The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (35 page)

“Michael, it’s not looking too good. If we go through with the trial you are facing six to eight years. If you throw your hand in now, okay, the judge will take it that you are the main man. That’s bad for you. But he knows that you can swing it for the other to plead guilty if you do. That will count in your favour. If you jack it in, you are looking at a lower sentence and so are the others, as they all have to get less than you. At the end of the day, I think I can get you three years if you plead guilty.”

This inspiring little speech came from my barrister. He looked out of the window of the interview room in the new Liverpool Crown Court building. In the distance I could see a ferry crossing the Mersey towards Birkenhead, and the Irish Sea stretching out to the horizon.

He turned back to me. “Take a good look, Mike. The way things are, you won’t be seeing it again for seven years.”

Thank you very much, you bastard.

We were all pleading not guilty, but my chances of getting off were receding. The police had requested permission to give evidence while hidden behind screens. They didn’t want to identify
themselves,
they said, because they were involved in dangerous
undercover
work. Naturally, l thought it was pretty sad that the justice system could let them get away with that sort of thing.  They’re police officers and they’re getting paid to do a job. Testifying behind screens, hidden from the public gallery, gives the jury the
impression
that the defendants are a bunch of desperadoes.

One of these coppers was asked the question, “How would you describe Mr Francis?”

His exact words were, “He’s a bully.”

Not, he’s tall, brown skin, stocky build, or whatever. Just “He’s a bully.” It’s not exactly evidence, is it? They were allowed to get away with things like that and, of course, they were granted their protective screens.

There was the odd funny moment. When we were asked to plead, the court clerk went through each of us in turn.

“Michael Francis, how do you plead?”

“Not guilty.”

Next.

“Not guilty”

And so on. It came to Martin Townsend. Martin has a speech impediment and we all knew he wouldn’t be able to get the words out

“Martin Townsend, how do you plead?”

Before he could open his mouth and stutter, we all shouted in unison, “NOT GUILTY!”

Thewhole court jumped about a foot in the air. We cracked up.

The trial began in February 1989 and was to drag on for months, a complicated mess of different defendants with different pleas. First up were two of our lads and one United fan, who admitted taking part in a fight outside Old Trafford. This was the brawl on Chester Road before Arthur Albiston’s testimonial, three months after the original Guvnors arrests. Another City lad, Vincent George, a seventeen-year-old who kept a written diary of his fights entitled “War Games”, went not guilty. During his trial the jury watched a three-minute black-and-white video of the fight which took place in the middle of the road as cars swerved out of the way: 

George’s defence failed and he got three months for violent disorder. Rodney Rhoden, who was sixteen at the time and who jumped on a United fan’s head as he lay on the floor, pleaded guilty and was sent to a young offenders’ institution for six months. The video was later seen by millions when it was shown on national TV news.

Things went from bad to worse. On 15 April, ninety-four Liverpool fans died in a crush in the Leppings Lane enclosure at Hillsborough in Sheffield. The whole world was shocked and there we were about to go on trial a week later for football violence. We were fucked. By now, I was also much better acquainted with the evidence against me. It was pretty damning. At West Brom, I was caught clearly on camera having a punch-up with a couple of guys in their end. You could see me against a barrier getting caught briefly and them whacking me. Then we’re on the pitch all going, “City, City” like a lithe mad army, about twenty of us, and the police take us into our own end.

Another example was a home night match against Middlesbrough. I had been getting some chips and someone smacked me on the jaw. These Middlesbrough fans had parked their van up and jumped out and we had a little kick-off. I kung-fu’d one of them in the face on the forecourt outside the ticket office. As the rest of them rushed me, I slipped and got a bit of a kicking. I read the coppers’ version of this in their statements and it was absolutely spot on; they must have been right there. Although none of them had actually got to know me personally, they had clearly come pretty close.

I was concerned, though, that if I went guilty, the next person down would then be named as the main man. That meant our Chris would have been labelled the Guvnor or, if he pleaded guilty, it could have been Dave  Foulkes, or Martin Townsend, or Adrian Gunning. Then they would have been hit the hardest. If you looked at the charges, in that particular season I only went to twelve games. I only picked the games I wanted to go to. But they were more or less making out that every time it kicked off, it was down to me. The Guvnors were 100–150 strong but they picked a few of us, who they thought were the main players, and a few younger lads. I didn’t even go to every game but they depicted me as being a figurehead: older than everyone else, a long criminal record, a reputation, a bit of a hothead. They said, “It’s got to be down to him, so make him the leader.”

That was when I got the little lecture off my barrister, who was actually very good, spelling out exactly what I was facing. Seven or eight years sounded an awful long time to risk for a not guilty plea, especially as I was guilty as hell. I knew there would be little point in carrying on once the jury had seen me brawling on video. My main question became, not whether or not I was going to be convicted, but what sentence I faced. I knew I was looking at a long term because football violence was such an issue in the media and in Parliament. Everyone was saying, “Mickey, it’s looking like you’re the main man, you’re getting slammed with it.”

Fuck it. I changed my plea to guilty and so did most of the others.

On 24 April, twenty-six of us appeared before Liverpool Crown Court. Twenty-one pleaded guilty but five went not guilty on the conspiracy to riot and cause violent disorder: Adrian Gunning, aged eighteen, Dave Foulkes, twenty-five, Andrew Bennion, twenty-one, David Goodall, twenty-three, and Ian Valentine, twenty-six.

The prosecutor, David Sumner, opened the case. He said the Guvnors and Young Guvnors had about thirty key members. He went on, “There existed a hard core of people associated with this club whose sole purpose was violence for violence’s
sake –
recreational
violence. If they were meeting another particularly notorious group like Leeds it would attract them to a near organizational frenzy. They would put other member under maximum pressure to attend the games and swell their numbers.”

Some of the gang never even went to the match at home games, he said.

“They adjourned to a public house and assembled again shortly after the whistle. Their purpose was to attack, intimidate and terrorise.”

He said an undercover police operation against us was launched in August 1987, using officers for a specially trained unit
codenamed
Omega.

Then one of the covert officers, referred to by the pseudonym Mr Henry in court, gave evidence from behind the screen. He claimed he was running with us for seven months going to away matches and sometimes acting as a van driver after being accepted. He said that as part of Operation Omega, he and three other detectives took on new identities, with disguises and fictional names and addresses. After each match they would return to a “safe house” to write their reports. They also used codenames for their targets: Gunning was Alpha, Foulkes was Nobby, Valentine was Heron and Goodall was Duck.

As well as trotting out the line about the Young Guvnors acting as spotter at railway stations and reporting back to us, he also said some of them, described as “baby-faced” and aged between fourteen and twenty, would position themselves next to police officers to listen in to radio messages, allowing them to find out the movement of opposing fans and so work out the best place for an attack. He said they would also watch any spectator who reacted to an
opposition
goal, marking him out for treatment.

The newspapers were taking a big interest. This was the
Daily Mirror:

And so on. Tempers occasionally boiled over. The
Manchester Evening News
was snatching pictures of everyone going in or out of the court and Adrian Gunning, who was a top lad in the Young Guvnors, lost his rag. He told the photographer to hand over his film, tried to smash his camera and apparently threatened to slit his throat. The photographer reported it to the judge, although he didn’t name Adrian. The judge said he was “outraged” and said anyone else who threatened the press, who were there to report the case for the public, would be remanded until it was over. He gave a little speech, saying, “In any democracy the Press are the lamps which show justice is living. They are welcome in this court. If anyone approaches the Press they will have the full rigours of the law brought down by me. If I have a hint of it happening again, substantive periods of imprisonment will be imposed.”

So Adrian was told to keep his fucking mouth shut because no one wanted to go back inside. According to a report of the trial in the
Sun,
the Young Guvnors lingered unobtrusively at railway stations to identify rival supporters to be battered in an operation of military style efficiency. The teenage “scouts” pretended to read timetables or newspapers and did not contact each other as they kept watch. Their reconnaissance was crucial to the Guvnors’ campaign of violence because fans from other cities often did not wear team colours and had to be picked out by their accents.

For good measure, the prosecutor also said we had threatened the former United star Paddy Crerand at his pub in Altrincham. The boozer had been wrecked by a mob of City boys one night.

It was put over as though we were a huge, highly-organized army with everyone doing exactly as they were directed. All the stuff they raked up about us having generals and lieutenants and intelligence units was a load of bollocks. You just go to the match with your boys and if it kicks, it kicks. Rarely is anyone badly hurt. 

The jury watched a film made by a police cameraman of two Leeds fans being attacked outside Maine Road. After a bit more of this treatment, four of the remaining five saw the writing on the wall and changed their pleas to guilty. Ian Valentine stayed not guilty and had all the charges dropped. Maybe we should have all done that – who knows? Many of the other hooligan cases around that time fell apart. Maybe ours would have too, but a lot of us,
including
myself, were frightened off by looking at seven or eight years in prison. Plus I was bang to rights on camera, there was no escaping that. The four new guilty pleas were adjourned to join the rest of us for sentence until 5 June, pending social inquiry reports.