There is a seldom violence in Greece, Czech Republic, Albania and Turkey. There are violent supporters in those countries but they are in the early stages of hooliganist behaviour. But during the UEFA cup semi-final games we witnessed the rival of English fans and the Turkish fans known with their nationalistic character. And this took Turkey in to the discussions about hooliganism.
In this paper I based my concern in Britain and other European countries. It is possible to observe violent behaviours of the supporters in America, Africa, and Asia or elsewhere in the world. But they are not that common as it is in the European continent.
So in the view of above we can say that hooliganism is not clearly an English Disease and we would be mistaken if we hold British supporters as entirely possible for the violent behaviours in the stadiums.
Preventing Football Hooliganism
After talking about the background, theories and cross-national basis of hooliganism, it is now clear that hooliganism is a very big social problem in Europe. What can Europeans do to overcome this problem? In this section I will try to find the answer to this question. And I will try to introduce the future plans of European initiatives for preventive measures enough to tackle hooliganism.
The most important measures were taken for United Kingdom. As I mentioned before it had the earliest and most severe problems with football hooliganism. And United Kingdom was the only nation that had received expulsion from all European competitions. This expulsion and the other important preventive measures were taken after the Heysel Stadium disaster in which 39 Juventus fans died after the clashes with Liverpool supporters. The British Police and the British Government took many measures by using technological developments using closed-circuit television and computer databases.
The advance of technology after 1990’s helped the police and officers to tackle hooliganism. But during 60’s and 70’s the measures taken were only limited by the use of plain-clothes officers in domestic games and police escorting some on horseback and some with police dogs.
The nineties saw a shift away from using police to control fans inside the ground with clubs relying more and more on ‘stewards’. The clubs themselves employed stewards. It was the principal reason for the decline of the ratio of police to fans in 90’s. Clubs such as Chelsea and Leicester had relied on stewards to police the stadium. Police officers called only to take away individuals from grounds if they were breaking the law where as Stewards called follow a particular clubs agenda and reject people for breaking club rules.
Another important change in field of measures against hooliganism was the use of closed-circuit television Closed-circuit television was introduced into football grounds around the middle of the 80’s. By this way football supporters were being subjected to camera surveillance and this helped the police to make a distinction between the hooligans and the ordinary football supporters. With the invention of closed-circuit television the use of hand-held video cameras became common. This became a feature of police tactics to deter violence, gather information and monitor the efficacy of crowd control.
Advances in technology have also aided the police in surveillance operations. The ‘Hoolivan’ was launched at the beginning of the season of 1985. This high-tech machinery enabled police to maintain radio contact with all officers inside and outside the ground and to be linked with the closed circuit television cameras in and around the stadium. The hoolivan tended to be used at high tensional matches or when the police were concerned about a particular group of supporters.
After the tragedy in Heysel Stadium in the spring of 1985 and the incident in Bradford were 56 people were killed by a fire in the ground, more serious actions were taken at the governmental level. In 1989 government responded to the disorderly incidents of 1985 with the introduction of Football Spectators Act. Football Licensing Authority was established under this act and it was responsible for awarding licenses to premises that admit spectators to watch football matches. The main proposal of the act was the introduction of compulsory identity cards for the supporters at every league; cup and international matches played in England. After the incident in 1989 where 95 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at Hillsborough Stadium, Lord Taylor published 43 separate recommendations, which were designed to be immediately implemented by all football leagues at the following season. And the final report on hooliganism was published in January 1990, which included Lord Taylor’s recommendations. There was an emphasis on the lack of communication between the fans of the football authorities and the poor conditions of the football grounds. The main recommendations of this report were conversion off all football league grounds to all-seater stadia by the end of millennium, ticket-touting to become a criminal offence and introduction of new laws to deal with offences inside football stadiums.
It was after 1985 (Heysel Tragedy) that a real cooperation was made in Europe between police forces and football authorities to tackle hooliganism. After 1985 there were four major European initiatives addressed the issue of football violence. Firstly, the Council of Europe adopted the European Convention on spectator violence and misbehaviour at sport events, secondly European Council called on all member countries to deal with violence, thirdly European Parliament proposed a number of different measures to combat football hooliganism and fourthly it was the report of Committee on Culture and Education of European Assembly which introduced new preventive measures for football hooliganism. International cooperation, active involvement of clubs, Investing information about fans and hooligans, excluding hooligans attending matches and communicating with fans, hooligans by police, clubs, stewards or fan coaches were the several elements of this report to avoid excesses in hooliganism. In this report also there were final agreements reached with UEFA on Euro 2000 matches and the ticketing system. So this report included measures to prevent violence in Euro 2000.
Conclusion
As I was doing my research on hooliganism I read many articles and visited many websites about hooliganism. The fact was the same everywhere, hooliganism was not declining and it was getting to be a bigger social problem each day.
Especially the events in Turkey and Copenhagen that we witnessed a few months ago and the events in Euro 2000 in Belgium are enough to show us the size of this social problem.
I talked about initiatives done about hooliganism just before Euro 2000. There were many measures taken to avoid hooliganism during these games. But we saw that the measures were not able to stop the football violence. They couldn’t go beyond than being initiatives of European officers
So it is the time for Europe to take more preventive and decisive measures like banning Britain from football games. I want to end my essay with an article written by Graham L. Jones in 26.06.2000. This article will be helpful in making a summary of the works about hooliganism.
‘The time for talk is over: Ban the Brits! Don’t wait another minute. Forget the possible quarterfinal game. Send Britain from Euro 2000 back to home. Yes, it’s my own country I’m talking about. And yes, it’s the team and players that I want to see pay the price for the absolute ineffectiveness of English Government and English judiciary doing nothing about hooliganism’
HOLT R. 1989.Sport and the British. Oxford: Oxford University Press
KERR H. 1994.Understanding Soccer Hooliganism. Buckingam: Open University Press
TAYLOR R. 1992.Football and its Fans. Leicester: Leicester Universty Press
Resources from Internet
noviolence.com/archives
dailynews.yahoo.com-22.06.2000
bbc.com- Hooliganism made in England but big abroad-26.02.1998
titonet.com/hooligans
thesportjournal.com- A developmental view of soccer hooliganism by A.J Harley
intorminc.co.uk- Hooliganism-a political football
eserver.org- Playing for England by Paul Smith