Lets start with the facts and get them out of the way. To celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II a football tournament was instigated between the 4 top English clubs and the 4 top Scottish clubs, the winners to keep the trophy for all time.
The final game was held in Glasgow at Hampden park. Celtic versus Hibernian.The final score was Celtic 2, Hibs 0. The official attendance figure was, 117,000. ( I would take that number with a large pinch of salt!) The date of the final was May20. 1953.
I was 12 years of age.All my life I have tried to remember the events leading up to that fateful day. I cannot remember anybody telling me, asking me, conversing with me at home, before or for that matter after the match.I very vaguely see a youngish smiling face if I try really hard to remember,one glimpse is all I have, a neighbour or a family friend? and then the crowds at the railway station, Peffer Place?
Lots and lots of people. Then there was the train and still the crowds.Did I stand or was I seated? Was anyone with me? The next thing I remember is arriving at the head of a queue, I was alone, I didn't have a ticket. I was lifted over the turnstile and I was inside the ground.
The match?, I have no idea. none whatsoever. The people, the noise, the crush.Often, for minutes at a time my feet left the ground, I was held in the grip of the crowd, moving forward when they moved forward and backwards when they reversed.I could not touch the ground,terra firma where are you? We swayed, all of us.no one seemed worried,but I had a sense of dread, a sense of wonder for such a young person.Even then I had questions, not about myself but, for the people in the crowd, faces without names,smiling,laughing shouting.Individuals, or were they? Then and now I still have the same questions ,what is it that makes a football crowd.Why? Why what? Why are they there,are they there as individuals, do they feel the warmth of the crowd, it can be cold, it can rain.They have paid good money to be there.I have been informed that the price the crowds pay nowadays to get into football matches is verging on the extortionate.They still pay though, even if it is through the nose.
Looking back to when I was young I think the crowd had no sense of being manipulated. They were told to move here, there , pay your money , don't ask questions.who are you? stand on the terraces,cheer on those guys in green, in red, in yellow, any colour in the rainbow,does the colour mean anything to you and yours, move here, move there,stand still. Pay your money, we want your money,and for that money you and your fellows can stand in the cold and cheer on,what? footballers, rugby, cricket, baseball, basketball, you name it , boxers,charioteers and gladiators.All we want is your money.
Eventually the football match finished,it was getting dark and I found myself outside, I walked with the crowd, I stopped and wept.I was alone, I was alone in a crowd. A man stopped and spoke to me, I remember his face, he was smartly dressed. He must have taken me with him onto the train. The train eventually arrived back to the Craigmillar and Duddingston Railway Station. My companion was a policeman, a detective, and he took me to the Craigmillar police station. The last thing I remember was a cup of cocoa. One thing that I have never forgotten is his face and his kindness.
There are many people like myself who do not go to big football matches.Speaking for myself I think it is because I do not like to be manipulated. I do not like to be part of an unthinking huge beast.A beast with very little heart and no sense of thought. Mindless and terrifying in its lack of self control .The majority of spectators ,as individuals I have found them to be intelligent and articulate . They are ordinary people with the hopes and desires of ordinary people.They come from all walks of life,labourers rub shoulders with managers, shopkeepers speak to tramdrivers,coalminers laugh and joke with bankers.
Since that time in 1953 I have never ever been to a large football match. I will watch the football on the TV. when I am with old army comrades in the pub, and I enjoy it. When I take the kids to the local park, I ,every now and again will watch for a few minutes the local amateur sides playing against each other.
I have nothing against people playing and watching football. Good luck to them,but what I am against is the manipulation for gain by ,(and this has been going on since Adam was a boy) rogues who call themselves businessmen. People dressed in suits who without a thought for the ordinary man in the street are willing for profits sake to pack him and his fellows like sardines into unsafe environments to watch, in a heck of a lot of cases men dressed in religious colours knocking seven bells out of each other.
I did not really give much thought to what I have just written but I think it must have been in the back of my mind for a long,long time. I do not feel any better for writing it.Looking back, I think I realised and for someone of such a young age it surprises me that I was able to understand better than the majority of the adults around me the stupidity of crowds and the iniquities that are perpetrated against us all.
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