I had a chat today about the challenges of managing potential football disorder away from grounds. As always everybody was keen to remember that more than 99% of people attending football matches are there to enjoy themselves in a way that poses no threats to the King’s peace. A sense of perspective is important in all public order and crowd management scenarios. The subject of the history of the issue came up. The problems of the 1980s and 1970s are still fresh in the mind and the lessons that were learned then are pretty well incorporated into modern practice. Modern public order (not a phrase I especially like) policing and the co-operation between forces has a lot to recommend it. Looking to the past the books by Mike Layton on the subject are worth a look. The particular challenge of policing fans as they travel on the railway network has been a speciality of BTP for the whole of the history of the force. Time consuming, expensive and sometimes dangerous this is