Football Factory

John King

Description

The Football Factory is driven by its two main characters—late-twenties warehouseman Tommy Johnson and retired ex-soldier Bill Farrell. Tommy is angry at his situation in life and those running the country. Outside of work, he is a lively, outspoken character, living for his time with a gang of football hooligans, the excitement of their fights and the comradeship he finds with his friends. He is a violent man, at the same time moral and intelligent.

Bill, meanwhile, is a former Second World War hero who helped liberate a concentration camp and married a survivor. He is a strong, principled character who sees the self-serving political and media classes for what they are. Tommy and Bill have shared feelings, but express their views in different ways. Born at another time, they could have been the other. As the book unfolds both come to their own crossroads and have important decisions to make.

The Football Factory is a book about modern-day pariahs, people reduced to the level of statistics by years of hypocritical, self-serving party politics. It is about the insulted, marginalised, unseen. Graphic and disturbing, at times very funny, The Football Factory is a rush of literary adrenalin.

Sujets

• Realism
• Working class culture
• Cult following
• Festival Cinémabrut
• Violence

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9781629631936
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for The Football Factory
‘Only a phenomenally talented and empathetic writer working from within his own culture can achieve the power and authenticity this book pulses with. Buy, steal or borrow a copy now, because in a short time anyone who hasn’t read it won’t be worth talking to.’
Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
‘This is a chronicle of a lost tribe the white, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual who is fed up with being told he is crap. It is the story of a flight from fear by a group of Londoners who have seen the present and know it does not work…. King writes powerfully with a raw realism and clear grasp of a culture which has been denied but cannot be ignored.’
Hugh MacDonald, Glasgow Herald
‘King’s novel is not only an outstanding read, but also an important social document … This book should be compulsory reading for all those who believe in the existence, or even the attainability, of a classless society.’
Paul Howard, Sunday Tribune
‘Bleak, thought-provoking and brutal, The Football Factory has all the hallmarks of a cult novel.’
Dominic Bradbury, The Literary Review
‘The first three chapters hit hard and the honesty will disturb some sensitivities. But the subtler theme of living with alienation, articulated with less fury but similar passion when divorced from the shock of the raw, is equally powerful as the snapshot narrative unfolds.’
Kevin Mitchell, The Observer
‘Powerfully written and tells you more about the mentality of those who disrupt football matches than all the theses of the sociologist academics put together.’
Ian Wooldridge, The Daily Mail
‘In an age where pessimists assign British culture to an unmarked grave, John King offers a refreshing alternative, doing for England what Irvine Welsh did for Scotland, and doing it with equal panache.’
The Big Issue
‘John King’s achievement since his debut has been enormous: creating a modern, proletarian English literature at once genuinely modern, genuinely proletarian, genuinely literature.’
Charles Shaar Murray

The Football Factory
John King
© John King 1996
First published by Jonathan Cape, a division of The Random House Group Ltd "Come Running after You" © John King 2015
This edition© 2015 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
John King has asserted his right to be identified as the Author of the Work.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-116-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930898
Cover design by John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Come Running after You
Coventry at Home
Doing a Runner
Tottenham Away
Worker’s Dream
Rochdale at Home
Hooligans
West Ham at Home
Never Never Land
Liverpool Away
Sweet Jesus
Norwich at Home
Happy Ever After
Newcastle Away
Running the Bulls
Wimbledon at Home
Poppy Day
Man City at Home
Bombay Mix
Threatening Behaviour
Bomber Command
Villa Away
Ashes to Ashes
Millwall Away
Liquidator
Something Special
Derby at Home
To Mum and Dad
COME RUNNING AFTER YOU
When The Football Factory was first published in 1996, the two British broadsheets that sell themselves as being open-minded reacted in ways at odds with their supposed stances, but in keeping with how they are seen by a big chunk of the population. Both took the time and space to demolish the novel. The Guardian saw it as politically incorrect, The Independent as politically correct. This obsession, which has since escalated and acts as a form of censorship, reinforces views expressed by Tommy Johnson, one of the novel’s two main characters. Our controllers may preach liberal values, yet few live by them. This hypocrisy is despised. Their contempt for the common people is never admitted, but it is clear.
The Daily Mail , which positions itself between the broadsheets and tabloids, and is a down-market, right-wing (shunned) cousin of The Guardian , was also predictable in its reaction. The Mail actually counted the number of swear words in the book. This response was again literal, if more honest. The Observer , provincial newspapers, fanzines and especially word-of-mouth made the novel a big success, so those negative reviews were positives in a funny sort of way, but why would these powerful, establishment titles bother with a first novel by a nobody?
The Football Factory gave them a chance to attack one of their pet hates the ‘football hooligan’ and through this their real target, the white working-class male. This lumping together of so many souls along racist, classist, sexist lines is one of the few areas where abuse of a group is not only accepted but encouraged. Smeared as racist, sexist and violent, they are an easy target, with few in a position of power willing to stand up for the likes of Tommy. In reality, this section of society is seen as a threat to the ruling elite, fear of The Mob running across centuries. If these people were united they could not be stopped and within the civilian populations of Britain, and indeed Europe, football stadiums are where this male power is at its most focused.
In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , author George Orwell talks about the power of the proles, about thought police and thought-crime and newspeak and doublethink. These ideas are embedded in The Football Factory . Then there is Hate Week, because we all need an enemy. It makes us feel good inside, bonds us with those who share our opinions, and this anger is more often mental, spoken and written than physical. The media feeds the craving. The creation of enemies and how they can fade once we know people as individuals is one of the major themes of The Football Factory .

Football is the people’s game. In its modern form it belongs to the Industrial Revolution, to those who migrated to the factories and mills and formed the working class in England, and the clubs that make up the various professional leagues are still named after the towns and cities where they’re located. In the early days, teams were also often linked to places of work, though these connections fell away over time. Each one was part of a real community and, despite the effects of globalization and the targeting of football by business interests, a strong sense of identity remains.
Football is a microcosm of society. It is a spectator sport and its worldwide popularity and the passion it stirs is unique. The game is easy to play and only needs a single ball. Poverty does not stop a youngster’s progress as it does in almost every other area of life. Despite the propaganda, neither does race or nationality. The crowds are noisy, partisan, flamboyant. They make football a spectacle. It is the theatre of the masses, ‘the working man’s ballet’ as my boyhood hero and favourite player Alan Hudson likes to say.
The terrace culture that links to English football today probably began in the mid-1960s. The so-called football hooligan also has his origins then. Huge attendances, local rivalries and star performers already existed, but increases in income, more clear-cut youth cultures built around styles of music and dress, the ideals these tribes embodied, greater communications and a World Cup held in England in 1966 created something new. Mods and rockers had been enjoying newspaper headlines with their Bank Holiday riots at seaside resorts, and before them Teddy Boys fought over territory in the 1950s, earlier gang warfare often related to areas of a town where it went largely unreported, but the skinheads were the first recognized football hooligans and every club had its following.
The ends where the home supporters gathered were the focus. The aim was for visiting hooligans to take them by force. Punch-ups became common, along with running battles outside stadiums and in the surrounding streets. Pubs were smashed up and trains set alight. Thousands of youths began travelling across the country on a regular basis. The trouble that had long accompanied games between local sides went nationwide. Reputations were built and legends formed. The numbers swelled, sensationalist reports and then TV images boosting the ranks of those searching for excitement. By the mid-1970s there was chaos. While much of this was down to the exuberance of youth, there was also serious violence and the very occasional use of weapons. Generally, though, knives and similar were considered cowardly, foreign and effeminate.
However, the small incidents journalists saw from the safety of their seats in the press box were being blown up out of all proportion to the reality, while worse things that happened beyond their vision went unreported. Stories weren’t worth much without accompanying photos either. Suspect headlines and text became routine, and this made an impression on the tens of thousands of youngsters who attended matches and saw events firsthand. If the media got these things so wrong, what other lies did they tell?
The 1980s saw the ages of those involved rise. There was more organization, but not as much as the authorities claimed. Some major riots took place and the trouble was being transported into Europe with British supporters involved in widespread disturbances with their counterparts across the English Channel. The Heysel Disaster in Belgium, before the Liverpool-Juventus European Cup Final in 198