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Football Fans Have Rights Too ! Say The Football Supporters Federation !
Tuesday, 17th Jan 2017 13:23

Ever been made to feel unwelcome or shunned just because you are a football fan ? Amanda Jacks of the Football Supporters Federation looks as why following a football club means you are treated differently.

Last weekend, the Superintendent of Nottinghamshire Police said that Mansfield Town fans heading to their match against Notts County were not welcome in the city centre. Our caseworker Amanda Jacks tells us why its time to end such discriminatory thinking towards football fans...

Discrimination in this country is illegal and rightly so.

There are laws to ensure that everybody, regardless of their religion, sexuality, gender, colour, physical abilities and nationality are treated equally. Again, rightly so.

When it comes to football supporters however, no such laws apply and I’m certainly not about to argue that the support of your club should become a protected characteristic. That would be crass in the extreme.

Let’s imagine for a moment it was illegal to discriminate against football supporters. If it was we wouldn’t see signs outside pubs saying “away fans not welcome” or we wouldn’t see messages from a police force saying “fans won’t be welcome in the city centre”.

Maybe we wouldn’t see coach operating companies having to follow guidelines telling them to let the police know if supporters are booking their coaches. Perhaps we wouldn’t see fans having having to buy a ticket to travel by bus to and from a game otherwise they won’t get a match ticket.

The fact that some of the examples above are comparatively rare doesn’t excuse them. Football fans are fully paid up members of society. They come in all shapes and sizes and from just about every background. Football fans are artists or zoologists and every profession in between. They are me, you, your mum, your dad, your friend, neighbour or colleague.

The idea that a publican wouldn’t serve the doctor that ran onto the pitch at White Hart Lane and helped saved Fabrice Muamba's life is unthinkable.But he might not if he was wearing his Spurs shirt and wanted a pre match pint away from home.

Members of our armed forces are revered and held up as heroes by many, but swap a uniform for a Millwall shirt and the welcome he receives at away game is likely to be a police officer filming his every move before ‘encouraging’ him to a pub from which he’ll be escorted to the ground 15 minutes before kick off.

This all may sound very emotive, but it’s exactly what may happen.

Underneath the shirt or the scarf is an ordinary person going about their lawful business, exercising their lawful right of freedom of movement and association.

Yet the restrictions that can be placed on supporters and the treatment they may be subjected to, especially away from home when there is a tendency to treat supporters not as paying customers, but a potential public order problem, effectively renders them persona non grata.

Fans are used to what some may say are petty inconveniences of this sort.

There is another, more troubling perspective to all of this. That it’s still too easy to pander to stereotypes that fans are, to a man, knuckle dragging thugs and that often the preferred media narrative (with notable exceptions) panders to this can mean a worrying lack of scrutiny when things go wrong or of football policing and legislation generally.

It means that people who admirably campaign for the rights of others, or who take an interest in civil liberties, are amazed when I inform them of legislation effecting only football supporters. It means headlines stating that banning orders prevent “violent thugs” from travelling overseas when two minutes research would inform them that not all on banning orders are violent thugs — far from it, in fact.

It's about time that people start to see behind the headlines to ensure that football fans are treated as equals.

Watching Football Is Not A Crime! is part of the FSF's ongoing drive to monitor the police in their dealings with football fans and work with them to ensure that all fans are treated fairly and within the law. You can contact FSF Caseworker Amanda Jacks via:

Twitter: @fsf_faircop
Email: faircop@fsf.org.uk
- See more at: http://www.fsf.org.uk/blog/view/football-fans-have-rights-too#sthash.SWFxy3dG.dp

Photo: Action Images



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