Dear WSC
A couple of things about the Back, Crabbe and Solomos article on racism in WSC No 118 which I thought was good and said a few things which needed saying. Most of the academic stuff linking hooliganism and racism was actually about support for the national team in the 1980s and 90s. Multi-cultural hooligan groups have been around for a while as Back and co say, but isn’t it mysterious that only their white members turned up to watch England, especially away? They knew what the score was for these kind of events, and violent racism was indeed central to trouble involving England fans abroad for a long time. Secondly, implying that multi-racial hooligan groups are themselves non-racist raises difficult conceptual issues of course; but try telling the Asian community in Newham in the 1980s, for example, that they weren’t sometimes explicit targets of combined back and white hooliganism and racism at West Ham and you might get some puzzled looks. Thirdly, the article’s point about opposing banal racism is important, but it would help if people involved in the campaign sang from the same hymn sheet. What chance do we have of dealing with the old (white) men on the terrace who often equate racism with a critique of redheads, if Ian Wright at the AGARI launch himself describes racism as being like “picking on people with big ears” or “people who are bald”. Saying, well, Wright’s ‘just a footballer’ or ‘just a working class lad’ won’t due unless we’re willing to say the same about his white equivalents most of whom even now don’t take racism seriously enough for exactly these sorts of reasons. Had a prominent white player made the same comment who knows what kind of press he might have had.
John Williams, Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research, Leicester
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
The FA may have staged a conference looking at the under-representation of Asians in English football, but Matthew Brown thinks they still have plenty to learn about the subject
FA goal to entice Asian players on to the field ran the Guardian headline, unwittingly highlighting both the hope and the hype surrounding the FA’s ‘Asians in Football’ conference held in Oldham last month.
Mike Ticher explains why Terry Venables' appointment as Australia's new manager caused as much consternation there as it did here
Australia fulfils an odd role in Britain’s unofficial list of foreign stereotypes these days. Because the vast majority of its inhabitants are white, it’s become one of the last places on earth which the so-called quality press, as well as the tabloids, feel free to patronize without fear of being called racist. What’s more, there’s a vast lexicon of symbols associated with Australia and Australians which are instantly recognizable to British people: marsupials; soap operas; conspicuous alcohol consumption; comical words and phrases; boomerangs; the bush; most of the words to Waltzing Matilda.
Darron Kirkby profiles one of the Hammers' boardroom members
Distinguishing features: Looks like the Fat Controller on Thomas The Tank Engine.
It was an unhappy captaincy debut for Vinnie Jones as Wales are torn apart by a classy Holland. Chris Hall reports from Eindhoven
10:30: While their supporters shake off some well earned hangovers and prepare to catch up on sleep during the one and a half hour journey south from Amsterdam, the Welsh squad stroll purposefully into PSV Eindhoven’s Herdgang training complex. New captain Vinnie Jones is lost in his own thoughts, coming to terms with his surprise elevation from hod carrier to standard bearer. Had the group included some of its missing stars – Giggs, Hughes, Rush, and er, Horne – it’s unlikely they would have created much more than a ripple of mild curiosity apparent in the faces of the onlookers. One of PSV’s many youth teams were waiting to take the field, hoping to impress the ex-internationals who coach them, and the gallery of parents cooing encouragement from the safe confines of the cosy clubhouse. Bobby Gould looks tense and wary, perhaps still clinging to the belief that those absent talents would have made a difference to tonight’s daunting encounter.