An Irishman's Diary

Christmas was going great up until then. For the first year in memory, dinner at my parents' house passed without an argument. The inaugural Yuletide visit to the in-laws also went well. I emerged unscathed and in buoyant mood, thankful the marriage was still intact after a party game had threatened to turn nasty.

Then I drove home.

One would think I'd be immune to it, like any motorist who has to journey frequently on Ireland's lawless roads. But, it being Christmas Day, I felt justified in expecting a momentary break from the madness which passes for driving in this country and that I could travel a mere five minutes without once being tailgated by someone who - with headlights blazing - would try to force me over the speed limit. Alas, it wasn't to be so.

Tailgating

As is customary, a pursuing motorist deemed my 30 m.p.h. in a 30 m.p.h. zone was inadequate and, in classic fashion, began closing any slight gap that opened between us using the tailgaters' rule of thumb, or perhaps toe: quick on the accelerator, slow on the brake.

Then, when I turned off the road, he, or she - I couldn't see, what with the glare in the rear-view mirror - took off with a screech and another burst of headlight-flashing, despite the fact that a red light lay 50 yards ahead. The aim, of course, was not so much to get there quickly but to give me the message to stay out of the way in future.

I journeyed the short distance home as much astonished as outraged that, not even on this supposed day of reflection and relaxation, could I escape such bullying. Yet I was determined not to let the incident spoil my good mood and, once inside, sat down with a coffee and one of my Christmas presents: Martin King's The Naughty Nineties, a book on football hooliganism which, from the back cover at least, seemed promising.

I couldn't have been more wrong. After half an hour, I was seething because far from "exploding the myths" surrounding football violence, as it proclaimed to do, the book sought to glorify the actions of its author, a self-proclaimed "real-life hooligan", and present the bottle-throwing, head-butting and racist taunting of his peers as a kind of righteous protest against "the Establishment".

One passage in the book, however, was genuinely interesting - in a way in which the author did not intend. It went: "Like the motorist, the foot- ball fan is seen as an easy target for the police. In both cases they can produce a steady stream of convictions, yielding a healthy income for the public coffers. How many times have you seen them jumping out of the shadows with their silly little guns and pulling some b***er over for speeding? When he or she has stopped they swarm over the car like ants.

"What is all this about? The cost of the operation is high, so the result (i.e. the income) has to be equally high. Why we as a society tolerate this is beyond me. We pay from our taxes for a police force that chooses to spend our money on policing non-crime and taxing us again, in the form of fines, for their fun and games.

"I labour the analogy about the motorist simply because more people may be able to relate to it. But the fact is, in my opinion, that the same dynamics apply to football violence and the police. The hooligan is a soft target all right."

Official interference

This passage is enlightening - not because of its flawed argument but because the person to whom it is directed at is the motorist, particularly the speeding motorist. The author seems to feel that this breed of character - forever pestered by such inconveniences as speed limits, fines and traffic policing - could best relate to his campaign to free football hooligans of official interference.

The person he had in mind was probably someone like the driver who clung to my rear bumper on the way home from the in-laws, someone who resented any restriction on their freedom of movement, who had no sense of responsibility to the other people with whom they shared the roads.

The author was right to think he'd get more sympathy by appealing to such people - because they are far more numerous than football hooligans and twice as unapologetic about their behaviour.

In Ireland, such drivers even have their own website - an award-winning website no less - entitled "Speedtraps", listing frequently-used Garda checkpoint locations to help motorists evade the laser gun. The site, which boasts almost 4,000 visitors a month, offers advice on "safe speeding" as well as recommended radar protection, licence-plate covers, laser blinders and jammers.

Contributions to it are made from drivers throughout the State, some sounding awfully like our friend above - complaining about the lengths gardai go to catch drivers and the injustice of being fined £50 for doing 60 m.p.h. on a perfectly good road, albeit one with a 30 m.p.h. limit.

The truth is that speeding and its many manifestations - accelerating through amber lights, tail-gating, etc. - have become accepted as normal behaviour. Hooliganism on our roads is not just tolerated - it is actively encouraged by a motoring lobby which glorifies speed and fuels resentment against controls on driver freedom which benefit society.