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5.19 pm
Mr. Tony Banks (West Ham): I begin by saying to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) that the House needs contributions such as his. The points that he made, some of which I shall echo, are precisely the points that the House and the country need to address. The subject is not one to be treated lightly. It should not be treated as a political football, so to speak.
I have a great deal of time for the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), but I must say to her--although I can say it only in her absence, as she is no longer in her place--that I expected something better from her in her speech. I do not say that in a carping way; I genuinely admire the right hon. Lady, particularly for her stand on other issues that are close to my heart, such as animal welfare.
This is a time when we need to present a united House--a united front--to the problems facing us. This is the first time that I have spoken in the House as a Back Bencher since the general election. I was looking forward to making a speech, although perhaps the House did not share my anticipated enjoyment. I would have preferred to choose almost any other subject for my contribution, but obviously I want to comment on the impact of recent events on our 2006 world cup campaign.
The crisis faced by English football is the greatest in its long, proud history. We gave the game of football to the world. That is one of the things that we have been saying in our 2006 campaign--we gave the game of football to the world, and we want to welcome the world to the home of football--yet here we are, on the threshold of becoming pariahs in the world of football. As I said, at such a time, football and the country need the parties in the House to present a united front. Playing politics with the subject, by either side, is dangerous and plays into the hands of those who wish us ill.
I understand UEFA's anger. After all, trouble breaks out only when the English fans turn up. It does not happen with the Scottish fans, or those from other countries. There are some difficulties with Turkish fans at present, but if we look back over recent years, it has tended to be the English fans who turn up and spoil the party. We can well imagine UEFA's anger, but I repeat what I said in an intervention--that it was extraordinary that Lennart Johansson, the president of UEFA, and Gerhard Aigner, the general secretary, did not see fit to call in Geoff Thompson, the chairman of the Football Association, and Adam Crozier, the chief executive, who were in Charleroi. I have just come back from Belgium. We had a meeting there last night, and I came straight back. I did not know that there was to be a debate, but I came back because there are other matters to be dealt with to keep the 2006 campaign on the road.
I find it extraordinary that the chairman and chief executive of the FA were not called in. UEFA officials talk about the family of football: I have heard them say time and again, "We are the family of football." When problems arise, they should call in the family to discuss them. There may have been a similar outcome, but at least the FA would have been party to it and would have been consulted in reaching it. I find UEFA's behaviour extraordinary. I trust that it is due to nothing more than clumsiness and political naivete, rather than anything more sinister.
UEFA has no right, any more than anyone in the House, to play political football with such a serious issue as that now facing English football. I say to the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), that I find it extraordinary and unacceptable for an international football federation to attack the policies of a sovereign Government. It is not for UEFA to do that. It is entitled to its opinions, but the way that that was done is unacceptable. I use that word yet again. It is a matter for the affiliate associations--in this case, the English Football Association--to maintain contact with the national Government. It is not a matter for an international body. UEFA is not the United Nations. Although I understand the anger that it felt, which we all share in the House and which all sensible people share, UEFA must be careful not to exceed its brief.
I hope that the telephone call which I know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made to Lennart Johansson, and the call which I think was made by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to Gerhard Aigner, will restore decent relations between the British Government and UEFA. I repeat that, on this occasion, UEFA exceeded its brief in some measure.
As always, I listened carefully to the speech of the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald. She seemed to attach little blame--perhaps I missed it--to the drunken yobs who disgraced football and the nation at Charleroi. In the end, that is what it is all about. The blame cannot be passed on to the Government or the football authorities; in the final analysis, we are all responsible for our own conduct. It is no good those people saying, "Well, I didn't realise that the Government had not passed strong enough legislation. Had they done so, perhaps I wouldn't have acted as I did."
Whenever I listen to the "Today" programme, everything always seems to be the Government's fault. Perhaps it is because I am now on the Government rather than the Opposition Benches--who knows?--or perhaps I am now listening properly. I begin to wonder whether, if those who blame the Government turned up late for work, they would tell the boss, "Unfortunately, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment did not give me my wake-up call and I blame the Government for making me late for work." That is a caricature, but, increasingly in this country, when a problem arises we pass the blame on to the Government and ask what they are going to do about it.
The Government can and must take action. Perhaps they should have done more, but, ultimately, responsibility for the scenes that we saw was entirely that of the yobs who created the mayhem and havoc. We must ensure that, whatever points we make in this House, we never lose sight of that fact.
The right hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes)--[Hon. Members: "Hon. Member."] Perhaps one day he will be a right hon. Gentleman, but it will be for long service on the Opposition Benches.
Mr. Banks: Yes, like me. It is surprising how fast time goes when one is enjoying oneself.
The hon. Gentleman touched on a crucial point: there is a yob culture in this country, and it goes beyond football. It dispirits me to say that. We saw who those people were and we have, more or less, a picture of them--they are overwhelmingly young, white, male, drunk, xenophobic and racist. Short of locking up everyone in the country who fits that description--unfortunately, they might be a minority, but they are a substantial minority--we cannot deal with the problem in terms of football or any other part of our society, sporting or otherwise.
The hon. Gentleman was also correct to say that we see the same sort of people in town and city centres around the country every Saturday night. Our town centres are being turned into no-go areas for respectable citizens. As the hon. Gentleman said, we also see them in Spanish and Greek resorts. How often have we felt ashamed to be
English when we have been there ourselves and seen the loutish behaviour of those street trash? That is exactly what they are.We must do more than simply get angry about the problem. We must try to analyse how it happens, rather than simply throw blame backwards and forwards. We must try to find a sophisticated way of dealing with it because, ultimately, these people are a problem for us all.
There is no easy legislative way to deal with these people. No one could describe me as a governmental brown noser, but I accept what the Secretary of State has said. I believe that we could have done more. In the end, however, one has to hope that people will behave better--that they will behave like responsible human beings. I get angry when people say that they behave like animals. Animals never behave in that way, so let us not use that description again.
We must now consider what further measures we can take. However, the House and the country must accept that, every time we take more measures, we scoop up people who are innocent. Further measures will also make injustice apparent to the innocent people who are caught up and will take more civil liberties away from us. We are English and proud to be English, but, frankly, those yobs who call themselves English have no right to use such a description of themselves. We must deal with them in the strictest and strongest way possible, while never losing sight of the fact that a much deeper-seated problem in our society encourages those people and fosters their behaviour patterns.
As I have said, we all have responsibility--the Government, football and, obviously, the House. But who are these people? They did not just appear. There are times when we feel that they are aliens, and that we do not want to share the planet with them, let alone a football ground, a continental street or a continental beach. Nevertheless, they have mothers, fathers, sisters and girl friends. It is about time that the families of these people started to put some pressure on them as well.
As I would never have behaved in such a way, I suppose that what I am going to say is a bit of a nonsense; but I can imagine what my father's reaction would have been if the front page of a newspaper had shown a picture of me coming back, having been kicked out of Belgium, Ireland, France--which hosted the World cup in 1998--or any other place in the world where we have caused mayhem in recent years. No one can exonerate himself, and the families of those yobs and thugs have a responsibility to deal with them. No one can walk away and say that it is someone else's fault--that the Government, or football, should do something about it.
The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey also made a good point about the language used by the tabloids. They, too, are responsible. Let me make it clear that I do not blame them, but it is a fact that language such as "Hun Nil!"--which was the headline on the front page of the Sunday People after the result--is racist and offensive. It encourages contempt for foreigners.
That is where all this problem stems from. As kids at school, we were brought up with the idea of the British empire--the empire on which the sun never set. There was a subtext: the English--I say "the English" because of the way in which we responded to the Scottish, the Irish and the Welsh--were the master race, created in
God's image, and God had made a big mistake when he created foreigners. As mature individuals, we can deal with that; it need not infect us. I am afraid, however, that some of those semi-educated mindless yobs do not see it that way.No doubt whoever wrote that headline thinks that it was just a bit of fun, but unfortunately it is necessary to be reasonably intelligent to appreciate humour. In fact, I do not find the headline particularly funny--I find it offensive--but to the weak, febrile individuals of whom we are talking, it constitutes almost a justification for the things that they do. "We beat the Hun": how offensive that is to Germans, both those in Germany and those who live and work in this country.
The Sun used a similar headline: "Heroes 1, Jankers 0". No other newspapers in the world describe football results in that way. Indeed, the language of most countries does not include insults to foreigners, and certainly does not include the range and complexity of insults that ours does. We cannot even engage in a debate about the European Union without using tabloid language and talking about Frogs and Krauts. As I say, I do not blame the tabloids, but tabloid journalists cannot write racist rubbish of that sort and then write editorials or features condemning the behaviour of the very people whose attitudes they have, in my view, fostered and, in certain cases, encouraged. No doubt I shall be ripped to pieces by some of the tabloid editors tomorrow. It will not be the first time, and I am sure that I can live with it. We know that what I have said is true, and it is about time that tabloid editors and journalists realised that they cannot whip up such behaviour and subsequently condemn it. They must realise that they are part of the problem.
Even if we are booted out of Euro 2000, that will not solve the problem of the yob culture described by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey and me. We, as a country and as a Parliament, must come together to seek ways of dealing with what I consider to be a cancer in our society. Toughening up legislation is one way, but securing changes in attitudes and putting peer pressure on these people is another matter.
We have dealt with the problem on our domestic football scene. That is the irony: all this only happens when people go abroad. The manifestations are here, but they are controlled in a far more organised way. When these people go abroad, all the restrictions are off, and they revert to the crude and nasty type that we recognise. We tackled racism inside our grounds through campaigns but, in the end, the thing that stops people is peer pressure. People used regularly to jump up and start to make strange monkey noises at a black player on the pitch, even at the club that I have supported for 50 years, Chelsea. "We are the only white club in London", used to be the song. British National party and National Front literature was openly sold on the terraces. We have dealt with that through peer pressure. In the end, that is what will deal with the yob culture in this country.
I want to say a few words about my work, as all Members know--well, I hope that they know, because if they do not I do not know what I have been doing for the past 12 months--as the Prime Minister's special envoy. I have felt many times that I have become that legendary Member for 30,000 ft. I have been working with others on England's campaign to ensure that England hosts the
world cup in 2006. I stood down as Sports Minister precisely to represent the Government on that campaign; I felt that it needed my full-time attention.My heart sank when FIFA, the world governing body, changed the decision date for 2006 from March to July. Immediately, I thought, "Oh no. My God. Euro 2000." I knew that there would be problems, not least in England qualifying. We managed to scrape through, but I thought, "We will have real difficulties now." It is a tragedy because--I do not say it in any jingoistic way; all the FIFA members have acknowledged it--we have the best bid. England has the best bid in terms of our facilities, the atmosphere in our grounds, our stadiums and the excitement and passion of our football. It is such a tragedy that that might all be wasted if England is thrown out of Euro 2000.
As I have said, if that happens it will be difficult to see a way forward. If the decision had been taken, as it was originally meant to be taken, in March by FIFA, frankly, we would have won. We could still win, just, but it now depends on what happens not on the pitch, but on the streets of Charleroi tonight and, if we get through against Romania, when we play Italy in the quarter final.
It is a tragedy. It is not special pleading for myself--I have a job and I will just carry on doing other things. But a sizeable chunk of my life and the lives of a whole group of people, young men and women, have been spent working on the campaign for four years. Those people include Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Geoff Hurst, Alec McGiven, the campaign director, and all the people at the Football Association. They have made a great effort. We should be proud of what they have all done. I do not want that effort to be absolutely wasted by what has been done to our reputation in Charleroi and elsewhere.
It still is a wonderfully well-organised, effective and professional campaign. Incidentally, we spent no more money on our campaign--none of it is Government money--than the South Africans and Germans have spent on theirs. I hope that they are not enjoying our predicament, but how much more optimistic they must now feel about their chances than they did only a couple of weeks ago. If anything goes badly, we will be in real trouble.
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