A "Millwall brick" is an improvised weapon made of a manipulated newspaper, used as a small club. It was named after supporters of Millwall F.C., who had a reputation for football hooliganism. The Millwall brick was allegedly used as a stealth weapon at football matches in England during the 1960s and 1970s. The weapon's popularity appears to have been due to the wide availability of newspapers, the difficulty in restricting newspapers being brought into football grounds, and the ease of its construction.
History
In the late 1960s — in response to football hooliganism at matches in England — police began confiscating any objects that could be used as weapons. These items included steel combs, pens, beermats, horse brasses, Polo mints, shoelaces and boots. However, fans were still permitted to bring in newspapers. Larger broadsheet newspapers work best for a Millwall brick, and the police looked with suspicion at working classfootball fans who carried such newspapers. Because of their more innocent appearance, tabloid newspapers became the preferred choice for Millwall bricks. The book Spirit of '69: A Skinhead Bible describes the use of Millwall bricks by British football hooligans in the late 1960s: "Newspapers were rolled up tightly to form the so-called Millwall Brick and another trick was to make a knuckleduster out of pennies held in place by a wrapped around paper. You could hardly be pulled up for having a bit of loose change in your pocket and a Daily Mirror under your arm." The book Skinhead says, "The Millwall brick, for example, was a newspaper folded again and again and squashed together to form a cosh."
Design
A Millwall brick is constructed from several newspaper sheets stacked and tightly rolled lengthwise. The resulting tube is then bent in half to create a handle and a rounded head at the fold.
Cultural references
The term "Millwall brick" appeared in a 2001 Times column about the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which writer Mick Humesarcastically proposed that airlines get rid of newspapers since "football hooligans used to fold them into something called a Millwall Brick."
The Millwall brick was mentioned in a 2004 Spiked column about Britain's knife culture.
A 2004 column in the New York Sports Express includes an expression of hope that Millwall F.C. would "upset Manchester United and put the infamous Millwall Brick inside the famous FA Cup."
In the film The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne fashioned a similar weapon out of a magazine.
In the TV productionLilyhammer, Season 2Episode 1, Duncan Hammer produced a Millwall Brick out of the Norwegian tabloid newspaper VG, some coins and his own urine while ranting about how he and his fellow football hooligans invented it to circumvent the police's weapon prohibition on football matches back in England.
