The awful events in Paris last weekend should transcend anything we would wish to write or say about football. The religious fascist fanatics are essentially exploiting the angst of poverty, dis-enfranchisment, religion and tribalism all around the world to further their own twisted prejudices.
However, there is for me some twisted relevance to football and how some football fans behave. After all, ‘fan’ is an abbreviation of fanatic. These Islamists are fanatics, they are ‘fans’ of an extreme interpretation of a religion, they also have a huge element of tribalism thrown in with Sunni/Shia divisions, their hearts are overrun with hatred and prejudice.
Bill Shankly the Legendary Liverpool manager once said…
“Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”.
Shankly (albeit tongue in cheek) could be interpreted as saying football is higher in importance than even religion and for some it is and with that comes for some, a similar distorted hatred that fuels extremism. It is an excuse of course to channel their own prejudices and hatred.
Football has had its dark days, Hillsborough and Heysel would never occurred in the way they did had it not been for the seed of violent tribal behaviour of a minority of football fans. My rationale is that Hillsborough would not of installed the controversial dangerous fences had football fans not started spilling onto pitches to fight each other in previous seasons (This also putting aside the dreadful police actions on the day) . A total of 135 fans died in those two tragic incidents that shocked the world, it is a similar number to those who have tragically perished in the awful events in Paris last weekend.
Of course there is a huge chasm between the scale of premeditated acts of determined terrorists and that of stupid football fanatics and a poor government response to tackle crowd safety. I in no way would belittle the horrific events in Paris in drawing some parallel however wide. I’ll endeavour to explain further.
Thirteen years ago I was at the Ideal Home show working. My then ten-year-old daughter had come with me to have a look round. To get home we jumped on the train at Earls Court.
Chelsea had been playing that day and as I got on the train I was relieved to see a raft of seats available meaning I could rest my weary legs and feet. I sat down and as I looked around I could see that all the commuters were sitting or standing at the other end of the carriage, aside from three men sitting opposite to me and I thought ‘that’s odd’.
As the train pulled away I then noticed that these three guys opposite me were Chelsea supporters, they were not wearing scarves but did have match day programmes. One then started chanting Chelsea songs. I sat tight scouring in my head-thoughts on the atmosphere in the train carriage. It wasn’t right. I sensed it and within a few hundred yards of us leaving the station one of the Chelsea supporters stood up and started cursing and throwing hateful abuse at a group of Asian men at the other side of the carriage. It was vile. I looked at my ten-year-old daughter and she looked perplexed. I held her hand to comfort her.
A few moments later a group of Romany busking musicians burst through the carriage door launching a cacophony of accordion and violin at the commuters with the obvious aim to collect money. The Asian hating Chelsea-supporting numbskull sat opposite me was incensed and stood up doing a Nazi salute screaming ‘No Surrender! No Surrender!’ whilst his two mates sat sniggering at this theatre of hate that now had morphed itself into the religious sectarian rivalry of Protestants against Catholics… Rangers v Celtic came in to my head, this idiot thought the buskers were Catholic Irish.
I closed my eyes for a moment, gritting my teeth whilst clenching my daughters hand tighter and then ping in my head I remembered! My daughters Mother was Singaporean-Chinese, in other words Asian and her grandfather was a born and bred Catholic Dubliner. My 10-year-old daughter was representative of both sets of people this moron was vomiting his bile at.
My daughter is a lovely exotic mix of her Mother and my err less exotic mix of freckles and red bits, her beauty was polluted by the ugliness that sat opposite to us. This ‘ping’ was the catalyst for me to stand up and let rip at the morons. The whole carriage went quiet. I cannot remember the exact words that launched from my throat but disgust, shame and moron would have been constructed within a caustic rhetoric. I also berated the guys sniggering chums. They sat silent. These were three forty- year-old plus men not some young yobbos, they were my generation.
My final words were said to my daughter who sadly had to witness this horrible angle of pond life’, ‘Come on sweetheart, there’s a really bad smell on this train we need to catch another train’. The main yob once he had recovered from the shock of someone standing up to him then gestured to us through the closed doors saying ‘Come on then if you want some!’, I shook my head and walked away.
On reflection my stand up stance probably wasn’t a wise thing to do. 3 v 1 is further compromised as I couldn’t fight my way out of a proverbial paper bag despite my Mohammed Ali grade gob and more importantly I had a child with me.
Trains and racist acts by football fans are not new and since that incident Chelsea fans have been lambasted after a group of them stopped a Parisian guy of African descent getting on a train in… Paris. Shameful.
West Ham fanatics are not beyond criticism either after they chanted anti Semitic songs on a train in Northampton last month and last season at the Spurs game there were further disturbing anti-semitic incidents. Also shameful.
And this is where I climb on an even higher high horse.
The first match I ever went to was Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham United at White Hart Lane in August 1970, the game finished 2-2. we went behind twice, ex Spurs Hero Jimmy Greaves scored for us and my childhood hero Bobby Moore played, ex Hammer Martin Peters played for Spurs and created their first goal… I was captivated by thrilling match. My dad was a die hard Hammer and the rivalry and atmosphere was intense amongst a huge sell-out crowd of over 50,000… it was an amazing experience, I was ten years old and from what I can recall no anti Semitism songs or chants and this leads me to….
This Sunday West Ham visit White Hart Lane. I will not go. I will also not go to the return fixture at Upton Park. I haven’t been to a West Ham v Spurs home or away game for years.
The same analogy of the experience with the vile Chelsea fans applies. I now have two sons from a second marriage. Their Mother is Jewish, whereas I am not religious at all and as I keep getting reminded that makes them Jewish. One of my sons has been brainwashed by me into following West Ham despite us living in Highbury and is hooked. Some time back I had a run in on a West Ham forum with a couple of West Ham fans on how I found the Hissing Song repulsive. It turned very nasty. I logged out never to return, the site owners clearly had no desire to moderate the site.
My sons Great Grandmother made it out of Poland in 1940… just. The rest of her immediate family didn’t, they all were starved, beaten, probably sexually assaulted or raped, skin turned into lampshades, possibly experimented on or gassed in Hitler’s horror chambers in Auschwitz. I make no apologies for such graphic detail. Their Great Grandmother in later life understandably had a mental breakdown. There were around 6 million other people that shared the same fate of her family.
The Islamists of ISIL/ISIS if they had their way would do a similar thing, their hatred of us is only surpassed by their hatred of Jews and Israel. Yet we have so called West Ham fans who think it’s funny to mock the Spurs fans in the guise of ‘It’s only banter’ by replaying the sounds of the gas chambers by hissing, words fail me. How do I explain this to my son who loves West Ham and who’s ancestors were murdered and incinerated?
One of my observations of the minority fascist Islamists is the small and quiet objection of the majority Muslim community at large, very few take to the streets to object at the acts and intentions of the nutters through fear or simply wanting to keep their noses out of it. The same happens elsewhere in society and in football matches, we hear and see stuff but largely do nothing other than tut tut. The same happened in Nazi Germany, this is maybe a human characteristic of self preservation, I get that.
I of course could go to the West Ham v Tottenham and ignore all this, but I can’t I am sorry, I can’t do this until this behaviour is completely booted out. I would as the result of my mouths auto-actions end up in trouble and probably as a result be completly turned off the club I have loved for what feels like an eternity. I don’t want that.
The irony of course is in the fact that West Ham’s very own Chairman David Gold is Jewish and he must be one of the few club chairmen that is a genuine supporter of a Premier League club they own. Past players have been Jewish including the talented and popular Eyel Berkovic and Yossi Benayoun, many die hard West Ham fans are also Jewish. Can you imagine how all of these people feel?
I know this problem like most is the minority of fans, but the same can be said of those that follow the perversion of Islamist ISIS or any other crackpot attitude, religion or ideology, it is always the ‘minority’ but it is often the majority that stand by and do or say nothing, such apathy is the sprinkling fertiliser on which extremism and bad behaviour. grows
So I say to the Chelsea fans that I met on the tube that day in Earls Court or to the West Ham fans that think it is ok to sing such a vile song imitating the sound of Nazi gas chambers and of course to the evil Islamist nutters wherever they are … Hiss off! … others please follow suit.