The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books)

by Robin Barratt

George’s defence failed and he got three months for violent disorder. Rodney Rhoden, who was sixteen at the time and who jumped on a United fan’s head as he lay on the floor, pleaded guilty and was sent to a young offenders’ institution for six months. The video was later seen by millions when it was shown on national TV news.

  Things went from bad to worse. On 15 April, ninety-four Liverpool fans died in a crush in the Leppings Lane enclosure at Hillsborough in Sheffield. The whole world was shocked and there we were about to go on trial a week later for football violence. We were fucked. By now, I was also much better acquainted with the evidence against me. It was pretty damning. At West Brom, I was caught clearly on camera having a punch-up with a couple of guys in their end. You could see me against a barrier getting caught briefly and them whacking me. Then we’re on the pitch all going, “City, City” like a lithe mad army, about twenty of us, and the police take us into our own end.

  Another example was a home night match against Middlesbrough. I had been getting some chips and someone smacked me on the jaw. These Middlesbrough fans had parked their van up and jumped out and we had a little kick-off. I kung-fu’d one of them in the face on the forecourt outside the ticket office. As the rest of them rushed me, I slipped and got a bit of a kicking. I read the coppers’ version of this in their statements and it was absolutely spot on; they must have been right there. Although none of them had actually got to know me personally, they had clearly come pretty close.

  I was concerned, though, that if I went guilty, the next person down would then be named as the main man. That meant our Chris would have been labelled the Guvnor or, if he pleaded guilty, it could have been Dave Foulkes, or Martin Townsend, or Adrian Gunning. Then they would have been hit the hardest. If you looked at the charges, in that particular season I only went to twelve games. I only picked the games I wanted to go to. But they were more or less making out that every time it kicked off, it was down to me. The Guvnors were 100–150 strong but they picked a few of us, who they thought were the main players, and a few younger lads. I didn’t even go to every game but they depicted me as being a figurehead: older than everyone else, a long criminal record, a reputation, a bit of a hothead. They said, “It’s got to be down to him, so make him the leader.”

  That was when I got the little lecture off my barrister, who was actually very good, spelling out exactly what I was facing. Seven or eight years sounded an awful long time to risk for a not guilty plea, especially as I was guilty as hell. I knew there would be little point in carrying on once the jury had seen me brawling on video. My main question became, not whether or not I was going to be convicted, but what sentence I faced. I knew I was looking at a long term because football violence was such an issue in the media and in Parliament. Everyone was saying, “Mickey, it’s looking like you’re the main man, you’re getting slammed with it.”

  Fuck it. I changed my plea to guilty and so did most of the others.

  On 24 April, twenty-six of us appeared before Liverpool Crown Court. Twenty-one pleaded guilty but five went not guilty on the conspiracy to riot and cause violent disorder: Adrian Gunning, aged eighteen, Dave Foulkes, twenty-five, Andrew Bennion, twenty-one, David Goodall, twenty-three, and Ian Valentine, twenty-six.

  The prosecutor, David Sumner, opened the case. He said the Guvnors and Young Guvnors had about thirty key members. He went on, “There existed a hard core of people associated with this club whose sole purpose was violence for violence’s sake – recreational violence. If they were meeting another particularly notorious group like Leeds it would attract them to a near organizational frenzy. They would put other member under maximum pressure to attend the games and swell their numbers.”

  Some of the gang never even went to the match at home games, he said.

  “They adjourned to a public house and assembled again shortly after the whistle. Their purpose was to attack, intimidate and terrorise.”

  He said an undercover police operation against us was launched in August 1987, using officers for a specially trained unit codenamed Omega.

  Then one of the covert officers, referred to by the pseudonym Mr Henry in court, gave evidence from behind the screen. He claimed he was running with us for seven months going to away matches and sometimes acting as a van driver after being accepted. He said that as part of Operation Omega, he and three other detectives took on new identities, with disguises and fictional names and addresses. After each match they would return to a “safe house” to write their reports. They also used codenames for their targets: Gunning was Alpha, Foulkes was Nobby, Valentine was Heron and Goodall was Duck.

  As well as trotting out the line about the Young Guvnors acting as spotter at railway stations and reporting back to us, he also said some of them, described as “baby-faced” and aged between fourteen and twenty, would position themselves next to police officers to listen in to radio messages, allowing them to find out the movement of opposing fans and so work out the best place for an attack. He said they would also watch any spectator who reacted to an opposition goal, marking him out for treatment.

  The newspapers were taking a big interest. This was the Daily Mirror:

  VIOLENT WORLD OF THE SOCCER GUVNORS

  A gang of soccer thugs plotted vicious fights with rival supporters like a company ran its business, a court heard yesterday.

  The gang, attached to Second Division Manchester City, had two branches, the Guvnors and the Young Guvnors, Liverpool Crown Court was told.

  It was alleged that they;

  Marshalled like an army, using scouts to watch the movements of rival fans;

  Remained anonymous by hiding their faces from monitor cameras at grounds;

  Grouped ready for attacks in pubs without seeing a second of any soccer match.

  The gang was finally smashed by undercover detectives who penetrated the secret world.

  And so on. Tempers occasionally boiled over. The Manchester Evening News was snatching pictures of everyone going in or out of the court and Adrian Gunning, who was a top lad in the Young Guvnors, lost his rag. He told the photographer to hand over his film, tried to smash his camera and apparently threatened to slit his throat. The photographer reported it to the judge, although he didn’t name Adrian. The judge said he was “outraged” and said anyone else who threatened the press, who were there to report the case for the public, would be remanded until it was over. He gave a little speech, saying, “In any democracy the Press are the lamps which show justice is living. They are welcome in this court. If anyone approaches the Press they will have the full rigours of the law brought down by me. If I have a hint of it happening again, substantive periods of imprisonment will be imposed.”

  So Adrian was told to keep his fucking mouth shut because no one wanted to go back inside. According to a report of the trial in the Sun, the Young Guvnors lingered unobtrusively at railway stations to identify rival supporters to be battered in an operation of military style efficiency. The teenage “scouts” pretended to read timetables or newspapers and did not contact each other as they kept watch. Their reconnaissance was crucial to the Guvnors’ campaign of violence because fans from other cities often did not wear team colours and had to be picked out by their accents.

  For good measure, the prosecutor also said we had threatened the former United star Paddy Crerand at his pub in Altrincham. The boozer had been wrecked by a mob of City boys one night.

  It was put over as though we were a huge, highly-organized army with everyone doing exactly as they were directed. All the stuff they raked up about us having generals and lieutenants and intelligence units was a load of bollocks. You just go to the match with your boys and if it kicks, it kicks. Rarely is anyone badly hurt.

  The jury watched a film made by a police cameraman of two Leeds fans being attacked outside Maine Road. After a bit more of this treatment, four of the remaining five saw the writing on the wall and changed their pleas to guilty. Ian Valentine stayed not guilty and had all the charges dropped. M
aybe we should have all done that – who knows? Many of the other hooligan cases around that time fell apart. Maybe ours would have too, but a lot of us, including myself, were frightened off by looking at seven or eight years in prison. Plus I was bang to rights on camera, there was no escaping that. The four new guilty pleas were adjourned to join the rest of us for sentence until 5 June, pending social inquiry reports.

  The day of reckoning finally arrives. David Summer reprises the case. He lays it on with a trowel. He even says that one of the undercover detectives was so stressed out by the fear that he might be caught that he had a breakdown during the operation. He also reads some choice extracts from Vincent George’s “War Games” diary. We all sit there in a row and I’m thinking, who the fuck is this kid Vincent George? I had never met him in my life but his little book of cuttings was helping the police to put us away.

  Then it’s Judge Clark’s turn. I’m first up for sentencing. He goes into one about how I have tarnished the good name of English sport and how people like myself, who enjoy Saturday afternoon recreational violence, have to be stopped. He says he has no alternative but to impose custodial sentence.

  And then he says, “I sentence you to twenty-one months in prison. You are banned from attending a match at any British football ground for a period of ten years.”

  Twenty-one months! What a result. After all that. I thought, I’m out in twelve, maximum. My family in court were upset but I was relieved. It had been a traumatic period and now at least I knew what I was getting. I could go to jail and get on with it.

  The dock officer takes me down. He says, “We had a bet downstairs that you were getting six or seven years.”

  They put me in the cage but by now I don’t care. The screws are amazed at the sentence. One says, “I’m not lying, mate, you got a right result there.”

  They start to bring the rest of the lads down, one by one. Chris is next.

  “Eighteen months,” he says.

  Then the others.

  “Fifteen months.”

  “A year.”

  “Six months.”

  Twelve of us were done that day. Seven went to jail, one went to a young offenders’ institution and four of the younger lads, including Rodney, Adrian Gunning and Jamie Roberts, got community service.

  The cops were praised by the judge and afterwards went round mouthing off all over the media about how marvellous they were. Nineteen people pleading guilty to affray and riot and violent disorder was a success for them. They were the heroes because they had secured convictions while a lot of similar cases were crashing. It made them look great. The main officer who ran the unit, Malcolm George, is now the national police expert on football hooliganism. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that the team that formed the nucleus of the investigations would be going to the World Cup in Italy in 1990 to keep watch on hooligans.

  But the way the prison service worked then, you only served half of your sentence. With the time I had served on remand, I would be out on parole in six months. In fact I was out five months later on weekend home leave. If you think of the work that was involved in that case, six months’ intelligence, lots of police expenditure, dawn raids on forty houses, sixteen months waiting to be dealt with, it must have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. And I got twenty-one months. I often wonder if the Old Bill really were as happy with that as they made out.

  After the court case, we were taken straight to Walton Prison in Liverpool. The screws were winding us up on the way, giving it loads on the coach, “They’re all Scousers here, mate, they don’t like Mancs. You’d better watch yourselves in the showers.”

  Actually the inmates were brilliant with us. We got to reception and could hear them saying, “Are you the Guvnors, are you the Guvnors? The Guvnors are here.” They looked after us well. They knew all about us because the case had been in the national papers and on TV and radio. They gave us all new gear. In those days it was all uniforms, you couldn’t wear your own clothes. We got new T-shirts, two pairs of underpants each, a pair of jeans, a pair of black shoes, socks. If they thought you were nothing, you got the shittiest pair of jeans that were too tight and too small for you, you got shoes with no laces in that didn’t fit, you got socks full of holes. We got well boxed off. The cons dished them out, trustees, all lads who were near the end of their sentence or just model prisoners. I learned that in jail you are all in the same boat and a lot of the Manc versus Scouser stuff goes out of the window. Everyone helps each other out.

  We were sent to our cells. Chris was put on a different wing and so I was on my own. I was led to my cell, opened the door and the screw said, “Welcome to your new home.”

  He pushed me in and shut the door. There was nothing in the room but porno pictures and a scruffy bed. Here we go. Stuck in this hole. The first thing I intended doing was cleaning the place up.

  I was sharing with someone else. There were footsteps outside and I heard one Scouser say to another, “Here y’are mate, there’s a fucking nigger in your cell.”

  I looked up and saw someone peering through the window, this kid with long hair. I thought, I’ve got a right cunt here. But he came in the cell and he turned out to be all right. We got on well.

  The next day, we had a chance to read the headlines:

  GUVNORS BANNED FOR 75 YEARS (Daily Mirror) JAILED THUGS GIVEN TEN-YEAR BAN FROM SOCCER! (Sun)

  Governors jailed as police infiltrate football gang (Daily Telegraph)

  Guvnors’ boss jailed (Manchester Evening News)

  There were nice mug shots of me looking a right hood. Later that day, Pat Berry got fifteen months, on top of a twenty-one-month stretch he was already serving, for “leading a group of up to thirty hooligans which roamed the city centre hunting Aston Villa supporters after a match at Maine Road”. Dave Goodall received a suspended sentence and a £1,000 fine. Others got community service and everyone was banned from football for various periods. Chapman, who was twenty-seven, got a £500 fine. He had confessed in his witness statement. All the lads done were from Greater Manchester, which shows how tight our firm was. No outsiders.

  Many got community service because the judge said hooliganism was a community offence and so they should pay the public back. Of the whole sentencing, they gave out about twenty years, between twenty of us. I know a lad from Man United who was on a ferry when it kicked off with West Ham and he got seven years for robbing jewellery off the boat, because it was football related. He wasn’t even a hooligan, he’d just gone for a snatch. That puts it into perspective. One way I did suffer though was when the Manchester Evening News revealed that I had worked as a stripper at ladies’ parties, under the name Mickey Hot Rocks. I got ribbed for that something terrible.

  It turned out there were a lot of Mancs in Walton, some of whom I knew, like Steve Bryan, who I later went into business with. I had no trouble in there at all, partly because we had a little clique and partly because of me being a big lad and the way I carry myself. If you are weak and you look weak you can get murdered. There weren’t that many smackheads in jail either; they cause a lot of mither inside, always pestering people. I suppose the good news was that the week after we were sent down, City were promoted, finishing second in Division Two. Another big day I missed out on.

  Jail is not as hard as it could be if you can get the things you want. If you have a strong character and put yourself about you can get pretty much anything in jail. You can get milk, decent meat, all the good stuff. You don’t have to get the shit. You can bag yourself a decent job. It can be harder for your family and friends; they think you are suffering in jail when really you are getting plenty of sleep, using the gym twice a day, reading, having a break. What more do you want? If you like going to the gym and eating, it is the best way to put on weight and get yourself fit. I came out as fit as fuck, like Raging Bull. Of course, it has its downside, you can’t see your family.

  I was in Walton for about twelve weeks and then moved to Wymott, a semi-open prison in
Leyland, Lancashire, where I shared with Chris until we both got our own cells, next door to each other. It was like going back to school. Each block is a “T” shape, with an A house, B house and C house. I was on B house. It had fourteen cells, you were allowed your own door-key and could have a stereo in your room and your own television which you could watch until 8 p.m. They would just lock the main wing door and we could have all the cells open, twenty-odd men running wild, smuggling in dope for draw parties, everyone saving their biscuits and cakes from visits until Friday night, taking your shirts off, covering the lights to make the room go blue, playing music dead loud and having a rave right there on the wing. It was wild.

  One night we were in there and everyone was on the smoke. I got a bit dizzy after a few puffs because I don’t smoke. They knew I’d do anything for a laugh, so one lad took a broomstick and said, “Bet you can’t do this, Mickey. Get the brush, look at the light, walk round it, put it on the floor, jump over it three times and run down the corridor.”

  So I get this brush, go round and round, jump over it, lose my bearing totally, hit every fucking wall, smash my head open, pouring blood and collapse on the floor. I pretend I have done myself in proper. I’m lying there and they all rush round me going, “Fuckin’ hell, he’s done in.”

  “I think he’s dead.”

  Just as they were about to call the screws I went “Yaaarg” and jumped up, and they ran for their lives.

  Wymott was full of Mancs. There were a few queers about as well, although the gang rapes that you hear about in America are very rare over here. Some strange things do go on though and I think the officers are aware of it and just let it happen. On that wing, the screws knew that Chris and I were pretty game and if they looked like losing control they would sometimes say to us, “Will you sort it out for us?”