UK Football Hooliganism: Is It Back?

During the ’70’s and ’80’s in Britain, a new craze was taking hold. Up and down the country, gangs of rowdy and drunken young men were meeting up on a Saturday morning, and causing violent havoc and the local football ground on a Saturday afternoon. Never before had British football seen such violence, with football matches becoming unsafe for women and children and police regularly being set upon as they desperately attempted to quell the disorder and hooliganism that went hand in hand with football for two decades.

However, as we moved through the years out of the ’80’s and into the 1990’s, football crowds gradually calmed down, with many of the former hooligans being in jail or serving banning orders. Consequently, football stadiums began to return to a place where a family could go to watch football again, rather than be pelted with stray parts of seats or terracing. 

By the new millennium, everything seemed to be fine. Police presence at football matches across the UK were able to be decreased, the number of families and children attending football matches had been steadily rising for years, and all seemed to be well. But little did they know that within a few years, these thugs would be revisiting their old stomping grounds…

The picture above is a scene that many people would immediately associate with a football match. However, if you asked someone the year it was taken, many would presume this was the 70’s or 80’s, when football violence in England was at it’s height. Well, these presumptions would be wrong.

This picture was in fact taken at a football match in Newcastle in 2008. That’s right – this disturbing image of large-scale football disorder was taken months ago, rather than decades ago as many would presume. Up until a few years ago, football grounds were once again a safe haven of sport – and nothing else. But, as this picture illustrates, these hooligans intent on causing drunken trouble are back.

But why? Why, after years of thug-free football in Britain, are these low-lives back to ruin our beautiful game once more? Well, there are two main reasons I can see for this.

First of all, many of the jail sentences and banning orders imposed on these groups are beginning to expire, thus giving them free reign of the football stadiums once more. Many of the hooligans that commited serious football-related offences have life banning orders, which means they will never be back at our football stadiums here in the UK. However, some of the less serious offenders, or those who were simply never caught, are beginning to worm their way back into the web of football violence as crime levels at football matches continue to rise dangerously close to those seen at the beginning of the last wave of football hooliganism back in the 1970’s.

Another (more debatable) reason for the reintroduction of football violence is something I believe in myself, and that is the inspiration that recent films such as ‘Green Street’ and ‘Football Factories’ cause amongst young men. These films have both been released in the past few years, and tell the story of football firms with big names starring such as Danny Dyer (Football Factories). The impression made by these films on football violence is one of excitement, friendship and adventure. Is this also to blame for the sudden surge of football-related incidents sweeping across the country?

The answer to this question is that I simply don’t know. What I do know, however, is that figures of football violence in the UK are definitely on the rise for the first time in almost 30 years. Although this is only small-scale compared to the trouble of the past, it is scarily similar to way in which the last wave of football hooliganism started in the 1970’s. We do not have a crisis – yet; but this is certainly an issue that in 10 years time may be much more serious once again.