Hateland

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  CHAPTER 11

  ALL TATTERED AND TORN

  I've been told that word experts believe the word 'hooligan' became popularised in part by a late nineteenth-century book called The Hooligan Nights. The author, Clarence Rook, claimed to have identified the word's origins in the deeds of a south-London-based Irish criminal called 'Patrick Hooligan'. A doorman with 'an exuberance of lawlessness', this probably fictional character was said to have died in prison after beating a policeman to death. His followers, 'the Hooligans', supposedly lived 'within a stone's throw of Lambeth Walk' and were described as 'sturdy young villains, who start with a grievance against society, and are determined to get their own back'.

  Be that as it may, 'supporting' Millwall became the main outlet for my anti-social urges. Being bad brings joy to those at war with 'normal' society. But being bad is never enough. You want to be the baddest. The ultimate baddies are Nazis. But high up there in the badness charts - back then, at least - sat the hooligans of Millwall FC, the 'Bushwhackers'. Their arch-rivals from West Ham United FC, the 'Inter City Firm', vied with them for top dishonours.

  In November 1987, Millwall drew West Ham ('the Hammers') in one of the early rounds of what used to be known as the League Cup. By then, the competition had some ridiculous name I've forgotten. (Gonad Cup? Simod Cup? Something like that.) It had been ten years since the teams had last met. Both sets of hooligans had spent a whole decade yearning to clash again.

  The game loomed like a hooligans' FA Cup final (if FA stood for 'Fuck Authority'). My south London friends talked of little else. Years earlier, a Millwall fan had died after being pushed in front of a tube train by West Ham fans. Now the day of retribution had arrived.

  The night before the game, a group of us went to The Gin Palace down the Old Kent Road. Millwall supporters filled the pub with their bodies and their voices. Everyone was singing as if on the terraces of 'the Den'. The favourite song - to the tune of Rod Stewart's 'Sailing' - went:

  No one likes us,

  No one likes us,

  No one likes us,

  We don't care.

  We are Millwall,

  Super Millwall,

  We are Millwall from the Den.

  A close second, also sung on a loop, to the tune of 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean', came:

  He's only a poor little Hammer.

  His face is all tattered and torn.

  He made me feel sick,

  So I hit him with a brick,

  And now he don't sing any more.

  I'd never been in such a charged atmosphere. The air pulsed with electricity. I could feel the static crackling in my hair. Or perhaps it was just sweat. The place seemed like a big hot-air balloon just waiting to go pop. Millwall wanted to attempt the impossible. Millwall wanted to run West Ham on their own turf in the heart of the East End. Even Hitler hadn't managed that. And he'd used bombers.

  This match aroused an intensity of violent feeling I'd never experienced before. I felt sure that pure bloodlust would ensure there'd be more than scuffles and wet punches next day. I imagined this encounter ending up like a scene from the Lebanese civil war.

  In The Gin Palace that night, the would-be warriors held the final tribal war-dance before the big battle. Being in a mob that strong, that powerful, is exhilarating. It offers a massive buzz. You know you want to damage the opposition, you know you won't run (even if you're scared) and you know you'll go to extremes you wouldn't normally contemplate.

  The next day, still a little hungover, I caught the tube to Whitechapel with Larry 'The Slash', Ray, Tony, 'Benny the Jew' and a few others. A lot of the Bushwhackers had arranged to meet there. Only fools would have gone in a small group to Upton Park for such a game. Most of us carried knives. I had a six-inch knife which, when sheathed, looked like a wooden ruler. When around 200 of us had assembled, we went out into Whitechapel High Street, but the police refused to let us wander round the East End and herded us back onto the tube.

  The word was that West Ham would be in a pub called The Horn of Plenty at Mile End. I knew the pub. It stood next to the tube station. Anticipating an ambush, we all agreed that, as soon as the train pulled into the station, we'd steam out and surprise any would-be attackers.

  The train pulled into the station. The doors opened and we piled out. Onto empty platforms. 'Fuck the Hammers,' someone shouted, 'Let's do their pub!' Everyone cheered and we made our way upstairs. As we got to the ticket barrier, a huge roar from the street outside almost blasted us back down the escalators. West Ham fans stormed into the station from every direction.

  I was panicking like fuck, but we surged forward. Everyone went under, over or through the barriers - and engaged in battle with the West Ham mob. It was pure savagery. We really wanted to kill each other. I grabbed one of the Hammers and kicked his legs from under him. As he fell, he cracked his head on the side of a ticket machine. I didn't give him a chance to get up. I held him by the hair and kicked him repeatedly in the head.

  Somebody jumped on my back. Someone else started punching me in the face. But shouts of 'Old Bill! Old Bill!' brought everything to a sudden end. Both sides ran to escape arrest.

  The police rounded us up and pushed us back down onto the platform. Soon, we continued on our way to Upton Park, home of the Hammers. When the train doors opened, we all steamed out, shouting in unison, 'Millwall! Millwall! Millwall!' We wanted them to know we'd stepped onto their home turf.

  Veterans had identified the Queens Market as the most likely place for a battle. Apparently, when you walked down Green Street towards the ground, the West Ham usually emerged from The Queen's pub, set back from the road in the marketplace. However, the only people who met us there wore uniforms. The sheer number of police astonished me. Riot vans, dogs and horses supported officers linking arms on foot. Even a helicopter circled overhead.

  As we progressed down the road, groups of West Ham would emerge from side streets offering violence. They hurled abuse and the odd missile. The police would chase them back down the street. The chances for confrontation began to look remote.

  When we got to the ground, I noticed the airport-style, walk- through metal detectors. An 'amnesty bin' for illegal weapons stood nearby. Fans had already deposited knives, CS gas canisters, metal kung-fu stars, an axe, a butcher's hook and other weapons before reaching the detectors.

  My mates walked over to a nearby bush. Pretending to have a piss, they dumped their knives. I decided to take a chance with mine. I stuffed it down the back of my trousers. The journey back to south London seemed certain to be more lively. I already had a deep red bruise forming under my eye after the fight at Mile End. I didn't want to take any more wounds home. Nor did I fancy a spell in hospital.

  Coins and belt buckles kept setting off the detectors, slowing everything down. A huge backlog of fans had built up outside the ground with the game about to start. In order to push people through more quickly, the stewards started ignoring the buzzing of the detectors in favour of random searches. As I got to the front, I raised my arms in anticipation of being searched, but a steward said simply, 'OK, mate,' and let me through.

  They packed us all into one corner of the South Bank. Police in full riot gear stood on either side. In the main stand to our left stood the bulk of the West Ham fans. They looked pretty frightening. Not many people bothered watching the game. Both sets of fans stood facing each other. Millwall fans chanted 'We are evil' and 'You'll get the same as Luton'. West Ham chanted 'ICF as they threw coins and missiles.

  A loud roar drew our attention to the game. West Ham had scored. We all surged forward and tried to get on the pitch. So did West Ham. I found myself being crushed against one of the barriers. Tony had lost his footing and fallen into a sea of bodies. At the front, Millwall fans started fighting the police, who soon beat them back.

  The game played on under a cloud of mutual hatred. You could tell the atmosphere had unnerved the players. The referee awarded West Ham a corner in front of us, but no pl
ayer wanted to take the kick. Several of them got into a huddle and argued. Eventually, one dashed over to the ball and took the quickest corner I've ever seen.

  So many police now stood in front of us that it had become impossible to see the pitch, let alone follow the game. Some people started shouting, 'Millwall's scored!' Others joined them and soon we were all jumping up and down in delight, although hardly any of us had seen the goal. To everyone's surprise, Millwall scored a second time. Again, almost no one saw the goal, resulting in another delayed roar.

  At the final whistle, they kept us locked in until the streets outside had been cleared. Eventually, the gates opened. A line of police officers, three-deep, greeted us. As we crossed a junction, a loud roar went up and West Ham fans ran at us from a side street. We ran at them, but the police swamped the area and prevented fighting.

  A few minutes later, we were standing in a tube heading out of the East End. But we knew the threat of violence hadn't passed. Everyone was trying to guess the most likely place for a battle. Mile End? Whitechapel? Or London Bridge? The latter seemed most likely: a 'neutral' venue with few police around. This meant if a fight kicked off, no one would have an excuse to run.

  Around 200 Millwall congregated at London Bridge Station. People were saying that ICF 'spotters' had been seen ringing the main mob on their mobiles. An 'off' seemed inevitable. We walked out of the station and down the concourse towards Borough High Street. Suddenly, a mob of about 150 ICF came round the corner. They spread out across the road and shouted, 'Come on Millwall, come on Millwall.' As they did so, they held their arms apart in boxing pose and started running towards us.

  I was at the front with Benny, Ray and Tony. I couldn't have run off, even if I'd wanted to. We surged forward, and were pushed, in the direction of the advancing ICF. I could see that several had armed themselves with knives, scaffold tubes, bottles and bits of wood pulled from a nearby skip. A loud bang made me glance to my right. One of the ICF had fired a flare gun. The glowing missile zoomed towards us, but then climbed steeply over our heads. I searched the advancing faces for my opponent. A tall, thin man in a leather jacket bore down on me. He was the one. Bang, bang, bang. Before I'd even had time to get one punch into him, he'd whacked me three times in the head.

  I grabbed his hair and tried to pull him into me, so I could get some punches into his face and head. But he knew his stuff. He twisted his body and punched me hard in the mouth. Blood poured down my chin and onto my chest. I knew if I didn't do something drastic I could lose badly. I pulled the knife out of my trousers. I stabbed him once in the upper arm. He let out a scream. Then I stabbed him again in the side, just above his waistband. His instinct was to try pressing his hand against the wounds, but he didn't know which one to press. He did a funny sort of turn, then fell to the tarmac.

  'Cunt, fucking cunt,' I said as I kicked him in the head a few times. Then I turned towards his friends with the knife still in my hand.

  With blood pouring out of my mouth, and a blood-stained knife in my hand, I can see now why I had no takers. I lunged at a half-caste man, but he backed away, screaming, 'Put the knife down! Put the knife down!'

  The shrieking of police sirens ripped through the air. Everyone started legging it. Everyone, that is, apart from the eight or ten bodies lying on the ground.

  My friends had all survived unscathed, bar a few cuts and bruises. We hailed a black cab and asked the driver to take us to Kennington. I didn't want him to know where we were from in case the stabbing later became an issue. At Kennington, I dropped the knife down a street drain.

  It was around this time in the late '80s that I put the BNP leader John Tyndall in a headlock at the meeting in Arnos Grove. Since then, my involvement in Nazi activities had pretty much ceased. I'd come increasingly to find the whole scene laughable, a ridiculous waste of time.

  Most of my south London mates felt the same. Only Adolf remained a 'true believer', but his cranky, paranoid, conspiracy-obsessed eccentricity merely underlined for me how the far-right would never make the leap into the hearts and minds of ordinary white working people. I didn't express my views to Adolf, partly because I didn't want to be ranted at for several hours. But, all the same, I hadn't exactly converted to the Anti-Nazi League. I had no intention of standing up tearfully in The Royal Oak to repent my Nazi sins and to pledge undying loyalty to The Guardian.

  Millwall achieved promotion to Division One (now called 'the Premiership') for the 1988 season - the high-point of their recent history. For decades, their hooligans had fought on the terraces of lowly clubs like Leyton Orient, Crystal Palace, Hull and Cardiff. Now, the Bushwhackers had a chance to take on hooligans from the country's top clubs like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, and, of course, West Ham. They could finally put beyond dispute their unofficial status as the country's number one 'firm'.

  Hooligan south London buzzed with expectation. Most pub conversations in my circle at this time seemed to revolve around plans for 'jolly ups' to games at the big clubs, whose grounds had seemed so unreachable for so long. For the first game, Millwall drew Birmingham-based Aston Villa - a chance for a crack at Villa's highly rated 'Steamers' firm. I decided to return with my new tribe to my old West Midlands hunting ground. Benny, Ray, Tony, Larry and I took the iron horse to Birmingham New Street Station. We travelled with around 50 other Millwall, largely from Peckham and Brixton. Most were travelling for the hooliganism rather than the football.

  We arrived around ten in the morning and decided to split into small groups so as not to attract police attention. Once clear of New Street, we'd meet at a pub near Digbeth Coach Station. As my little group ascended the escalators into the Bull Ring shopping complex, we saw a few teenagers watching us. We assumed they were 'spotters'. I knew Birmingham well, so I could guide people away from areas of possible ambush.

  In the pub at Digbeth, the Millwall fans began arriving. None had encountered any trouble, though several said they'd been followed by 'spotters'. As we stood having a chat and a drink, a missile smashed the pub's front window, showering people in glass. Outside, we heard the chanting of 'Villa! Villa! Villa!'

  We ran out onto the pavement and found ourselves being pelted with bottles and stones. Those at the front began to run at the 75-strong Villa mob; those behind followed. We hadn't even reached the Villa fans when those at the rear started running. Soon, they'd all taken to their heels. Many of them ran onto the dual carriageway. Vehicles swerved or screeched to a halt. The blowing of car horns accompanied the chaos. The remaining Villa fans disappeared into shops and side streets. None of us caught any of them. Only world-class sprinters could have managed that feat.

  Outside the ground, Millwall fans fought running battles with the police. Larry, Ray and I ended up being arrested after a scuffle. Because of my Midlands accent, they locked me up initially with Villa supporters. These supporters knew I was Millwall, but no one said anything. By that stage, our common predicament had united us, and our differences had been forgotten. It didn't matter what I said to the police, though, they wouldn't accept I was in the wrong cell. Only when I was charged, and could show the desk sergeant the Millwall tattoo on my arm, did they move me to the same cell as my friends.

  Magistrates later fined us all a hundred and fifty pounds for public order offences.

  In early 1989, Millwall played Liverpool at home. Everyone had been waiting for this game. At Anfield earlier in the season, 100 of us had stood in the road outside the famous Kop end waiting for the Scousers to come out. When they saw us, they initially ran at. us, but when we ran towards them, they shot back into the Kop. The humiliated Scouse hooligans had sworn revenge at the return match at Millwall.

  Before the game, I met up with my mates for a drink in The Brockwell Tavern. About an hour before kick-off, we went outside to a minicab office and ordered a cab to take us to the ground.

  A black African driver came out and led us to his car. He noticed five of us and said, 'I can only take four.' I said I'
d 'give him a drink' if he took us all. It hardly seemed worth taking two cabs. He insisted he'd only take four. I tried reasoning with him politely, but for no reason he quickly got really shirty, telling me if I asked again he'd take nobody. I didn't like his aggressive attitude and told him to calm down.

  He started walking back to the office. Over his shoulder he said, 'Fucking walk.' I put my hand on his shoulder to attract his attention. He spun round with a small penknife in his hand. I said, 'What the fuck are you doing?' He didn't answer. He just stabbed me twice in my left upper arm and ran into the office.

  I genuinely couldn't believe what had happened. I stood there speechless and in shock. My mates ran into the office behind him and steamed into the four or five drivers sitting in a waiting area. I ran in, too, and looked for my assailant, but he'd disappeared.

  We bashed everyone in there and trashed every phone and piece of furniture. I never did see that man again. I dearly wished I could have set Dougie on his trail. We walked down to Brixton and got a cab from there. My wounds weren't serious, though one of them should have been stitched. I didn't even bother going to hospital as too many questions would have been asked.

  But the incident did have quite an effect on me. It scared me. Although I'd been stabbed on two previous occasions, this stabbing made me realise I was as vulnerable as everyone else. In a few months' time, I'd be 29 years old. Debra had been talking about having another baby. I felt I wouldn't be around much longer if I continued running round the country behaving like a juvenile delinquent. I was certainly slowing down, but unfortunately I hadn't yet stopped.

  I felt intrigued when Adolf told me that Patrick Harrington, one of the country's best-known far-right 'faces', had been in contact. Harrington, as a member of the National Front, had achieved national publicity in 1984 when some of his fellow students at the Polytechnic of North London tried to stop him attending lectures. He'd gone to court to secure his right to be taught. The mob of far-left demonstrators who'd tried to block his path had been pilloried in sections of the media as 'red fascists'.