Hundreds of English fans have been departed from Belgium after scenes of mass violence in Belgian cities and football authorities have threatened to expel the English team from the competition if there is another outbreak of the English Disease This was an article dated 20 June 2000 written by an English journalist. It is obvious from this article that world is facing a great problem nowadays. Actually it would be wrong to use the term nowadays because the English Disease namely hooliganism have been a problem for many centuries.
There are many things to say on hooliganism but first it would be better to start with its definition. Hooliganism doesnt have a standard definition. But it can be defined as destruction of properties or injury to persons, sometimes involving theft, whether by a gang or a small group of young people. Hooliganism is characterised as a lack of self-control, love of malicious mischief and idleness passing into dishonest and crime. Hooligans are usually made up of boys and young men, aged between 15 and 25 and their main targets are other groups, who only differ from them in their being composed of fans of another football team.
And another interesting fact about hooligans is that they consider themselves to be true fans: they support the team for better or worse, they create the highly praised atmosphere inside stadiums. Their main interest does not seem much to see brilliant football but to see their team win. As I mentioned in the beginning football hooliganism is known as the English Disease but it has been a problem throughout Europe especially in Germany, Holland, Italy and Belgium as well as in the UK. Also Greece, Czech Republic, Denmark, Austria and Turkey witnessed these disturbances in football matches.
There are a lot of work done all around the world to avoid the harm hooligans give to the environment and themselves. European Parliament and the National Parliaments of the European Union made effort to avoid the violence throughout Europe. European Council issued a report on hooliganism September 1999 and tried to take further steps on this problem. After all the work done by various sociologists and initiatives of the European Institutions still it is difficult to observe decline in violence in European Stadiums.
To make it clear that World is suffering enough from hooliganism for many years I will give some events that took place in various stadiums of the world. They are all violent and they are all dreadful. Then I will have a look at the background of the hooliganism. Then we will be able to study this subject within sociological perspective. Past Violence Acts at Soccer Stadiums 1982 Moscow – 340 people are reported to be killed at a European Cup match between Soviet club Spartak Moscow and Haarlem of the Netherlands. 85 Belgium – 39 people are killed at the European Champions Cup Final at Heysel Stadium when riots break out and a wall separating rival fans of England’s Liverpool and Italy’s Juventus of Turin collapses. 1989 England – 95 people are crushed to death at an English FA Cup semifinal game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, when police open gates to alleviate crowding outside Hillsborough Stadium. The resulting rush of people onto the already filled terrace sections traps fans against riot control fences ringing the field. 1996 England – It led to some 200 arrests and 30 injuries after England’s Euro 96 semifinal loss to Germany. 96
Zambia – At least nine soccer fans are crushed to death and 52 others injured in a stampede following Zambia’s victory over Sudan in a World Cup qualifying game. 1999 Belgrade – A 17-year-old fan was killed by a flare fired by rival supporters in a violent Belgrade soccer derby. Background of hooliganism Football has been associated with violence ever since its early beginnings in 13th Century in England. On those days the game involved some battle between young people of neighbour villages and towns. So those were the days when the roots of the modern football were being established in Ancient England.
And at the same time it was going hand in hand with the violence. Tolerance of football violence was not, however universal and as early as the 14th Century there were calls for controls on the game. But these measures taken were not because of the troubles in matches. It was driving ordinary citizens away from the market towns on match days and it was bad for the business. Nicholas Farndon, the Mayor of London issued a proclamation in 1314. It was forbidding the games within frontiers of London. But the effect of this preventive measure was limited despite numerous arrests, the games continued.
Further attempts to control the games were made by 1660 in England and Scotland but they were ineffective bans on the game. Throughout the 17th Century there were hundreds of football fans destroying work places and causing trouble in the towns. By the 18th Century the game took a more political significance. The transformation of the game from an unregulated battle on an ill-defined field of play was as a result of urbanisation and industrialisation. The modern, professional version of soccer was created during 1840s. In the early days of professional soccer violent rivalries were common and spectator violence were regular during the 1880s.
Football in the early 1900s remained a working class pastime with the new grounds built close to the heart of working class communities. The workingman merged his heart and soul with the effort and staked his reputation on the outcome of the game. During the period after World War I and through World War II there was a decline of crowd violence and misbehaviour. Between the period of 1914-1940 there was individual violence but hooliganism in the collective and contemporary sense did not take place at football matches. During this period number of women attending football matches increased significantly.
After the interwar period we observe the rise of the New Hooligans. The postwar years were boom years for the English game and this was reflected in record ticket sales and attendances at the professional soccer games. However the glow of victory in the Second World War and the small economic growth created rising public concern about the problem of working class youth, rock and roll and especially the Teddy Boys. The incidences of football violence doubled in the first five years of the 1960s compared to the previous 25 years. Teddy Boys was the name given to a youth sub-culture of the late 1950s.
They had a particular style of dress, hairstyles, and dancing. There was reputation of violence and bad behaviour among them. They were also blamed for the rise in crowd disturbances at soccer games. Teddy Boys were in a number of quarrels with opposing fans at the soccer matches. Teddy Boys was a very crucial moment for the development of the soccer hooliganism. However in this early stage, hooliganism has not yet become a household item in Britain. The next important stage for hooliganism occurred with the emergence of the skinhead craze during the late 1960s.
Skinheads cropped up all over working class council estates, in public housing and throughout the towns and cities of Britain. They displayed loyalty and pride in their community. Heavy drinking and fighting were ways of life for these young men from the rough working class. These soccer gangs went to soccer matches to support their local teams and soccer matches were the best places for the skinheads to display their aggressive ways of life such as heavy drinking and fighting. The mid 70s saw the emergence of the fighting crews who have become known as the early predecessors to the early hooligans of the 1980s and 1990s.
The most notorious of these fighting crews were the ones supporting London team Millwall Football Club. They had a reputation of being hard and crazy fans. They were organised according to their fighting abilities and ages. The Millwall Fans disbanded during the late 1970s when the key members were jailed and government took more preventive measures at the stadiums. However the organisation of the activities of the Millwall fans started to be associated with the super hooligans of the teams such as Liverpool, Chelsea and Leeds.
During 70s skinhead gangs slowly disappeared from the terraces but the hooligans remained. And it was possible to observe hooligan behaviour in other European countries so continental youth was influenced by the British hooligans. With cooperation of the police, Football Associations and the owners of the soccer clubs there was an attempt to stop the invasions of hooligans. Building of the barricades in various stadiums was an important step for the prevention of the invasions. But this resulted in a tragedy because 95 Liverpool supporters were pushed and squeezed between the barricades.
And this event resulted with the removal of these barriers. By the mid-1970s British authorities began to take soccer hooliganism more seriously and they started to use more serious penalties. During those years there was a slight drop in hooliganist movement but time showed that measures were not efficient enough. By the time the invention of the circuit TV made identification of the hooligans easier and hooligans began to do their activities at the pubs and at the side streets of Britain. In short the real expansion of hooliganism was felt in the 1970s.
In the world there was an image of beer-drinking crazy British football hooligans and hooligans were willing to keep this image. Another important fact was the growth of the English Nationalism with the English Hooliganism. Hooligans were seeing themselves as the hardest national bloc in Europe. The serious problem of football violence in Europe mainly in England made social scientists to study this issue in detailed some sociologists considering its long history mentioned hooliganism as a sub-culture in their writings. Now I will try to detail the theoretical perspectives of different social scientists on hooliganism.
Theoretical Views on Hooliganism Since the 1960s many researches were done on hooliganism. Social Scientists, journalists and academicians made many researches on this issue especially in England the work on hooliganism was held in a very detailed research. Various schools were formed on the sociological perspective of hooliganism. They tried to explain the causes and patterns of the football violence in detail. They started their historical researches from the beginning in the late 1960s when hooliganism became a major concern in Britain.
They usually saw hooliganism as a continuation of groups such as Teddy Boys, Rockers and Skinheads. John Clarke and Stuart Hall were the sociologists who argued specific sub-cultural styles enabled young working class people and males to resolve essential conflicts in their lives. Post war sub-cultures such as Teddy Boys and Skinheads have been examples of these kinds of people. According to John Clarke Skinheads as an earliest exponent of hooliganism reflected working class traditions. There was a magical recovery of community through different patterns of behaviour and these behaviours included violence.
While generations of working class youth had inherited the traditional ties to football and the pattern of supportership characteristics of the previous generation; they failed to inherit sociol controls which went with the supportership behaviour. Violence became known as demonstrating loyalty and supporting their local teams. And also the reason for this behaviour was considered as the wider shift in the class structure of British Society. Other then the sociological studies made on hooliganism there were studies on observed behaviour of hooligans and accounts provided by fans themselves.
They just didnt treat hooligans as subjects to understand their behaviour. The methos was simply asking them. So by this way they tried to have an insider view on hooliganism. And they realised that there were social rules among hooligans. Being a football hooligan enabled young males to achieve a sense of personal young males to achieve a sense of personal worth and identity at school or work. Violence was a part of route to success and it was an alternative way of having a career. One of the influential studies done on hooliganism is the one that is about the lower working class and their alienation.
Lower working class communities are characterised by a positive feedback cycle, which encourage aggression in many areas of social life. The capacity to consume alcohol in large quantities and fighting was a highly valued attribute among males of the lower working class. And they denied the educational and occupational status as a major source of identity. So this kind of a view on hooliganism was mainly based on a social class and the values of this class. Lower working class members especially the ones emerging after the reindustrialisation period of the 1970s caused hooliganism to expand according to this view.
It is a big problem for sociologists name and interpret the behaviours of the hooligans. For one investigator a specific incident involving rival fans might be classed as a serious violence, a second observer might describe the same event as a harmless display or a journalist might use the term mindless thuggery. So there is no objective way of describing these behaviours. So because of this lack of objectiveness sociologists had different views on hooliganism. Some of them treated hooligans as the members of hell and some insisted on their sociological and historical background and blamed the society for their patterns of behaviour.
And another author claimed that it was media and the police who were responsible for the behaviours of the hooligans. So it is clear that there is no Europe-wide explanatory framework developed for the hooliganism. Also the sociological and the psychological factors which lie at the root of football violence differed in each European country. But there is a reality that football stadium is a convenient arena for all kinds of collective behaviour. Whether the background of the hooligans is different or not, young men who use the stadiums in different countries are all playing the same game.
In the countries like Italy, Germany and Holland there were domestic kind of explanations according to the theoreticians of those countries. And they just didnt rest their theories on British models. Of course there are some specific factors common to fan groups throughout Europe but these factors are rarely applicable to all of the European Countries. Up to this point we observed that English fans are the leaders of the hooliganist behaviour and there is imitative behaviour of European fans. Now I will try to discuss the extreme anti-social behaviour in other countries.