Football, according to the old (English) cliché, is a game of
two halves. Likewise the behaviour of its supporters. Whereas
the 1998 World Cup ended with joyous scenes of happy French fans
on the Champs D'Elysèes in Paris, it began with the image of English
football fans battling French police and rival supporters in Marsielle.
In the span of five weeks, television audiences around the world
were shown the two faces of football fandom -- one positive, the
other negative. While the earlier scenes from Marseille may tell
many North Americans more than they want or care to know about
either soccer or hooliganism, I want to offer the following observations
about what is, in fact, a fairly complex phenomenon.
The very public displays of street fighting kill any notion that
the problem of fan violence has been resolved. This fanciful notion
has gained currency in some quarters in England in large measure
because of an evident decline in trouble at English football grounds
over the past several years.
In this regard, what recently happened in southern France can
be understood as Bill Buford's vindication. Buford is an American
writer, sometime resident in England, who wrote in 1991 an ethnographic
account of the lifestyles of the rougher type of English football
fan. The tone and tenor of the book is summed up by its title
Among the Thugs. While the book was reviewed well in North America, it received
a more mixed welcome in the U.K. According to the Independent on Sunday (March 23, 1997), the tabloid press lapped up the lurid tales
of terrace violence at home and abroad, while the more serious
university based football researchers demurred. Perhaps it was
considered impertinent for an American to be passing judgment
on the violent and aggressive behaviour of English males, when
some American inner-cities routinely resemble war-zones. Certainly
Buford was criticized for accentuating the negative, and in so
doing, ignoring not simply the more reputable aspects of 'the
beautiful game' (Pele's phrase ), but above all, the more representative
behaviour of the majority of fans.
Much more to the intellectual -- and popular-- liking than Buford's
work was Nick Hornby's 'Fever Pitch', published a year later. This account of growing up as a football
fan and Arsenal FC fanatic played down mindless violence on the
terraces (without completely denying its existence), and emphasized the more ordinary routines of obsessive male fans. He has spawned
imitators, and there are now a number of similar celebrations
and confessionals from middle-aged males keen, among other things,
to depict football as a metaphor for life itself.
As revealed in the opening stages of the World Cup, however, the
ugly side of English football remains intact, stubbornly resistant to all preventive measures. And I do mean English -- and not British.
One of the enduring curiosities of the game is that hooliganism
is an English phenomenon rather than a British one. The relatively
good behaviour of the Scottish fans, at least in contemporary
times, has been explained by the latters' efforts to disassociate
themselves from all things English, including any imitation of
the malevolence of the English fans. So what is it that makes
hooliganism such an obdurate quality of the English game -- at
least when the principal protagonists travel abroad? Answering
this question turns us away from literary debates or cultural
studies, and towards sociology.
As morally reprehensible as it is, English football hooliganism
is a fascinating sociological phenomenon, particularly for students
of crime and deviance. It manifests itself in a society which,
by international standards, is not noted for the incidence of
crime, particularly violent crime (although this view is not shared by those who actually live there). The
British crime rate is appreciably lower than that found in Canada
and, of course, the United States. Interestingly, the same holds
for Holland, which like England is a small, densely-populated,
relatively violence-free society with a significant hooligan problem.
And in both societies the largest cities -- and most prominent
football teams -- are well connected by road and rail transportation.
However, the fact that "hooligans" are easily able to travel in
numbers across Europe does not begin to explain hooliganism's
English origins. For this we need to turn to the research of Eric
Dunning and his colleagues at the University of Leicester (described
in, among other places, The Roots of Football Hooliganism : An Historical and Sociological
Study, by Eric Dunning, Patrick Murphy and John Williams [London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1988]).
Unfashionable though the concept has become, it is class that
gives football hooliganism its resonance in England. Some politicians
and academics have attempted to disconnect football (if not the game itself, then certainly
its more violent constituents) from its class roots, for example
by unearthing affluent hooligans far removed (geographically and
socially) from the working class and problems of unemployment
and disadvantage. Yet football remains the quintessential working man's sport. While it is true
that at least since1966 football has become a more middle-class, and more recently, a less homogeously male
pursuit, the hard-core of fandom is still found where it has always
been found: among young, or youngish, working-class males, for
whom football is the emotional centre of their lives, and the
principal expression of a masculinist street culture which, particularly
when accompanied by heavy drinking can turn nasty.
The ties that bind members of this culture to one another are
essentially local, and localism breeds suspiciousness of outsiders
-- regardless of whether those outsiders are from a neighboring
community or a neighboring country. In a global context, such
as is provided by the World Cup, these suspicions also take on
a racist edge -- a legacy of Britain's Imperial past.
Of course, many more young males in those communities are exposed
to those conditions and values than ever become hooligans. Even
the most jaded anglophobes recognize that the hooligan element is but a small one among the
English fans . While the 'many are called, few are chosen' quality
of this situation poses problems for sociological analysis (why
don't all those who grow up in such communities become hooligans?)
it is also responsible for misleading popular commentary about
the relationship between 'hooligans' and 'true fans'.
Probably the oldest canard in the book is that hooligans are not
true fans -- that football is incidental to the more serious business
of drinking and fighting. Dick Howard, the British-born World
Cup analyst on Canadian television's TSN, is only the latest to
relay this falsehood. All researchers agree that the hooligans
are the most knowledgeable and informed members of the football
community. Comments to the effect that hooligans would not know
the names of the English team playing in France are laughingly
off the mark. The fact that this argument is wrong has not prevented
its endless repetition, nor does it mean that it serves no purpose.
As sociologists of deviance like to point out, by portraying wrongdoers
as different from the rest of us, the respectable community, in
values, motivations and lifestyles, we are able to distance ourselves
from disreputable events and individuals.
Of course, sports-related violence is not unique to football or
unknown in North America: the celebrations following the Chicago
Bulls' NBA victory (co-incidentally, on the same day that the
hooligan story was breaking in Marsielle), and Stanley Cup wins
(Montreal) or defeats (Vancouver) suffice to dispel that notion.
The why's and wherefore's of North American sports violence (part
of the game, rather than in the stands?) is another matter entirely.
September 1998
© CJS Online 
