Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang (3 page)

School could have been my passport out of the east end but not when it was run by Glasgow Corporation. My first alma mater was Thomson Street primary school, a dilapidated, red-sandstone heap and, I believe, the oldest school in the city. Despite its many deficiencies I was delighted to be there not just for the company of the other kids but also because I was a pretty able student and was regularly in the top three in the class. I was particularly good at English and I recall that an early ambition was to become a football reporter, to which end I would compose little stories about my exploits on the pitch.

The main problem at Thomson Street wasn’t the age of the school or my fellow pupils. It was our teachers. There might have been one or two good ones but to me most of them didn’t give a fuck. It was a chore for them even to turn up and an even bigger chore for them to teach us. They were going through the motions. I had my own, very personal problems to contend with. When I was in primary six, Mum met the love of her life, Tom, and although I now consider him to be my father I resented him at the time. As a result my behaviour at school became disruptive; I got lippy with the teachers, threw my schoolbooks around the class and played truant on a regular basis. The inevitable suspensions followed.

Worse was to follow. One day in class I was swinging a desk on my feet when the teacher slammed her hands down on the lid. My feet were squashed but instead of saying ‘That’s no’ fair miss,’ as most of my classmates would have done, I picked the desk up and threw it at her. I missed by inches but it was enough for me to receive the ultimate punishment: expulsion. In my six weeks away from school I was referred to a child psychologist, which seemed to calm me down and after that my classroom behaviour improved.

The same couldn’t be said for my life outside of school. By the time I arrived in primary seven I was already a prolific shoplifter. One of my favourite haunts was the toy department of Fraser’s store in Buchanan
Street, from which I stole huge numbers of those little Corgi cars. I was bound to get caught and sure enough on an expedition to What Every Woman Wants I was picked up by store detectives and handed over to the police. I was referred to the children’s panel and placed on a supervision order. Mum was worried sick but she knew it was a phase I was going through, a youthful rebellion against the arrival of Tom. As I said we are like father and son now but it took me years to accept him.

Fights were a daily occurrence at Thomson Street, as they were on the streets of the east end, and it was at this time that my readiness to take on all-comers became evident. I am not the biggest but that was never a disadvantage. In fact I think my lack of stature was an advantage by forcing me to stand up for myself. My personality also helped. I try never to back down, no matter who I am up against. I also discovered that verbal aggression from someone my size has a huge impact on potential opponents because they just don’t expect it from someone who is smaller than they are. I must have been in a scrap every other day, mainly with guys my own age. I would say I won about half of them, which is a decent batting average considering my size. I didn’t care about the punishments until one day in a final attempt to stop me fighting the teachers pulled the Thomson Street team out of an inter-schools tournament. The decision punished everyone and it was designed to bring home to me that I was letting my teammates down as well as myself. As a member of the team, and a football fanatic, it hurt.

It certainly helped me when I made the step up to Whitehill secondary school in 1984.
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I was looking forward to going there, not least because on a tour of the school while I was still in primary I noticed two lovely-looking girls. ‘That will do me,’ I thought. The reality of life at Whitehill however was very different.

The first problem was my blazer or should I say my sister’s cast-off blazer, which I inherited. I didn’t want to wear the fucking thing but Mum insisted. It was twelve years old and really looked its age. I knew the minute I walked through the school gates for the first time that I would get the pish ripped out of me. And so it proved. On my first day I ended up battering a loudmouth who wouldn’t stop going on about it. After that I hid the blazer in bushes on my way to school and picked it up again when I was walking home.

The second thing I had to deal with was the extreme levels of violence, which came from both inside and outside the school. The boys in second year saw the new intake as easy meat and picked on us from day one. You had to stick up for yourself or your life would become unbearable, although sometimes the odds were just too great no matter how brave you were. I vividly remember being chased for two miles round the Powery area of the east end by a mob of second years wielding coshes and wooden hammers. Luckily for me I gave them the slip and by the time school came around again they had moved on to another target.

Whitehill only really came together when we were faced with a threat from outsiders. In our case it came from the pupils at St Mungo’s, a Roman Catholic school that was also in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow and less than a mile from Whitehill. That is the Catholic Church for you, creating divisions wherever it can, separating children from the same estate, the same street, the same block. It started at the age of five and I will always remember my Catholic pals from Gallowgate trooping off to St Ann’s while I went off in the other direction to Thomson Street. There is no need for it; quite simply it is a form of apartheid. On their way to and from school the St Mungo boys would shout ‘dirty, smelly, Orange bastards’ at us while we would reply with ‘dirty Fenian bastards’. Fights were an everyday occurrence, made more vicious by sectarian hatred.

That was life in an east-end school. And just like at primary school most of the teachers, it seemed to me, couldn’t have cared less about helping us to fulfil our potential. The gym teacher did his best to keep me and my pals in line and gave us what Sir Alex Ferguson later made famous as the ‘hair-dryer’ treatment. My geography teacher realised that I had ability and encouraged me but the rest in my opinion were a waste of space. It was more about childminding than education. Given proper encouragement I could have passed a lot more exams than I did but it wasn’t to be.

I was inspired by my brother’s stories about the violence he was experiencing as a Rangers fan. Christopher had attended the infamous Scottish Cup final of 1980 when both sets of Old Firm fans invaded the Hampden pitch at the end of the game and engaged in running battles. At the age of eight I watched the television pictures of the fights and felt contrasting emotions; worried for my brother but exhilarated by the violence. He followed Rangers all over Scotland and would come back with tales of how the light-blue legions would dominate the towns and cities they visited, rubbing the locals’ noses in it in the process.
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But that was old-fashioned stuff: scarfers getting pissed up and running amok; there was no planning, no organisation. There was a new phenomenon in the world of football hooliganism: the casual. The word ‘casual’ was now becoming well known to the media and football fans in Scotland, thanks to the mass outbreak of trouble at a Motherwell–Aberdeen game in the early Eighties, when scores of smartly dressed young hooligans fought each other on the Fir Park terracing.

By this time my Celtic-supporting days had been over for a couple of years and I was now a regular at Ibrox. It was 1983 and although in those pre-Souness days Rangers were rubbish on the pitch I found the terracing fashions inspirational. More than anything else it was shame that made me a football hooligan. When I was growing up, families like ours were given clothing grants and when Mum got ours she would buy me Y cardigans, polyester shirts and waffle trousers. The naffest clothes known to man. It didn’t matter that every other working-class Glaswegian was wearing
them; they still made me self-conscious, as they did all self-respecting twelve-year-olds.

What a contrast with the fashions sported at Ibrox. Boys just a little older than me had wedge haircuts, and wore Adidas Trim Trab trainers, Lois jeans and Lyle and Scott shirts. Some guys, those with a few quid to spend, had Ellesse tracksuits as well as the latest gear by Segio Tacchini and Fila. Others adopted fashions from American sports, with Rangers fans wearing the blue colours favoured by the New York Rangers or New York Jets, providing a clear contrast to Celtic fans with their green Miami Dolphins outfits.

The Rangers casuals, the Inter City Firm, led by guys like Barry Johnstone
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, had come into existence by 1984. I was desperate to join but the problem was my age. The older boys didn’t want a thirteen-year-old hanging around cramping their style and they told me in no uncertain terms where to go. Desperate to get a foothold in the new, exciting world of football violence some of my like-minded pals and I set up the Rangers Soccer Babes. It wasn’t long before we were called into action.

Hearts were our first opponents. One Saturday in 1985 their main mob, the Capital Service Firm, was in Glasgow city centre, on their way to Central station to catch a train to Paisley. Never ones to let a promising shoplifting opportunity pass them by Hearts cruised down Buchanan Street looking for opportunities to plunder the fashionable shops that line both sides of Glasgow’s most exclusive shopping destination. About twenty Rangers Soccer Babes, including me, were outside Fraser’s department store when we heard the unmistakeable hiss of ‘CSF, CSF’. No hesitation, we steamed in. As bottles flew in both directions the two mobs came together, scattering terrified Saturday-afternoon shoppers all over the place. The CSF initially got the better of it and pushed us back but we quickly regrouped and chased them down Buchanan Street and under the Hielanman’s Umbrella in nearby Argyle Street.

I was exhilarated. It was my first experience of FV and the adrenalin rush was incredible. I had never experienced anything like it and I am sure everyone who has ever been involved in the scene will back me up. Drugs, sex, alcohol; nothing comes close. I prayed that my next fix would not be long in coming.

Our main opponents were the Celtic Soccer Babes, no surprise there. Although I only ever rated the main Celtic mob, the Celtic Soccer Casuals, for a season or two their baby offshoot was a different kettle of fish. For a start it was bigger than our baby crew, and vicious with it. I discovered just how vicious before an Old Firm game at Celtic Park in 1985. Seven of us were standing outside Greaves sports shop in Gordon Street, talking to two boys who had come up from Leeds to savour the Old Firm experience. We spotted two Celtic Soccer Babes and verbals were exchanged. I thought to myself, ‘These cunts can’t be out on their own,’ and no sooner had the thought gone through my mind than forty of them came charging round the corner. We scattered; we had no chance. Forty against seven doesn’t compute, which just goes to show that we all have to run some time despite what some so-called hooligans claim in their books.

With the rest of the boys I sprinted down Mitchell Lane towards Argyle Street but Celtic caught up with me. I did my best to resist but was quickly knocked to the ground. That pack of wolves didn’t need to be asked twice. They were all over me, pushing each other aside to kick, punch and stamp all over my body. I put my hands over my head but the blows kept raining down. One well-directed kick caught me on the nose, splitting it wide open and splattering my assailant’s trainer in blood. I fell in and out of consciousness, one thought flashing through my mind.

‘I am going to die, right here in the middle of Glasgow, in my city, in my home.’

And then salvation came from the unlikeliest of sources. A passing Good Samaritan saw what was happening and shouted:

‘Enough is enough.’

He was wearing a Celtic scarf and that was probably what saved my life. It gave him a degree of moral authority with the CSB lads and they reluctantly backed off. The Celtic scarfer helped me to my feet and I was able to stagger off and rejoin my pals.

Having taken a beating like that some people might have walked away from the hooligan scene, never to return. Not me. It didn’t put me off for a second; all it did was to intensify my hatred for all things Celtic, a hatred that became even more pronounced the next time I ran into the Celtic Soccer Babes in the city centre. A few months later I was walking along the Trongate, heading for one of my many hearings at the Children’s Panel. I had stopped to look in a shop window when I felt a hand on my shoulder:

‘Excuse me mate.’

I turned round to find six CSB surrounding me. I tried to throw a punch but they set about me, leaving me with a bloodied nose and boot marks on my clothes. ‘This will make a good impression on the panel,’ I thought as I made for the nearest toilet to clean myself up.

I had by now fully embraced the casual and gang cultures, and everything that goes with that way of life. I was desperate to look the part but not having the means to buy the gear I wanted there was only one alternative: shoplifting. An early expedition came one Christmas Eve in the mid Eighties. I had had my eye on an Aquascutum shirt in Fraser’s for some time and when the shop was jam-packed with people buying presents I took my chance and stuffed it up my jacket. Although it was a woman’s shirt and the buttons went the wrong way I thought I was the coolest guy ever with that shirt on. After that stealing from shops became a way of life. That’s how I got most of my clothes and, so that Mum wouldn’t worry, I told her I had bought them from a shoplifter. I even sold her clothes I had nicked and gave her the same cock-and-bull story. Being part of a big firm helped in the shoplifting game. About forty of us would charge in, so ensuring that the security staff couldn’t lock us in, and then lift as much as possible before scarpering. We were particularly fond of our expeditions to the upmarket boutiques of Edinburgh, where there was also much less chance that we would be recognised.

Fighting was not confined either to match days or to other groups of casuals. The Rangers Soccer Babes was made up mostly of guys from the east end of Glasgow and we spawned two offshoots in that area: the East End Firm and the Duke Street Firm, both of which were largely, but not exclusively, made up of Rangers casuals. A favourite haunt was McKinlay’s nightclub in Shettleston, where we would attend the under-eighteen disco. The first time we went there was to give our pals from Shettleston a hand against a gang from Tollcross with a truly wonderful name: the Tollcross Wee Men. During the disco, one of our guys got it on with a Wee Man and the whole place went up in a full-scale, thirty-a-side rammy. I picked up a chair and brained the nearest Tollcross boy with it but in return got a blow to the head with another chair.