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6.26 pm
Mr. Martin Salter (Reading, West): I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this sadly topical debate on football hooliganism. I am grateful also to the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) for giving me just enough time to make my contribution. However, I caution against the effectiveness of naming and shaming. Some of the so-called fans of whom I am aware who are involved in organised football violence do not consider naming to be shaming. Instead, they consider it to be a badge of honour. That is the awful truth with which we must deal.
I am not an impartial participant in the debate. I speak as a long-term football supporter and as a regular attender of football league matches for more than 30 years. I recently had the honour to be made vice-president of Reading football supporters' club, something of which I am particularly proud, as many people in Reading well know. However, I am ashamed to admit that, over the years, my town has produced some especially violent football hooligans, whose behaviour was highlighted in the recent BBC documentary entitled "MacIntyre Under Cover".
I was in the Chamber yesterday during the exchanges following the statement of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on Euro 2000, and on the disgraceful scenes of violence and mayhem that occurred over the weekend at Charleroi. With a few exceptions, the quality of the contributions did none of those present any favours. For example--I say this in all kindness--what does the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) know about football fans? How many football matches has she attended? Does she seriously think that football violence started when the Government were elected? Does she recollect events at places such as Turin, Heysel, Malmo and Dublin, which occurred when Conservative Governments were in power? It is not a party political matter. It is a damning indictment of the conduct of a significant minority of fans and of a rich seam of thuggery towards, and contempt for, people from other nations.
I say to the Government that it is a bit lame to try to pin the blame for the failure of the Football (Offences and Disorder) Bill promoted by the hon. Member for West Chelmsford on the actions of the lunatic right on the Conservative Benches, when many Labour Members had reservations. The lunatic right, or the extreme right, have a responsibility, but that is not only in this place. Its role is in the public promotion of racism and xenophobia, which is, sadly, a hallmark of certain aspects of English football.
I have spent a good deal of my political life working with anti-racist and anti-fascist groups in fighting organised and violent racism. I pay particular tribute to my colleagues from the Searchlight magazine for their invaluable work in exposing the strands of evil that link the extreme right wing in British politics with organised violence, both on and round the football terraces and against black, Jewish and Asian members of our community.
I return to our home-grown thugs from Reading. I am talking about Danny Walford and Andy Frain. We learn much about what motivates these people from the
company that they keep. Frain is a member of Combat 18--the name is derived from Hitler's initials--which provides bodyguards for holocaust apologists and other right-wing, racist speakers. He runs--I am sorry to tell my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks)--with the Chelsea headhunters, and he has been prosecuted for the dissemination of Ku-Klux Klan literature. He dreams, I fear, of establishing a white homeland in Essex. Walford, as the documentary showed, glories in violence. He has no political affinity with any one football club, and he boasts how easy it is to organise rucks and riots on the internet and via mobile phones.Instead of trying to score political points, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald and some of her colleagues would do well to consider how their own public comments and actions affect the situation. They have helped to fuel the atmosphere of racial intolerance that lies at the heart of the problem.
In case any hon. Member doubts that the major problem underlying football hooliganism relates to the behaviour of English fans abroad rather than at domestic competitions, it is worth quoting House of Commons Library figures for arrests and attendances at football league and premier league matches. There has been a welcome reduction in football-related violence. In 1984-85, there were 7,000 arrests from 17 million attendances. Last year, the arrests fell to more than 3,000 while attendances rose to 24 million.
That is a tribute to the behaviour of the vast majority--the genuine football fans--and the efficiency of the police and clubs in tracking, identifying and banning known troublemakers and those involved with organised football violence. What happened in Charleroi at the weekend had absolutely nothing to do with football, and everything to do with alcohol-fuelled racism and xenophobia. How else can one explain comments made by a spokesman for the National Criminal Intelligence Service, who said on Sunday:
- The bottom line is that there were a lot of young men aged between 18 and 30 who get drunk and like to cause trouble. They talk about provocation but to these people someone speaking German is considered provocation.
Practical measures could be taken to isolate the thugs. I shall not use up time by listing them, but they offer only part of the answer. We must address the whole conduct of our politics. I want to associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, who condemned the street trash who have done so much to blight our national game and our reputation as a footballing nation.
Mr. Tony Clarke (Northampton, South): I appreciate that we are pressed for time but does my hon. Friend agree that we are hindered in tackling the street thugs and trash by the media's comments about Kraut-bashing and analogies with the second world war? Does not the media's little Englander attitude, which also, sometimes, expresses itself among those on the Conservative Benches, hinder our progress towards being less anti-European and not such little Englanders?
Mr. Salter: I agree. Sections of the tabloid media must bear their share of the responsibility.
We have proved that football hooliganism can be tackled effectively at home. The challenge is to take further practical steps to prevent known hooligans from
travelling to games abroad. We must also tackle the racism and xenophobia that spews out filth in the back rooms of certain of our political parties, in the pages of some of our tabloid media and in far too many of the hearts and minds of young English males masquerading as football fans.6.33 pm
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire): We have had an excellent debate on this important subject. The hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) talked about the yob culture and its effect on the innocent. We must all realise that the hopes of many people, particularly the young, are tied up with the England football team as they face Romania tonight. I recently attended a football tournament for under-13s at which there was remarkable enthusiasm for Euro 2000 and for seeing England and our best players do well. Most of the nation will be glued to television, hoping that England will do well. We hope that our players, who have done rather better than usual so far, will be able to progress.
However, at the same time there is the dread thought for the people of Belgium and Holland that the violence might return. In an article earlier this week, a journalist put the matter rather well, writing:
- The politicians ought to front up in the midst of a riot to see for themselves what it feels like to be intimidated, abused, roughed up, vomited on, stolen from and, in every sense of the word, offended. Then, perhaps, they would not talk quite as much about civil liberties and nets, but instead find the guts to eradicate this plain yobbery.
As a Conservative, even I feel that having our Prime Minister snubbed by the Belgian Prime Minister when he attempted to hold a meeting in front of the television about football hooligans displays the depths to which our country has sunk. We are being shamed and humiliated. In 1998, at the world cup in France, we saw a glimpse of the same thing. At Marseilles, a dreadful riot involved English fans, but it was not only the English who were to blame. At Lens that year, German fans went on the rampage, beating a gendarme almost to death.
There were, however, different reactions in England and Germany to those shocking events. The German reaction was to take emergency measures to try to stop that happening again. In England, within a week of the incident, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) tabled amendments in Committee on the Crime and Disorder Bill in which he sought to make it possible, in the cases of those known to be likely to cause riots, damage and insulting behaviour, for a court, on the application of the police, to be able to say that, for specified persons and matches, the risk of allowing travel would be too great. There is a civil liberties price to pay, but if refusing someone the ability to go to a football match abroad for three weeks every four years will save England the humiliation that we all feel at the actions of oafs, it is not too high a price.
My right hon. Friend made a suggestion back then with which most commentators agree. The same suggestion has been made on both sides of the House tonight. The Home Secretary said two years ago that he would sit down and work on the idea. I know that he has been busy; many problems have crossed his desk since then, and we have
all heard the numerous statements that he has had to make about them. However, he has spent two years sitting down and working on it, and nothing has emerged. That is unacceptable. He had an opportunity in 1998, in 1999 and again this year before the European championships began to pass legislation through the House with the support of the Opposition. He refused to do so.We need to know whether the Home Secretary supports legislation. If he does, when will he do something about it? He has slurred the Opposition disgracefully by saying that it is all our fault. The fact is that he holds the job of Home Secretary and he is the man who can introduce legislation with unlimited time. He has failed to do so. The outside world--Europe, the football supporters and others--criticises him, and is right to do so. UEFA and the football supporters are entitled to say that the right hon. Gentleman has not done enough because he has not done enough.
It is feeble for the Government to say that they gave 1,000 names to the Dutch and the Belgians and that they sent warning letters to half that number, telling them that it would be rough for them if they went to Holland or Belgium. The German reaction to a similar problem was to turn back 2,500 people. They visited each of them and either marked or took away their passports. The Germans compiled good lists of the likely football hooligans, and set up border controls to ensure that those people did not get through. The result was that only 31 German, but 800 England, supporters were arrested.
The same problem was identified in 1998, but there was a different response. As both countries had that problem in 1998, it would hardly be surprising if people in UEFA wondered what had happened since then. They might compare the proactive approach of the Germans, which resulted in far less criminality by their supporters, with the lackadaisical approach of the Home Secretary, which led to 800 English people being deported from Belgium--the figure is rising all the time.
To say that this national humiliation is the fault, among others, of UEFA--as did the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes)--he criticised alcohol, which is fair enough--[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says that he did not criticise UEFA, but he did. He said that it was quite wrong of the organisation to make that threat, but the fact is that UEFA has had enough. His speech deserves little comment--[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Russell) says that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey beat me once, which is true but not relevant to this debate.
Several hon. Members--including the hon. Member for West Ham--pointed out that tabloid language was most unhelpful. We all agree on that. It was said that alcohol is a problem, as, of course, it is. It was said that the yob culture was all wrong and that we must do something about it, but no one knew quite what we could do.
We were left with some clear conclusions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield. He said, first, that the Government had not done enough to change the law and that, secondly, a culture had developed in which yobs and oafs could get away with their behaviour. He pointed out that the number of police had been cut dramatically by the Government.
My right hon. Friend said--fairly--that he was not trying to make a party political point on the matter, but I want to do so. The Government have cut police numbers by 2,500; there are 3,500 fewer specials and 90 police stations are closing every year. In such an atmosphere of slack law and order, it is not surprising that people think they can get away with it.
My right hon. Friend said that there should be a policy of zero tolerance towards football violence. During the years of Conservative Government, constant attempts were made, year after year, to meet the problems as they emerged and to clamp down on them--the hon. Member for Halton (Mr. Twigg) criticised that. The reason that the hon. Member for West Ham could say that we had sorted out the problems in the grounds was partly due to the action of the FA--of course--and partly to that of the clubs. However, in large part, it was due to measures passed in 1985 by the Conservative Government to crack down on alcohol abuse in grounds and to the Public Order Act 1986, which created new offences that cut down on the abuses that had been occurring.
The Football Spectators Act 1989 for the first time imposed restrictions to prevent people from going to international matches by compelling them to attend police stations during the match. The Football (Offences) Act 1991 and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 were passed. As each problem emerged, the Conservatives passed laws to ensure that it was addressed.
No one claims that all the problems can be solved at a stroke. As soon as one is resolved, another emerges. However, we need a rigorous attitude. We need a Government who are prepared to take action when it is needed. Football violence and yobbery is a national curse; it must be dealt with rigorously. It is no good for the Government to say that they will look at the problem and then to fail to do so. It is no good for them to say that they will solve the problem one day and that they have held another seminar--as the Minister almost always does--sweet words, but no action. We need a commitment to legislation now. Will the Minister tell us that he will introduce legislation and, if so, when? We want action and we want it now.
The Home Secretary said that only a small number of those who were deported were known to the authorities as football hooligans. What about the football hooligans we know about? Eddie Curtis, the head of the hooligan spotting team, said that most of the main undesirables--the criminals on the NCIS list--had got into Holland and Belgium. I do not want to read more headlines, because the Government have failed to curtail the liberties of such people for three weeks every four years. Let us have some action--let us solve the problem.
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