Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang (10 page)

My political hero or heroine if you like, is Margaret Thatcher. She stood firm against so many challenges, whether it was militant trade
unions, the Soviet Union or General Galtieri. She also allowed tenants to buy their own council houses, giving people who would never normally have got the chance a foothold in the property market, freeing them from the yoke of municipal socialism. I certainly wouldn’t be as well off today if it wasn’t for Maggie freeing up the economy, although on the negative side I do admit that the country became a little more selfish when she was prime minister. Most importantly of all she refused to capitulate in the face of violent Irish Republicanism. Without her the proud Protestant people of Northern Ireland – who have fought so bravely for Britain through the ages – might now be part of the Republic of Ireland.

I am still opposed to, and suspicious, of the Republican movement. Its leaders say they are now wedded to the democratic process but I remain to be convinced. There is a new danger on the horizon, as younger Republicans become disillusioned with the peace process and join organisations like the Continuity IRA, which has recently been involved in terrorism. Everyone of a Loyalist persuasion will need to be vigilant.

My Loyalism is the main factor in my antipathy towards all things Celtic. I just can’t accept that Celtic fans, who have benefited greatly from living in this country, sing songs that praise people who have murdered British soldiers, not to mention many innocent women and children. Celtic apologists will argue that only a small minority sing the ‘Boys of the Old Brigade’ and suchlike but I am not so sure. And if it is just a ‘small minority’ then why do the majority let them get away with it? If they really wanted to they could stop the hatemongering tomorrow by putting pressure on those who are doing the singing. But they don’t and that tells its own story.

My sense of Britishness, of being a Loyalist and a Protestant, has cemented my love of Rangers. We have signed Catholics, we have had Catholics in positions of authority; one day we may even be owned by a Roman Catholic. But to the supporters we will always be a Protestant club despite what I see as the apparent desire of the powers-that-be at Ibrox to suppress our traditions and rewrite our history. I have attended hundreds of games, at home and away, in Scotland and across Europe. I played for the club as a schoolboy and dreamt of becoming a defensive midfielder in the mould of Lee McCulloch or Rino Gattuso. I have bought the replica kits and the memorabilia. I am bringing up my two sons in the true Rangers way. I have risked life and limb to defend Rangers scarfers when they have been attacked by opposition mobs or the Spanish police. But what thanks have I had?

Three life bans from Ibrox. That’s what.

As the letters in the plate section of this book show Rangers have seen fit to ban me from the place I love, most recently in 2007 (although the ban was rescinded in 2009).

The bans hurt but they never affected my feelings for the club, which I consider to be the greatest in the world.

I
will
follow on

I had never felt so low. I was sitting in Deans’s pub in Shettleston, a great wee howff frequented by ICF, gangsters and assorted local hard men. I couldn’t get the disasters of the afternoon out of my mind. It had been the most humiliating episode in ICF history. My mood was hardly lightened when in bowled Harky, full of the joys of spring as per usual.

‘What’s the matter Sandy? I heard you got your baws kicked in Edinburgh,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Fuck off ya dick. At least I was there,’ was my considered response.

But, despite my retort, deep down I knew he was right. We had been annihilated that afternoon in October 1994. Many ICF, a good proportion of them young and inexperienced, got a doing. Several were hospitalised.

I had also taken a beating. Hibs had landed volleys of kicks, punches and missiles on my body. I was cut and bruised and my legs were aching, a result of my vain attempts to ward off the CCS.

The emotional pain was much worse and the constant, albeit light-hearted, ribbing I got that night in Deans’s didn’t help. It wasn’t just from Harky. The regulars, most of them formidable scrappers in their own right, didn’t spare my feelings. They gave me pelters. I was in turmoil and the copious quantities of drink and drugs I was ingesting were no help at all. I went over Slateford again and again in my mind. One thought predominated.

What could I have done differently?

*

Hibs were always formidable opponents. Over the piece they were the best mob we ever faced, at least in Scotland. It wasn’t just their fighting abilities. They had style, an abundance of self-confidence and a cockiness that came with being the top mob. They didn’t walk, they swaggered.

What made them so good? I think one of the main things was their unity. They were a tight-knit group, at least in the early days. Most of them came from the same, relatively small, areas of Edinburgh. That was a unifying factor and helped to bond them. They were so close that, when they were formed, consideration was given to calling their firm The Family, before they settled for the name everybody knows them by today, Capital City Service. They wholeheartedly embraced the casual lifestyle, from clothes and music to fighting and organised crime.

The CCS produced some top, top boys. Names like Taylor, Girvan, Lynch, Welsh and ‘Fat’ McLeod will be familiar to anyone who has ever folded a Millwall brick. And then there is Andy Blance, author of the book
Hibs Boy: the Life and Violent Times of Scotland’s Most Notorious Football Hooligan
.
¹³
While some of the Hibs main faces (including Fat McLeod) would splinter off and join the Scottish National Firm in the late 1990s, Blance stayed loyal to the CCS. That loyalty steadied the ship and ensured that Hibs remained a leading player on the hooligan scene.

The CCS would do whatever it took to get to the top of the heap and stay there. After one of their lads, Raymie Morrell, was nearly kicked to death by Aberdeen they took revenge in the most spectacular way possible. They threw a petrol bomb at the ASC in the middle of Princes Street and, as Blance notes in
Hibs Boy
, they had also planned to petrol bomb the Aberdeen train as it left Waverley station, a manoeuvre that was detected just in time by the Old Bill. That is just one example of the extreme violence they were prepared to use in pursuit of their goals. You knew that anytime you faced them you had to be right at the top of your game.

One of my earliest memories of the CCS was the afternoon of the Skol Cup final at Hampden in season 1985/86. Rangers weren’t involved; it was a match-up between Hibs and Aberdeen. Hibs travelled through to Glasgow on the train, getting off at Queen Street and walking the short distance to Glasgow’s other mainline station, Central, to catch a train for the national stadium. To an ‘Under-Fives’ hooligan it was an awe-inspiring sight. It was one of the tidiest mobs I had ever seen. I reckon they must have numbered close to five hundred that day, every one of them dressed from top-to-toe in to-die-for gear. With a couple of my pals in tow we tracked them through the city centre, entranced by their style and their swagger.

They didn’t think as highly of us. We were wearing Paisley-pattern jumpers, which clearly didn’t impress our visitors from the east.

‘Where did you get those jumpers you Weegie cunts?’ they asked.

There were major battles that day, right across Glasgow, but we played no part. It was a day for Hibs and Aberdeen to enjoy. We were interested spectators, watching as two of Scotland’s top firms fought each other to a standstill on the streets of our city. It was magnificent to behold.

Seeing the CCS in its pomp had whetted my appetite. I was itching to take them down a peg or two. Despite what some people think it was never sectarian where Hibs were concerned. The Easter Road men may have formed the original Irish Catholic club in Scotland and in recent years – probably due to the James Connolly marches in Edinburgh – their fans have become more Republican in outlook. But that never applied to the CCS. They were game lads, dedicated to their club and to FV. We wanted to take them down because they were the top mob. It was out of respect for their achievements.

My only real beef with Hibs is their contention that Rangers always used tools and they, the wee souls, didn’t. That sticks in my craw. Andy Blance and his pal were jailed for attacking Dunfermline at the Kronk nightclub, and almost every CCS boy who was there that night was holding. Maybe a battle in the Gorbals in 1991 has also slipped their mind. I was in jail but I was told that in the course of a brutal encounter one of our boys got his ear sliced off. You can’t do that without a knife.

One of my first confrontations with the CCS didn’t coincide with a Rangers–Hibs game. In 1985/86 we were playing Hearts at Tynecastle in the Scottish Cup and I went through to the capital with a few boys in my own age group. We couldn’t get match tickets so we took a diversion to Princes Street, where we hoped to relieve some of the bigger stores of their choicest clothes. What we didn’t know was that the favourite haunt of the CCS was the former Wimpey bar at the east end of the street. We were happily strolling along, identifying the best shops to steal from, when, all of a sudden, we were pulled up by ten Hibs Baby Crew. They gave us the third degree. Where were we from? What were we doing there? Which team did we support?

We were outnumbered two to one and discretion being the better part of valour we tried to bluff our way out of a tense situation. I thought they were satisfied with our answers but one of them had clearly run out of patience.

‘It doesn’t matter who you are. You’re Weegie bastards. You shouldn’t be in this city.’

With that he cracked one of our lads in the face and from there it kicked off big time. We did our best to hold them but the disparity in numbers was just too great and we had to retreat. Bizarrely, me and one of my pals ended up in a shoe shop, where we threw an assortment of boots, shoes and sandals at our assailants. The shop staff, visibly upset, picked up the phone and dialled 999. Within a few minutes the cops were on the scene and they hauled the two of us into an old Tardis. For the second time in ten minutes we were asked the same questions. Where we were from? What were we doing there? Which team did we support? We explained that we couldn’t get tickets so we had decided to come into the city centre. The cops seemed happy with our answers and sent us on our way but not before giving us a rather strange piece of advice.

‘Let that be a lesson to you. The Hibs Baby Crew are no mugs and they won’t accept outsiders, especially Weegies, coming onto their turf.’

An officer of the law was happy that Hibs had attacked us! To most people what he said would have seemed strange. But the reason for his attitude I think is that many police forces across Scotland had grown tired of thousands of Old Firm fans turning up in their towns and cities and running riot. They were glad the boot was on the other foot, that it was Rangers and Celtic fans who were getting a hard time.

That was the Hibs baby crew but I soon found out just how formidable, and devious, their main mob could be. It was a Skol Cup semi-final in 1985/86 and we took healthy numbers with us on the train for the first leg at Easter Road. The game itself was a nightmare. It fucking pissed down all night and as we were getting drenched on an open terracing Rangers contrived to lose two-nil. There were many skirmishes inside the stadium but it was after the ref had blown for time up that things got really tasty. We were walking back to Waverley, surrounded by our fellow Rangers fans.

At least we thought they were Rangers fans.

We heard the chants of ‘CCS, CCS’ and before we could work out what was going on about fifty ‘Rangers’ fans were steaming in to us. Hibs were wearing Rangers colours and had taken us, and the Old Bill, completely by surprise. Once we had got our composure back it went off with a vengeance and there was some vicious close-in combat. The CCS got the best of it but we stuck to it and they didn’t run us. It was memorable for another reason. As I outlined in a previous chapter Barry Johnstone
used CS gas on Hibs but it blew back, almost knocking out a police horse. We watched in disbelief as the poor beast reared up violently, clearly disorientated after inhaling the gas.

Hibs came to our place for the second leg and I was again struck by their organisation and discipline. They were as cocky as ever, taking the tube to Copland Road station, where they knew they would be surrounded by tens of thousands of Rangers scarfers and casuals. The flash cunts also carried early examples of the mobile phone, those big half-brick jobs that are so reminiscent of the Eighties. There were verbals before and after the game but we couldn’t get near each other due to the large police presence.

It took us until 1987 to get a right result against the CCS. It was a league game at Ibrox and they were striding down Paisley Road West after the game, arrogant as ever. That was the cue for Rangers and a big mob of our lads attacked. I was actually on my way home on the bus when I saw it kicking off. I rang the bell and when the driver slowed down I leapt off the bus and ran to join the fray. By this time Hibs had been split into two groups and they were both under siege from hundreds of ICF. There were fights all over the street with boys going down and getting a right kicking. Some of the ICF lifted scaffolding poles from a nearby building site and were whacking the CCS with them. I will never forget the dull thuds as metal connected with muscle, knocking the Hibs boys clean off their feet in the process. We chased them all over Govan, the formerly invincible CCS. It was a real coup. The two mobs, even they would have to admit, were now on a par.

Our rivalry got even more intense. There was one afternoon in either 1989 or 1990 when the CCS took on, and ran, a small group of ICF in Govan. I wasn’t there and nor were most of our front-liners but we heard about it and were desperate to avenge what had happened. About twenty ICF drove to Edinburgh in five cars, every last man armed to the teeth. Some had knives; others carried baseball bats or coshes, while I was in possession of a Samurai sword. We cruised up Lothian Road, the heart of Edinburgh’s social scene, scouring nightclub after nightclub. We drew a blank. At club after club there was no sign of them, either that or the bouncers told us the ICF were barred. We even phoned some of their main faces but they wouldn’t come out. Just as well. Those weapons weren’t for show. It would have been a bloodbath.