I am a 30-something female, with a good job and a squeaky clean criminal record, yet every weekend, according to the Football Supporters Federation, my human rights are compromised. My freedom of movement and right to assemble is restricted and my image is captured, despite having never committing or being accused of any crime. This is all because I regularly attend football matches. Football matches are subject to policing and stewarding unheard of at any other public event of its kind, beyond the laws brought in to apply within football grounds as a result of the Taylor Report on Hillsborough. The Football Supporters Federation is increasingly concerned about the discrimination shown towards football supporters by the Police and the law.
Section 27 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 allows the police to move someone, over the age of 16, from a specified area for a period of up to 48 hours. No offence needs to have been committed for the act to be enforced (Football Supporters Federation 2008). The Home Office’s guidance to the Police on the implementation of this power states, “the power is to be used where the presence of that person in that locality is likely to cause or contribute to the occurrence of alcohol-related crime or disorder in that locality and the direction is considered necessary to prevent or reduce the likelihood of such alcohol-related crime or disorder. The aim of the new power is to minimise the likelihood of alcohol-related crime or disorder arising and/or taking place” (Home Office 2007). The Home Office advice goes on to say that the power should be used “proportionately and reasonably”, however, the Football Supporters Federation has increasing accounts of this not being the case for football fans. For example, in 2008 80 Stoke City fans were rounded up in a pub in Manchester prior to a game at Old Trafford, were detained for up to four hours and forcibly transported by the police back to Stoke-on-Trent on coaches, missing the game. The fans had been well-behaved and the pub landlord made no complaints about their behaviour. Greater Manchester Police later conceded that there was no evidence to enforce Section 27 on the Stoke City Supporters and that its use in this case was unlawful and compensation was awarded to some of the fans (Football Supporters Federation 2009)
Unfortunately the examples of football fans being policed on prejudice and reputation rather than evidence are not limited to the unlawful use of Section 27. Regular attendees at football matches would, at some point, have had their freedom of movement restricted. A personal example from attending a Norwich v Ipswich game involved being rounded up by Norfolk police from the platform at Norwich Station and escorted to Carrow Road. There was no option and requests or attempts to leave the escort to make your own way to the ground or in to the City Centre were met with the reply that not conforming would result in being put on a train back to Ipswich, an occurrence that is increasingly known in football as a ‘Bubble Trip’. My freedom of movement would not be restricted this way in any other circumstances without legal evidence, yet this kind of policing occurs somewhere in the Country every weekend.
At a recent Football Supporters Federation event a representative from the Metropolitan Police said that football supporters were policed on behaviour not on reputation and that disorder at football has reduced. However, the overwhelming opinion of other panellists and the audience was that football fans experienced regular discrimination, were treated as ‘second class citizens’ and a ‘riot waiting to happen’. The panellist from the Crown Prosecution Service implied that some of the treatment of football fans such as being filmed and stopped and searched was not a problem if you were not doing anything wrong. But football has changed, why should we all be subject to this kind of authoritarianism? The demographic of the fan base has changed significantly since the ‘darker days’ of football, often cited to justify this kind of policing. Why should someone be discriminated against and their freedoms eroded on the ground of what sport they choose to watch? If you are not persuaded by the human rights argument, what about the cost to the taxpayer of this heavy and unnecessary use of our police service?
One solution is political lobbying for laws to be changed and the removal of laws that apply just to football and increased awareness of unlawful practices by some the Country’s police forces towards football fans. Much work is being done by organisations such as the Football Supporters Federation and with millions of people attending football matches every week in the UK the political strength would be enormous, however, football support is rivalrous in nature and without more unity between factions of supporters this political power risks not being realised.
