The Culture of Football: Violence, Racism and British Society, 1968-98
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The Culture of Football: Violence, Racism and British Society, 1968-98 Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Bebber, Brett Matthew Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 06:10:11 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194186 THE CULTURE OF FOOTBALL: VIOLENCE, RACISM AND BRITISH SOCIETY, 1968-98. by Brett M. Bebber A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN HISTORY In the Graduate College University of Arizona 2008 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Brett Bebber entitled The Culture of Football: Violence, Racism and British Society, 1968-1998 and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date: 4/21/08 Laura Tabili Date: 4/21/08 David Ortiz Date: 4/21/08 Susan Crane Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. Date: 4/21/08 Dissertation Director: Laura Tabili 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Brett M. Bebber 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisors and colleagues at the University of Arizona: Susan Crane, David Ortiz, Kevin Gosner, Doug Weiner, Julia Hudson-Richards, Elena Jackson-Alberran, Cat Belshaw, among others. My thinking and analysis have been refined by their trenchant criticisms. I also wish to thank Laura Tabili, whose incessant thoughtfulness and great care helped to shape the final product. I would also like to thank my wife, Emily Bebber, and many friends and family members for their support and encouragement. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures………………………………………………………………………….....6. List of Archival Abbreviations………………………………………………………...…7. Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..…8. Introduction- Sport, Politics and History in Postwar Britain…………………………....10. Chapter One- An Introduction to Football Violence: Context, Community and Conflict……………..42. Chapter Two- Moral Anxieties, National Mythologies and Football Violence……………………...…94. Chapter Three- Violent Environments: Physical Space, Discipline and Football Disorder……………161. Chapter Four- Police and the State: Tactics, Networks and the Development of Football Policing….247. Chapter Five- Stretching Punishment: The State, Law and Order, and Threatening the Spectator…...306. Chapter Six- The Football Front: Fascist and Anti-Fascist Politics in Football, 1977 to 1985……...344. Chapter Seven- Ten Years Too Late: Racism and Anti-Racism in Football, 1986-1998………………396. Conclusion: Legacies of Violence in British Football…………………………………446. Appendix……………………………………………………………………….………455. Selected References……………………………………………………………………458. 6 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Evening Standard cartoon, 29 April, 1974…………………………………..198. Figure 2: Daily Express cartoon, 24 May, 1974……………………………………….200. Figure 3: Drawing, Denis Howell’s Administrative Files……………………………..202. 7 LIST OF ARCHIVAL ABBREVIATIONS Public Record Office, National Archives, Kew, London, England…………………...PRO Runnymede Collection, Runnymede Trust, Middlesex, England……………………...RT British Library, Main Branch, King’s Cross, London, England……………………….BL 8 ABSTRACT Britain enjoys a rich historical tradition of popular protest and collective action. Due to their public and publicized nature, sporting events have been recognized increasingly as venues in which broader cultural and political meanings are enacted and debated in the postwar period. This project examines how social anxieties about immigration, unemployment, and government repression were represented and contested through violence and eventually racist aggression at football matches. From 1968 to the mid-1970s, violence among fans and with police became expected on a weekly basis within and outside British football stadiums as new forms of spectator allegiance and sports consumption emerged. British football became a contested cultural and institutional site of racisms, violence, masculinities, and national mythologies. Rather than examining football per se , the principal aim of this project is to investigate how this distinct cultural milieu became a site for the British government to enact violence against working-class citizens by manipulating moral anxieties, physical environments, police tactics, and legal prosecution. Whereas many British sociologists have focused on the motivation of crowd behavior and the group dynamics among supporter gangs, this paper looks at the response of the state, local police authorities, and the Home Office and Department of Environment. Politicians concerned with British sport helped to create oppositional, aggressive and disciplinary environments that promoted mutually reciprocating violent environments. Beginning in the late 1970s, spectators not only participated in violence, but also racial abuse, in stadium environments. Several fans 9 protested the emergence of successful black footballers, who came to represent conflicts about immigration, job and housing competition, and race riots in postwar Britain. The environment became a cultural location that several groups recognized as a platform for the contestation and manipulation of racial and class conflict: it garnered activism from the neo-fascist National Front, spawned several anti-racist organizations, captured the attention of the Home Office responsible for public order, and garnered extensive national press coverage. Consequently, the football environment not only mirrored social and political hostilities, but produced them as well. 10 Introduction- Sport, Politics and History in Postwar Britain Due to their public and publicized nature, sporting events have been recognized increasingly as venues in which broader social struggles have been reproduced and redefined. 1 Examining violence and racism in British football shows that from the late 1960s social anxieties about race politics, class relations, and state repression were represented and contested through violence and racist aggression at football matches. Class violence and racial abuse in football not only reflected broader cultural struggles and fractured social relationships in postwar Britain, but also produced new social anxieties and political questions. The state and leading political authorities responded to the presence of violence and racisms in one of the nation’s central cultural institutions by re-examining policing and disciplinary policies for working-class citizens. Rather than examining football per se , my principal aim is to investigate how this distinct cultural milieu became a site for the reproduction and performance of racial and class tensions, masculinity, and racist violence. The environment of British football serves as an aperture through which to reassess the fundamental social and cultural processes within post-1945 British society, as well as the way politicians, lawmakers, and grassroots organizations approached them. Evidence will show that social conflict, 1 For examples of recent scholarship see Patrick McDevitt, ‘May the Best Man Win’: Sport, Masculinity and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, 1880-1935 (New York: Palgrave, 2004): Neal Garnham, “Patronage, Politics and Modernization of Leisure in Northern England: The Case of Alnwick’s Shrove Tuesday Football Match,” English Historical Review 117:474 (2002), 1228-46; J.A. Mangan, ed. Making European Masculinities: Sport, Europe, Gender (Portland, Frank Cass, 2000) and John Hargreaves, Sport, Power and Culture: A Social and Historical Analysis of Popular Sports in Britain (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986). 11 allegedly eliminated by the postwar social democratic compromise, re-emerged in cultural contests over physical space and policing in football stadia. Class discourses and practices resurfaced in football conflicts as global economic crises and retrenchment of social welfare apparently betrayed postwar social democratic promises. My research in recently released government documents shows that politicians and police authorities consistently met violence with their own repressive measures, escalating conflict and ignoring its relationship to larger social fissures. State authorities