The Safe Standing Movement in English Football (1989-2019)
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THE SAFE STANDING MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH FOOTBALL (1989-2019): TIMESCAPES, TACTICS AND NETWORKS MARK TURNER A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Solent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2019 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT This work is the intellectual property of MARK TURNER. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights’. 2 CONTENTS Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………….. 6 Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………….. 8 Abbreviations …………………………………………………………………………. 10 Introduction: The Ritual of Watching Football: A Thirty Year Social History 12 Original Contribution to Knowledge ……………………………………………….. 19 Structure of Thesis ………………………………………………………………….. 21 PART I Chapter One: Introducing Safe Standing and Relational Sociology Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 25 Entering the Story of Safe Standing ………………………………………………. 28 Introducing the Football Supporters Federation ……………………………………..30 The Legalities of Standing and All-Seated Stadia ………………………………….. 32 Persistent Standing of Football Supporters in All-Seated Areas …………………… 35 Theoretical Framework: Cultural Relational Sociology and Social Movements ……38 Chapter Two: The Neoliberal Timescape of English Football Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 45 ‘A Whole New Ball Game’: Conceptualising Traditional Football Fandom and the New Consumption of Football …………………………………………………….. 47 ‘Supporters Not Customers’: The Political Economy of English Football during the 1990s ……………………………………………………………………………….. 55 ‘Football without Fans is Nothing’: Contemporary Fan Protests, Mobilisations and Social Movements ……………………………………………………………………61 Research Gaps ………………………………………………………………………..75 3 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………… 76 Chapter Three: Methodology Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………78 Methodological Choices and Research Design ………………………………………. 80 Data Collection ……………………………………………………………………….. 91 Data Analysis ……………………………………………………………………… 118 Ethics …………………………………………………………………………………120 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………121 PART II Chapter Four: 1989 - 1999 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 122 ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’: The Kopite Agitators and Reclaiming the Game …….. 125 ‘When Saturday Comes, We’re All Just Football Fans’ ……………………………. 130 Structuring Collective Action: Changing Roles and Positions ………………………138 ‘Marching Altogether’: Leeds and Manchester Academic Networks ……………….143 Militant Networks and Collective Effervescence: Building a Relational Coalition of Football Supporters ………………………………………………………………… 150 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………. 166 Chapter Five: 1999 - 2009 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 168 ‘Stand Up if You Love City’: Emerging Political Opportunities and Constraints … 171 From South East Liverpool to North London: Building a National Social Movement Organisation …………………………………………………………………………. 185 SUSD: East London Networks and Relational Repertoires of Contention ………….. 194 Reprogramming New Logics of Rail Seating ………………………………………. 202 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………212 4 Chapter Six: 2009 - 2019 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 214 ‘A Love Supreme’: North East Networks and Building Diplomacy ……………… 217 Movement Entrepreneurs: Seeing and Feeling the Movement ……………………… 223 Switching Celtic: Misbehaviour and the Green Brigade ……………………………. 229 Beneath the Wave: Spirit of Shankly and the Hillsborough Inquests …………………236 Rhizomatic Networks and the Corporate Logics of Fan Engagement ………………..242 ‘The Vocal Minority’: Standing Up for Choice and Breaking Down the State ………251 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………263 Conclusion: A Temporal View of Football Supporter Social Movements 265 Limitations and Future Research ……………………………………………………..272 Final Remarks ……………………………………………………………………… 274 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………… 277 Word Count: 86, 555 5 ABSTRACT Twenty eight years after the Taylor report into the Hillsborough stadium disaster recommended that all Premier League and Championship football grounds in England and Wales should become all-seated, the UK Government Sports Minister Tracey Crouch, in June 2018, announced a government review into the safety of modern standing areas and whether new developments in stadium safety and spectator accommodation, might justify changing the current all-seating legislation to permit Safe Standing. In October 2019, the review concluded that their remains significant scope for further research to build an evidence base to trial different standing areas, alongside monitoring clubs taking different approaches to the management of standing. These recent events are the outcome of a thirty- year social movement in which a critical mass of football supporters, through the networks they formed, have built relational collective action across the neoliberal timescape of English football from 1989-2019. This thesis presents a social movement analysis of Safe Standing and in doing, produces a largely untold thirty year social history of English football supporter activism. To achieve this, it applies a relational sociology approach (Crossley, 2011; 2015) to capture the importance of football supporter networks, relationships and interactions which built this social movement across different temporal periods, or what Gillan (2018) refers to as multiple timescales. It offers an original contribution to knowledge of football supporter social movements through a rich micro- level analysis of the most important issue which fans collectively coalesce around, and the legacy of the worst sporting disaster in the UK, which has dominated public consciousness for thirty years. And as a social movement, I argue Safe Standing is one of the most important recent development in the game, because it evidences how supporters, who have been deeply affected by the all-seating legislation, are now in a position to affect the future consumption of English football. My analysis showed how this was achieved, and argued that a small core network of approximately 30 supporters, to which I gained insider access, 6 stand to potentially impact and shape the consumption habits of a leisure practice all over the world. In doing so, the thesis represents the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the 30 year movement against the all-seating legislation and offers an important social history which informed both the focus of the government review and its primary conclusions. 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to thank all those who gave up their time to talk to me or be interviewed for this research. In particular, I would like to say a big thank you to Peter Garrett and Graham Turvey for providing invaluable access to two incredibly rich FSA archives. And to Peter Daykin who kindly offered insider access to the FSF Safe Standing network and his general support throughout the course of this research. I would like to say a special thank you to Richard Penton for taking a punt on a young, inexperienced early career researcher in 2011 and offering me a full time position at Solent University. This not only provided the foundation for this PhD, but changed my life in so many ways. I would also like to thank my colleagues within the School of Sport, Health and Social Sciences at Solent (past and present) who have supported me, in particular Rob Burton and my Director of Studies, Richard Elliott. I would like to express gratitude to Joel Rookwood and Stefan Lawrence for both their critical advice and continued friendship. However, I would like to say the biggest thank you and pay the greatest debt of recognition to my two supervisors, Peter Millward and David Webber. Dave has been an invaluable source of support over the past 24 months upon joining my supervision team in 2017. He has pushed me critically and always believed in this research. I cannot express in words my thanks to Pete who has supported me unconditionally from day one and has been a true source of inspiration both academically and personally. He has been incredibly patient and understood the challenges of doing this PhD part-time. His encouragement and support is something I’ll never forget. I would like to thank all my family and close friends. During this research, I got married, moved house twice, became a father for the first time, and lost two important family members. Throughout this, my Mum has been a true source of strength and support. 8 Thanks also to Karen, who helped me in so many ways throughout this journey. I would like to say the biggest thank you to my wife Kate for her incredible patience and unconditional love throughout all the various challenges which presented themselves. And to my son Isaac, for helping me to smile again and put everything into perspective. I would like to say a special thank you to my brother Anthony and my friends at Manchester City, Mark, Mike and Laura. Those relationships and connections still matter. Finally, I dedicate this thesis to my stepfather, Tony. We have stood and sat together watching football for thirty years. Thank you for giving me this. I’ve put it all into this PhD. 9 ABBREVIATIONS FSF. Football Supporters Federation FSA. Football Supporters Association NFFSC. National Federation