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Mr. Peter Luff (Worcester): A week.
Mr. Evans: He is on £30,000 a week, and he is a Frenchman at that. He should have been banned from our game, but he was not. He was forgiven, and we then wonder why fans break goalposts at Brighton.
The FA is a bunch of amateurs running a professional game. The chief executive, who has presided over the demise of discipline required on and off the field, has clearly been incompetent for a long time. I could spend the rest of the day giving examples of hooliganism over the past 10 years. The most vivid example, which says it all, involves the behaviour of the FA, particularly its chief executive and chairman, the manager of the English football team and, indeed, the players. I refer to the inexplicable decision to go to China and back as preparation for the most important tournament in this country for 30 years.
Football is a violent game. It is more accurately described as a collision than as a contact sport. Nobody expects the gladiators who play at the highest level to be statesmen or saints, or even the mythical Corinthians of the legendary old school for whom playing up and playing the game was more important than winning. That is not what they are paid millions for, but the latest bad behaviour by the supposedly grown men of the England squad confirms the depressing image of English football after its age of innocence. That impression is not so much one of lions led by donkeys as of hippopotami managed by hypocrites.
The extravagantly boozy, shirt-stripping 29th birthday party for Paul Gascoigne in a Hong Kong nightclub was worse than outrageous. It was idiotic, because it was in public, so it was photographed and sold to the newspapers, thus signalling a humiliating message to the millions for whom Gazza and his team mates are heroes. It does not inspire confidence in England's discipline or fitness on the field a fortnight later in the most important football championship to be held in Britain for 30 years.
The drunken damage caused to the aircraft bringing the team home was criminal and dangerous, as well as appalling publicity for the England game, but the timorous reaction by England's football authorities was far worse. This week's statements were made too reluctantly, too late and were too secretive in their bad-boy network.
The refusal by Terry Venables to name the four players chiefly responsible for damaging the aeroplane was an example not of collective team responsibility but of managerial cowardice. Who can doubt that the affair would have been trodden into the mud had Cathay Pacific not claimed £5,000 in compensation for the damage to its 747? If the offenders had been yobbish fans rather than yobbish megastars, they would have been taken to police cells at Heathrow without their studs touching the turf, but as the ball bounced, Terry Venables acted late--and with apparent reluctance--by ruling out in advance the expulsion of anyone from the squad.
A publicity agent's description of the team's behaviour as "mild high jinks" was an insult to youthful high spirits as well as a monstrous euphemism in a sport where euphemism is usually offside. Any player who misbehaved so wildly when Sir Alf Ramsey was manager would have been sent straight home. In those days, nobody would have dared or wanted to misbehave when wearing a England blazer.
Gazza and the rest should not have had a chance of starting on Saturday to redeem their professional reputations in the historic national arenas if the squad was collectively responsible for its behaviour in Hong Kong and on the Cathay Pacific aeroplane. The manager should have resigned and the squad should have been dismissed. Unless the authority was prepared to allow another squad to be named, we should have withdrawn from the tournament. There is no chance of winning such a tournament. At that level it is simply impossible without discipline.
If the squad had been dismissed as I have just suggested, those who wore the England shirt in future would be aware of their responsibilities and they would wear it with pride. Let us hope that, when Glenn Hoddle takes over as manager, new standards will be set and that, thereafter, English players will behave in a way that is conducive to pride and integrity, that he himself will dress and behave in a manner that befits the manager of our national team--with the top button of his shirt done up so as not to give the impression of a Sunday morning, jack-the-lad manager--and perhaps the young men who make up the England team will rediscover the important old English virtues of discipline, modesty and common sense.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington):
I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans). If I were a member of the England squad, I might argue that Members of Parliament were no people to lecture footballers on drunkenness, yobbishness and bad behaviour.
The eve of Euro 96 is an appropriate time for this debate. I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in what has until now been something of a "Boy's Own" debate to raise issues of wider significance. It is impossible to exaggerate sport's significance in inner-city areas such as Hackney. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Keen) said how important sport was to him as a schoolboy in a very poor town in the north.
As we approach the millennium, sportsmen are the only authentic heroes for young people in inner cities such as those whom I represent in Hackney. The days when people saw politicians, soldiers, explorers and even business men as heroes are long gone. Sportsmen are the heroes for the young boys and girls in my constituency's schools and it is one of the reasons why sport is so important and of a wider significance to society.
For young people in inner-city areas such as Hackney, especially young males who seem to be systematically underachieving educationally, sport offers an arena where achievement and the ability to excel seem possible. Sadly, despite the bravado, bluster and even violence, such young men--black and white--often have deep feelings of inferiority in education and even their ability to hold a job. Sport for them is an arena in which they can imagine themselves achieving. That is such a positive factor to build on in education and society. Sport helps people in inner cities to build a sense of community and offers wider horizons, which, in terms of turning them into citizens and helping to build a society, is very significant.
A few days ago my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) was talking about his ideas on curfews for young children. While I agree that it is sad and inappropriate for young children under the age of 10 to be on the streets until all hours, I do not believe that curfews are the answer. A proper policy on sport in schools to provide sporting facilities for young people is the positive and constructive way in which to ensure that children under the age of 10 are occupied and not hanging around on the streets where, as we know, the devil finds work for idle hands.
I particularly wish to mark the contribution of black and--to use the word much favoured by the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield--immigrant sports people. Whenever race and immigration issues are raised in the House, they tend to be in a negative context such as immigration controls, refugees and crime. I want to speak about the excellence, dedication and hard work that so many black people and people of immigrant descent display in the sporting arena which makes them heroes for black and white young people.
We will all have marvelled in the past few weeks at the truly stupendous performance of Linford Christie on the athletics field. At a point in his career when many people might be thinking of leaving athletics, Linford Christie is
still a world beater. For most young people, certainly in my part of London, he is much more of a hero than any hon. Member.
Mr. David Evans:
Is the hon. Lady aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne(Mr. Coe) is the president of the Haringey athletics club?
Ms Abbott:
I am well aware not only of the hon. Gentleman's contribution to sport but of his very strong personal stand on racial discrimination. None the less, since we have had so many negative debates in recent months about immigration, refugees and race, I thought that it was important to take the opportunity to mark the achievements of British citizens such as Linford Christie who are excelling and doing this country proud.
I want to say a little about racism in sport, and I shall start with football.
I was interested to read a recent newspaper article by Cyrille Regis, one of the first black players to play for England in the early 1980s, in which he said how much hate mail he received when he first put on the England strip. He remembers getting a letter with a bullet in, saying that the minute he went on to the pitch at Wembley, the bullet would find him.
Cyrille Regis continued:
"But, sadly, racism is still there and I don't know if it can ever be eradicated . . . We've got plenty of black players now but hardly any black fans and that's terrible. In black people's minds they're still frightened to go to matches because they know that there will be people there who are racists and they might get beaten up".
It is remarkable that although about one quarter of our professional footballers are black, a tiny proportion of regular attenders at football matches are black. I am afraid that that shows the continuing prevalence of racism among sporting crowds.
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