"Some time ago, I came home from Wales by train. The station was a village station just outside Cardiff, and I arrived early. I bought a cup of tea. It was a cold Saturday evening, and only three or four other passengers were on the platform. A man was reading a newspaper, rocking back and forth on his feet. We waited, and there was an announcement on the loudspeaker about an unscheduled train. A little later, there was another announcement: the unscheduled train was about to appear, and everyone was to stand ten feet from the edge of the platform. It was an unusual instruction, and the man with the newspaper raised an eyebrow. Perhaps, I thought, it was a military train of some kind. A few minutes later, police appeared, emerging from the stairs nearby.
The train was a football special, and it had been taken over by supporters. They were from Liverpool, and there were hundreds of them - I had never seen a train with so many people inside - and they were singing in unison: 'Liverpool, la-la-la, Liverpool, la-la-la.' The words look silly now, but they did not sound silly. A minute before there had been virtual silence: a misty, sleepy Welsh winter evening. And then this song, pounded out with increasing ferocity, echoing off the walls of the station. A guard had been injured, and ass soon as the train stopped he was rushed off, holding his face. Someone inside was trying to smash a window with a table leg, but the window wouldn't break. A fat man with a red face stumbled out of one of the carriages, and six policemen rushed up to him, wrestled him to the ground and bent his arm violently behind his back. The police were over-reacting - the train was so packed that the fat man had popped out of an open door - but the police were frightened. For that matter, I was frightened (I remember my arms folded stupidly across my chest), as was everyone else on the platform. It was peculiar: I was at a railway station where everyone around me spoke Welsh; I was there to catch a train: then this sudden display. I thought that it was intended for us, that this violent chant was a way of telling us that they, the supporters, were in the position to do anything they wanted.
The train left. It was silent.
I got home at one-thirty in the morning, and the country seemed to consist of a long cordon of police. At Paddington Station two hundred officers were waiting to escort everyone from the platform to the Underground. I changed trains four times; three were taken over by supporters. One was torn apart: the seats had been ripped out, and the bar, which had been closed beforehand, was broken up, its metal shutter-door split into pieces and drink handed out to anyone who walked past. I did not know what was more surprising, the destructiveness, which was gratuitous and relentless, or that, with so many police, no one seemed able to stop it: it just went on. Hoping to avoid trouble, I sat in a first-class carriage at the very front of one train, opposite a man who had paid for his first-class ticket. He was a slim elegant man with a thin moustache, wearing a woollen suit and expensive, shiny shoes: a civilized sort of fellow reading a civilized sort of book - a hardback novel with a dust-jacket. A supporter had been staring at him for a long time. The supporter was drunk. Every now and then, he lit a match and threw it at the civilized man's shiny shoes, hoping to set his trousers on fire. The civilized man ignored him, but the supporter, puffy and bloodshot persisted. It was a telling image: one of the disfranchised, flouting the codes of civilized conduct, casually setting a member of a more privileged class alight.
It was obvious that the violence was a protest. It made sense that it would be: that football matches were providing an outlet for frustrations of a powerful nature. So many young people were out of work or had never been able to find any. The violence, it followed, was a rebellion of some kind - social rebellion, class rebellion, something. I wanted to know more. I had read about the violence and, to the extent that I thought about it, had assumed that it was an isolated thing or mysterious in the way that crowd violence is meant to be mysterious: unpredictable, spontaneous, the mob. My journey from Wales suggested that it might be more intended, more willed. It offered up a vision of the English Saturday, the shopping day, that was a different one I had known: that in towns and cities, you might find hundreds of police, military in the comprehensiveness, out to contain young, male sports fans who, after attending an athletic contest, were determined to break or destroy things that were in their way. It was hard to believe."
The train was a football special, and it had been taken over by supporters. They were from Liverpool, and there were hundreds of them - I had never seen a train with so many people inside - and they were singing in unison: 'Liverpool, la-la-la, Liverpool, la-la-la.' The words look silly now, but they did not sound silly. A minute before there had been virtual silence: a misty, sleepy Welsh winter evening. And then this song, pounded out with increasing ferocity, echoing off the walls of the station. A guard had been injured, and ass soon as the train stopped he was rushed off, holding his face. Someone inside was trying to smash a window with a table leg, but the window wouldn't break. A fat man with a red face stumbled out of one of the carriages, and six policemen rushed up to him, wrestled him to the ground and bent his arm violently behind his back. The police were over-reacting - the train was so packed that the fat man had popped out of an open door - but the police were frightened. For that matter, I was frightened (I remember my arms folded stupidly across my chest), as was everyone else on the platform. It was peculiar: I was at a railway station where everyone around me spoke Welsh; I was there to catch a train: then this sudden display. I thought that it was intended for us, that this violent chant was a way of telling us that they, the supporters, were in the position to do anything they wanted.
The train left. It was silent.
I got home at one-thirty in the morning, and the country seemed to consist of a long cordon of police. At Paddington Station two hundred officers were waiting to escort everyone from the platform to the Underground. I changed trains four times; three were taken over by supporters. One was torn apart: the seats had been ripped out, and the bar, which had been closed beforehand, was broken up, its metal shutter-door split into pieces and drink handed out to anyone who walked past. I did not know what was more surprising, the destructiveness, which was gratuitous and relentless, or that, with so many police, no one seemed able to stop it: it just went on. Hoping to avoid trouble, I sat in a first-class carriage at the very front of one train, opposite a man who had paid for his first-class ticket. He was a slim elegant man with a thin moustache, wearing a woollen suit and expensive, shiny shoes: a civilized sort of fellow reading a civilized sort of book - a hardback novel with a dust-jacket. A supporter had been staring at him for a long time. The supporter was drunk. Every now and then, he lit a match and threw it at the civilized man's shiny shoes, hoping to set his trousers on fire. The civilized man ignored him, but the supporter, puffy and bloodshot persisted. It was a telling image: one of the disfranchised, flouting the codes of civilized conduct, casually setting a member of a more privileged class alight.
It was obvious that the violence was a protest. It made sense that it would be: that football matches were providing an outlet for frustrations of a powerful nature. So many young people were out of work or had never been able to find any. The violence, it followed, was a rebellion of some kind - social rebellion, class rebellion, something. I wanted to know more. I had read about the violence and, to the extent that I thought about it, had assumed that it was an isolated thing or mysterious in the way that crowd violence is meant to be mysterious: unpredictable, spontaneous, the mob. My journey from Wales suggested that it might be more intended, more willed. It offered up a vision of the English Saturday, the shopping day, that was a different one I had known: that in towns and cities, you might find hundreds of police, military in the comprehensiveness, out to contain young, male sports fans who, after attending an athletic contest, were determined to break or destroy things that were in their way. It was hard to believe."
machasha:
I was once travelling from south england to the Midlands....by coach. On this coach was a school football team (Welsh) they spent most of the travel singing songs by the Bee Gee's in Welsh. It was really...enjoyable.