Читать книгу Rolling with the 6.57 Crew - The True Story of Pompey's Legendary Football Fans - Cass Pennant - Страница 9

The Original Portsmouth Skinheads

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‘THE ACCUSED WERE IN THE LARGE GROUP OF PORTSMOUTH SUPPORTERS WHO ADOPTED A PECULIAR STYLE OF DRESS, SIMILAR TO THE ROYAL NAVY’S FATIGUE WEAR. MOST OF THEM HAD CLOSE CROPPED HAIR, WORE THIN BRACES SUPPORTING JEANS WHICH WERE IN A HALF-MAST POSITION AND ALL HAD HEAVY BROWN BOOTS.’

CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEATHAM, FOR THE PROSECUTION.

To fill you in on those real early years, we’ve enlisted the knowledge of old skin Pat who in 1967 moved up to London from Hayling Island to seek work, but still followed his beloved Pompey around the country bringing his new-found London experiences with him. Pat and Robbie Mc, another older lad, tell with accuracy how the skinhead scene took off in Pompey. Here’s their account.

1966, the year England were to win the World Cup, I went to my first game, Manchester City at home. I was a school kid, a typical 14, 15 year old. Some of the lads had got me to go. I wasn’t particularly interested in Pompey in any way but I was keen on football, keen on playing it and I thought Manchester City was a big name. So I went along to the game and I can remember walking into Fratton Park. I actually remember the moment I walked in there. You know what it’s like the first time … you see the crowd, you see the Fratton End. A lot of the lads I’d been going with, they’d been going to football every Saturday. We walked in the Fratton End and there’s all these Manchester City fans, right, they’re all little blokes with leather jackets and scruffy, greasy hair. But we’d been inundated with the info that the hard people were Manchester United, Liverpool … because up until that point the only football violence was them smashing trains up. This is when it was first coming in. And I thought, God, they are going to be dead hard, their fans. So, anyway, I get to the ground, and I had no thought of seeing violence or fighting at football, but, of course, everybody starts chanting and I could feel, you know, you’re getting carried away with it. I suddenly cottoned on that Pompey was going to be as hard as, or even do, Manchester. And then the next thing is I turn up and I see one bloke with wild ginger hair, glasses that thick and, to look at him, you wouldn’t think for one second he was going to be hard, you never connected people with glasses as hard. And then I saw Ginger go in on them and the next thing I know is this mad feeling of excitement – Manchester City are running. I’m suddenly clocking that – and everyone says this – you suddenly realise you’re not watching the football very much. And then in the second half the trouble died, Manchester City had moved, they tried us, no joy, so they moved. This is very small … it’s not like the pitch battles you see later on. Basically Pompey then had a group of fans, people like Dinksy, Dave Dwaine and that, who I could see were older than me. It’s obvious, they’ve got the nice clothes, obviously got girls and when you’re young you think, I’ll never do all this, you know how it is, and so you have that sort of lot. Every football crew had older blokes, might have a suit on, looked a bit like Jimmy Tarbuck, a right mixture. We’d even have Teddy boys, it was like that, but you were Pompey.

After that I started to go to a few of the home games, the next one was Southampton, this was the same year. That was good because I’m standing outside the ground and about 200 or 300 Southampton fans come up. I still didn’t know the score and I see this lot and think, Blimey, and then they’re all there giving it gob, but it’s still very low key, not how you would have felt in the seventies … frightening. Then they go in the Fratton End and within 10 minutes Pompey had had them off and they were burning their scarves on the terrace and I said, ‘This is wonderful’. I’m 15, I’m terrified, don’t get me wrong, I’d have been the first to move. You’re little kids and you’re on the periphery of it, you’re not right in the centre, and then you’re starting to recognise faces. I started to recognise an older kid and I used to watch and see how stylish he was … and that was Dinksy.

The big style and the big thing at the time was that you had a scarf, always tied in a knot and you had the metal football badges. We all had those, well, Dinksy had loads, he also had a Levi white denim jacket that he’d wear, he’d have Levis on and the most important thing was he tended to cut the bottoms off and have the white rim about half an inch done like that, that was very, very important. We were called Moddy boys, but this was very sort of low key. You still had all mixtures. You had the guy of 25 with a suit, you had all sorts of mixtures. Generally the music we liked was in the top ten and we’d have a chart record as a football song in 10 minutes. So this is all still fairly low-key stuff.

Season ’67–’68, we went to see Chelsea play West Ham and I think you ought to hear about this one, because this was an amazing sight. We get outside the ground and we’re kids, and we’re like, ‘Who you going to follow? Chelsea? West Ham?’ Next moment, we hear this noise coming like a train and this fucking mob of West Ham come up, the whole of West Ham came in one go, hundreds of them. There’s skinheads, there’s men who look like the Kray brothers, there’s men who look absolutely evil with scars up and down them and they are IT. They’ve all got a little badge on: ‘North Bank, West Ham’. They come in and I’ve never seen a mob like it, I remember thinking, How the hell are Chelsea going to do anything about this? So anyway, gates open, West Ham pile in, the push surges from top to bottom, you’re going flying, it’s unbelievable, slowly but surely Chelsea are coming in chanting, ‘Chelsea, Chelsea’. They’re getting more and more together. I look to Chelsea and I give them their due, they give as good as they get. The end was shared, the result was shared, although outside it was basically a West Ham rout. I could see these London mobs are scared of nothing. So, you know, they both have huge mobs, West Ham, Chelsea. Spurs are getting established. Of course, Millwall always had the name and the reputation.

The first time Millwall came to Fratton Park in ’66, they’d just come up through the divisions. Now Millwall were getting a reputation on the news. In one particular incident, they’d not lost at home for about two years and they lost to Plymouth Argyle. It was an absolute riot and Millwall were getting a name. So we had them at Fratton Park for the first time. They all came in one group and it was led by men of about 40 years of age. They were massive. They came in the Fratton End and for about 10–15 minutes there’s a gap between the two sets of supporters, and then the fight’s going to start. A bloke started sizing up to Ginger. There’s Ginger and one other bloke who has a go. Ginger came out of that with his shirt off and his vest hanging on by one thread. I can remember he turned to us and said, ‘I’m not having any more of that.’ Ginger had more guts than the rest of us put together, he’d had a go, and, of course, you’re thinking, Well, if he can’t do it … So Millwall routed the end and absolutely took it. We were all gobsmacked – this is taking it to another level. We’re all mainly youngsters, of the same age. But this Millwall thing, I can remember an incident where I saw 14-year-old kids laying into a bloke of about 20, no fear whatsoever. They were coming up to you, they were looking for it. It was murder. It was a complete and utter rout, no two ways about it. There’s no use pretending otherwise, they routed us. That was the first time we had Millwall up there. But over the years there were to be plenty more Millwall stories.

In season ’67–’68 we’re doing well. I’m thinking I’m it, we’re all thinking we’re all it, and then came my wake-up call. I started going to my first away games because Pompey are flying that season. So I go to Crystal Palace away, season ’67, Boxing Day game. Now when I get to Crystal Palace, we went up the other end. There still weren’t any real fight ethics going on at that time. Not a lot of madness is happening because you’ve still got the World Cup fever and that. Things are still peaceful. But this Palace game is a very important moment. Nothing happened at Crystal Palace. It was an 11 o’clock kick-off, something like that. So, after the game, me and my mate and all the Pompey fans split up. Some sad bastards went to Charlton versus Millwall, something crazy like that. We went to Spurs versus Fulham. Spurs were always a big popular team amongst Portsmouth fans. West Ham were number one, Spurs were second. So we go to that, you know, good game, big crowd and all of that. Here’s the funny bit, you see, Pompey had gone to Spurs in the FA Cup the year before and near on 20,000 Pompey fans had taken White Hart Lane with ease. The reason being that Spurs hadn’t formed as a mob in ’67. Now if you want to clarify that, read the Chelsea book by Martin King, which was his first away game, at that particular time. So Spurs were getting turned over at the time. Pompey had gone and turned them over without any fighting, just with weight of numbers. So I went up to Spurs thinking it wasn’t a very dangerous, hard place, because I knew Pompey had turned it over the year before. Coming out the ground, we got on the underground station, basically in dimlo clothes, I had a combat jacket on with Pompey on the back, absolute dimlo. I’ve got a blue and white scarf showing, and all of a sudden there’s loads of kids around me, aged 14 to 20, and it’s Spurs and they’re around me and they’ve clocked the blue and white scarf. Straight away they come up to me and said, ‘You fucking Chelsea?’ Basically me and my mate thought, What’s best? Shall we just go to pieces? They might leave us alone. We’re still kids, you know what I mean? I looked at this bloke and he’s like, ‘Ah, no leave them alone, they’re only kids,’ and this bloke sat down. We’re sitting down with Spurs all around us, and he starts talking to us, one of the nicer sort of blokes. I started asking him about his clothes, I couldn’t get over it, looking at their clothes. They all had black army boots on – that was the first boot, the black army boot. They all had little checked shirts, they weren’t the Ben Sherman, you know, the old man’s shirt, they had that later. They had either navy blue or green sleeveless jumpers, they’ve all got the Levis rolled up, got scarves down the front, the suede clipper jackets, things like this are coming in, I’m starting to see, they’ve all got braces. I’m starting to ask where they’ve bought all their clothes and I’m getting clued up, I’m learning fast. Eventually the train pulls in somewhere and there’s about 30 Norwich fans they spot. So the whole lot just goes off and starts kicking … and me and my mate sat there thanking our lucky stars we weren’t the unfortunate ones. It was more the fact that we were country bumpkins and looked hicks – if we’d have been dressed as skinheads, we’d have been beaten to pulp. But they probably thought, Leave them alone.

And this is where Pompey are wising up, straight away you start seeing the emergence of the first serious group, the Southsea boys as they were known, some good people. I’m beginning to grow up and they’re all 15, 16, but they’re beginning to know me as coming from Hayling. I’m beginning to get in. I’m getting very friendly with Dinksy, I’m meeting people like Pete Harris, Dave Dwaine, now these to me were style kings. Now all of a sudden I’m getting to be a bit of a style king, I’ve moved up London for a job.

Season ’68–’69, and football hooliganism now is getting into full flow, it’s becoming the purpose now of going to football. I don’t like the word hooliganism, I mean, just the whole thing of you’re young and that’s where it’s at and that’s what you’re doing, that’s what you did, if you were with the in-crowd. The thrill, the excitement, everything was on the terrace, and every football book I’ve ever read will say that. It’s part of you growing up and becoming what you think is a man, at the time. You start off down the front, two, three years later you’re standing in the middle, one day you might even start a song off. It’s all a process.

So come this particular season I’m talking about, this is when we’re starting to move into the serious business. Because I’ve moved up London at the time, I’m on the streets and this is when the skinhead fashion was getting immaculate. Now the big clothes of the time, believe it or not, the traditional Burberry flyfront mac, the classic one. They weren’t cheap and you could have navy blue or you could have cream. V-neck jumpers, you always had maroon or navy blue; cardigans were coming in and then jungle greens. Now to get jungle greens there was a shop down Southwark I used to go to. Jungle greens suddenly became the in thing, you’d get them, little rim again and you’d press them and they’d be high up. Then the boots started coming in, you had cherry red Commando boots, you’d have Monkey boots, you’d have long brown ones that came up high. Now you’re starting to get with the cult skinhead thing. Trilby hats are coming in, sheepskins are starting to make their appearance which was a big cult thing – to have a sheepskin you had to have a lot of money as well. Now the whole of London is buzzing on this, nowhere else in the country is, don’t get me wrong, this is a London thing. I don’t care what Manchester and the rest of them say, ’cause I went up there and we just laughed at their attempts. So the London thing’s moving fast now and I’m going to Spurs games.

Now I’m wising up fast, and I’m learning the real great days were the thrill of the underground, the thrill of the chase. First game I went to was Spurs versus Man United. They were great moments. The first thing I learned is that London crews at a game like that would tend to attract supporters from other London clubs if they weren’t involved with each other. So there were West Ham and other people there, in that sense, ’cause it was north, it was Manchester. So I’m looking at Man U who are meant to be it and I’m looking at them and they are making me physically sick – they’ve all got moustaches, they’ve all got this dodgy sort of hair. They’re absolute dimlos with about 30 scarves round them, they are dimlos. Lesser people think that it was Man U running the show back then, they make me laugh. Anyway, the Spurs crew are getting smart now, they are really geared up and they’ve got this look that no one else had. I can remember in the game, I’m standing outside the ground with some Spurs lads I know, and a young black kid, about 16, comes up, and says, ‘I’ve been in there and I’ve been thrown out. I’m going back in, it’s fucking great.’ I got to talk to him and that was Sammy Skyves. At that time it meant nothing, but Sammy later went on to become the big Spurs leader. He was just a little black kid of 16. He had no fear, he just ploughed in there time and time again.

Spurs and Man U, up to half-time I can see Man U are getting the worst of this. Half-time, we go underneath the Tottenham stand and we’re picking off Manchester mercilessly, absolutely mercilessly, they’re getting murdered. All of a sudden I see a strange sight. I see about four or five blokes and they’re going ‘Arsenal’, like, and they’re going to these Spurs fans, and these Spurs fans, you know, they’re dead hard, yet these four of five Arsenal are barging their way through, and I find out later that one of these blokes was Johnny Hoy who’s another big, big name of those times. At the time, ’68–’69, everybody seemed to think that Arsenal was it, they had a deadly reputation, but the overall cream of the crop, the people who ran it were West Ham. There was no doubt about it, you knew that West Ham were the ones.

So I’m up London now and the skinhead thing is kicking off big, although the reggae and the music thing hadn’t come so much then, and the main music was the soul things of the time. You tended to find if skinheads went out in the evening they’d be extremely smartly dressed, expensive suits and things like that. With the second stage of skinhead basically came tonic suits, the cropped hair, the Ben Shermans, the shoes – you had tasselled loafers, you had weave wear, you had Royals, that was a very big shoe. It’s taking off big, the real smart look’s coming in now and obviously the Crombie’s coming in. Not only that, the reggae thing’s coming in. I started going to all-nighters. And the main thing about all-nighters was East-End lads who were skinheads, rock-steady and reggae, I use the generic term reggae, it was more rock-steady. This is the music of the streets; this is when you get the big explosion, the ‘Tighten Up’ albums starting to come out. The music started coming down here and you started getting a whole thing now where you’ve got a working-class, young people thing, the football fan. There was Motown, reggae, ska, that’s where you were. If you weren’t there, maybe you were a hippie, or you could be a biker, but you were a no one. So the football thing now has really taken off in a big way.

I’d take our first end when we knew we had something. The year ’67–’68 was the year we nearly went out. An important day was 28 February, Rotherham away. To the best of my knowledge that was the first time Dinksy organised a coach away. Up to then you would have got on the specials or whatever, but Dinksy organised a coach for us specially. So that’s Rotherham away, but I didn’t actually go to that one. It was 30 bob, one pound fifty, and it left at midnight from the Crystal Palace pub which is now defunct. All the lads came back and told me the good times they had, so I went on the next one to Hull. This is the first time we are free, we can do what we want and we are away in a mob. One coach and about 50 people. Hull City was a stroll ’cause they didn’t have a recognised end or a recognised football crew, simple as that.

The next game we went to was Blackpool away. Now Blackpool’s getting good. I hitchhiked up there and I met the Pompey lot as they came in. At the time we were wearing our scarves. It’s about Easter time now. We’re wearing scarves linked and hanging through our Levis and if you nicked anyone’s scarf from the other end you’d have it. So we’d be walking about like Christmas trees, with a thousand scarves. To me it’s an important moment. We’re up north, we’re over 200 miles away and we suddenly realise we do have a talent for what we were about to do, because quite frankly we ran Blackpool out their end and out the flaming town. Fifty of us. Going up north, it’s all the same – they’re all bikers, they’re all rockers and greasers and stuff. So that was that season, Blackpool away and that would have been about it that season.

So the next season things are getting serious now. The first away game, Birmingham City, we all got on a train and we all went up there, I would say about 250 of us. So we all start marching down the streets down to Birmingham’s ground and this is a story that’s repeated itself two or three times with me after a trip to Birmingham. We’re standing on the sidelines and we can see their mob coming around. Their mob gets near us, we chase them, and they go flying. This is what happens at Birmingham. Ten minutes later there’s twice as many. We chase them and they go flying. They come back 10 minutes later and in the end we’re totally and utterly outnumbered. But I didn’t rate Birmingham or Villa or any of those crews at all. They always seemed to need vast numbers. So basically nobody got hurt but we didn’t win that one, we had to split up and go away. But we were learning then, and it’s a long walk back to the station – if you walk down one road, they come up another. With two sides to everything it can be a nasty experience. We all got home safely. I was living in London at the time and I got the Chelsea train back from either Leicester or Forest, I think it was. And there was hundreds of Chelsea and I knew some of them. I think it was Forest ’cause they took Forest apparently, and not many people did at the time.

So after Birmingham, it’s Millwall that will be the next decent home game. Yeah, Millwall, oh my God. At the time, we know what’s coming, we’ve got Millwall. So we all go down to the game. I can remember from half-eleven, 12 o’clock, the whole thing was getting nasty. I went to get off at Fratton station and if I remember correctly there was Millwall all around. We went to Portsmouth Harbour station and their mob were backed down to the platform. Now Millwall had a superb crew, which at the time would have been a sort of mod-skinhead look, guys in suits, you know, that sort of look. Almost Ronnie and Reggie in a way, that sort of general look, well groomed, cropped hair. They looked the part; they looked like they could be a bouncer in a nightclub. They came down and they’ve got the Fratton End basically. They infiltrate, they’re very clever, and you don’t know where they are. And then, two minutes before the kick-off, you suddenly realise they’re standing next to you. They say, ‘Come on then, come on’ – it’s all of this and they’ve infiltrated you and they’ve got you, and they’re round you. And we had to move, we got the worst of it, simple as that. Then, coming outside the ground, we all got up together and we got up to Fratton station where that bus shelter is and Millwall turned: ‘Come on then, if you want it.’ And they ran us, it’s as simple as that, I can remember running for my life, hiding in a garage with two other blokes ’cause these Millwall blokes, about eight of them, are outside, going, ‘Bastards are somewhere here.’ We were going to get killed … madness. So that’s another time we’ve met Millwall and we’re two–nil down by now. They have routed us again, that’s all I can say. I know the stories later in the eighties, but I can only put it in perspective. At the time we were not in the league of a West Ham, Chelsea … we were not in the league of the things even the 6.57 were to do in the eighties. I could see that we had something, definitely, but we didn’t have the big numbers. Millwall away was a no-no. We went the first year in ’67 and nobody bothered going again after that. I’d go Millwall away but I’d go incognito. I went twice and I kept very quiet and low, it’s as simple as that. I don’t even know why I went but I did.

Millwall’s near neighbours, Charlton, they had a go. People laugh now but I’ll give them their due. Charlton came up and I always had a slight respect for Charlton because it’s a hard club to follow if you’ve got West Ham and all the rest around you. They had a go and we turned them over, simple as that. I can remember Cardiff, they always strike me as not so much wanting trouble, but if someone hit them they’d always hit back, there’s no doubt about it.

For me, the season Pompey came of age was the year that we had Blackburn Rovers away in the FA Cup. This is one of Pompey’s finest glory moments. At this period, ’68, ’69, ’70, you may find this hard to believe, but we were getting warned, the only two northern teams we were getting warned about apart from anything obvious – I’m not going to say Man United away – were Nottingham Forest away and Blackburn Rovers. Man United fans had told us about Blackburn Rovers and West Ham also told us about a nightmare trip they had up there in the FA Cup back in ’66. So anyway we all go to Blackburn, this is the FA Cup ’69 year, and the day starts off badly. The simple reason being that, at the home game that year, about the second game on the Tuesday night which I didn’t go to, there’s three or four Blackburn blokes down, big leather jackets, big blokes and what had happened was, after the game, some Pompey had spotted them and had followed them out, and apparently this Blackburn bloke turns round and says, ‘Come on then, if you’re going to do it, do it.’ And they got a kicking. So we get to Blackburn, right outside the ground, and I’m standing with Dave Dwaine and all that lot. Then someone said, ‘Oh, Christ, it’s that bloke.’ And it was this bloke with his mate and we knew straight away they’d spotted us. Blackburn’s the same, all filthy Hell’s-Angels types, big, big, big. So anyway we get in the ground, and there’s only two coaches of us doing this because the special was delayed until half-time. The coaches were Dinksy’s again, and they both left from the Crystal Palace pub. In fact, Dinksy had only the one coach. For Dinksy’s coach, you had to be one of the 40 or 50 people to get invited on it, simple as that. You had to be one of the people. And by this time we had a pretty hard sort of crew of all good lads I grew up with, mainly known as the Southsea boys. And Gosport always supplied some very, very tasty boys, Dave Dwaine, people like that, very important early people and a solid sort of Gosport crew of about eight or nine used to come over too.

So Blackburn away. This is before the game’s even begun, we’re up the other end and all Blackburn are up their own popular end. This is a good half-hour or hour before the kick-off, I would say, because the terraces at each side are fairly empty of people and, as you know, in those days you could move round the football ground. The whole thing was about taking an end. The whole thing was the battle of an end; that was the most important thing. So Blackburn start to move round our end, so they get to about halfway round the side terrace to the left and the whole lot of us just went to them and scattered them. During these early preliminaries I can remember one guy, Ian McKay – he lives in Australia now – who lived on Hayling, and I can never forget him – he had his boots on and his braces and that, and he carried on walking, and he walked right into the Blackburn end, took a few punches, like that, like the hero everyone thinks is mad … there’s always a madman somewhere, you think he’s going to stop in a minute.

We’re up our end now, we’re bolstered, but you can see more and more Blackburn, right, and I’m looking at this and I’m thinking there’s a hell of a lot of them. Football has started, you can forget the football – after 20 minutes we’re 4–0 down, something like that. So what’s new, this is typical Pompey, isn’t it? So now the fun starts. The back of the end we’ve got is like Arsenal’s old North Bank with stairs up the back, wooden stairs, and Blackburn come piling through. All big blokes, they’re piling through; they’ve got the old pennies and they’re chucking them at us like hell. There’s some strange liquid coming over. I’ve heard rumours, although I can’t say for definite, that they were chucking ammonia. So, anyway, they’re all around us now. It was one of those efforts, to me, where Pompey was standing against overwhelming odds and they were standing their own to the last. I was very, very bloody proud of us that day, it was a different story. This has gone from us being 15-year-old kids to this now becoming a serious business. And I can remember coming out of the ground and there was Pete Harris and me walking and there’s Blackburn about 200 yards behind us. I’m looking at them and I think it was Pete that said, ‘Just walk slowly,’ and I was thinking, Well, why don’t we all just bloody well leg it to stay alive to be honest. He said, ‘Just walk slowly,’ and we just walked and these Blackburn walked behind us and I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe this was because of the way things were at the time about 1969, 1970. They could have given us a good hiding, but I had the feeling they didn’t because there were only a few of us. It wasn’t the type of thing that happened later, I mean, three or four years later you would be dead, wouldn’t you? Fifty of them would kick you. But I still don’t think it’d got to that stage.

Anyway, we get back to the coach and on the way it stopped at Manchester at about seven in the evening. The express purpose for me and Dinksy was to go and see the Twisted Wheel club. That may not mean a lot to some of you today, but it’s a big Northern Soul club, right. It had finished and closed, and me and Dinksy said we wanted to go along and see it. We went and saw it, and we get back to the coach. This is about nine or 10 o’clock at night and we’re just hanging about by our coach. All of a sudden four or five Manchester City blokes come for us. They were the skinhead type, but quite frankly they didn’t have the clothes. They didn’t have white Sta Press up there. They used to wear cook’s trousers, right. These Man City blokes had been to Chelsea the week before and Manchester City had taken a bitter hammering from Chelsea fans. Really, really bad. I know that because I’m living in London so I’m getting the gossip. They’d been slaughtered.

So they come up and our man Dave Dwaine had a pair of Jungle Greens on. And this Manchester City fan goes up to him and says, ‘They’re fucking Chelsea trousers,’ and throws a kick at him. He throws a bit of a kick where it’s an antagonistic thing but not in the definite sense that he was offering him out. So Dave goes on to the coach and gets a bloody great big rattle that used to travel with us to away games. It was a bloody great big thing with metal pieces, right. So I see Dave Dwaine getting off the coach, this is a bit like the scene in Goodfellas where he sees him walking. So I see Dave Dwaine walk up to the bloke and he gets the rattle and he goes bang, and the bloke’s head splits and there’s blood all over. The bloke staggers like that and he goes, ‘You haven’t fucking put me down, have you?’ And we’re looking at him going, ‘Oh my God. If it was anybody else they’d have been in hospital. The next minute, it’s about 10 o’clock and Man City have just come back from Newcastle for the FA Cup, fifth round, and about 200 Man City fans dive on the fucking coach. They’re all around it, the back window goes through, but by a miracle the police turn up and get us out. We’d already had a fight; we’d bumped into a mob of about 50 or 60 Man United and we just chased them to the middle of Manchester. Also I remember Pompey fans went into a club – and I’m not proud of this – and long leather coats were very much in vogue, and they cleared out the bloody cloakroom, which ain’t nice, but there you go. We’re suddenly realising we can go to away games and we’ve got a crew, simple as that. We’d gone, we’d had a go at Man City, had a go at Man United, had a go at Blackburn, and that’s not a bad day’s work for any of your football mobs.

At that time I was the only person from Hayling into football in that sense, right, so you were still an unusual figure; it was still a cult thing, a skinhead-type thing. We were getting more influences now because we’d got London boys working in the holiday camp. They were coming up and they were wearing some beautiful clothes, everything was changing now. Mustard-coloured cardigans; Fred Perrys are appearing, although that was a big mod thing in the sixties, right; three-button granddad vests, though I never rated them and never saw much of them anyway. Now that same year of 1969 in the following season was when the skinhead explosion was taking off big time. This also coincided with me having another big culture change in a way. Funnily enough this was the first time I ever took speed. I bought five Dexys off someone. I introduced them to another part of the culture, the clubs up Farnborough, the Blue Moon and that and the marina all-nighters were kicking off and a lot of us were starting to get into that. So we were starting to take all that. And now reggae was coming through the boards and all of a sudden the riots started going off at Easter, the skinhead riots.

Just before the start of the ’69–’70 football season, the Daily Mirror printed a report on the Isle of Wight pop festival. It was the usual crap about Dylan, about hippies stoned out of their heads on acid, the old peace and love bit. However, the article ended with a report on a ‘strange youth cult’, which had sprung up in East London. The youths, said the article, had severely battered several Pakistanis. As the days went by, various newspapers printed reports on strangely dressed, short-haired youths involved in punch-ups in various cities around the country. As usual the press didn’t know what the fuck was going on. The skinheads had arrived – peace and love died; hate and war was born.

And the next thing you know is everyone’s a skinhead. This is the big thing. The next season everybody had cropped hair and you suddenly realised that people who’d maybe had long hair for a long time had suddenly gone and had it cropped to the point you didn’t even recognise them on first look. Obviously the movement, the whole scene, was getting diluted, it was bound to. So let’s have a look at the games that season, because it’s a serious business now. Everyone’s fighting now.

The Portsmouth skins first made their presence felt at the Pompey versus Leicester pre-season ‘friendly’. They steamed the Leicester mob, most of whom still had long hair. The boots went in fast and furious up the Milton End before the game had even started! Then a week later Pompey opened the season away to Blackpool. The Pompey skins made more headlines than the team. They ran riot across Blackpool seafront, smashing the place up. Then they pulverised the Blackpool mob at the match.

I didn’t go to Blackpool personally, which is the greatest regret of my life. The reason being that, at the time, I’d got so into the sort of club culture, reggae and pills, that I was a bit of a sick case for a while. I was dropping out of things. I missed Blackpool away, like I say, but I’ve heard so many good stories.

The word went round, who fancies going to Blackpool for the crack? There would be many who would heed the call, as Blackpool football ground was the least of its attractions. Three coaches were put on with everyone meeting and leaving from the Crystal Palace pub situated at the top end of Goldsmith Avenue, a big boozer close to nearby Fratton station.

Leaving after closing time on a Friday night was a sure-fire sign high jinks would occur somewhere en route. This turned out to be in Oxford where one of the coaches broke down. The delay, leaving a coach load of boozed-up Pompey supporters hanging around to amuse themselves, had the local police called out, as things began to get naughty. It was only the start, as further on the coaches pulled into a service station meeting up with Chelsea supporters on the way to Liverpool. No problems, as both sets of fans took to talking and chatting with each other, catching up on all the football stories of the day and it was all very jovial until a coach load of Man United going to a match the other way pulled in. Immediately, a few Chelsea and a few of our boys decided they wanted to have a go at them. Over they all went, routing the United fans almost as soon as a few punches were let go. With that being over quick, the Pompey coaches ploughed on, eventually reaching Blackpool just before nine on the Saturday morning. The coach that had broken down arrived as well, so we all met up and went about the town. Some went drinking, some went down to the funfair, and generally it was a good day.

We had all arranged to meet again before we went into the ground, and a half-hour or so before kick-off we went into Blackpool’s ground en masse, straight in their end, everyone from the three coaches. Straight away we made for the middle of their end behind the goal, and there must have been 200 mobbed-up Blackpool who broke off and ran. With no opposition, everyone stood about enjoying themselves, singing and generally having a laugh. Their end began filling up quite quickly and Blackpool’s boys started having a go back, by mobbing up and coming in from different angles. It was going off all game. But never once did they shift us because never once did they stand. They just kept running away. The Old Bill never tried to shift us from their end, even they could see nothing was going to happen here as there was only one mob. With the other lot running off, no one was getting hurt. We lost the game and went outside and waited for them but they wouldn’t come out of the ground. After what seemed about half an hour the police just moved us on, because the Blackpool fans just stood in the ground and would not come out.

So now we all split up into various little groups, and then everyone converged on to the seafront where it went off with various incidents going on all along the Blackpool mile. I was in a little group of 10 when a knife was pulled on us. One of the boys from Leigh Park just went for the geezer and chased him down the road as he took off, running down the road still with the knife in his hand. Things were just happening along that seafront but there was no suggestion that this could be Blackpool’s mob, they could have been locals, day-trippers, anything. But the main thing about the day was that our appearance, and our hair in particular, seemed to really shock people. Ninety per cent of us had cropped hair. A few arrests were made and the police just appeared to be amazed. They would ask questions like, ‘Why do you have your hair like that?’ and get a response of ‘So you can’t grab us by the hair.’ They had not seen anything like this before – it was all new to Blackpool. They had obviously not played Millwall and seen the big boots and rolled-up jeans, because for the next three days it was in all the national press. Papers like The Mirror ran articles about the trouble and all the arrests, but the focus was all about the Portsmouth skins and skinheads.

If you were there that day and of the age, as a Pompey fan you would never forget. To go to the other end of the country, have a laugh and read about yourself in the papers for the next few days over this skinhead business. It was a first for Pompey and it was one of the games that even today people say, ‘Did you go to Blackpool away?’ Blackpool away was a big talking point and it still is. You had to be there to appreciate it. It gave Pompey fans a name long before the exploits of the later 6.57 crew. To be part of that first skinhead explosion was a real happening time. We never left Blackpool until midnight and incredibly it could have gone off with Millwall that day. We had stayed around the funfair, our three-coach mob, when about the same number of Millwall came in. They had played away to Bolton and decided to drop in. You can imagine a real nasty situation here. There was a bit of banter between the two rival groups but, after a few calls of ‘Let’s leave it, we’re both here to enjoy ourselves’ – there also seemed to be mutual admiration with us both sporting the skinhead look – both groups just walked away. It was that kind of weekend, it really was.

The week after Pompey’s 5–1 home defeat at the hands of Sheffield Utd the front cover of the Football Mail was dominated by an article on the skinhead menace and showed a picture of a skin outside the Fratton End being frisked for weapons, but the remainder of that season continued without the sensation of Pompey fans making all the headlines. So basically looking at the 1969–70 season, apart from the obvious boring facts that Millwall came down and took us again, there wasn’t a lot happening aggro-wise. That is, until Norwich away. Now Norwich away was well planned. The moment we knew it was an away game everybody’s getting excited. So it’s the same thing again, Dinksy’s coaches. Now everybody is in their full skinhead glory. It’s August and I’m wearing a bloody knee-length sheepskin because you know what fashion’s like – you don’t care if you’re sweating or not. Everybody had a Ben Sherman and a porkpie hat; we’ve now got a solid Pompey crew. We all tended to be the same age. The older blokes – a lot of people who’d been Teds or whatever – they’ve gone, their time had gone. It was the early seventies. So we go to Norwich away and I’ll never forget it. We always travelled up in the night, Norwich, Torquay anywhere. So we got there about five in the morning and straight away we’re wandering the streets with not a lot to do. About 10 o’clock we start hitting the pubs and all that. We start drinking and so now you’ve got a drunken mob of Pompey absolutely up for it. We make our way to the ground, we get in the ground first and then Norwich start to come in. They didn’t like this one little bit, I mean, who would? We’re on their end and then the serious business of fighting goes on for about three-quarters of an hour and Norwich quite simply lost their end, they lost it and they got pissed off. They probably outnumbered us about three to one. When you look back we probably had about 150. The coaches were always the vanguard, we did the fighting, then the trains or other people might pull in. They’d be on the periphery but they’d join in. It was the same in the seventies and the eighties, wasn’t it?

So we’ve come out the ground and they’ve all regrouped. And I shall never forget this, we start to march back to the town centre. But we confronted Norwich. I can remember, for some crazy reason, in between us and the Norwich mob there was a wedding going off and I can remember, for some reason from somewhere, ‘Tears of a Clown’ by The Miracles was playing dead loudly. There’s Norwich there and there’s us there and that’s it, we charged at them. And I can remember – and this is terrible – but I can remember the bride and bridegroom ducking down like this and all this wedding party goes flying. It’s not funny and we’re flattening anybody and everybody. This is the town centre and we just cleared it, just a full-scale riot. I can remember standing there and the next moment a brick went smack into my chin and I sort of fell back right and then I saw a Pompey fan – I can’t remember who – picked up, you know, like the Coca-Cola swinging sign. He picks that up and he chucks it straight into these blokes. We’ve wiped it and have run Norwich everywhere. I notice when this happens that the town hate it, the whole town, everyone hates you. This is bad news. Right now this brought us a lot of bad publicity, the newspapers were full of it and it made the Sunday papers, just like before with the Blackpool riot.

One word sums up the football scene of the 1968–71 year – skinhead! As the months and seasons passed, the number of skins in Pompey grew and grew. It wasn’t long before gang warfare ensued.

The hardest mob in Pompey were the Bell Boys, who took their name from the now disused Golden Bell pub under the tricorn where they used to gather in force on match days. Besides the Bell Boys, there was the Eastney mob, who were constantly at war with the Pier Boys from Southsea, led by Robbie Jones. North End had a tough crew of skins with the Page brothers, Ritchie Blake and Stef Kurder in their ranks. Portsea had a big mob, as did Portchester and Fareham, who were always kicking fuck out of each other.

Besides battering each other, the skins indulged in Paki-bashing, skate-bashing, and hippy bashing. They were also at war with the local Hell’s Angels. The main gathering place for all the Angels was a café in Palmerston Road called the Milano. The skins used to hang out at the Marina discotheque in Goldsmith Avenue, or the Crystal Bar in Southsea. I can remember sitting outside there on the steps, watching the older skins and their birds going in and wishing to fuck that I was 18 instead of 13.

The skinhead cult was at its height in 1970. The bank holidays that year saw skinheads on the rampage in Brighton at Easter. Holidaymakers dived for cover as skins and Hell’s Angels battered each other on the seafront. By August, the coppers had got wise to the skins. They were rounded up as soon as they arrived in Southend on Bank Holiday Monday. Besides confiscating knives, coshes, steel combs, etc., the coppers took their braces and bootlaces, which made it extremely difficult for them to run riot. The media, as usual, was going over the top with hysterical reports on any incidents of violence involving skins. The skinheads, of course, loved it.

As 1970 came to a close, a lot of the skins began to dress in a suedehead style. Their hair was cut about an inch all over and they wore a Crombie overcoat, carried a brolly, usually with a sharpened point, and wore heavy brogue shoes or loafers rather than bovver boots.

The clobber may have changed but the violence went on unabated through 1971. In the autumn of that year a mass ruck took place between skins and greasers in the Gilded Cage bar at Queen’s Hotel. Billy Madden and Phil Hansford were both stabbed as the place erupted. The skins and suedeheads, however, were dying out, as the Smoothies came in wearing Rupert-checked trousers, round collared shirts, tank tops and interlace shoes. By late 1972 the skins had completely died out in Pompey. The original skins of ’69–’71 were some of the hardest geezers ever to follow Pompey.

Rolling with the 6.57 Crew - The True Story of Pompey's Legendary Football Fans

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