How 1980s-style football violence has returned to Scotland in an even more dangerous form

The ease of communication provided by social media, the sale of large-scale pyrotechnics and a lack of police boots on the ground means Scotland must stand by for trouble.

This is the subject of my latest Scotsman column, published in today's newspaper (7th January 2025).

Thank goodness we’re a long way from the 1980s. It may have been a period of glamour and excess for some, but if you were working in policing it was the most violent of times. Long-running investigations into dreadful child murders, the hugely disruptive Miners Strike, all capped off with the Lockerbie Bombing.

It was a decade of trouble and disorder, and rumbling through the decade’s second half was organised gang violence, much of it associated with football clubs, or at least groups of thugs claiming to support them.

So-called ‘football casuals’ made their appearance in the mid-80s and for the rest of the decade were a pest, causing regular planned disturbances in our town centres, while some even tried getting involved in organised crime and drug dealing. Despite their tabloid reputations, most of these gangs were just petty criminals, using football clubs as a flag of convenience.

Helicopter footage from Police Scotland shows youths throwing fireworks and other projectiles during public disorder in Edinburgh last year | Police Scotland

Derby day violence

In the end, they were defeated by good, intelligence-led policing, coordinated action from football clubs, and some robust street enforcement. Like most gangs, the football casuals had only a handful of leaders. Remove them and they crumbled. It took a while but eventually the casuals and their ilk disappeared.

Or at least, that’s what I thought, but recently there have been worrying signs that we’re heading Back to The Future. Forty years on, the rise in public violence and organised, football-related thuggery is significant. From planned riots around fireworks night, to recent street fights following a cup final in Glasgow and a local derby match in Edinburgh, there are a lot of similarities to the bad old days.

The latest disturbances have been orchestrated using football clubs as a guise to promote their religious bigotry. Like 40 years ago, football stadiums themselves are seldom the chosen venue for confrontations, the surveillance systems are too good.

This is a problem. If you have to confront a disorderly crowd, then it’s best on ground of your choosing where you can bring your resources to bear. Running fights through town centres are difficult to control and the risk of innocent bystanders getting injured is much higher.

No quick fixes

There are a couple of big differences from the ’80s. Then, we could often get word of when and where confrontations were planned so we could head them off. Now plans are made over social media, much more immediate and difficult to intercept. That and the ready online availability of huge pyrotechnic flares have made life much more difficult.

But we had another advantage back then – a good street policing model, with high visibility and ears close to the ground. Now, in many places, community policing appears greatly diminished with the attendant loss of street intelligence and visible preventative presence.

The bad news is there are no quick fixes to this rising trend of street violence for there are complex causes. Just like the ’80s, it’s not just about thuggery but underlying discontent among many young people, who feel they have been failed by the system and trapped in a cycle of low wages and high taxes. Disgruntlement will find an outlet.

Police Scotland have declared their determination to build back community policing and street presence. It can’t come soon enough. But, in the meantime, stand by for trouble.