Putting the boot in

Men are always going to kick fuck out of each other, then go off and shaft some bird,” explained John King in his disturbing 1996 account of football-related violence, The Football Factory. A highly accessible and compelling (if depressing) slice of popular literature, similar in style and spirit to Irvine Welsh’s scuzz-scented urban-brutalist prose, Football Factory – a sales phenomenon and a considerable critical success – has now been belatedly brought to silver-screen life in all its seedy, ugly glory.

It unfolds through the eyes of Tommy Johnson, a Chelsea-supporting thug with slightly more grey matter upstairs than most of his psychopathic comrades-in-crime, who observes at first-hand the colossal damage wrought by his chums’ addiction to massive gang-fights of senseless violence and bloody consequence.
As a film, The Football Factory succeeds beyond all imagination, its unflagging pace, energy and humour guaranteeing instant cult status along the lines of Human Traffic or Trainspotting, though some have found the gang-fight scenes too much to stomach.
It’s directed by working-class indie-auteur and Millwall fanatic Nick Love (Goodbye Charlie Bright), with Danny Dyer (the much-loved chirpy-Cockney from Human Traffic, looking barely a day older) assuming lead duties to excellent effect. Even so, he can’t help but be overshadowed by the imposing and distinctive figure of Frank Harper (Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels), shaven-headed, tattooed and built to kill, whose astonishing performance as psychopathic fascist Chelsea thug Bill Bright doesn’t just ooze menace, it makes Ray Winstone look like Julian Clary.
In fact, Harper has immortalised himself here as surely as Joe Pesci did in GoodFellas, his deeds bound to be rewound and watched with glee in the DVD players of young males the world over - Bright is the sort of Combat 18 footsoldier who carves up faces for kicks, a living embodiment of violent dysfunctional Englishness.
In person, of course, Harper is an amusing and affable fellow, although you still wouldn’t fuck with him. A lifelong Millwall nut, he’s on the verge of becoming instantly recognisable as a result of his film work, and has the air of one whose mere appearance is sufficient to ensure respect and everyone’s best behaviour. He’s still on a high from Millwall’s unlikely run to this year’s Cup Final, where they were predictably murdered by Manchester United:
“It was a great social day out, with no aggro, and no arrests,” he says. “Shame we lost, but we out-sung ‘em.’
All the same, he laments the apparent emasculation of his tribe since Millwall’s notorious dockland stadium ‘The Den’ was replaced mid-’90s by a hooliganism-proof ‘New Den’. The result, it seems, has been a marked decline in hospital admissions after Millwall home games.
‘I mean, the old Den was something else, it was scary,” he reflects. “Inside the ground has totally changed, and a lot of that’s to do with seating. Basically, the way the New Den’s set out, you can’t get directly to the away stand any more, so that straightaway restricts you, and any action nowadays takes place well away from the ground. I mean with CCTV, you’re nicked, in’ tcha, you’d have to be a fuckin’ idiot, you’re on camera.”
The popular generalisation has had it that Crystal Palace draw support from South London’s blacks while Millwall are associated with the BNP white-power brigade, but Harper is very keen to refute this as a product of false image-making.
“Even going back to the Seventies when they wouldn’t expect to be well treated anywhere, a lot of black guys were in (Millwall pub)The Bushwhackers” he recalls. “I think out of all the firms, Millwall’s is probably one of the most racially integrated. And Palace haven’t got a proper firm.’
Nick Love, The Football Factory’s director, is hugely proud of the film but visibly drained by the experience of making it.
Its centrepiece was a simulated gang-fight between dozens of armed Chelsea and Millwall fans, which necessitated the recruitment of some fairly enthusiastic extras: “We had to judge the right sort of person to be an extra, which ain’t easy - you want people who know what they’re doing, but you don’t want them going fuckin’ psycho and killing each other on a film set,” he observes. “Then you had to keep them sweet, as well. The biggest thing on my mind the whole time was upsetting one of the firms. But our technical adviser, a pal of ours, he’s very well respected in that circle and no-one would have got out of line while he was there, and he certainly made it a lot more authentic than I would have done.”
“The day passed off really peacefully,” points out Harper, “a couple of broken bones, but the death toll was zero. You can’t ask better than that for the amount of lunatics we had there. We had a load of beers afterwards with the Old Bill, ‘cos they was real coppers, and I was still so buzzed physically and mentally I couldn’t sleep that night.”
Though almost a decade has passed since The Football Factory hit the shelves, the issue of football violence is unfortunately as topical now as it was in 1996 or 1986, thanks in the main to the Herculean efforts of a very large minority of England’s travelling away support. Even the comparatively tranquil Euro 2004 has been marked by sporadic outbursts of violence in the Algarve, where masses of the England support spent entire days and nights concussing themselves with alcohol.
This is hardly a freak once-off, either - they’ve covered St. George’s flag in glorious blood and vomit at France ‘98, Dublin in 1995, Sweden ‘92, Sardinia in 1990, Charleroi in 2000.
The rest of Europe, as ever, looks on bemused and baffled – after all, international football tournaments are generally notable for the fantastic spirit of trans-national brotherhood they engender in the various supporters, a utopian vision of Italians, Danes, Swedes, Spaniards and Bulgarians getting along wondrously, like John Lennon’s brotherhood of man, until England’s finest enter the beach/pub/café and the mood instantly sours, prompting all the sane people to get up and leave as the shout goes out for some ‘fackin’ lager’.
Unsavoury though it may be, the sad truth is that fan violence makes for a horribly gripping spectacle.
The six-part BBC series Hooligan was as fascinating as anything broadcast on TV in the last decade, and Football Factory provides an intoxicating head-rush of vicarious thrills for anyone hungry for more of the same.
Morally non-committal, extremely funny, appropriately soundtracked (The Jam) and so violent you suspect Tarantino himself would lap it up, The Football Factory’s place in British cinematic history is assured.
Now, roll on Headhunters and England Away.

The Football Factory is on general release