Former Manchester United Goalkeeper Gary Bailey would have been at the centre of a campaign against Football hooliganism in the 1980’s according to documents released today under the thirty year rule.
Bailey would have been interviewed by the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, under proposals by her Press Secretary Bernard Ingham as part of a campaign called “Goalies against Hoolies” in a note sent to the Prime Minister in the summer of 1985.
Football hooliganism was rife at this time. The following season English clubs would be banned from Europe after Liverpool fans rioted at the European Cup Final and according to the note:
“A variant of, or added to, this is to try to organise the more articulate goalkeepers, who are often first in line of hooligan fire, to launch a campaign – ‘goalies against hoolies’. We are proposing you should give an interview to Gary Bailey, Manchester United and England goalkeeper, from Piccadilly Radio, Manchester – an interview which we should get networked. Bailey is an articulate graduate,” advised Ingham.
The papers released today also show of Mrs Thatcher’s worries about the introduction of new GCSE exams, fears about Michael Heseltine and his role in the Westland affair and how threats that civilisation would be devastated by “nuclear winter” after conflict with the Soviet Union were dismissed as scaremongering by the Home Office.
