind us; they would appear at any moment. Someone then shouted that we were all English. Why were we running? The English don’t run.

  I felt I had been doing nothing but running, but this was all it took: there was the roar, and everyone turned and headed straight for the police. It was the first time I had seen them since they gave chase after the stoning of the petrol station. There were now many more police than before, dressed in proper riot gear—shields and helmets and heavy jackets. And they all had guns. The English supporters seemed not to think much of the Italian guns. I could think of little else.

  I wanted no part of this. I stood back, while everyone rushed forward, stones and bottles in hand. I was getting a feel for the rhythm of this thing, and I suspected that—after an incident characterized by large quantities of dust, flying objects, tear-gas and a gunshot—everyone would come running back in my direction. Which, in due course, they did. And thus, once again, I found myself running.

  And so it went on. Having fled in panic, some of the supporters would then remember that they were English and that this was important, and they would remind the others that they too were English, and that this was also important, and, with a renewed sense of national identity, they would come abruptly to a halt, turn round and charge the Italian police. Stones would be thrown, people would be felled, until the police contrived to regroup and again give chase. This went on for a long time. This went on for an interminably long time. It went on for the entire length of this long street. I didn’t see much of the actual fighting because I didn’t want to be close enough to be able to. I was in the middle of the crowd and the only reason I was in the middle was because I never got to the very front. I wanted to get to the front—that was where I would be safest—but I was having trouble keeping up. This chase was being conducted at a sprint, and I was running out of breath. I felt heavy and fat. Sweat was pouring down my forehead and into my eyes. I was running with my shoulders hunched up, as if to protect my neck, because I was afraid of getting shot or hit or hurt from behind in some way. All around me injuries were appearing, and I didn’t know why. It was the strangest thing: one moment I was looking at the fellow ahead of me, watchful of his feet, not wanting to trip him or trip over him; the next moment, the back of his head was wet and red and glistening in the sun. Blood was pouring down the sides of his neck and being soaked up by his shirt. He kept reaching back with his hand, touching the liquid. When had this happened?

  I spotted the flabby boy and his girl-friend with the pink spectacles. They were running with great determination. What were they doing here? I spotted other people I recognized, but only briefly, because I was having to concentrate very hard on my feet, not wanting to fall over, but not having the room for the speed at which we were running. I could feel someone touching my back, for balance or to ensure that he wouldn’t trip over me, just as I was touching the back of the person in front. And then suddenly the pavement opened up—a sewer had been dug out—and a deep well appeared before me. The person in front dived to the side, and I twisted and somehow managed to jump over him. I heard sounds behind me—glass breaking, stones, scuffling—I don’t know what it was, because when I looked I saw only glimpses of things: dust, and the sun brown and hazy, and the glint of the riot shields. I was going to get caught—I was going to feel some terrible hot pain across the back of my neck or my head, I just knew it—and then finally this long, never-ending eternity of a residential street ended and gave way to a square.

  There was openness and an expanse of sky, and poor simple shops and unadorned concrete buildings. I ran to the far side and leaned against a wall, hunched over, hands on my knees, heaving from the effort to catch my breath. I watched as the supporters on the other side turned and once more did battle with the police as they came running into the square in pursuit. I was wet and red and hot and couldn’t get a full breath.

  I don’t know how long I was there—time enough to regain my composure and slowly take in the people around me. The square was filling with supporters. I watched one. He was on his own, laboriously pushing a large rubbish skip out into the middle of the square. The skip was full and one of its wheels was broken. He pushed and the skip swung off sideways and he pulled it back and pushed a little more and then finally got it to the position he wanted. He then walked round, lifted himself up by the big metal lip of the bin and pulled it over. It slammed on to the pavement and the rubbish—glass, bricks, bits of food, tins, papers—tumbled out. He picked up a wine bottle by the neck, adjusted his grip and threw it, end over end, against one of the flat, concrete houses. He picked up another and threw it. He must have thrown five bottles before one finally slammed into a bedroom window, which then exploded, the glass falling on to the pavement below. He picked up something else—something heavy, solid—turned and threw that at another house. He was in the middle of the open square and able to turn in any direction and blow out someone’s window, pick up another bottle, brick, piece of plumbing or any other object yielded by his skip full of treasures, turn and break something else. He was becoming increasingly autistic. You could see the world receding from him; his mates, in combat on the other side of the square, were disappearing. Nothing disturbed him.

  I felt heavy. I was exhausted, but it was more than physical tiredness: the fear was gone and the animal excitement and the nerves, and I was left with nothing more than the act of observing this little shit. Why was he of interest? What was there to say but: I have now watched a little shit.

  I was next to a shop and the man who ran it appeared. He had dashed out to collect his children—when the crowd came running into the square, his daughters had been playing in the middle—and he was now hustling them back. His wife and two of his children were already inside, and he was left behind pushing a baby stroller that kept getting caught on the step. The child in the stroller must have been about two. He lifted up the stroller—his wife had already pulled down the shop’s metal shutter half-way—but he was in a rush and couldn’t get the stroller over that last step. Glass was breaking all round him; the autistic maniac in the centre of the square was sti
ll at it. The shopkeeper tried three times. His wife, crouched on the other side of the shutter, was shouting at him.

  I was appalled by the sight; I was appalled at myself—at my crude voyeurism. The scene disturbed me. But it also disturbed me that other scenes had not. This had become my thing: to be a witness, yet again, to the ugly arrogance of the little shits who had driven this man to hide behind metal shutters, waiting for the sounds of the violence to end. These images were not modern. This square—simple, poor, unsophisticated, undisturbed by tourists or foreigners—was at odds with the poison that had come pouring into it. I tried to imagine this man’s fear, looking up to see his family surrounded by men who had appeared as if by some terrible magic, filthy, bleeding men, breaking windows, hurling benches into the small shops run by his neighbours, throwing stones, bottles. I haven’t known a fear like the fear this man must have felt, when, screaming for his wife and the members of his family, he bolted out of his shop. What social mutation has resulted in these bored ugly boys of the Union Jack believing they are entitled to inflict this pain, this fright?

  I then looked up and was surprised by what I saw: it was the Italian police, on the far side of the square, retreating. They had turned and run. You could see them jogging down a side-street in formation, the backs of their riot shields bobbing up and down, refracting the light from the setting sun.

  This was inconceivable. What did this mean? That the supporters had won?

  No one realized what had occurred—the police had left so rapidly—but once it became apparent, the supporters started chasing down the street after them. They threw bricks and bottles at their backs. But none of them hit their target. The police were gone; they had retreated; they had disappeared.

  Silence. It was over.

  I looked around, trying to catch an expression that would help me to interpret what I had just seen, but everyone was as mystified as I was.