Hard Rock is still here in Nottingham. I never go in there, no punk or skaters stuff on the juke box. I used to live in Sheffield too so I take it you were on Ecclleshall Road when it all kicked off. Stuff I train in is a PFS affiliated school, it's not strictly Vunak and I like so the trip doesn't bother me. You wrote about the documentary by Donal McIntyre when he was with the Chelsea Headhunter, it was a great but scary show. There was another about fans in England, Italy and Argentina, meatheads galore. You're right about pubs WSC (When Saturday Comes) and not wearing club colours, but feelings can run high when it's your team.
Interesting to read what Nocturnaloner wrote, that there is a different gang culture altogether but they basically do the same thing, we don't have gangbangers over here but regular working men who on a Saturday will get tooled up and look for trouble. Problem is they ruin the day for everyone else.
Anyway, steer clear of the bullets, everyone
I think we do have a gang culture in the Uk. I read in the Times (of London) today that a gang of 20 youth's were hanging outside a tube station and attacking people who went by. The police needed a minibus to take the victims to the station.... these people were armed with knives (this was not a detailed story so I will look out for more detail as it comes up). What they thought they would get from this is anyones guess (initiation rite?)
But in my view this and the well publicised shootings last year seem to make it clear we are getting more gang orientated.
How are we menat to deal with 20 kids armed with knives... you avoid them, you cross the street, you recognise the danger and you back away...
Football hooligans in the UK ...where to begin...yes it was the McIntyre program. Scary people, who 90% of the time are "normal" and probably don't regard themselves as criminals. The fights are often arranged between gangs... wonder if Ex-lawyer has a view on consent to violence?
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Hi Bear -- Since all my legal experience is with the U.S. system (and the state statutes of one state, mostly), I'm not in the best position to answer your question. But since English common law formed the basis of the U.S. criminal-justice system, what I have to say probably isn't too far off the mark -- you might want to check with a local solicitor or barrister or LEO about the particulars in your community.
Here in the U.S. there are several types of statute that would likely prohibit mutual-consent fights between groups of people.
The first one that comes to mind is "affray," which is an old common-law offense. Basically, affray is a mutual-consent fight between two or more participants which results in "terror to the public." (I suspect the "terror to the public" part is meant to distinguish full-on fights from friendly horseplay and athletic competition). I used to hate dealing with affray cases because they invariably involved fights between groups of teenagers, all of whom claimed to be acting in self-defense, all of whom had attitude to spare, and all of whom wanted to go to trial. Yeesh. Interestingly, I never went to trial on an affray case -- they were often dropped by the prosecutor, probably because most/all of the witnesses were defendants and didn't have any credibility.
A similar offense is dueling, which is basically mutual-consent fighting with weapons.
Then you've got a couple of potentially-relevant offenses that don't require that a blow be thrown --
One is disorderly conduct, a.k.a. disturbing the peace. This is a real catch-all charge, which I have seen applied by LEOs to all sorts of situations. The cynical among us (not me, of course!) think of the Dis Con charge as one of the first options for annoyed LEOs who have a P.O.P. (Pissing Off the Police) case and need a handy statute to use.
Finally, there's inciting a riot, which I think of as a felony version of disturbing the peace. It typically involves an "inciter" plus one or more "audience members" who are being incited. This is a charge that's often used when the LEOs disperse a big group of people who are getting dangerously riled-up by a few loudmouths. I handled a case once where a young man was charged with inciting, after supposedly getting into a fight in front of a crowd of a couple of hundred teenagers after a high-school football game and then getting into an ugly shouting match with a couple of local cops who were unlucky enough to be first on the scene. It was one of the few times I took depositions from LEOs and they basically said things like, "I was scared s***less" and "I was afraid I was going to die." Despite the adversarial situation I was in, I felt a lot of respect for those LEOs. How many of us could deal with that kind of pressure on the job? Not this kid.
If you are eating or sqeamish maybe read this later...
I do not think over here in the UK it would be possible to consent to this violence.. I remember reading in the papers a few years ago about this group of people who got there kicks nailing each others genitals to tables etc. They got caught for some reason (difficult to run with your nuts etc.hehe) and the courts said it was notpossible to consent to such a level of violence, even though they were consenting adults.
Seems the law will respect those things which are sport such as boxing but things which are non sport are not. As a lot of the hooligan fights take place outside where people are likely to see I think minimally you will get breach of the peace and affray. We also have common assault etc. Recently some sport cases footballers have been charged with criminal charges fro things they have done on the pitch that were not part of the game and resulted in injury to other players although more often it is a civil claim for money.