Joined: Nov 19 2002 Posts: 13624 Location: West Yorkshire
Mintball wrote:I started going to football matches in the mid 1970s – and to top-flight matches from 1979.
The most unpleasant experiences I've ever had, connected with sports fans, have involved ending up on trains with RU fans or being in a bar with RU Hacks. I'm talking abusive, drunk – on one of those trains, the floor was pretty much flooded. On another, which was not any sort of a sports 'express', there was a group of young RU fans behaving in a disgraceful and abusive manner to passengers – in a carriage that included families with young children.
There is a popular idea that only football has ever had oiks connected with it. It's a myth. And indeed, RL is hardly innocent on the matter.
The actual history of – okay, let's call it sports-related hooliganism – goes back a good century or more. If memory serves me correctly, there was a mass bottle throwing (and they were not plastic) at a football match in 1906. It barely warranted a mention anywhere. Similarly, when Dixie Dean thumped a fan who was giving him racist abuse, there was hardly any mention (a policeman shook Dean's hand). Compare that to the furore over Eric Cantona drop-kicking a gobby little fascist.
Reporting of incidents only really started in the mainstream, national media in the mid to late 1970s. You could make the case that it became 'an issue' when the middle classes started feeling that it was impinging on their lives – even if only because they read about it.
Never forget that the government of the 1980s wanted to use football fans as guinea pigs for ID cards. But then again, there was a demonisation of the working class in general taking place.
This is not to suggest that some people did not use football as an excuse for fighting. But it needs to be seen in the wider context – including the class one.
Compare these sort of incidents to the 'japes' of the Bullingdon Boys, as but one example. What barriers were errected to stop them doing things like trashing people's businesses?
Well the worst violence I have ever seen as been at football matches in the late eighties and early nineties.
Blame it on an attack of the working classes if you want but there was a hell a lot of fighting and hooliganism going on and fences were erected. It was only 4 years before Hillsborough that Heysel happened and the banning of english teams in Europe for fighting, this happened and it wasn't the government demonising the working classes they shouldn't have been bloody fighting in the first place using football and 'passion' as an excuse.
Now having said that I am not saying Hillsborough was caused through hooliganism, it clearly wasn't, but lets not paint a picture of nice piece loving football supporters being demonised by nasty people in power, its surely not as black and white as that.
Cibaman wrote:Dont really agree with that. Large scale football hooliganism was a problem from the mid 60's and well reported at the time. I remember a Leeds v Man City game in '68 by which time the rituals were well established. About 4,000 City supporters escorted to and from the train station by police on horseback and dog handlers, numerous "skirmishes" in and around the ground, attempts by groups of City fans to invade the Leeds end, Leeds fans waiting outside the ground to ambush City fans, etc, etc. There was a huge breakdown in the relationship between fans and the police in the late 60's when the Harry Roberts song could be heard at many football grounds.
Cant say I've ever witnessed anything at RL or RU grounds comparable to football from about 1967 to the early 90's.
From the mid-60s onwards I was growing up watching the Don Revie Leeds Utd and so of course wanted to go to Elland Road like my dad did - he wouldn't let me go even with him because of the violence and bad language (parents sort of cared about that sort thing then), instead he encouraged me to go to Headingley where my Uncle worked and my first season ticket there was in 1968 - the rest, as they say, is history.
Although not as ancient history as Mintball if she can remember a bottle throwing incident from 1906.
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Joined: May 10 2002 Posts: 47951 Location: Die Metropole
christopher wrote:Well the worst violence I have ever seen as been at football matches in the late eighties and early nineties.
Blame it on an attack of the working classes if you want but there was a hell a lot of fighting and hooliganism going on and fences were erected. It was only 4 years before Hillsborough that Heysel happened and the banning of english teams in Europe for fighting, this happened and it wasn't the government demonising the working classes they shouldn't have been bloody fighting in the first place using football and 'passion' as an excuse.
Now having said that I am not saying Hillsborough was caused through hooliganism, it clearly wasn't, but lets not paint a picture of nice piece loving football supporters being demonised by nasty people in power, its surely not as black and white as that.
I wasn't. I was attempting to point out a number of things – including but not limited to fighting not being new and how, when the ruling classes behave badly, it's ignored.
I am well aware of Heysel and the ban that followed.
Incidentally, the worst violence I've ever personally seen was around three years ago at the Etihad, when Birmingham were visiting and their particular bunch of thugs (the 'Birmingham Zulus') had decided that they were going to celebrate their 25th birthday by starting a riot.
But the idea that fighting and 'hooliganism'* are new or limited to football is, I'm afraid, simply a myth.
There have been gangs fighting in pretty much every major city in the UK for donkey's years. As just one example, look up the Scuttlers.
Nor, as I have suggested, is it limited to class – no matter what some of the media pretends. More history: go back to the 18th century and their were gangs from across the class divide, who had a favourite trick of holding up coaches and then burning them.
The underlying issue is why young males (primarily but not exclusively) feel the need to fight and be destructive – whether this is a 'problem' and whether it can be solved and, if so, how.
JerryChicken wrote:... Although not as ancient history as Mintball if she can remember a bottle throwing incident from 1906.
I'm wearing well.
* As mentioned before, a word coined in the 19th century, as a result of a music hall song, to name the behaviour that the song was about (a badly-behaved Irish family called the 'Hoolies'). Which in itself tells you something.
"You are working for Satan." Kirkstaller
"Dare to know!" Immanuel Kant
"Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive" Elbert Hubbard
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Joined: Nov 19 2002 Posts: 13624 Location: West Yorkshire
Mintball wrote: But the idea that fighting and 'hooliganism'* are new or limited to football is, I'm afraid, simply a myth.
I have never said thih, but we are talking about a football related incident, and as such football related violence and hooligans are more prevalent to the discussion. It wasn't RU hooligans that had recently been convicted of killing opposition fans and subsequently got teams banned from competitions and made it so fences had to be erected at stadiums.
Joined: May 10 2002 Posts: 47951 Location: Die Metropole
christopher wrote:I have never said thih, but we are talking about a football related incident, and as such football related violence and hooligans are more prevalent to the discussion. It wasn't RU hooligans that had recently been convicted of killing opposition fans and subsequently got teams banned from competitions and made it so fences had to be erected at stadiums.
Indeed.
My – attempted – point is that there had been, for some years, a demonisation of a particular type of hooligan, as though there were only one, and that that contributed to what happened at Hillsborough.
Which rather takes us back to class, to government needs for a group to demonise/scapegoat (and try their ID cards on) etc and so forth.
"You are working for Satan." Kirkstaller
"Dare to know!" Immanuel Kant
"Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive" Elbert Hubbard
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde
Joined: Nov 19 2002 Posts: 13624 Location: West Yorkshire
Mintball wrote: and that that contributed to what happened at Hillsborough.
I suppose my point was that there behaviour was a contributing factor, as I said no fences - no crush.
I think that, there are two separate issues which IMO seem to be getting blurred in the coverage etc.
1. The actual tragedy, which I personally think there were quite a few factors (of varying degrees) which built up to this happening and there isn't one single cause/person/group that we can point a finger at and say it was your fault.
2. The cover up. This IMO is the most shocking thing to come out of the whole thing.
Dally wrote:I thought the hypocrisy of the Labour party in parliament yesterday was staggering. Anyone who had a pair of eyes or had ever been to a big football match in those days could see the main issues. Despite the bereaved families' constant campaigning in all their years in government, what did Labour do for what used to be it's "class" (if as some suggest this was a class issue). Fair play to Cameron. I actually think the Tories will get some votes in Liverpool as a result of this (the city was the first Labour stronghold to lose faith in Labour previously).
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Joined: Oct 01 2007 Posts: 2866 Location: Liverpool.
Some interesting posts on here lads. I with the Government would release a similar fanfare when the crime figures are released! We might just find out a few facts which might enlighten people regarding the crime rate for Liverpool as opposed to other cities and large towns. That way, those people who have never set foot in Liverpool and who have been no nearer to it than Widnes and St Helens but who think they know all about the place might keep quiet. But you know Tories. They'll get out of anything except Rupert Murdoch's bed.
Doc Holliday wrote:Some interesting posts on here lads. I with the Government would release a similar fanfare when the crime figures are released! We might just find out a few facts which might enlighten people regarding the crime rate for Liverpool as opposed to other cities and large towns. That way, those people who have never set foot in Liverpool and who have been no nearer to it than Widnes and St Helens but who think they know all about the place might keep quiet. But you know Tories. They'll get out of anything except Rupert Murdoch's bed.
Certainly on the hate crime front you're not as bad as Manchester. Long way worse than Sheffield though:
Doc Holliday wrote:Some interesting posts on here lads. I with the Government would release a similar fanfare when the crime figures are released! We might just find out a few facts which might enlighten people regarding the crime rate for Liverpool as opposed to other cities and large towns. That way, those people who have never set foot in Liverpool and who have been no nearer to it than Widnes and St Helens but who think they know all about the place might keep quiet. But you know Tories. They'll get out of anything except Rupert Murdoch's bed.
Certainly on the hate crime front you're not as bad as Manchester. Long way worse than Sheffield though:
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