Book serialisation: Far Foreign Land, Chapter 3
The 2005 journey continues to evoke the past. Paris, tear gas, Toxteth and recalling those happy days when Real Madrid were beatable in European Cup finals
EVEN WHEN THERE’S NO hope, you have to fight back. Resistance is an end in itself. So, as soon as the players came back on the pitch, there was plenty of fist-clenching and a gritted-teeth hubbub.
Just get one, they’re Italians, they’re mentally weak… Sometimes, the only fallback position is placing your hope in tanks-with-reverse-gears clichés.
Football makes nonsense of relativity. Time accelerates and decelerates over the course of 90 minutes so that even with a watch and a scoreboard clock it’s hard to keep tabs on where you are. It felt like half an hour had passed since half-time when John Arne Riise finally managed to get his cross in after a failed first attempt. Stevie Gerrard rose to the ball and, so it appeared, flicked it in.Nine minutes had passed in the half.
We couldn’t see, from our angle, the power he’d put into it. He couldn’t know the power he’d unleashed.
Consolation goal celebrations are different. You don’t hug strangers and you pull the air-punch. It’s another deep breath and an imploring, low-register grunt of ‘come on’. Gerrard didn’t seem to think we were excited enough.He made lifting gestures straight across to the area where we were standing, as if he was angry at us.We were still angry at him.
‘I don’t need lessons in supporting from you,’ I howled.
* * *
The first part of the journey didn’t really feel like an away trip. Train travel usually happens in the company of a group of other fans and the time is whiled away with a mixture of banter and boredom but there was little to do now but reflect on the wider journey. From London, the Eurostar took me to the Gare du Nord in Paris. I didn’t recognise it.
The last time I came off a train here on the way to a European Cup final, in 1981, a man who disembarked in front of me was wearing a flag that said ‘Paris on the dole’. There were plenty of similar banners – songs, too.
‘On the dole,
drinking wine,
Gay Paree…’
You couldn’t help but feel proud. In many ways it was better than winning the cup - being able to give a collective two-fingered salute to the Thatcher Government and show them that we had the enterprise to get on our bikes. The rest of the country would tune into the match on television and see our message to them.
What was that message? I don’t think we were sure. Maybe that despite all the economic, political and social pressure that the city was under in the early 1980s, we were unconquered.
Clearly, many of us who travelled to that European Cup final in Paris were out of step with mainstream Britain. We moved increasingly left, confusing Thatcherism with Conservatism and failed to realise that the Government was more radical and more intent on changing the face of the nation than the Militant Tendency.
A wave of redundancies was passing over the city. We had no jobs, no respect, no power. What we did have was the energy to fight back. And the best football team in the world.
When we sang:
‘They all laugh at us, they all mock us,
They all say our days are numbered,
But I was born to be Scouse,
Victorious are we…’ it wasn’t just about football.
So 11 men in red shirts dominating not only England but Europe became a focus for our hopes. Even those who didn’t comprehend our thought processes and pride could understand when the word ‘Liverpool’ sat at the top of a table or a man wearing a Liver Bird on his chest picked up a silver trophy. By God, we were pleased the buggers envied us something.
There was an anger in those songs about being on the dole and a warning on the banners but it was not heeded. Little more than five weeks after Phil Thompson lifted the European Cup in the Parc des Princes, the fury erupted in the area Scousers call Liverpool 8 and the rest of the world would soon know as Toxteth.
The riots have been portrayed as having racial undertones, having taken place in the south end of the city, where the black community are congregated. However, the problems were much wider and trouble in the north end was underreported.
Near Anfield itself, the huge block of tenements called Sir Thomas White Gardens saw sporadic rioting. The social and economic problems – and the behaviour of the police in working-class areas in crudely executing the stop and search ‘suss’ laws – had created a sense of alienation that was widespread across the poorer population.
So we were hardly surprised to find the French police were heavyhanded, too. For the best part of 25 years it had not been romance that came to mind when I heard the phrase ‘Paris in the spring’. It was tear gas. The CRS, the French riot police, were waiting for us in 1981 and their previous experience of fans from across the Channel was six years earlier, when Leeds United supporters brought a bit of darkness to the City of Light, rioting in defeat
The CRS were primed when, on a damp spring morning, ticketless Liverpool fans gathered outside the Parc des Princes. The middle-aged, families and the more restrained young men – me among them – formed an orderly queue where a gendarme indicated that there might be tickets available. The wilder elements went looking for touts – and they were neither equipped nor inclined to pay the exorbitant prices demanded by locals.
For some reason, the law in France appears to protect touts. Our boys gave them a friendly buffeting, relieved them of their booty and were rather put out when the CRS intervened with a baton charge. This was good entertainment for our queue and a very acceptable way of passing the time before they sold us some tickets, even if there was much comment that the busies should have been out stopping crime rather than rescuing vile parasites from good-hearted boys who were liberating a few tickets.
Then, as if they’d heard the criticism under their helmets, the CRS turned to face us. They began walking forward. Being positioned conveniently near a bridge over the Périphérique, I began to back off. My mate said: ‘They won’t charge, it’s mainly women and kids.’ They charged.
It was a situation many football supporters have experienced abroad yet the general population at home will always instinctively side with a police force and assume that any brutality is a result of hooliganism.
Here, the scallies had scuttled off, so the CRS assuaged their need to impose themselves by cracking the heads of those least likely to fight back. They wanted to let Les Rosbifs know that they were not prepared to have us act like Leeds in 1975.
As we fled across the bridge – the odd bottle-flinger giving us the chance to embellish the tale into a legend of fighting retreat – a tear-gas canister arced overhead. ‘Jesus, the bastards are gassing us,’ someone said. It was incredible.
The French savages had over-reacted. It was almost enough to make you feel good about the Liverpool constabulary. Little did we know that within six weeks the police would be firing CS gas on the streets of Liverpool – the first time such a weapon was used by the authorities on mainland Britain.
Actually, the CRS did us a favour. We staggered through a multistorey car park and emerged into a street lined with Spanish coaches. Two men were fighting in the middle of the road, but it seemed to have little to do with football. Madrileños and Scousers were watching together and seemed friendly enough.
The sight of us weeping brought amusement all round. ‘Why are youse crying, boys, haven’t you got tickets?’ a man said.
We shook our heads. ‘Well he’s got some.’ He pointed to a Real Madrid fan, who beckoned us over.
‘How much?’ The man pointed to the price on the tickets: 100 francs. We couldn’t believe it. Face value. We had just enough money to buy them. Foolishly, we’d spent the majority of our cash drinking in Dover and on the boat to Calais. We were now cleared out, but getting in. And we’d get a drink anyway, because the place was awash with looted wine.
We swigged from bottles with Spaniards and told them that their little club could not compete with our side. The older Real fans laughed at us, but we were young and the only history we cared about was our own.
I winced at the memory. The Spaniards must have looked at me like I look at young, mouthy Chelsea fans. Better to think of Alan Kennedy getting into an odd position in the Real penalty area and shooting when the entire Liverpool section were screaming: ‘Cross!’ His single goal was enough and we took the long journey home happy. It was a hat-trick of European Cups and I recall laughing about the gas on the way home.
‘The bastards can gas us every year if we win it,’ I said. It was a sentiment remembered with bitterness three years later.
Still, Paris has a different atmosphere without the gas, the rain and the hairy-arsed policemen desperate to put another notch on their baton. You never really experience a city when you visit it as a fan and the City of Light, surprisingly, is quite a nice place on a warm May afternoon.
Some things don’t change though, I thought, as I sat outside a café, enjoying the sun and a glass of beer in the short 90 minutes between trains. I was still travelling across Europe without a ticket for a European Cup final. The next stop would be Vienna, where I would be joined by Dave. Frankly, he was the last person I wanted to see.
There was something I hated about Dave. He had a ticket.
Tomorrow, Chapter 4: They all say our days are numbered
Order Far Foreign Land here: Cost £10 UK, £15 Europe, £18 Rest Of World. All including postage
For those interested in the culture of Merseyside, try my non-football novel. Good Guys Lost, an epic of Liverpool life set from the 1960s to the 2010s