Striking and unexpected portraits of Millwall Football Club

A new documentary explores the diverse community at the heart of London’s most infamous team.

It’s bare­ly three min­utes into an evening mid­week Cham­pi­onship clash at the Den, the south­east Lon­don home of Mill­wall Foot­ball Club. The Lions are fac­ing mid-table side Black­burn, and left back Joe Bryan whips a loop­ing free kick towards the penal­ty area. After a brief back and forth with some head ten­nis, the ball drops neat­ly onto the fore­head of Wes Hard­ing, and the Mill­wall cen­tre back nods it below Blackburn’s sprawl­ing goal­keep­er and into the net. As it cross­es the line, the rough­ly 15,000 home fans jump to their feet and col­lec­tive­ly break into cho­rus: No one likes us, we don’t care/​We are Mill­wall, super Millwall/​We are Mill­wall from the Den.

The chant is one of the stadium’s most pop­u­lar – a sub­ver­sive wink to the fanbase’s rep­u­ta­tion. A lega­cy of the peak of Eng­lish football’s hooli­gan­ism era, Mill­wall has long been a club asso­ci­at­ed with the most vio­lent aspects of the sport’s fan­dom and cul­ture. Across the 70s and 80s, fight­ing among club firms’ became syn­ony­mous with Eng­lish foot­ball, and that image was par­tic­u­lar­ly exac­er­bat­ed by its por­tray­al from sec­tions of the media. Mill­wall, led par­tic­u­lar­ly by its F‑Troop firm, became infa­mous for vio­lence, with a BBC Panora­ma episode from 1977 that por­trayed hooli­gan­ism as endem­ic in the club help­ing to cement its image to the British public. 

The ungen­er­ous view would be they’ve got a chip on their shoul­der,” says Har­ry Law­son, the cre­ator of new film Mill­wall on the Screen. The more gen­er­ous view would be that they think the folk­lore around Mill­wall is fun­ny and they tap into it.”

Cur­rent­ly being shown on loop at the Chemist Gallery in Lewisham, south­east Lon­don, Mill­wall on the Screen is a 52-minute-long part-doc­u­men­tary, part exper­i­men­tal art film explor­ing the wider com­mu­ni­ty of Mill­wall at the heart of London’s his­tor­i­cal­ly work­ing-class, dock­land area.

From the les­bian cou­ple who man­age Millwall’s com­mu­ni­ty food bank, to its pas­sion­ate stew­ards, fam­i­lies, and LGBTQ+ team Mill­wall Romans – the film is a win­dow into the diver­si­ty of the club’s fan­base in 2023, show­cas­ing a dif­fer­ent side to the club than what is usu­al­ly cap­tured in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. A short, silent ver­sion (below) is played on the big screen in the north­east cor­ner of the sta­di­um at half time.

Mill­wall [fans] weren’t more aggres­sive or [fought] in greater num­bers than clubs like Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, who now have a more sani­tised glob­al image,” Law­son explains of why the club has retained its rep­u­ta­tion. Walk­ing around the Den, it’s not graph­ic designed up to the eye­balls. Mill­wall don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have the bud­get for these con­sid­er­a­tions, and nev­er play­ing Pre­mier League foot­ball, they’ve nev­er had the TV neces­si­ty to clean that up per se.”

Yet that image of vio­lence and thug­gery belies much of the heart­warm­ing acts of com­mu­ni­ty and mutu­al sup­port found around the club. For the film, Law­son spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time in the Mill­wall Com­mu­ni­ty Trust – a build­ing next to the sta­di­um that hous­es a food bank fund­ed by Mill­wall FC. With­in a cost of liv­ing cri­sis that is bit­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly hard in Bermond­sey, as rapid­ly ris­ing rents and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion is cre­at­ing incred­i­bly tough sit­u­a­tions for those on low incomes – the food bank pro­vides food relief, as well as a place for peo­ple to catch up with their friends over a cup of tea. Head­ing up the oper­a­tion are Ellen and Kel­ly, a proud­ly les­bian cou­ple who got mar­ried in the director’s box of the Den.

Their com­mit­ment to the food bank is an amaz­ing thing to wit­ness,” he says. Homo­pho­bia is a prob­lem in foot­ball grounds, and Mill­wall is one of those clubs that have this rep­u­ta­tion, and they are an open­ly les­bian cou­ple wear­ing Mill­wall track­suits. They wouldn’t think of it in such grandiose terms but in my mind they are rewrit­ing what you’re allowed to look like as a Mill­wall fan.”

“Homophobia is a problem in football grounds, and Millwall is one of those clubs that have this reputation, and they are an openly lesbian couple wearing Millwall tracksuits.” Ellen and Kelly, Millwall Community Trust foodbank

The film is the cul­mi­na­tion of near­ly two years of work, and an insight to the deep mean­ing that foot­ball holds to its fans, beyond the 90 min­utes on the pitch. One of my rules going into the shoot was that there wouldn’t be a foot­ball in the film – like a spher­i­cal foot­ball,” Law­son explains of his process. So for a long time I didn’t shoot any game­play. There are three or four instances where you see some­one whack the ball and then it cuts back to the fans, but the fans are the action – it’s about peo­ple watch­ing football.”

One scene in the film focus­es on a pair of six-year-old twins, both don­ning grey flat caps and puffer jack­ets as they cheer on the boys in blue. Their out­fits are rem­i­nis­cent of the hooli­gans of decades past, but the boys aren’t look­ing for a fight. There’s an inter­est­ing thing that hap­pens with the match­day uni­form peo­ple adopt,” Law­son says. So when you see a group of Mill­wall fans on the train, they do dress in a way that mim­ics a lot of the hooli­gan image, so they’ll be wear­ing a flat cap, Stone Island jack­et, a par­tic­u­lar mod­el of Adi­das trainers.

But for a lot of these boys, it’s the last thing that remains – they’re not meet­ing up at a pub on a Fri­day to dis­cuss where they’re going to be fight­ing, all they’re doing is wear­ing the uni­form of a hooli­gan,” he con­tin­ues. So the two twin boys, that type of image is the strongest for a project like this because it speaks to all these cul­tur­al rem­nants – whether that’s hooli­gan­ism or this dock­ers’ aes­thet­ic – but then dif­fus­es it by being these angel­ic boys. And that’s what the project’s try­ing to do.”

Mill­wall on the Screen by Har­ry Law­son runs at the Chemist Gallery from Novem­ber 3 until Novem­ber 262023

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