On the pitch were Graeme Souness and his all conquering Liverpool team of Crown Paints sponsored shirts.  Off the field was Anfield's swaying Kop. Haircuts wise there was the wedge; the back of the head perm and if you were truly brave the all over curly perm. The 80's were also the real birthplace of the football casual; the football fan of designer sportswear, training shoes and a multitude of other corresponding fashionable mistakes including a selection of the aforementioned haircuts. Its main protagonists were mobs or firms like the ICF at West Ham; the Head-hunters at Chelsea or the Bushwhackers at Millwall. The fashions of the casual would change as the country felt the oncoming of the 1990's as Fila tracksuits and diadora became Stone Island, CP company and New Balance. The disaster of Hillsborough and eventually the efforts and endeavours of system eager to to redeem the game saw the heyday of the casual and firms swept away.

Almost every country had its stadium trends and supporters streams but British football supporters going back to the 1950's has almost always had a strong fashion-led subcultural element. Images of drunk Teddy Boys and the mods in Fred Perry fashions existed across the 1960's and 1970's. The origins of the casual subculture can probably be related to the mod subculture and the emergence of inner urban city youth gangs. Within this generational groups of youths who supported football clubs gradually began to bring their fashion onto the football terraces, and certain clubs began to be known for their mod or skinhead followings and the fashions that characterised the gang.   In the late 1970s many groups of young lads who attended football matches started wearing designer labels and expensive sportswear in order to some say, avoid the attention of police. In reality avoiding the attention of police was never really the main point of being a 'dresser'. Police by the mid 1980's even without CCTV and intelligence, generally knew who the hooligan groups and firms were due to the fact that they were so noticeable and stood out so much compared to the average fan. Anyone dressed head to toe like Bjorn Borg in Fila in 1984 at a football match was evident to any policeman not just a casual.

The Firm, Original Film (1988)

The Firm was a 1988 TV film that screened on BBC2 in early 1989 to widespread acclaim and criticism from television, outrage from the public and adulation from hooligan gangs. Very few films made with respect to the hooligan genre have really reached the heights of Alan Clarke's effort. This is especially true in comparison to later years efforts such as The Football Factory and Green Street starring Elijah Wood. These movies have generally been dismissed by protagonists of the hooligans age both past and present as fake and plastic.  Despite this The Firm was not without its critics; many sociological experts on the cult of football hooliganism poked and chipped at its lack of realism; stage managed isolated violence and the 'fuedal barron type' depiction of hooligan leaders such as Bexy and Yeti.

Hooligans in the film were depicted as driving open-top VW Golf and Mercedes cars,  and long leather jacket wearing blade carriers.  The fashions and clothes trends were poorly expressed whilst the choreographed violence ignored all of the other action, atmopshere and occasion that comes with messy matchday violence.   The 1988 TV film directed by Alan Clarke and written by Al Ashton revolves around the activities of Clive 'Bexy' Bissel played wonderful well by then upcoming actor Gary Oldman. He plays leader of the ICC (Inter City Crew), an imaginary made for TV firm but almost certainly based around the famous I.C.F firm of West Ham United.

In the film rival football fans battle it out on the streets with the backdrop of British Rail captured as the choice of travel for supporters. Much of the violence shocked television audiences of the time with the film including beatings, a slashing and ultimately a shooting. The Firm is also notable for having almost no musical score and uses no music from the era. Instead most of the songs are football songs sung by the Firm members instead. Some firm members sing a sing called 'Horchchurch Boys':

Hornchurch Boys, we are here

Shag your women and we drink your beer!

Na, na, na, na, nanan nana na

Horchurch Boys are big and strong!!

At the end of the movie the famous 'Two World Wars and One World Cup' is sung by the collective gangs as the remaining hooligans chat to a mock TV documentary crew. Alan Clarke's effort does though include Dean Martin's rendition of 'That's Amore' over the opening titles.

Acting wise the film features some of the most famous British actors of the time including Phil Davis, Charles Lawson and Steve McFadden. Bexy Bissel is a married estate agent with a secluded home and a baby son. His wife is played by Lesley Manville who at the time was Gary Oldman's off screen wife as well. From the start it is clear she does not approve of his activities as a football hooligan and this is captured alongside his respectable day job as an estate agent. In one scene his his baby son injures himself with a Stanley knife carelessly left around by Bexy. Confronted by his wife he proves unwilling to give up his interest in violence as he 'needs the buzz.' 

Clarke cleverly mirrors Bexy's middle class home life with his working class roots to show a father who expresses a degree of acceptance of his son's lifestyle possibly through a mutual support of West Ham. Oldman uses his natural leadership qualities and substantial ego to cajole and encourage his fellow gang members who play alongside Bexy a key role in organising trips to rival firms cities. Its later explained that Bissel has a vision of a 'national firm', which would serve  to join all the smaller firms of rival teams into one larger firm and travel to the 1988 European Championships in Germany. His ideas are not accepted by other firm leaders who each try and out-do each other to be the top boy.

The key to the film is the way it which Clarke bonds together differing social strata via the medium of football violence. Bexy and Davis's character Homer relish being looked up to and admired by the younger lads in the "firms". Oldman plays the part so well and its no surprise his later career would show his ability to be cast well as an eccentric villain  or a morally corrupt character. Such a real life character himself from London allowed Oldman to be the primary antagonist as the Essex Thatcherite and star as the unhinged suited-yet often-booted leader of a 'firm' of London football hooligans. Punch-ups, baseball bats, stanley blades fitted both the man, actor and character.

The Firm was Alan Clarke's final film before his death from cancer in 1990, and it followed a string of masterful British TV Film classics including Scum and Made In Britain. Determined to chronicle the rise of hooliganism under Margaret Thatcher's Tory government, Clarke's film was controversial not just because of its blunt portrayal of violence, but also because it was the first fictional commentary to portray hooligans as otherwise ordinary members of society.

Towards the end of the film the pointlessness and futility of being involved in football violence is characterised by the main character Bexy being shot dead by Yeti, the leader of "The Buccaneers" one of their rival firms during a violent clash. Although such an act has possibly never occurred in UK Hooligan history the senseless killing of a family man with a child left viewers shocked.

Even after death, Bexy's followers still regard him as a hero figure and in the final scene go on to claim that when they are fighting German thugs at a forthcoming tournament they are doing so in memory of their dead leader. This ending shows the hooligans from three different firms together in unity even though they had been fighting each other before.  Boozed up, aggressive and nationalistic they claim to a mock TV crew that he was a legend and a visionary.     The Firm showed Oldman before he got into his period of being Mr Hollywood as the intense hooligan hero. Some have said it had an almost Quadrophenia feel to it with Oldman's performance mirroring that of Phil Daniels intense performance in the latter film.

The Firm By Nick Love (2009)

Nick Love is no stranger to the theme of the football casual. The Business starring Danny Dyer uses a similar code of fashion, era themes and musical score. In his reworking of The Firm Love takes the punchy story by telling the story from the point of view of a teenager.  This is a coming of age wannabe casual called Dom played by Calum McNab  who threads the story together instead of focusing on older Firm leader Bex Bissell as Clarke did played this time by Paul Anderson.

Dom spends most of his time skiving from his going-nowhere job helping his dad. He has a rage of dead end friends but begins to idolise Bex and wins a place in the Firm after a painful initiation in a nightclub. Dom’s relationship with his dad Bob the builder is explored as is his relations with his mother and best mate.

Dom wants to walk away from his unsavoury new mate, but does he have the bottle to do this by joining the rest of the gang.     McNab plays an impressionable lad who slowly convinces his parents that he is worthy of a Fila tracksuit but after witnessing all the rucks and violence but by the end of the movie he begings to realise just where his true loyalties and sense of friendships may lie. Love's efforts at depicting the hero of the film as the desperate-to-belong teen rather than the Thatcherite hero Bex is a clever choice but sadlyproves to be  less impressive than the original.  Like Oldman, Paul Anderson as Bexy is a truly chilling character and the moody football casual who can switch to hooligan mode from his respectable local estate agent role in no time. 

From the full electric blue Ellesse tracksuit to the deerstalker hat and Diadora borg elites the clothes in The Firm are as spot on as you could get for the era. At the time though not everyone dressed as head to toe in the stuff as they do in Love's films.  Clearly the casual clothing and general 80's fashion have a huge impact on the film-making of Love. The clothes are almost a driving force behind the film, where as on the Clarke effort having the right clothes was never in any way an intrinsic part of the story. Whilst acting and intensity plays the main role in Clarke's film, fashions play the main part in the Love film.

Which Firm?

Unlike Clarke, writer-director Nick Love is now the acquired taste for the modern day DVD generation crowd but with The Firm and Football Factory he entered remake territory and this effort, whilst admirable for the accuracy of clothes, fashion and fight scenes is less memorable for the storyline and acting. 

The acting of Oldman and Davis is far and away better than that of Anderson and McNab but the story, jargon and clothing is far more realistic in the second effort.   Love's effort is first hand rather than poorly researched and well executed as the first film was.   Love though is too eager to make a contribution to the sub-genre of the football hooligan movie. His movies feel exactly the same from titles to music and it all feels very repetitive, self indulgent but enjoyable.

Nick Love's film is clearly an adaptation rather than simply a remake.   Instead what he does is to expose an new angle via the experience of the wannabee casual. The rivalry between Bex and Yeti via front-line fighting or telephone calls still exists as it did in the original, but it sits behind the story of Dom who only plays only a small part in the original.  

The Firm 2009 style is very much an authentic celebration of the early 80's casual era rather than a 'movie' as such. At times it feels like product placement and a fashion show but has a stimulating if not as equally interesting story to tell.