Why it
matters
This isn’t going to be an easy one to write. Perhaps, on a football
website, particularly one run by and principally for people who live away from the club we
support, I have no business writing about recent events in the town of Burnley. There are
two objections to address at the start. Firstly, this is a football website, and the riots
in Burnley had nothing to do with football. Secondly, we do not live in Burnley, so
it’s not for us to comment.
Maybe so. But I must admit to being uneasy at the thought that some of the
racists who rioted recently will be people who go to Burnley matches. I start from the
assumption that the riots prove that there is a problem of racism in the town, and my own
experiences convince me that racism is still a problem at Burnley matches. And there were
a few times during the riots when connections were made explicit. Here, for example:
"Earlier in the evening, a large gang of white men gathered outside
Burnley Football Club's Turf Moor ground before wrecking several takeaways."
Lancashire Evening Telegraph, 25 June
"‘I'm a bit racist,’ said Lee, 19, in a Burnley FC top.
‘ I'm being honest - I know it's a bit bad.’ What does it mean to Lee to be
English? ‘You have to be white, and born in England.’"
The Guardian, 30 June
This last article was illustrated with a large photograph of Burnley - in
which Turf Moor loomed centrally and unmissably. There was also a reference elsewhere,
which I can’t track down, to a group of white rioters chanting football songs.
So, however much we might not want it to be, football is in there
somewhere. The club we support has appeared in these stories, and there is therefore at
the very least a danger that Burnley FC and the rioting white racists will be linked in
public perception. This provides one compelling reason why, as football supporters, we
need to ask what can be done.
Secondly, my cards are on the table. I don’t live in Burnley. I never
have, and I expect I never will. I was born there, but I have lived in Nelson longer than
anywhere else, and wherever I have lived since it’s been in an area with a large
population of Asian origin and widespread poverty. Still the fact remains I’m now an
outsider, a settled Londoner, commenting on things a couple of hundred miles away. But no
one else seems to have tried to write about what happened from a football perspective, so
reluctantly, I’m going to have a go.
I have stopped waiting for Burnley FC to even acknowledge the events in
the town. They might have been expected, as a minimum, to issue a short statement making
clear that the football club had not sustained any damage and was open for business as
usual - but they didn’t even do this. If you were an exile and looked only at their
official website, you might never have known anything happened in the town to which we all
owe some allegiance. It may be harsh to blame them for that. Whoever runs the site may not
have known what an appropriate thing to say would be, in which case it might be safest to
say nothing. But pretending nothing happened, or that what happened had nothing to do with
the football club, could turn out to be terribly shortsighted.
For a start, and in illustration of how what happened connects with
football, I think this puts a tin lid on any attempts to get people of Asian origin to
watch Burnley. Well, would you? If I was an ‘Asian’ person living in Burnley
– by which, of course, we generally mean people who were born in Burnley, went to
school in Burnley, live in Burnley, and speak with a Burnley accent – I wouldn’t
dream of going to Turf Moor now. I’d know what grief I was going to get, and I’d
have a pretty good idea that some of the faces in the crowd were BNP voters and racist
rioters. So I’d stay away. And so a whole generation of a significant section of the
local community – and one which, by the way, is interested enough in football to play
it and buy the merchandise of national level clubs – is lost. The timing of this is
tragic. Only recently, the club, to their credit, appointed Nourrendine Maamria as our
first ever Ethnic Minorities Development Officer. I feel for him, now, for he must have an
impossible job.
What can be done?
What could the club have done immediately after the riots? How about a
statement condemning the violence and making clear that anyone found guilty of involvement
was banned from Turf Moor? After all, they were quick to ban those arrested for
involvement in the post-Blackburn fracas, a storm in a teacup compared to recent events.
Does it matter whether an incident is explicitly football-related or not? As I say above,
there is a danger that what happened will impact on the football club and the way it is
perceived. As I will argue below, this perception could be the cause of future problems
for Burnley FC. Further, Burnley Football Club has a responsibility to the community in
which it lives.
Let’s address that second one first. How often have we heard it said
that ‘nothing is bigger in the town than Burnley FC’? Hasn’t it been stated
that Burnley FC, with his history and recognition factor, enables a small town to punch
above its weight? I agree with this. Until the riots, Burnley was most famous for its
football club. If you told people you were from Burnley, then if they’d heard of
anything, it was the club. Nothing is bigger in Burnley than Burnley FC. And we like that,
but I believe this brings with it responsibilities. Burnley FC represents the town. It can
also lead the town. Not only can it, but it has a duty to.
There is a job to be done in building bridges – quietly and
sensitively, in view of the racist myth that ‘Asians get more’. Burnley, as a
key local institution, has to be involved in this. But there is also a public job to be
done in making it known in the clearest possible terms that racists are not welcome at
Turf Moor.
The track record
Unfortunately, the club’s record on this is patchy. They could, of
course, point to the strong statement against racism that they made earlier this year.
Sadly, this statement was undermined both by its internal contradictions – by lumping
racism and ‘bad language’ together as equivalent offences, the club looked like
they hadn’t thought it through – and their failure to match words with action.
There are any number of instances of people looking to the club for action on racism
– and none being taken. The fact remained that last season, and after those strong
words, many decent people were expected simply to put up with racism at Turf Moor.
Complaints to the stewards fall on deaf ears. Have you ever known a steward tackle racism?
They avoid the issue. I know of people who have handed season tickets back to the club
because they could not live with the regular racism of those in adjacent seats – and
the club has accepted this. If good people feel less inclined to go because racism is not
being tackled, then something must change.
What happened at Ewood Park last April does not provide grounds for
optimism. In response to the Blackburn supporters’ chants that Burnley was a
‘town full of Dingles’, the away end riposted with the disgraceful chant of
‘you’re just a town full of Pakis’. Let’s be clear about this. This is
a racist chant. ‘Paki’ is a derogatory and abusive term. To say that Blackburn
has a ‘town full of’ them is, as the racists would see it, to level an insult at
Blackburn.
The truly depressing thing was that this was no small or isolated chant.
This was sung loudly and repeatedly by a significant proportion of the crowd. I would say
that it was a majority around where I was sitting. This was an uncomfortable moment. In
the past, when confronted with examples of racism, we have always been able to hide behind
the notion that these people are a ‘tiny minority’ who do not represent Clarets
supporters. At Ewood, this was no tiny minority.
It worries me that many people could see no wrong with this chant, or
seemed to feel it was a fair response to the ‘Dingles’ chants. It’s
possible, of course, that many of the people who joined in would not consider themselves
to be racist, in the same way that people in Burnley claim to have voted for a fascist
party without themselves being fascist. Well, no excuses: the best way to prove
you’re not racist is not to join in with racist chanting. And no, this wasn’t a
bit of a laugh, it wasn’t fair enough, it wasn’t excusable in the circumstances,
it wasn’t just hitting back at the other side after they started it. It was a large
group of white people singing in disparaging terms about people with different coloured
skin. That was an ugly spectacle.
If I’ve dwelt on this, it’s because almost as distressing as the
thing itself was the club’s confused reaction to it. The day after the game, I was
astonished that the club’s official website carried a statement congratulating the
supporters on their good behaviour. They subsequently issued a clarification, in which
they explained that they were thanking people for refraining from violence. The fact that
the club, after a day marked by racist chanting, could praise the crowd’s good
behaviour betrayed a certain lack of sensitivity to the issues on the part of someone at
Burnley FC. The inference I took from this was that it was okay to be racist as long as
you weren’t violent. Glib, perhaps, but have not recent events showed the connection
between racist beliefs, racist behaviour and racist violence?
I was disappointed too by the fact that no one subsequently seemed to take
this particularly seriously. It didn’t seem to register as an issue at the following
meeting between club and supporters representatives. This apparent complacency looks
shortsighted in the light of what happened later.
This is not to say that, if Burnley had condemned racism, the riots would
never have happened. But, by speaking out when it had the chance, the club might have
planted a few seeds, might have made a few people think. To do so would have been to act
in accordance with its role as one of the cornerstones of the community. It’s too
late now; they missed their chance. But there could be a price to pay for silence in
future.
Looking forward?
Because I worry about how the season’s going to be with the burden of
the new reputation Burnley has. There are some potential flashpoint fixtures early in the
season. I’m sure I don’t need to name names, but amongst the clubs we are
playing, early on, are some with a reputation for racism or for violent support, and some
in towns with a large population of Asian origin, including others recently involved in
riots. These will constitute a good behaviour test.
I worry that fascist groups like the BNP, emboldened by their unusually
large showing in the election and the publicity they have garnered from the riots, will
adopt the old NF tactics of using football as a recruiting ground. Are we going to see
purveyors of racist literature selling their wares again at Turf Moor? After all, racists
now know they have strength in numbers. Racists now know they are not alone. The chanters
at Ewood, the BNP voters, the racist rioters: this is not a tiny group of people. They
could feel the time is ripe to become more vocal, more visible, more active.
Other supporters of other clubs won’t have overlooked these events.
Some games could resemble a BNP convention. And then what happens when we play in other
troubled towns, or anywhere with a large ‘Asian’ population? Will our yobs go
looking for trouble? Will the local yobs get their retaliation in first? And what chants
will opposition fans level at us? And how will we respond? Besides which, even without the
race element, Burnley could be thought of as a good place to come if you want a bit of a
ruck. Should we stand by for yob awaydays looking for some action?
I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, although I turn
them over, and I hope to be proved unduly pessimistic. I know I’m not the only one
who has gone through these thought processes. They prove, whether you like it or not, that
what happened impacts on football. Our game takes place within society, and that society
is now more volatile and troubled than it was. Burnley FC, as a key part of local society,
has to start taking these issues seriously. By firm and decisive action to eliminate
racism from Turf Moor, it can set the tone.
The challenge
Will they? Does it matter to them? Why the silence? How seriously does
Burnley FC take the community these days? I’m not sure. Once it looked promising. The
new regime swept aside the cobwebs of the detested old school and promised to talk to the
fans. Here, it would be churlish not to acknowledge the progress made. The regular
meetings between club and supporters representatives mentioned above are, I think, a
significant innovation, even if the results are sometimes disappointing. But recently, and
increasingly, it all seems to be about money. Sure, they’re happy to talk to us, but
it’s usually to exhort us to give ever greater chunks of cash to the cause of Burnley
FC. They may not have mentioned the racist riots on their website, but they’re
certainly no slouches in advertising their wares; the site is awash with ‘news
stories’ that are in fact adverts for club services and financial products. A
particularly disgraceful one recently was nothing more than a press release encouraging us
to sign up for the ITV Digital service. Is money the only thing that matters?
This is, I concede on reading back through it, a piece long on questions
but short on answers. Well, I don’t have many. I wrote this out of a sense of
uneasiness with the club’s silence, a concern that what happened shouldn’t be
ignored, and a fear of how it might affect us in the season to come.
In essence, I believe that the club must act to deal with racism at
matches, and to prevent those convicted of racist violence from association with Burnley
FC. In accordance with its role as a leader, a strong statement on racism and an
affirmation that it will not stand for racism at matches should be made.
As for other suggestions, I found some in the recent Clarets Independent
Supporters Association (CISA) newsletter, emerging from a discussion held at their recent
AGM. These include an anonymous reporting system for racist offences and stronger and more
public support, for example through its website, of the ‘Kick it Out’ campaign.
I agree with these. I would also like to see the club consult with police, political and
football authorities, and all sections of the local community, including supporters, to
develop a plan of action on tackling racism. I would hope, as well, that Burnley FC has
input into the taskforce that has been set up to investigate the riots.
I know, ultimately, that racism is society’s problem, and that
football can’t solve society’s problems. It can, however, have an influence,
particularly when an institution is as significant in a local context as Burnley FC. I
finish with the hope that Burnley FC will make its contribution towards bringing the town
back together – and look forward to a day when all sections of the town feel
comfortable in coming through the turnstiles at Turf Moor, thus helping to present a more
positive image of Burnley.
