Life on Mars

Welcome back to the seventies, the economy is tanking, unemployment is rising. The football is hooligan is back where did they go and why are they back?

The football hooligan was a uniquely British invention and an export to the world. The history of the hooligan in the UK is attributable to the decline of the working class. Great football clubs were founded on the industrial might of an empire. Every industrial area had a club, this was encouraged by the factory and mill owners of places such as Manchester, Birmingham and London. The mill owners although pioneers in industrial relations realised that sports encouraged the mental well being, of the workers and greater productivity on a Monday morning. The thought of sports on a Saturday seemed to distract from the misery of the situation.

Saturday afternoon was treated as a special as Matt Busby alluded to people work hard enough during the week they should be entertained on the weekend. People had loyalty to there individual teams but the feeling of support was not as tribal as it is now. It was not unusual for football fans to watch both Liverpool and Everton or Manchester United and Manchester City. This seemed to continue all the way through the fifties and sixties.

When the great industrial cities started to collapse in the seventies and eighties work began to become scarce. Where a person worked mattered less than where they what football team they followed. Football no longer became a tool to entertain it became an outlet for frustration. Young men without work and no wars to fight was a mixture for disaster. Football became a symbol for the fight with a decaying industrial system.

The violence on the terraces became a regular part of the seventies to the eighties. It was exported in bastardised forms across to the continent. Germany, Russia and Italy felt the blight of hooliganism. Then in the late eighties it stopped, why? Simply drugs and dance. The rave culture came out of the gay clubs and hit the mainstream. People who used football and violence as escapism for their mundane lives suddenly threw themselves into this culture and used ecstasy. The top boys of the hooligan culture moved to become the top drug dealers and rave organisers.

Now we are back in the mire, joblessness has risen and the rave culture has become a corporate issue. Like all stories from the past everybody forgets the bad old days and football hooligans have become anti-hero's with their own autobiographies and fan clubs. Worse the rest of Europe love the hooligan culture. What is even worse their was stories in the Nytimes of the Columbus crew in Mls trying to replicate the hooligan firms of England.

Where to go now ? The hooligan firms of the twentieth century grew out of the industrial cites, these new firms have grown out of the underclass that pervades the British culture. A sub-culture disenfranchised by the brave new world of the twenty 21st century. The only place they can show this frustration is in the back streets surrounding the modern corporate entities that surround the citadels of football. Stopping the fighting will be impossible the bleak view is that it must be contained.