You can’t fight hate with hate - you just get more hate

New show centres on football violence back in the eighties

BACK in the 1980s there were two words which epitomised the idea of gangs and football violence in Leicester. As a teenager back then, “Baby Squad” conjured up an image of Hell’s Angel-style leatherclad bikers, causing havoc and instilling fear, writes Lizz Brain.

In reality, they were simply a group that sought out groups of rival football fans looking for a punch-up.

But now, the story of one of their lot, Riaz Khan, has been adapted for the stage, with a film also at the screenplay stage.

The play is a two-hander, with one actor playing Riaz and another taking on multiple other characters in a football ground-styled set.

“It’s going to be amazing, I can’t believe how much it will look and feel like you were actually there in the 80s,” says Riaz.

Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual, premiering at Curve this autumn, is based on Khan’s book of the same name, written in a bid to educate others about tolerance and bigotry.

He joined the Squad at just 17.

“I was a badly dressed schoolkid and would be teased about it. My parents would be sending money back to Pakistan and Afghanistan and I became involved in Asian gangs.

“One day, I saw a group of lads in town and they were really smartly-dressed and I wanted to look like them. So I did, and then one day I was hanging around the Haymarket shopping centre and someone asked me if I was into football, because I was wearing the uniform of the football casual. “It all started from there.” His first experience of the Squad’s violent activities was a LCFC away game at Birmingham FC in October 1983.

“It was the first game I went to. I was arrested, my parents weren’t too happy about it but it was a rite of passage. It wasn’t a mass brawl.

“Most of the time it would just be a few people fighting at the front and a lot of people watching.

“I don’t want to play it down or glamorise it, but most of the time the violence was exaggerated by the media.

“We did have some morals, we didn’t go around attacking everyone and anyone, we were looking for people who wanted to fight us.

“It was organised fighting, we didn’t just go beating people up. I won’t big it up but it was organised thuggery with a bit of finesse.”

Riaz left after six years “after Hillsborough, with increased security, CCTV, heavier sentencing, and I guess I just grew out of it. There are still pockets of the Baby Squad now but it will never be like it was. I don’t want to glorify it but it’s a mugs’ game now.”

Riaz was prompted to write his story with the rise of the far right on the terraces.

“The EDL were recruiting, targeting muslims in general with their hate and I realised that maybe I could educate people that not all muslims are terrorists. I got involved in debates in social media and started to become a bit of a figure for it.

“I didn’t write the book to become a public figure, but then, when I had a rant against Rupert Murdoch in 2015 over his One In Five Muslims Support ISIS headline, it propelled things.

“It’s really hard to get through to scumbags, and some of these scumbags rule the world, but showing them muslims aren’t all bad, that they help people, that you can’t fight hate with hate because you just get more hate, is the only way forward. It does give me headaches though.”

His story and the adaptations for stage and screen are being documented by the BBC and Channel 4, and he already has newspaper interviews lined up with The Times and The Guardian.

It seems the story of a football hooligan turned lecturer and author is going global.

Catch it early at Curve this autumn.

Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual plays Curve from September 26 to October 6. Details on 0116 242 3595 or: curveonline.co.uk