Introduction

The Football League was founded on 17 April 1888, and fans have been attending professional football in England and Wales in their thousands ever since. Football is a game that ignites passion and loyalty that borders on tribalism, and language and behaviour on the terraces has always walked the line between robust and raucous on the one hand and criminal on the other. Nowhere is this more problematic than in the area of chanting and shouting by fans towards other fans, officials and players.

What is now referred to as ‘hate crime’ is not a new issue in the 21st century. Grayson (1999) cites the example of a Swansea fan being jailed for calling a visiting player a ‘black n****r’. It is no coincidence that some of the key officials in the Professional Footballers Association are Black former players who were subjected to vile abuse during their careers in the late 20th century. Beloff observes that football is the only professional sport where engaging in chanting of a racialist nature has been made a specific criminal offence and the only sport to have a ‘special crime’ to eliminate racism. His comment that ‘[a] buse from the terraces still deforms the national game even at a time when half the national team is black’ (Beloff, 2004: 63) is both accurate and still relevant, and a sad indictment on a minority of those attending football matches. In the words of Simon Barnes: ‘You can go to a football match and accuse Arsene Wenger of being a paedophile. You can call Sol Campbell a homosexual, you can sing about your delight in the Munich air crash or the Hillsborough disaster, and that’s all tickety-boo’ (quoted in Beloff, 2012: 1). Unfortunately, some football fans believe it to be their right to be racist, homophobic, sexist, antisemitic or Islamophobic even if some would acknowledge that such behaviour outside a football stadium would carry the risk of criminal prosecution. The development of social media has led to ‘keyboard warriors’ sending hate-filled messages to those involved in football. Fortunately, as will be seen, Parliament has acted to legislate against this.