Drug Abuse

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DRUG POLICY, VOL 5, NO 1, 1994

FOOTBALL AND DRUGS TWO CULTURES CLASH

Mark Gilman gives an ethnographic snapshot of the merging of two traditionally opposing cultures: the perceived 'effeminacy' of taking psychedelic drugs and the perceived 'machismo' of the football fan.

THE PLUNDER OF BIOGRAPHY

In the pursuit of ethnography it is quite legitimate to plunder one's own biography. This work is no excep, tion. Between leaving school in 1972 andreturning to full time education in 198 1, 1 was engaged in all kinds of casual work and travelled extensively. The nature of much of this kind of casual work meant that large amounts of time were spent rubbing shoulders with a very particular kind of people. These were people who exist in that grey area between the licit and illicit economies. Not heavy duty criminals, inthemain,but people who are 'duckers and divers', wheelers and dealers'.

These people came from working,class backgrounds but for one reason or another had rejected, or been rejected by, honest toil. Instead they hustled around in the quest for a fast buck and a few quid on the side. Many of them were officially unemployed and signed on until it became too much trouble. At which point they disappeared from official records until the taxman or the VATman caught up with them.

Writing recently in New Statesman and Society, Laurie Taylor talked about attending a funeral of one of the latest breed of hedonistic entrepreneurs. He described the mourners and in so doing reminded me of a great many of the people that I grew up with (Taylor, 1992):

'They were mostly men of about 25. But men who'd probably been men since the age of 14, when they decided that school was a wank and that, rather than hanging around waiting for a dead,end job, they'd go out and find their own way to make a living. A bit of wheeling and dealing. A little ducking and diving. What was new was their confidence, their solidarity. As soon as they began to talk, you realised that this was not a diffuse collection of misfits, suitable cases for treatment or counselling. This was a small unapologetic army of working class entrepreneurs equipped with a defiant sense of moral righteousness and an absolute certainty that those like themselves who made money from their wits were the winners, the top men.'

The other group of people that were closest to me were fellow fans of Manchester United Football Club. Most of these men (and they were mostly men) were prototypical working class. These were the lads who had'trades'or decent jobs. If they had lived in a coal mining area they would have gone down the pit. They worked hard all week. Put up with foremen and bosses telling them what to do. Then Saturday came and nobody, but nobody, was going to make them do anything. Saturday, particularly Saturday afternoon, was their time. It belonged to them, their team and their mates. They were no longer anonymous cogs in the wheels of industry.

When the Red Army (or any other football army come to that) invaded town centres at home and away, they had power. They were surrounded by police escorts to protect you, the public. Children were ushered out of their way. Local people and local traders rushed for cover. The hooligans were here. Loqk out! Lock up your daughters! I n short, every Saturda~ afternoon they got repeated doses of Andy Warhol's 15minute fame. Their week-tong anonymous grind evaporated. Their self-esteem was fed and replenished by the fear on stranger's faces. The hooligans were stars. In many ways just as famous as their heroes on the pitch. In 1978 John Clarke remarked that:

'Although football is our national game the history of its development shows a long and very deep connection with one particular section of the nation - the English working class.'

However, over the years this working class has been pushed and pulled to the point where it is difficult to recognise who the modern working class are. It is much easier to see who the middle class are and who the underclass are, but who are the working class? Where are they? What do they think/feel? Sometimes I think I know but other times I am not sure. But over the last 10 years the working class entrepreneur attitude has been dominant among'the lads'. Here is another quote from the same piece by John Clarke (1978):

'. . . Football's prominent place in our national culture is not derived from the game itself ... but because the game could take hold of peoples lives, win their commitment, lift them to heights of passion and plunge them into the depths of despair.'

As the years pass by the widespread appeal of football to young working-class men is being reduced. There are more and more alternative leisure pursuits competing for less and less disposable income. If you took it seriously, and weren't a 'part time supporter', football was never a very cheap option. But nowadays it is downright expensive. And more and more leisure activities and cultures are on offer to grab hold of your life, win your commitment, lift you to the heights of passion and plunge you into the depths of despair. The latest of these leisure cultures is'raving', involving the use of drugs such as Ecstasy. 1 want to try and show that rave culture is the latest and biggest modern youth cutture with psychedelic drugs at its centre.

Further, I would like to trace the emergence of rave culture and the use of Ecstasy among young(ish), working,class men and look at the impact this has had, and is having, on their lifestyles. 1 will use football hooligans as a window into this phenomenon. 1 have a long-standing interest in football and football hooligans. 1 also have a Master of Arts degree in crime, deviance and social policy, and have been involved in drug work and research into drug use and drug users since 1984. So 1 have a long-standing personal interest in football and a professional interest in drugs.

In my research into the relationship between football and drugs 1 have unashamedly exploited my own biography as part of the methodological tool box. The other methodological tools employed in this work have been interviews (usually unstructured) and observation. In other words the methodological tools borrow heavily from 'Ethnography'. For those of you not familiar with methodological issues, ethnography is born out of anthropology.

You know the kind of thing. Some Oxbridgescholar goes off and lives with a lost tribe in Papua New Guinea and then comes back to tell us all about it. He or she spends time in the world of the people being studied with the aim of getting an insider's view of a culture or a social group. The emphasis is on being authentic and on being accurate. To achieve this the ethnographic researcher has to go where members of the culture or social group carry out their activities and observe members by watching them carefully, asking the right questions, and by listening. This is what 1 have been doing with a group of young men in and around Greater Manchester involved in the rave scene. The prime aim of this research is to get infor, mation on safer drug use back to groups of people involved in similar behaviour. The'Peanut Pete'campaign is one practical result of this research.

My research into dance drugs in general and Ecstasy in particular began towards the end of 1989. Up till then all mywork in the drugsfieldhad been concerned withthe use of heroin, opiates and otherdrugs of injecion. 1 am co-author of a book YoungPeople and Heroin in the Northof England, published in 1987. For myMasers degree 1 wrote about the relationship between the 'War on Drugs'and HIV prevention. 1 was, and still am, involved with the production, monitoring and evaluation of our HIV prevention comic book Smack in the Eye.

In 1989 we were very much aware of the latest upsurge in the use of psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD. Like many other drug agencies we had tended to view the use of LSD as part of recreational drug using patterns that were largely non-problematicand if left alone would fizzle out without too much harm being done. However, 1989 also saw the t4rescendo of the MADCHESTER phenomenon colliding head-on with the ACID HOUSE phenomenon. It was at this point that we became concerned about the sheer scale of the use of psychedelic drugs as part of the emergent rave culture. So we decided to take a closer, and more structured, look at recreational drug using patterns involving the dance drugs - amphetamine, LSD and Ecstasy.

By 1989 we were approaching the third year of producing Smack in the Eye and were very familiar and happy with the methodology that was employed in its production. This is a very simple methodology. It merely requires an agency to make a commitment to liaising withcurrent drugusers on a regular basis tofind out more about their drug-using behaviours and ask them what services they need and/or what information they might find useful. Many agencies make the mistake of thinking that ex-users will fit this bill. They won't. The views of current users is often fundamentally different from that of the ex-user.

By 1989 we knew a lot about white, working-class, male, opiate injectors so we felt it made sense to make incremental steps towards targeting and speaking with white, working class, non-opiate, non-injecting drug users. And where better to start than with groups of football fans. The overwhelming stench of cannabis products that oozed from their midst suggested they had more than a passing relationship with illegal drugs.

 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOME BRITISH YOUTH CULTURES

The relationship between football and drugs is only a reflection of a much wider set of issues and relationships concerned with youth culture and drugs. But British football grounds have provided a focus for all the most significant British youth cultures for almost 30years.

In the 1960s we first heard orchestrated chants echoing around the terraces. These were often adapted from pop songs of the day. Mods and Rockers could be seen at football matches and some of them, particularly the mods, would be watching the match while under the influence, or the after effects of amphetamines.

The 1960s saw a boom in the use of amphetamine tablets and capsules such as purple hearts, black bombers, green and clears etc. The 1960s saw white working-class youth dancing all night to the latest sounds fuelled by vast amounts of amphetamines. The clubs didn't serve alcohol. Young people took a change of clothing to change out of their sweaty dancing clothes before going home.

The links between stimulant drugs, music and all night dancing were forged in contemporary history at the Twisted Wheel club in Manchester. The Twisted Wheel has gone down in the history of northern pop, ular culture. For any one who wants to get a general feel for this era 1 recommend the film'Quadrophenia'. This film also contained scenes of the mods on the march in seaside towns on bank holidays. Scenes that are very familiar to anyone who travelled with football fans in the late sixties and early seventies, the only difference being the number ofyoung women who j oined the march of the mods.

Although there was some cross,over between mod culture and the terraces, the other sixties phenomena - 'Hippydom', 'the counter culture', 'the first psychedelia'- didn't really affect the terrace cultures. Hippies were middle class'puffs'and therefore their drugs (LSD and cannabis) were'puffy'and not for real men. Amphetamines and alcohol were the drugs of the day for working-class kids and football supporters.

Rowdy Yates (1992), the Director of Lifeline, makes a very clear observation about this period and the sixties counter,culture in general:

'It began in the art schools and universities of Cheltenham, Oxford and Cambridge. It's origins were never in Barnsley, Wigan or Birmingham ... The rallying cry for [the counterculture] was an obscure quotation from Plato "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake" - Not many working class kids had read Plato. This, at least remains the same ... From the beginning, the counterculture of the sixties was inspired by the middle classes. John Hopkins, Rosie Boycott, Michael Horovitz, Robin Blackburn, John Peel, Kieran Fogerty were all university brats. Jagger, Lennon and McCartney all went to grammar school. To working class kids it was a dream lying just outside the factory gate. To them - unable to play music, paint murals, write poetry - the one sure way in was to take the same drugs.'

But that was if you wanted to take hippy drugs. In the 1960s and first few years of the 1970s mosItfootball supporters didn't. I think there is a crucial historical footnote here. The counter-culture -'Hippydom' or the first psychedelia - was the domain of middle,class drop-outs from higher education. These people would flirt with self-imposed poverty and Eastern mysticism until they got bored. Then they went back to university, finished their degrees and went on to marry the same accountant they would have married anyway. They usually had two kids named something like 'Toby' and 'Pippa'. Moved to the country. Voted for the SDP. joined Greenpeace, campaigned against nuclear power and cursed Thatcherism all the way to the bank. To them the working class were a mystery. They knew more about the Dalai Lama than they did the ordinary folk of Doncaster.

In direct contrast, and born out of Mod/Spiv culture, 'Northern Soul' was a much more working class phenomenon. Its origins were in Barnsley, Wigan and Birmingham. And the enthusiasts who kept it alive came from working class backgrounds. They were the ones who broke into the chemists and blagged doctors for the tablets necessary to keep the party going and the dance floor burning.

Unlike the hippies they didn't want to dress down.

Like the Mods before them they wanted nice clothes not scruffy workclothes (they had to wear them all week for real). There is nothing more sad than seeing middle-class people dressing down so as to have an affinity with the working classes. How insulting it is to working-class people to have one of the wide varieties of social worker, on nearly Y,20 000 a year, stomping round your council flat in Doc Martens, dungarees and donkey jacket - how on earth do they expect to be taken seriously?

Northern Soul in the 1970s was borne out of mod culture in the 1960s.'Wigan Casino'and'The Torch' in Stoke on Trent'Kept the Faith'. The'faith'was dancing all night on stimulant drugs to soul music. Only the drugs had changed slightly. Supplies of pills diverted from doctors and chemists could no longer satisfy the demand for amphetamines so the back street chemists got busy and started producing amphetamine sulphate powder by the ton.

The early 1970s also saw the emergence of skinheads. Skinheads were an offshoot of mod culture. In the main, they rejected amphetamines, or combined them with alcohol. Despite their affinity with reggae and ska music they declined the accompanying marijuana as a'puffy/hippy'drug and stuck to alcohol. Variations on the skinhead look dominated football ter, race culture in the first years of the 1970s until the advent of the platform sole.

The silver boots of David Bowie in the early 1970s saw football hooligans in platform soles, massive pants, gaudyshirts with massive collarsand starry tank top jumpers. Although alcohol remained dominant the music of David Bowie made LSD acceptable to working-class kids and football supporters. The LPs 'Hunky Dory' and 'Diamond Dogs' were particularly influential. If you remember, Bowie had used the William Burroughs cut,up method to create the lyrics for Diamond Dogs. Looking back I think the clothes designers must have taken LSD before using the cutup method in creating some of the fashion monstrosities that we all fell for at the time.

LSD microdots produced some big eyes and some scarymomentsin 1974,1975 and 1976. Cannabis also started to crop up more and more over this period and a mini-form of psychedelia became popular among working-class kids. Perhaps this was the dress rehearsal for today's psychedelia. But trying to clump around on six inch soles while tripping on acid, drunk on beer and stoned on cannabis was no mean feat. To then engage in a football brawl required acute dexterity in mind-body function. Hardly surprising that LSD microdots acted to quell some of the violence of this period. However, LSD and psychedelia never really got a chance to compete with football hooliganism in the 1970s because, just as it was getting a foothold, the police launched Operation julie and the party was over. Not to be revived till the blotting paper revolution of the 1980s.

EnterPunkRock; 1977 saw the explosion of punk. Punks began pogoing on speed and glue, but got spewed up on the dark shores of heroin, needles, overdoses and death. With all that black leather, nihilism and pessimism, what did we really expect? However, punk did leave behind an important'Do it Yourself' legacy which was later to find its true expression in Rave culture.

By the early 1980s football hooligans had an identity all of their own. Football hooliganswere separate from football supporters. Their fashion and culture was that of the 'Casual'. For much of my discussion of the soccer casual 1 am indebted to an anonymous article from The Face (199 1 ) magazine.

In 1981 young working-class lads could be any, thing they wanted to be: Soul Boy, Skinhead, Mod, Punk. The list was endless. If you were really desperate you could become a New RomantiG*. If you needed medical help there was always Heavy Metal.

But for switched on, street-wise, working-class kids there was only one real option - Soccer Casual/Hooligan. Soccer casuals wore expensive designer clothes. A million light years away from hippies and all the hippy mutants. Fashion and style were all important. You were nobody if you label didn't scream - expensive! Working-class parents despaired as their kids demanded trainers and track suits costing hundreds of pounds.

The casual movement was the culmination of many things. Working-class kids in expensive clothes were not new. Neither was football violence. But the casual movement created a look unique to the mod/spiv football hooligan. Mooching around in a Tacchini Track Suit and fighting in your local team's 'firm'became the'thing to do'. All football clubs had a hooligan element. The casual uniform meant everyone could join if they had the right labels.

The casuals were different from earlier hooligans. They didn't wear their club's colours. This was frowned upon. They were faces. The people that mattered - opposing team's firms - knew who they were anyway. If you weren't known you were doing some thing wrong. Once again Warhol's 15,minute fame. Only this time you were even more famous. Your fame was amplified as part of a small crew. Even Manchester United's casual crew was relatively small - in compar, ison to the huge Red Army of the 1970s.

The casual's heroes weren't the 'good piss up good punch up boot boys of the 1970s'. Their heroes were the local villains. The took was that of the spivvy, pickpocket wide boy. The obsession with style and clothes led some of the older 'boot boys' to call the casuals'puffs'. This theme has been taken up by various commentators over the years. Writing in The Mail on Sunday on 27 October 1991 Richard Heller claims that football hooligans are '

. . obviously repressed homosexuals'. 1 must say that 1 have felt similarities between being in a pub full of soccer casuals and being in a pub full of gay men. There are the same furtive glances at each other's clothes and an eerie feeling of being in a room full of Regency Dandies from a bygone era. In fact, some of the most famous faces in soccer casual firms have been gay or bisexual.

The hows and whys of the birth of soccer casuals is quite a complex phenomenon. But why it continued waseasyitwasgreatfun! Andformost people the fun was not so much in the carrying out of the violence but rather in the great escape that soccer casualdom offered. Hanging around in smart clothes, travelling around the country chasing, or being chased by, young men just like you. This was the nearest most would everget to Hollywood (The Face, 1991)!

'They [soccer casuals] enjoyed the characters, the top boys, the tales. They enjoyed a different brand name each month, a new word each saturday, and a different posture each minute. There were stories to be told, adventures to be had . . . running Leeds at Kings Cross and not being able to sleep for three days because of the high ... why did they do it? They did it for the buzz ... In another time they would have been pirates.'

By 1988 the buzz had faded. It wasn't as much fun. It got boring. It was also getting more and more dan, gerous. Strict policing meant that you had to do as muchdamage in as small a time as possible- hence the Stanley knife and CS gas - literally a quick in and out and off!

And then along came that Smiley Matey Acid House and the boys found a new buzz. Acid House and then Rave came along at just the right time with a pocketful of herbs and chemicals. Before Rave there were only two kinds of clubs. Those where you dressed up in smart clothes, got incredibly drunk to shitty chart music then looked for a casual sexual encounter, a fight and a kebab (not in any particular order 1 might add). The other kinds of clubs were the really trendy ones and they wouldn't let you in anyway.

When Rave began as Acid House there was good music, good drugs and no violence. It was a most welcome change. Ex-casuals started to get into the DJ game and/or organising the drugs and the security for early Acid House parties and Raves. The Do-it-Yourself attitude of Punk was resurrected. Records could be made in bedrooms. Musical pretence was rejected punk style. just as crusty old rockers complained about the lack of musical ability of the three-chord wonders of Punk, so they became apoplectic about dance music that was made on cheap computers by spotty kinds in anoraks living, not in Los Angeles, but in Stafford with not a guitar in sight. In many ways, Rave is/was much more egalitarian and revolutionary than Punk ever was.

Punk had stars, alternative stars, but nevertheless 'The Stars'. They, the stars, stood on the stage and you watched. At a Punk gig you could jump up and~down and spit at the stars or you could be a wilting wallflower leaning against a wall working on your moody look. None of this pretentious bullshit cut any ice at a Rave. The very nature of Rave is about fun, celebration and participation. The Rave has no room for wallflowers or moody grungers dressed in black. There are plenty of dark and damp studenty venues catering to these middle-class posers. A good Rave is dependent upon audience participation. In fact audience participation is the Rave. And this is where many of the cross-overs with soccercasuals come in. The soccercasual was not content to stand politely and watch the stars on the pitch. They wanted a piece of the action. They wanted to participate. They wanted to be famous too. They wanted a top buzz not a secondary high (The Face, 1990:

'When you've stood in the middle of a full scale soccer riot with everything going off around you. When you've stood, rushing off your head in a packed field of friends dancing and watching the sun come up. That's when you begin to know how confused the line between love and hate is. It's all just a buzz!'

'HELLO! HELLO! - UNITED ARE BACK! HELLO!'

Something very important happened in the clash between the cultures of drugs and football in the spring of 1991. The news probably went unnoticed by everyone except football fans in general and Manchester United fans in particular. This is the news ... bringing you the latest from around the world. Tonight we spotlight Eastern Europe. What does the future hold for the Balkans? Can Gorby hold on to power in the face of Yeltsin's meteoric rise to become the USAs favourite Rusky? But first, over to Poland (not you Adolf!) and the most important story of the day - Manchester United Football Club have beaten Legia Warsaw Football Club by three goals to nil. Barring a freak accident at Manchester United's Old Trafford football stadium in two weeks'time, Manchester United and their army of devoted fans will be in Rotterdam on 15 May 1991. Let all the world hear this:

'United are back - United are back - Hello Hello - United are back!'

However you heard this result, if you are, were or ever have been a Manchester United supporter the same questions were in everyone's mind -'How long shall we stay in Amsterdam? How will we get there? How will we get a ticket? How will we get off work?'. The answers to these many questions were debated in bars all over Britain. At the end of these debates only one thing was certain and that was expressed in song:

'Rotterdam, Rotterdam, we're the famous Man United and we're going to Rotterdam.'

In reality, many thousands were heading towards Amsterdam for a week or more and the day trip to Rotterdam to witness the renaissance of a footballing religion and the collection of a modest silver trophy was a pleasant little excursion. In the weeks leading up to the game all manner of obstacles were put in the way of United fans wishing to make a holiday out of the trip to the Netherlands. Thousands of United fans in thousands of bedrooms spent sleepless nights in nervous anticipation of the trip to come. Like Martin Sheen's character in 'Apocalypse Now', they had been waiting so long for a mission and now they had one and no-one was going to stop them going. Unlike the Martin Sheen character when this mission was over they would want another and another ... The end of the journey promised so much and yet provided so much more.

'DREAM TRIPPING YEAH... THAT'S WHERE I WANNA BE...'

In their dreams an advance scouting party of United fans made a tremendous discovery. Colonel Walter J. Kurtz was found alive andwell in ahashishshopjust off Dam square. Like so many Vietnam veterans he had abandoned T.S. Eliot and the Wastelands of Cambodia for the oasis of uncomplicated hedonism that is Amsterdam. He now wears a Manchester United baseballcap anda drug- induced permanent smile. Sitting in a modest rented flat in Greater Manchester he entertains burnt out ravers with tales.

The tales, however, are not of' The Horror, The Horror', of man stripped of all normal moral conventions, but of the enlightenment of football fans introduced to a civilised society where the police treat you like human beings and all your physical and psychological needs are available - legally. The tales of Walter J. Kurtz are of one week in the Netherlands in May 1991 - when he met with the Manchester boys - and what tales they are. Listen and behold. Allow, yourself the indulgence of speculating as t~ a future where every day is like the days of that glorious rain), week in May.

'BACK TO LIFE - BACK TO REALITY?'

This dream sequence acts as a rather fanciful prelude. It is both confusing and surreal but so was the trip to the Netherlands. Confusion characterised the buildup to the final. Between them, the football authorities, the administrators of Manchester United Football Club PLC and the media did everything in their power to prevent the party to end all parties.

The most famous football team in the world were back in a European final. The fans had waited 23 long years sustained only by the odd FA cup victory. This is 'wax fruit'compared to European football. Despite the long wait for real success the 'Red Army' had never deserted its post at Old Trafford. The club wanted to reward this loyalty with a miserly, oneday, there and straight back, in-out cattle trip to Rotterdam. The attitude of thousands of United fans was unanimous, 'I f they think they can get away with this they must be joking!'. All manner of routes to the Netherlands were planned and the necessary tickets bought. Tickets for the game would be purchased over there from 'touts' or 'scalpers' of which there were to be many - there always are and always will be.

The surreal part came as a direct result of the fans' first encounters with the Dutch police. They looked like any other gang of European riot police with helmets, guns and dogs. Yet they behaved like friendly but firm rational human beings. This was weird with a capital 'W'. Veterans of football travel, at home and abroad, expected to be treated in the same provocative way that they are used to week in week out. But here were policemen who told you where to find the best places to stay, how to get around the city, the best trains to catch and, get this, the best places to buy soft drugs (i.e. in the designated 'coffee shops' not from street dealers).

The surreal theme continued as one regularly bumped into faces well known for wearing malignant scowls now giggling like excited children as they puffed away on their decriminalised cannabis joints. Not everyone saw the funny side of this. One disgruntled and self-proclaimed 'veteran hooligan' clutched his zillionth beer Cthey're too fuckin' small these!'), looked around the crowded bar, cloaked in a fog of cannabis smoke, and remarked disconsolately:

'Look at 'em! its fuckin' ridiculous this! its like letting kids loose in a fuckin' chocolate factory! there's not a punch in 'em! if it went off now we'd get fuckin'wasted!'

The response of those in earshot of this remark was to take a long look at this sad creature of football's dim and distant past and to burst out laughing. He had completely missed the point. The 'Red Army' were here on 'R and R' - rest and recreation. Any trouble would ruin the holiday. The bars and brothels would be closed and Amsterdam would be about as much fun as Downtown Nowhere on a Sunday afternoon. The disgruntled veteran hooligan was treated to a rendition of a song from his own heyday that celebrated the varied interests of the travelling'Red Army':

'Eyes right, foreskins tight, bollocks to the front, we are the boys who make no noise we , re only after cunt. We're the heroes of the night and we'd rather fuck than fight, we're the heroes of the Stret rd siliers.'

For the rest of the Dutch sojourn any mention of the phrase, 'it's like letting kids loose in a fuckin' chocolate factory!' was, and still is, met with gales of its' or here fans' oked hely but cap, and Dca, But the best soft laughter. Such surrealist themes were to run and run. Obviously, the participants did not remark on the surreal nature of much of the trip to Amsterdam in such terms. Rather, they told their friends the stories and the settings in which they occurred and finished off with, 'lt was fuckin' mad- brilliant'.

The key point here is that it must be understood that a football match (even including extra time) only lasts for two hours. The'lads', who are the vanguard of any football club's support, regard official club trips that take you straight to the match and straight home as worse than useless. Most of them would rather stay at home and watch the match in the pub than go on one of these official trips. The reasons for this are plenty and are only tangentially related to football violence.

If you listen to the 'lads' talking about a football trip very little will be about the game itself. Most of the 'folk tales'will involve incidents before and after the game. Some of the incidents may have involved violent or threatening situations but they are just as likelytobeaboutsex, drugs andmusic. Youdon'tget much time for either of these on an official trip. To go to the Netherlands to see your favourite side play in their biggest game in 23 years and to avoid Amsterdam, the city that is widely recognised as a hedonistllV'paradise, is nothing short of perverse in the eyes of the'lads':

'We're taking over, We're taking over, We're taking over Amsterdam [repeat and repeat].'

For students of popular culture one of the reasons why'the Red Army's' occupation of Amsterdam was so important is that it consolidated a growing link between drugs and football fans. Since the mid to late 1970s there has been a growing overlap in the drugtaking, nightclubbing and terrace cultures. This was clearly noted at the 1990 world cup in Italy when England supporters took up the now famous chant of'Let's all have a disco!'. The practices oPskinning up' (smoking cannabis), 'having a dab' (of amphetamine sulphate), 'taking a trip'(LSD) and 'doing an " E ... were already making some transition from dance floor to terrace. For many young men the weekend has become a discrete leisure culture which combines mornings, afternoons and nights in one long unbroken hedonistic celebration.

Many members of the'Red Army'experienced this lifestyle for the first time in Amsterdam in May1991.

It was their Ibiza 1988. At the Inspiral Carpets concert at the Paradiso club (on the Monday before the match), a massive red, white and black MUFC flag was unfurled and United's 'lads' stood out among the crowd of Dutch music lovers. United's 'lads'were the ones with LSD eyes, extra large cannabis cigarettes and three beers perched precariously on top of each other. Having tasted this lifestyle they brought their enthusiasm for it home with them, looked around for a suitable vehicle and found -'the Rave culture'.

At the time of the final the Manchester guitar bands of the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets andjames had dominated the listening material of the'lads'. Within weeks of returning home the 'lads' were listening to tapes of'Italian house' and 'hard core Belgian techno'. Moreover, they were dancing to the same music at'Rave'nights in local clubs while under the influence of methylenedioxymethamphetamine-MDMA,'Ecstacy'(orsimply'E'). By the time of the start of the 1991-1992 season many of the 'lads' were confirmed 'Ravers'. Although the Happy Mondays et al. had a place for easy listening at home, weekend nights out were reserved for Rave music dished up by a 'top Dj' in a sweaty club with the blood being chased at break neck speed round your body courtesy of MrT'and his side kick'Billy Whizz' (amphetamine sulphate).

When we start to unwrap the package of reasons that have been cited for the current ceasefire in football violence, the transition of key individuals from hooligan to Raver jumps out at those who really know the football scene. The surrealism referred to earlier now knows no bounds. At one Rave in September 1991, key members of both Manchester United and Manchester City's 'lads'found themselves raving under the same roof on the same drug -'E'. Peoplewho six months earlier would have been tearing each other's throats out were now dancing together and pulling'E'faces at each other. Later that month one of United's lads described how he and his mates had gone to a Rave in Yorkshire and he had found himself sur, rounded on the dance floor by a group of young men dressed in the old style, famous white shirts of the 1960s Leeds United side:

'I was off my face on "E and didn't know or care where I was or who I was and then I noticed these shirts bouncing all around me. For a split second I thought - fuck me! We're in Yorkshire! These are Leeds! This is it! The party stops right here! It's going to go right off now! 1 looked at one of them and his eyes were in the back of his head he was well on one and out of it. 1 ended up dancing with them all night - fuckin' mad or what! - Brilliant!!'

What was unique about this epoch (the early 1990s) in the history of football violence was the blending together of a whole weekend leisure culture in which football played only one part, albeit a maj . or one. In the past key individuals have always retired from football violence only for the violence to continue in their absence. They get married andhave kids, go to jail, lose their jobs (and therefore their money) and some I . u st grow out of it. These th ings have always happened. What is unique is the conversion away from violence of a whole strata of footbatt'hooligans) at the peak of their hoot igan 'careers'.

As the 'top lads' converted so they influenced those younger ones who took them as role mode s. In 1991-1992 there didn't seem to be any'Young Governers' (Manchester City) or 'Young Munichs' (Manchester United) stepping into thehooliganvoid created by the move to raving in favour of rowing. They were not asking their olders @4id better, 'Can we come to the next away game with ~ou?'. Instead they were asking if they could come to the next Rave, get on one and get out of it.

In summary, something happened, a change came. However, 'cautious optimism' is probably the wisest position for social scientists to adopt. For a short peri, od football violence was uncool and drugs played a major role in bringing this culture shift about. 1 would like to claim that my modest, and on-going, research project is further evidence that experiences with psychedelic drugs can be important agents of personal, psychological, cultural and social change. Now that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary kids have tasted psychedelia who knows what changes lie ahead. However, if culture and fashion are anything they are fickle and subject to overnight change. Already, in the 19931994 season, we have seen a lowly club's lads take the opportunity of a favourable cup draw to steam into blissed up 'lads' from one of the bigger, more fashionable clubs. The reverberations and the return to violence could be as swift as was the move towards peace and love.

Mark R. Gilman, The Lifeline Project, Globe House, Southall Street, Manchester M3 I LG, UK.

REFERENCES

Clarke, J. (1978). Football and working class fans: tradition and change. In R. Ingham, S. Hall, J. Clarke, P. Marsh and J. Donovan (eds), Football Hooliganism, p. 39. London: Inter-Action

Taylor, L. (1992). When the music's over. New Statesman and Society, 24 April.

The Face (1991). December, No. 39, pp. 72-76.

Yates, R. (1992). If it weren't for the alligators. A Lifeline Publication.