History of Hooliganism in Football Originated in Britain - Literature review Example

The word "hooligan" which the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines as a "tough and aggressive or violent youth"entered the British lexicon only in the 19th century, but its presence has been felt ever since, especially in the realm of soccer. One of the anthems of football hooligans "There's a George in my heart, keep me English,/There's a George in my heart, I pray, /There's a George in my heart, keep me English, /Keep me English till my dying day. /No surrender, no surrender, no surrender to the IRA" has become the known precedent of brewing trouble in audiences wherever British fans are present, "Those who have followed England over the years have come to identify the singing of this song as the precursor to trouble and invariably, ...... it is a sure-fire sign that the hooligan element is present and that their senseless fury is about to be unleashed"( Chaudhary, 2002). Though hooliganism in football originated in Britain, it is today by no means isolated to the UK, and is in fact a major source of concern and much sociological and psychological research across Europe and other nations. It is today an accepted fact that hooliganism has had its presence in various countries across the last century, a fact which has been systematically established with concrete evidence: By now, most students of sports violence recognise the spurious nature of the claim that soccer hooliganism is a "British disease".....In content analyses of media Williams et al. (1984) unearthed over 70 reports of spectator disorder at soccer matches in 30 different countries in which English fans were not involved between 1904 and 1983.(Coakley, Dunning, 2000) The exact date of origin of this phenomenon in soccer cannot be easily ascertained . It came to the notice of the public and government authorities in the sixties, but in fact the first recorded instances of football hooliganism hark back to a much earlier date. " During a match in 1846 in Derby the riot act was read and two troops of dragoons called in to deal with a disorderly crowd, whilst pitch invasions became increasingly common from the 1880's onwards"( Pearson, 2001). Indeed, violence has always been associated with a majority of sporting activity, and more specifically with soccer, which is "in both the pejorative and non-pejorative sense, an intrinsically aggressive event which sanctions some violence in attempts to win, and retain, possession of the ball". (Bonny, Giulianotti, Hepworth, 1994) But it was during the Swinging Sixties that football became more of a fashion than a sport, a part of youth culture, and developed a relationship with fashion, style, image and even music. This was in part because football clubs became more organised, the limits to a footballer's weekly earnings were abolished, and last, but not the least, the hosting of the 1966 World Cup finals in UK, which got widespread media coverage. Also important was the establishment of fan followings for different football clubs, and the concepts of "ends" in the stadia, which the supporters of the home and away group respectively marked as their territory, and the defence of which became paramount, attaining almost a cult status. "The most important feature of contemporary hooliganism is the taking and holding of 'ends'. Away supporters, especially those from clubs with 'hooligan' reputations, try to drive home supporters from their traditional end"( Holt, 1992). In this decade, male youth gradually became a community on its own, distinct from the patriarchal concepts of family and society, and football became a mode of independent expression. There are manifest continuities between the rites of violence in contemporary Britain and earlier periods. But the specific forms of hooliganism are new; football crowds were not segregated by age before the 1960s; youth did not congregate around parts of football clubs as their territory--they had a larger territory and community which they shared with their older male relatives. ( Holt,1992) Hooliganism became a growing trend in British soccer, earning notoriety for outrageous behaviour, and rampant violence and hit a calamitous proportions in the eighties, with the Heysel disaster that led to the banning of the British club teams from various European cup competitions. In 1985, Liverpool played Juventus in the European Cup Final in the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. Before the match, Liverpool fans attacked Italian fans, who fled in panic. As the Italians tried to escape, they became trapped against a wall inside the ground, and this wall collapsed - leading to 39 Juventus fans dying. ( Giulianotti, 1997) One of the earliest attempts in the sixties to discern the reasons behind hooligan behavior in soccer was made by John Harrington, at the behest of the then Minister of Sport, Denis Howell, who tried to explain hooliganism in terms of 'immaturity' and 'loss of control', without taking the sociological dynamics into account.(Harrington, 1968). Another attempt by the authorities to understand hooliganism was made in 1969, under the chairmanship of Sir John Lang, which came to be known as the Lang Report. It consisted solely of football officials, police and government members, with no representation whatsoever from the academia, and came out with a one-sided report with more emphasis on how to treat the symptoms of the violence, rather than the detection of its cause. These reports were followed by academic research in the field, which pointed to sociological causes. The earliest and the most debated theories on football hooliganism came from Ian Taylor, who took the Marxist standpoint. He believed the alienation of football from its working-class roots, and the perceived usurpation of the sport by the newly rising middle-class and the upper-class was the main cause for soccer hooliganism. According to him, hooligans created disorder in order to regain lost territory, and reaffirm the working-class nature of the game, which soccer seemed to have lost because of the clubs becoming more commercialised and removed from the earlier grass-root ethos. ......working-class fans, according to Taylor, believe that they were able in the past to exert a degree of control over the policies of their clubs. However, they were not consulted over the changes associated with 'bourgeoisification', and experience the increasing orientation of the game to a middle-class audience as a usurpation. They also resent the fact that players seem to have severed their links with the working class. Football hooliganism has arisen in this situation, he suggests, as an attempt by young working-class fans, in the face of changes that have been externally imposed, to assert a form of control that they believe members of their class were able formerly to exert. In short, according to Taylor, football hooliganism is best understood as a working class 'resistance movement'. (Dunning, Murphy, Wiliams, 1990) There was also a segment of the academia which reasoned that in many ways the hegemonic divide caused by the press in reporting on the hooligans was also partly responsible in shaping the mindset of violent soccer enthusiasts. The hooligans were portrayed in the tabloids as animals, and deserving of harsh punishments. Another idea might be to put these people in hooligan compounds' every Saturday afternoon ... They should be herded together preferably in a public place. That way they could be held up to ridicule and exposed for what they are - mindless morons with no respect for other people's property or wellbeing. We should make sure we treat them like animals - for their behaviour proves that's what they are". (Daily Mirror, 1977) This discrimination against the hooligans, without any idea of or concern for the root cause of the phenomenon, was almost universal. It was fully backed by the authorities, who believed more in short-term inhibitory measures than placing an emphasis on long-term socio-cultural issues, like class resentments. The police response to hooliganism was predictably harsh and repressive, at the cost of the elite class, who would be kept safe from attack in cordoned-off areas. Rather than fully grapple with the vexed question about what cultural meaning football hooliganism has within British society, the British government has suggested the gradual upgrading of football venues so that they become all-seating stadiums to be patronised only by good citizens who can qualify for a special football supporter's ID card. Those citizens would be protected by beefed-up policing: the police would have unlimited rights of search and widened powers of arrest, new criminal offences would be put on the books for sports grounds, and alcohol sales severely restricted. (Smith, 1991) This hegemonic attitude worsened the situation between hooligans and the rest of the society, effectively ostracising the unruly youth, and planting in them seeds of further rancour as well as the need to live up to their ill-repute, which further encouraged violent hooliganism. Apart from this hegemonic isolation of the hooligans, the media's coverage of hooliganism, with a tendency to sensationalise the violent activities and their perpetrators especially in the British tabloids, has also led to a "spiral effect" or "Deviance Amplification" theory of hooligan activities. In the absence of any other reliable source of information, the press became the sole guide for public opinion, and also influenced relevant legislation. Some academics like Stuart Hall believe that hooliganism is worsened due to an exaggerated and often baseless portrayal of hooliganism in the press. "If the official culture or society at large comes to believe that a phenomenon is threatening, and growing, it can be led to panic about it. This often precipitates the call for tough measures of control. This increased control creates a situation of confrontation, where more people than were originally involved in the deviant behaviour are drawn into it ... Next week's confrontation' will then be bigger, more staged, so will the coverage, so will the public outcry, the pressure for yet more control..."(Hall, 1978) Not only does the media end up supplementing hooliganism, it also facilitates a cultural climate, where football's appeal as a fashion statement for the youth become strong, especially in the era of the Mods, teddy Boys and the Skinheads. The style and manner of the tough ruffian in sporty clothes, doc martens and body piercing became the image of cool in the sixties, and emerged as a strong youth subculture that embraced football hooliganism. ...football hooliganism is the consequence of a deep-rooted complex or configuration of socio-cultural traits, more specifically of a long-established subculture of aggressive masculinity that is predominantly but by no means solely lower class. It is a subculture that celebrates very narrow, rigid and exclusive notions of locality, community and nation, notions that involve an ambivalent mixture of contempt for and fear of anything or anybody that is 'different', 'foreign', 'strange'. (Dunning, Murphy, Williams, 1990) The Skinheads were basically anti-fashion, which became a style in itself, their tough-guy, working-class image and almost fascist patriotic zeal adding to their coolness quotient in the eyes of a youth in need of an ideal. They usually indulged in alcohol and drug abuse, and took pride in an emphatic and almost atavistic masculine attitude, as well as bringing down rival football fans during matches and outside. Their organised, ritualised nature of football hooliganism, its rhythmic, abusive chantings and its association with other themes like Acid culture gave its fierce territorial rivalry the distinct branding of a subculture. This subculture was all about being tough, talking tough, and even dressing tough. Fans dress carefully in order to identify themselves within their group. The styles change with bewildering rapidity but the way of tying a scarf or the kind of boots and socks worn carry a message about the 'hardness' of the wearer. 'Hardness' is what much of hooligan behaviour is about. ( Holt, 1992) The hooligan preference for rock'n roll in the sixties gradually gave way in the eighties for a combination of Acid House music and neo-psychedelia , and Paul Smith( 1991) finds "something uncanny about a cross-fertilization of acid culture and football, particularly given the relation to violence that they might respectively be assumed to hold", at music festivals which "demonstrated the full integration of a footballing motif into the styles, performances and musics of the subculture"(Smith, 19991) as seen "amongst the multifarious track suits and football shirts adorned with club logos the distinctive yellow and green strip of the Brazilian national team seemed particularly prominent. These, appended to ubiquitous wide flared jeans, epitomised the juxtaposition of acid culture with the sports ethos"(Smith 1991). The fashions sported at such festivals are ample evidence of the intermingling of music and football, and possibly of the feeding off and complementing of each other in the process. The two subcultures of music and football came together in fashion, giving birth to a youth culture at its most spectacular and possibly most violent, since Acid culture and violence go together. This theory of sub-cultures was strong in the eighties and the nineties, and soccer hooliganism was thought to be a lifestyle symbolic of an expression against the establishment. John Clarke and Stuart Hall in particular, argued that specific sub-cultural styles enabled young working class people, and males in particular, to resolve essential conflicts in their lives - specifically those of subordination to adults and the subordination implicit in being a member of the working class itself. Post-war sub-cultures, such as those of the Teddy Boys, Mods and Rockers, Skinheads and, in more recent years, Glamrock, Punk, House etc., have all been examples of these symbolic attempts to resolve structural and material problems.( Theoretical and research perspectives, 1997) The world of soccer hooliganism is almost exclusively the domain of men, with only 10 to 15% of the audience consisting of women. Despite the inroads made by women into the "masculine" domain of soccer, football remains largely played by men, watched by men, and written or talked about by men. This lack of feminine and "civilising" influences may be another cause behind soccer hooligan behaviour. Soccer in image-dominated popular culture, particularly the massively expanding soccer-related media, is 'somewhere masculine for men to escape to and the sight of men doing manly things together-all from the comfort of their armchair'.... Fan surveys constantly emphasise the dominance of white males as fans despite increasing evidence of women attending matches. Women writers and researchers into soccer culture are still a tiny minority and frequently marginalised. (Redhead, 1997) With increasing regulations, police vigilance, rising cost of tickets, and the efforts on the part of football authorities to attract a more affluent audiences, hooliganism is on the wane. The emergence of the "New Lad"phenomenon which came with the commercialisation of football, has further influenced soccer hooliganism in the nineties. This and the rising awareness against fascist and neo-nazi ethos amongst the youth, has led to more of a "carnivalesque" rather than hooligan atmosphere in soccer matches. The rise of the New Lad-or 'Millennium Man' -as a figment of the advertising, marketing and popular culture industry's overactive imagination is a significant factor in the 1990s.....'New Laddism'-whether new or not-is certainly connected both to the changing, wider context of soccer hooliganism as well as various diverse fans' resistance movements. (Redhead, 1997) More and more football events are now peaceful, for example the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea, and the 2004 European Championship in Portugal. But academics are right when they point out that "Across the centuries, we have seen the same rituals of territorial dominance, trials of strength, gang fights, mockery against elders and authorities, and antagonism towards 'outsiders' as typical focuses for youthful energy and aggressive mischief".(Pearson, 1983). Soccer hooliganism is a phenomenon that is unlikely to go away anytime soon. In this year at the World Cup to be held in Germany, another of hooligan havens of Europe, authorities are not taking any chances. "Football disorder remains a lingering menace and that is why we want to minimise the risks and provide better communication about travelling English fans," Home Office Minister Paul Goggins said. Goggins said the British government, police and supporters groups were working hard with German authorities to make the World Cup, which begins in June, a trouble-free tournament.(Germany discusses football hooliganism with UK ahead of World Cup, 2006) References Bonny, N. Giulianotti, R. Dr. Hepworth, M. (1994).Football, Violence and Social Identity. Routledge. New York.91 Chaudhary, V. (2002)On the Road with the Amiable Army. The Guardian. June 18. Retrieved on March 03, 2006 from Coakley, J.Dunning,E.(2000) Handbook of Sports Studies. Sage Publications Ltd. London.389 Daily Mirror, 4 April 1977 Dunning, E. Murphy, P. Williams, J. (1990)Football on Trial: Spectator Violence and Development in the Football World. Routledge. London.13, 38 Germany discusses football hooliganism with UK ahead of World Cup. Islamic Republic News Agency. January 27, 2006. Retrieved on March 05, 2006 from Giulianotti. Dr R. (1997).Football Media in the UK: A Cultural Studies Perspective. Retrieved on March 03, 2006 from Hall, S. (1978). The Treatment of Football Hooliganism in the Press. R. Ingham (ed).Football Hooliganism: The Wider Context . London: Interaction Harrington, J. (1968). Soccer hooliganism. Bristol: John Wright. Holt, R. Sport and the British: A Modern History. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 992. 330, 343. Pearson,G.( 1983). Hooligan. Macmilan.London.202 Pearson, Dr G. (2001). Fig Fact-sheet Four: Hooliganism. Football Industry Group. University of Liverpool. Retrieved on March 03, 2006 from Redhead, S.(1997) .Post-Fandom and the Millennial Blues:The Transformation of Soccer Culture. Routledge. London. 01. Smith, P.(1991).Playing for England.Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. Retrieved on March 03, 2006 from Theoretical and research perspectives..(1997) Social Issues Research Centre. Retrieved on March 03, 2006 from Read More