Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang (9 page)

‘Naw, don’t even fucking think about going back again,’ I said with feeling.

I had a black eye and Jinks had a broken nose, a few of our expensive garments were totalled and I believe that was the sum total of our casualties. It was now quarter to three. As we made our way up London Road we bumped into other ICF, some in groups of five or six, some twenty-strong. As we told our stories there was a mood of envy amongst the lads who weren’t there and of what might have been among the lads who were.

‘If even half of the lads in Minstrels were there we’d have ran them cunts all the way into their shithole of a stadium,’ I said, to general agreement.

The atmosphere in the Rangers end was fucking phenomenal. By now all our firm knew what had happened. We could see their main lads in the Jungle and they looked gutted. I can’t blame them. I think the final score was 1–1 but I couldn’t be sure; I couldn’t have cared less. What I remember very clearly is that
after the game we mobbed up outside and our firm was at least five hundred-strong. Word had got around about what happened before the game and, although nothing was said, we all knew we were going back for seconds. As we headed along London Road we came to Baines Street, and, without anybody saying a word, we turned right and walked the couple of hundred yards to the corner of Baines Street and the Gallowgate.

‘ICCCF, ICCCF,’ we chanted.

There were thousands of Celtic fans around but that didn’t matter. Confronted by five hundred Rangers they lost it; you could taste the fear radiating from them. They were shiting themselves. Their firm, the Celtic Soccer Casuals, and various other groups of terrorists, local nutters and hard men tried to front us but they were utterly destroyed. They were chased everywhere. They tried to make a stand several times but the tone had been set when just thirty of us had done them before the game. It had been like the Alamo in reverse.

We had the momentum, we had the belief and we were beheading a bogeyman on behalf every Rangers fan in the city. No more would the Gallowgate be tiptoed around and over the course of the next four or five years we terrorised those cunts in that shithole whenever we chose. Possibly the biggest clue to our utter domination was the fact Baird’s, Norma Jean’s and the other Celtic dumps closed their doors whenever we played at Celtic Park. Before that day we were already dominant against Celtic’s firm, after that day we moved into another stratosphere.

We knew, better still, they knew.

I am not a bigot. That statement will surprise some people, given the team I support, the mob I joined, my antipathy towards Celtic and even the title of this book. But it’s true.

While I disagree strongly with the teachings of their church I have nothing against individual Roman Catholics. I even married a Catholic in a Catholic chapel. People are entitled to their own beliefs and that includes adhering to whichever religion they choose. Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship; these things are what Britain is all about and what made this country great.

I was glad when Rangers started to sign Roman Catholics. I was glad when Rangers made a Roman Catholic the club captain. I was glad when we appointed a Roman Catholic manager, even if he did turn out to be a dud. Those were the right things to do. And I don’t just mean in a moral sense, although that was important too. Opening the floodgates meant that we could draw on a much wider talent pool; it has made Rangers stronger on the field and that for me is what it’s all about. In fact I would go further: I believe that had the old signing policy been scrapped earlier Rangers would have won the European Cup before Celtic did.

The change in the signing policy had another beneficial spin-off: it meant that Celtic supporters and their many camp followers in the media and in politics no longer had that particular stick to beat us with. It was something they raised at every opportunity and in every forum and it took its toll on our reputation. That said I don’t think Celtic fans have been entirely honest about this issue. It seems to me – and to many of a light-blue persuasion – that the only reason Celtic signed Protestants was because there weren’t enough Catholics in Scotland for them to choose from. Celtic had to broaden its horizons, not for principled reasons, but to put a competitive team on the park. Just think of the way they treated Jock Stein, the most important man in their history. They should have
given Stein a seat on the board when he stepped down as manager but chose instead to give him a job in the pools department. That to me was an insult and I believe that had he been a Catholic he would have been a shoo-in for the boardroom.

While I defend the right of people, including Roman Catholics, to worship as they see fit, that does not mean the Roman Catholic Church, or Roman Catholics, should be above criticism. Some questionable things have been done in their name. Scottish Catholics like to make out they have been discriminated against in Scotland, and, while there is some truth in that, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Let us consider 1920, when the conflict over Irish independence was boiling over, a conflict that the Irish in the west of Scotland took more than a passing interest in. In that year Charlie Diamond, editor of the
Glasgow Observer
– the main newspaper for Scotland’s Roman Catholics – was sent to prison for advocating terrorist attacks on British troops in Ireland. Nor did a jail sentence stop Diamond from supporting extremism. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the
Observer
, under his editorship, praised the fascist regimes of both Hitler and Mussolini in the most glowing terms. The
Glasgow Observer
in those days was also consistently and fiercely anti-Semitic, describing Jews among many other things as ‘odious and unscrupulous exploiters’. It is significant that there were no protests at the
Observer
’s vile editorial policy from Scotland’s ‘downtrodden’ Catholics or from the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the day.

There was also a strong link at that time between fascism and Irish Republicanism. In May 1945, shortly after Hitler committed suicide, the government of the Irish Republic sent a wreath to the German embassy in Dublin. While almost every country in the world celebrated the death of the cruellest man in history Ireland mourned his passing. It is also well documented that the Irish Republic was a haven for Nazi war criminals after the Second World War.

But for some Scots from an Irish Catholic background it wasn’t enough simply to incite violence against the Crown. They went even further, bringing Republican terrorism to the streets of Glasgow. In 1921 an IRA commander, Frank Carty, was being transported in a Black Maria from the High Court to Duke Street prison. The van was attacked by a ten-man IRA unit, who shot dead a police inspector, Robert Johnston, before turning their guns on his two fellow officers. It was only thanks to the courage of these two officers that the raid was foiled. Carty was safely delivered to his prison cell.

Inevitably, there was anger at the atrocity perpetrated by the IRA. In the aftermath of Duke Street there were sectarian riots in Glasgow, most notably in the Gallowgate, which left many people injured and caused extensive damage to houses and commercial property. The police did their best to find those who had planned and carried out the raid on the van and discovered that the IRA men had been helped by some members of Glasgow’s large Catholic population. In St Mary’s RC church in the east end the police found a huge cache of guns and bomb-making equipment. A priest and seven parishioners were arrested, but due to lack of evidence no one was ever prosecuted for the ‘Glasgow outrage’, as it became known.

In the field of education the Roman Catholic Church is responsible for the most divisive policy of the last hundred years. I am talking of course about the educational apartheid forced on this country by the presence of separate Catholic schools. ‘Rome on the rates’, as it was once known, is to my way of thinking deeply damaging. In the already divided west of Scotland it divides people even more, breeding distrust and exacerbating sectarianism. The vast majority of Scots agree with me, if opinion polls are to be believed. Given that they asked for and were granted their own state-funded schools I am not sure how Catholics can square this with their contention that they are seriously discriminated against.

Then there is the scandal of the paedophile priests, a scandal that the RC Church desperately tried to cover up. It was systematic abuse that lasted for decades, perhaps even centuries. One wag summed it up when he said, ‘At one time young Irish boys wanted to enter the priesthood, now it’s the other way around . . .’ The whole thing was a disgrace; it turned my stomach. You have to question the morality of the bishops and the cardinals, supposed men of God, who not only turned a blind eye to what was going on but also actively conspired to get the perverts off the hook.

Despite the claims by Catholics about unfair treatment today the boot is firmly on the other foot. It seems to me that the Scottish establishment now actively favours people of that religious persuasion. By contrast we Protestants have been made to feel ashamed of our religion, our background and even our football team. We have been cowed by the relentless propaganda that pours out of Holyrood and the media, all of it designed to make us feel like second-class citizens. Celtic fans wallow in their Irishness, even those whose only connection with Ireland is to have once drunk a pint of Guinness.

This new state of affairs is accurately reflected at Ibrox. Rangers fans hate Celtic as much as they ever did but are now afraid to say it. While Celtic fans feel free to sing songs praising the IRA and other murderers, or to boo a minute’s silence commemorating British soldiers who died for this country, we sit on our hands, unable to celebrate our heritage. The atmosphere at Ibrox has been ruined by bans on this song and that chant, even when they are clearly humorous, designed only to wind-up Celtic supporters. Take for example the ‘Famine Song’, a witty little ditty which suggests that as the potato famine is over Celtic fans might like to go back home to Ireland (‘The famine’s over/Why don’t you go home?’, sung to the tune of ‘Sloop John B’). Some daft bugger with green-tinted spectacles complained to the Irish embassy in London, who in turn passed the complaint along to the Scottish government. Meanwhile Celtic too jumped on the bandwagon, with Dr John Reid, club chairman, describing the ‘Famine Song’ as ‘vile, racist and sectarian’. Then, in November 2008, came the most ludicrous overreaction of them all, when a young Rangers fan was convicted of breach of the peace for singing it at a Kilmarnock–Rangers game.

The establishment in Scotland hates what Rangers stand for. Politicians, the media and churches portray anyone connected with the club as right wing, bigoted and old fashioned. To them we are an embarrassment. It came as no surprise to me that the anti-sectarian organisation, Nil by Mouth, was set up following the murder of a young Celtic fan. Since its inception in 2000 it has been handed substantial amounts of taxpayers’ money to help meet its running costs. The murder in question was horrific, and as a father my heart goes out to the boy’s parents, but I strongly believe that if it had been a young Rangers fan who had been murdered the Scottish establishment wouldn’t have bothered. Nor have I, and most other Rangers fans, been impressed by NBM’s campaigns. To me they lean towards helping Celtic and Celtic fans. Nil by Mouth even gave evidence against the Rangers fans accused of singing discriminatory chants by UEFA.

The Scottish government proudly proclaims that it is fighting racism, sectarianism and discrimination. One of its campaigns had a slogan ‘One Scotland. Many Cultures’. That’s right, but not if you’re Protestant, Unionist, working class and a Rangers supporter. I am of course a member of that endangered species – and I do mean endangered, because everything I believe in and hold dear is under attack in modern-day Scotland.

First and foremost I consider myself Scottish and British. But I am also a proud Glaswegian. This is a great city with a proud past, at one time a world city that produced more ships and railway engines in a year than the whole of Germany. Shettleston, my spiritual home, is a microcosm of Glasgow, full of hard-working, down-to-earth, friendly people; they are the salt of the earth. I have strong links with Shettleston: my mum worked there; I had a house in the area; my aunt lived there; many ICF, including Harky, come from the place. I also happen to like the many Roman Catholics who hail from Shettleston; they are a welcome addition to the community.

To me an essential part of being British is an appreciation of our armed forces. They epitomise everything that is great about this country. They are the real heroes. As a boy I read about the 36th Ulster Division, and was inspired by the heroism of its soldiers. The 36th grew out of the Ulster Volunteer Force, which was formed by Sir Edward Carson to prevent Northern Ireland from being subsumed into a united Ireland. The Ulster Division fought bravely throughout the First World War and on a single day at the battle of the Somme in 1916 suffered more than five thousand casualties. Reading about those brave Ulstermen gave me ambitions to serve. I wanted to be a Royal Marine and at the age of seventeen I was all ready to join-up but Mum wouldn’t sign the papers granting me permission and the opportunity to serve my country slipped away. I never miss the chance to defend our servicemen and women and the great job they do. I am regularly on radio phone-ins, where I go toe-to-toe with people I believe are trying to put down Britain and its values. One such person, I would argue, is the socialist politician, George Galloway, and I have had more than a few ding-dongs with him on the airwaves.

In political terms I am on the right of the spectrum. I admit to attending the odd British National Party meeting when I was younger and, yes, I did sign the nomination papers for a BNP candidate but that is my right in a free society. For the record I should make it clear that I agree with some of the BNP’s policies. Immigration has become much too easy and has to be more tightly controlled – but on the other hand I do not agree with the forced repatriation of immigrants. That said people moving here from abroad have to integrate and to respect this great country of ours and all it stands for. My message to immigrants when it comes to Britain is. ‘Love it or leave it.’ Simple as.