The FA and League has only themselves (and the police, and Tottenham) to blame for the racism mess « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Tony Attwood

According to reports Tom Adeyemi who plays for Oldham, on loan from Norwich City, was racially abused by one or more Liverpool fans at the Anfield ground last night.  He gave a statement to Merseyside Police in which it is understood he claimed to have been racially abused twice by a supporter.

The Guardian today states that, “Witnesses reported seeing two fans wearing Luis Suárez T-shirts – similar to those worn by Liverpool players at Wigan last month, after the Uruguayan was found guilty of racially abusing Patrice Evra – confronting Adeyemi. A witness who gave evidence to Liverpool officials and the police said: “I was to the right of the Kop and the No11 turned to walk away after a tackle. I heard a single voice shout, ‘You fucking black bastard.’ He spun round with shock on his face and started pointing at the crowd, from where the shout had come”.”

No one was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated behaviour, even though the club will know exactly who was in which seat for the all-ticket match.

Liverpool continue to appear to be a club that is institutionally racist in itself.  It’s support of before and after his eight-match ban for racially abusing Evra, their refusal to apologise profusely to Evra, and Luis Suárez’ failure to apologise properly (a generalised apology to everyone for “any offence caused” is certainly not an apology in the context of racism), and their bleating requests for help from Manchester United ahead of the next Man U/Liverpool game all point to a club that does not understand the nature of racism.

But, as always, there is history.

If you have been reading Untold since the early days you might recall that I got rather exercised when in 2008 Hampshire police announced the investigating of racial and homophobic abuse directed by Tottenham fans towards Sol Campbell at a Portsmouth v Tottenham game.

The police said they would report the matter to the Football Association because it was not possible to make arrests due to the sheer numbers chanting.

The chant was perhaps the most appalling ever heard at a game.  It has appeared in the press, but as before I won’t reprint it.

Five arrests were made later following photo identification of a handful of fans, but Tottenham fans have continued with the song and the chants without any action being taken against them at all.  The footage of the game is still available, and most of those in the enclosure would have bought their tickets through Tottenham H itself, and therefore the matter of matching the individuals shown singing on film against those on the files of the club is not difficult.

There was no excuse for not arresting these people, banning them for life from Tottenham games, and charging them under a variety of offences relating to homophobic behaviour.  There is no excuse for the FA and the League not dealing with Liverpool either in the way they have handled the Evra affair, or for last night.

The police assertion at Portsmouth that they could take no action because everyone was doing it, also needed to be investigated but never was either by the club or the EPL or the FA. It was instead the green light to racism and football has been on the back foot ever since as racism and homophobia creep back into football year on year.

A ban on away support for Tottenham matches could have helped.  It would have hurt the decent minority of their travelling fans – and that is regrettable, but the majority who seem to enjoy this sort of thing, would also be hurt, and that would be helpful, in my view.

I was at Arsenal in the 50s as a youngster, and through my teens in the 60s, and as a young man in the 70s, and I heard a lot of awful chanting and abuse.  At time racism and homophobia was commonplace – but the club dealt with it.  First all the racism went, and then having dealt with that Arsenal started to work on anti-Semitism.

I know there is still anti-Semitism at the ground when Tottenham play, just as I know that there are people who are anti-Semitic when Arsenal play away.  But the club has (and this is just my opinion as one who has been going to the ground through most of my life) worked to remove it.  Just as Tottenham fans don’t raise the Star of David when playing at Arsenal any more (as they once did), so the number chanting “Yiddo” at the end of the “Hate Tottenham” chant declines year by year (although I admit that is a more difficult one because of the hard core Tottenham fans adopting the word Yid as part of their self-description.  I don’t condone “Yiddo” chants, I just acknowledge that it is harder to get rid of).

But the fact is that Arsenal has fought and fought to eradicate racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitic statements from the ground, in the way that many other clubs (including I believe, Liverpool) have not.   Some have joined in the effort rather later – and the press is now full of praise for Man U and the way that after more than 10 years of accepting it, they have made some effort to stop the abuse of our manager at each game.  Man U’s record is awful, but at least at long last they are travelling in the right direction.

But Liverpool are not.  The fact is that Liverpool are getting deeper and deeper into a hole of their own making.  They could have taken action years ago to deal with racism, just as Tottenham and the police could have taken action to deal with homophobic chanting, but they have chosen to step back and say it can’t be done.  They could have waited for the outcome of the recent racism case, accepted the verdict and apologised with all their might.  To accept the verdict “for the good of football” rather than because racism is disgusting, shows just how deep they have sunk.

Liverpool seems to have utterly no idea what to do.   That’s why we have the current mess.