Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang (15 page)

In terms of their mob, I have always found them to be something of an enigma. In the pre-casual days they had the most formidable hooligan gang in Scotland, the feared Gorgie Aggro, which was made up of skins and bovver boys. I remember my brother Christopher coming home from Tynecastle and telling me about fights with the Aggro. It was one of the few places Rangers were met with any resistance in those days.

It is therefore surprising that Hearts didn’t become major players when the casual scene got into full swing. They had a mob, the Capital Service Firm, but many of them went over to Hibs, their deadly rivals, and became part of the much bigger and more formidable Capital City Service. Despite their difficulties the CSF still had a reasonable mob and we had quite a few offs with them. That may surprise some people, given that Rangers and Hearts are supposedly Protestant clubs, but football is very territorial. Tynecastle has always been an unlucky ground for me and I got hurt there several times. The first incident was in 1985/86, the season that Hearts were pipped to the title by Celtic on goal difference. I was part of a group of Rangers Soccer Babes and before the game we plotted up in Gorgie Road, close to the Wheatsheaf stand. We ran into Hearts youth and after some pretty nifty fisticuffs backed them off to their own stand. It was still early, so early that there were hardly any scarfers around.

After hostilities had ended we were trooping back to Gorgie Road to meet up with the main mob when I, being a mouthy so-and-so, held back to goad the Hearts boys for running away. I was so busy giving them pelters that I didn’t notice one of the guys we had chased flanking me on my right-hand side. Before I knew it he punched me on the back of my head and knocked me to the ground. Within seconds six of his mates jumped on and started to kick fuck out of me. I remember lying on the ground trying to fend off kicks and punches and shouting for handers from the rest of our mob. The force of their blows got ever stronger and it got even scarier when one of them shouted: ‘Hold the Weegie bastard and we’ll stab him.’

I took this threat very seriously because given the rate they were going they probably would have ended up killing me using just their feet and hands. Thank fuck that someone in the ICF saw what was happening and alerted the rest of the firm. They ran back to help, and not a moment too soon either because I really thought I was going to get a knife in the guts. It was two valuable lessons for the price of one: don’t take the piss, and always expect the unexpected. In the end I walked away with just cuts and bruises but thanks to my big mouth it could have been so much worse.

Later in the Eighties we were again in Gorgie Road, this time in a swing park, with about ten other ICF and RSB. We weren’t able to get match tickets so we were larking about on the swings waiting for the game to end so that we could walk back to Haymarket station with the rest of the mob. From out of nowhere we were confronted by twenty CSF and although we were well outnumbered we had nowhere to run. The only option was to stand and fight. I have to say that we gave as good as we got, despite them having twice as many boys. I was in the wars again and ended up with a really sore ear after some cunt hit me with a Millwall brick. No wonder I think of Gorgie Road as my unluckiest street.

In the Eighties the walk from Haymarket to Gorgie could be tasty but from about 1990 onwards the relationship between the two mobs became more cordial, with the two youth wings forging a particularly close friendship. The CSF have some great lads on board: the T brothers; Gags; Davie E; Young Claye and his youth firm – all of whom joined us in the Scottish National Firm. The problem for the CSF as an independent mob was that the Hearts support never embraced the casual
culture in a big way and, in consequence, they were dominated by their city rivals. Much the same thing happened in Glasgow, where we have lorded it over Celtic for years.

I am proud to be British and I never want to see any of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom break away. Such is my passion for this great country of ours that as a young hooligan I always tried to wear Union Jack boxer shorts, T-shirts and socks, and if it wasn’t Union Jack gear I would don clothes with the Red Hand of Ulster logo prominently displayed. My choice of outfit was always a great source of amusement for the older boys in the ICF. In fact it led to Harky giving me the nickname Billy Britain, and it is one that has stuck with me to this day.

Given our strong sense of Britishness, fans of other Scottish clubs claim that the ICF joined up with the English national team’s firm to fight Scotland fans. That is crap. We are Scottish and British, not English and British. While we have nothing but contempt for the Tartan Army bampots who denigrate the idea of British identity that does not mean we put England above Scotland. In fact some of the most vicious football violence I have ever taken part in involved Rangers ICF members fighting the English national firm.

My first experience of the England mob came in 1985. I was twelve and a Rangers Soccer Babe, just starting out on the great hooligan adventure. They came up to Glasgow for the Scotland–England game that year and again in 1987. I was in awe. There were just so many of them, and they were almost all massive beer monsters. The England lads had been making headlines all over Europe and when I saw them, and the way they took the piss on the streets of Glasgow, I understood why.

I went down to Wembley in 1988 for the England–Scotland fixture with an old school pal from Shettleston. We travelled by coach on the Friday morning, one out of a convoy of hundreds that clogged up the M6 and then the M1. My mum and my aunt were also on the coach, which made the journey slightly bizarre. They weren’t going to the game; their intention was to go shopping on Oxford Street and no doubt to keep an
eye on me. We arrived about two in the afternoon and were taken to our hotel in Piccadilly Circus, after which we did the whole London tourist thing.

The next morning me and my pal headed for Trafalgar Square where we ran into a few boys we knew from Blackley’s Baby Crew. They had come down with the main mob, the CCS, and I would guess there were about three hundred Hibs there altogether. We didn’t get any grief from the Hibs boys and in fact we walked with them the rest of the way. En route the CCS had it with Leeds and then Chelsea and they gave a good account of themselves. At Trafalgar Square it was fucking chaos. There were thousands of Scots milling around, most of them drunk, and fights were kicking off all over the shop with the many English firms who had come along for the fun.

We got the tube to the game and as we were walking up Wembley Way I realised just how special the place is. Wembley is steeped in tradition. But there was another great tradition about to be played out: all-out warfare between England and Scotland. The atmosphere was tense, especially after what had gone off at Trafalgar Square. This time I was desperate to be part of it.

In the stadium I had hoped to be alongside the CCS and those ICF boys, including Harky, who had travelled down. So you can imagine my disappointment when I found myself in the upper tier behind one of the goals, sixty feet above Scotland’s top hooligans, who were congregated in the lower tier. It didn’t take long for it to go off. Hibs had a massive presence and ably assisted by elements of the ICF they steamed into England. It was a magnificent sight to behold and the Scots fought like lions. I was desperate to get into the fight and eventually I managed to scramble down into the bottom tier but by the time I got there the Old Bill had things well under control.

After the game, boys from every major Scottish firm – Hibs, Aberdeen, Rangers, Hearts, Celtic – mobbed up and went looking for England. There were skirmishes all over the place, with mounted police charging both sets of hooligans. I was in a group that chased some England into a multi-storey car park and we had a memorable set-to, which ended with one of their boys being thrown off a stairwell on the second floor. He was hurt but not, as I found out later, critically. The fighting continued all the way to the tube station until the cops managed to squeeze us onto trains for the city centre.

Scotland more than held its own at Wembley (off the pitch at least) and it gave us a lot of confidence for the next game with England, which of course would be the following year at Hampden. That turned out to be the most memorable Auld Enemy encounter of them all, one that led to questions in Parliament and calls for the fixture to be scrapped.

To say that the 1989 Scotland–England game was eagerly anticipated by mobs north of the border would be an understatement. Everyone was buzzing; everyone wanted a slice of the action. There would be no repeat of what happened in either 1985 or 1987 when the English had wreaked havoc without any real response from us. This time it would be different. We were two years older, we were better organised and our club mobs were more formidable, even if some of them had their own agendas while they were fighting under a Scottish banner.

On the day of the game I travelled into the city centre by taxi, heading for Minstrels bar, which is opposite where the Riverboat casino is today. On the way in I noticed that along with the massive police presence there were huge mobs of England roaming the streets. Their body language left me in no doubt that every last one of them was looking to spill Scottish blood. We would have to be at our very best if we were to stand any chance of competing with that lot.

When I got to Minstrels I was delighted to see that upwards of two hundred ICF were out. We also knew that Hibs would be fielding at least two hundred and that Aberdeen would have about the same. Nor did the other clubs let us down. The Utility was out in force and so too were our provincial colleagues from Motherwell, St Johnstone, Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock. The common denominator that day was that no cunt wanted England to take the piss. I was tooled up. I had a spring cosh in my pocket and most of the ICF were also carrying a weapon of some description. There was no alternative. We knew that the English boys rarely left home without a tool and that they were not afraid to use them.

We left Minstrels and made our way up Hope Street. Almost immediately, at the junction with Argyle Street, we were confronted by a huge mob of Derby County. I was immediately struck by how old they were; I was sixteen but some of them were old enough to be my father. It didn’t faze us. The roar of ‘ICCF, ICCF’ went up and we charged. Drawing my cosh I was confronted by this fat fuck, thirty-five if he was a day. I bounced the cosh off his skull but it must have been a cheap one because it broke into little pieces, leaving me to rely on my fists and feet.

By this time hundreds more England had appeared and they split us into two smaller groups. I was in a group that got backed off to the railway arches and although they were getting the upper hand we were giving everything we had. The Old Bill were doing their best to break it up but their job was rendered nigh impossible as more and more mobs appeared. To our right we were flanked by one hundred and fifty Newcastle and in the confusion I remember steaming into them as well. My run-in with the Geordies didn’t last long because out of nowhere a brick shithouse of a cop grabbed me by the ear, wrestled me to the ground and stuck on a pair of handcuffs.

‘Fuck off. My day is over,’ I thought as I was thrown into the back of a police van with a group of England. There were dozens of these vans in the city, and they were quickly being filled up with boys from both sides. I thought I would be taken to the nearest station and charged but I was to spend four hours in the back of that particular vehicle. The cops were too busy lifting people to take us anywhere and the only consolation for me was that as the van sped from one trouble spot to another I got a great view of some of the best FV in the history of the beautiful game.

Jamaica Bridge was typical. I watched open mouthed as Harky and Christie, with the assistance of a few Rangers Soccer Babes, backed off twenty of Stoke’s Naughty Forty crew. I was so proud of their bravery and their fighting spirit. They were outstanding that day; it was in the best traditions of Rangers and the ICF. When we got to Eglinton Toll, which is not far from Hampden, there was an almighty tussle between two hundred Hibs and the same number of English outside a petrol station. I was very impressed by the way the CCS boys handled themselves and I said as much to one of the Dykes boys when he was arrested and bundled into the van.

Finally, the cops took us to Stewart Street police station and on the way there we were joshing the English about what they could expect in Barlinnie prison. ‘You’re going to the BarL boys. You’ll get your back doors booted in there,’ we chortled, using a well-known euphemism for anal sex. Some of them were fucking shiting themselves; you could see the fear etched across their faces. They were well aware of Barlinnie and its fearsome reputation and taken out of their comfort zone some of them weren’t as tough as they thought.

Inside Stewart Street it was a real Who’s Who of football thugs. The place was awash with leading faces from every corner of the United Kingdom. They kept me in a cell overnight and the next day, at five in the
afternoon, I was released. I was well pissed off. Not only had I sat out most of the FV but I had now also missed a league decider between Rangers Boys Club and our bitter rivals, St Mary’s Guild, a Roman Catholic team (the good news was that the game finished in a draw, which meant we won the league).

In the Sheriff Court on the Monday morning I got a £75 fine, which was paltry by the usual standards. But I did get a double bollocking: one from my mum and the other from my team manager at the Boy’s Club. It was becoming apparent to me that I was a much better football hooligan than I was a footballer!

The media reaction to that game was something to behold, and no wonder. There were more than two hundred and fifty arrests, dozens of people were seriously injured and taken to hospital while pubs, shops and restaurants got trashed. The Sheriff Court was so busy that a special thirteen-hour sitting was necessary to deal with the sheer volume of cases. More than £11,000-worth of fines were imposed for offences ranging from breach of the peace to assault.