May 1, 1982: It's Only a Game

May 1, 1982, 40 years ago: We've all heard the expression, "It's only a game." Or, "It's just a game." Or, "It's not life and death." And no sport, no competition, no individual game should be treated as a life-and-death matter.

On this day, it was.

Two of London's Football League Division One soccer teams played each other. Arsenal, at their Arsenal Stadium, known as Highbury for its North London neighborhood, hosted West Ham United. Despite their name, West Ham play in London's East End -- then at the Boleyn Ground in Upton Park, now at the London Stadium in Stratford.

The two teams have a rivalry, but neither is the other's most hated rival. Arsenal's are Tottenham Hotspur, less than 5 miles to the north. West Ham's are Millwall, across the River Thames in South London. So there is little reason for aggression -- or "aggro," in English slang -- between the fans.

But this was the dark age of hooliganism in English football. And West Ham had the most feared group of hooligans in the country, the Inter-City Firm, or the ICF. They were known for winning fights both inside and outside stadiums, often "taking" the section of a stadium with the most passionate home fans. At Highbury, this would be the North Bank. In 1968, the ICF took the North Bank, and, when Highbury closed down after the 2006 season, to make way for the nearby Emirates Stadium, this would go down in history as the only time the North Bank was taken by an opposing firm.

Arsenal were not known for having a hard-fighting firm, although they did have The Herd. The Herd would never start anything, but defended hard, and had earned the ICF's respect.

Arsenal were in a tough stretch. They had reached 4 cup finals in 3 seasons, 1977-78 to 1979-80, but won only 1 of them, the 1979 FA Cup Final. West Ham had beaten them in the 1980 FA Cup Final, and that still stung.

As the 1981-82 season wound down, Arsenal were fighting to finish high enough in Division One to qualify for the UEFA Cup, Europe's secondary tournament after the European Cup. (Today, those competitions are known as the UEFA Europa League and the UEFA Champions League, respectively.) They were helped by the fact that Tottenham had won the FA Cup, and Swansea City, winners of the Welsh Cup, were high enough in the table (standings) that a team might only need to finish 7th to qualify for Europe. West Ham were not going to qualify, but could still finish in the top half of the League.

The game was a good one for Arsenal. Graham Rix and Alan Sunderland scored, and Arsenal won, 2-0. But there was trouble in the stands, well before kickoff. Hammers fans got onto the North Bank early, and there was a lot of fighting, and even a smoke bomb. The takeover of 1968 was not repeated, and, perhaps for the 1st time, the ICF needed a police escort out of a visiting stadium.

But once out of the stadium, the fighting resumed. Little skirmishes broke out on Highbury Hill, behind the West Stand, en route to the Arsenal station on the London Underground. All together, the fighting was as bad as Highbury has ever seen.

The entrance to the Arsenal station includes a long tunnel to the escalator and the tracks, and if a firm is big enough, it can easily trap opposing fans there. One such Arsenal fan was John Dickinson, 24, and he was stabbed to death. His killer was never identified, although a rumor got around that he was killed himself, in a later hooligan "off." (Not with Arsenal fans.)

This wasn't the first time that an ICF man had killed an opposing fan. In 1976, Millwall fan Ian Pratt grabbed a scarf off a West Ham fan, then got chased into New Cross station by the ICF. He landed on the tracks, and it became a situation of, "Did he fall, or was he pushed?" Whichever was the truth, he was chased into that position, and was hit by a train, and killed.

After Dickinson's death, security was ramped up at Highbury. Word got around Europe that Arsenal fans fought back, and so, as Arsenal played in the 1982-83 UEFA Cup after a 5th-place finish in 1981-82, there were few incidents. Violence at Arsenal home games has been rare since.

Hooliganism seemed to bottom out in 1985, with incidents all over England, especially in an FA Cup Quarterfinal match when Millwall went to Luton Town, and the European Cup Final, in Brussels, Belgium, where Liverpool fans were seen as having caused the deaths of 39 fans of Turin, Italy team Juventus in an accident.

Eventually, security procedures improved to the point where such fights could be prevented, or at least broken up quickly. It also helped that many of the classic "hoolies" grew out of it, and, as would be said in baseball, the farm system dried up.

By the dawn of the 21st Century, "hoolie lit" developed, as former hooligans, from firms up and down the island of Great Britain, wrote memoirs of their exploits. Most of the West Ham fans who wrote such books, whether they were at Highbury in 1982 or not, expressed regret for Dickinson's death. But few mentioned his name, or Pratt's name. Like the Mafia, firms had a code of silence, never ratting out each other, or even their opponents.

On May 1, 2022, 40 years later to the day, Arsenal and West Ham played again, this time at the London Stadium. There were no incidents, inside the stadium or out. But neither was there a moment of silence in memory of John Dickinson. There were, for the victims of the Ukrainian War, and for Black Lives Matter, as there have been for each of those movements since they began. But not in memory of those who suffered as a result of English football hooliganism. Arsenal won the match, 2-1.