Images of thugs causing mayhem on Britain’s streets has brought back painful memories of the football hooligans of the 1970s and 1980s. Back then, ‘firms’ of shaven-headed white men regularly went on the rampage, in and around railway stations, town centres and football grounds. Shops were looted, police officers and their horses were pelted with beer cans, and highly organised gangs did battle. Many of those involved did not even bother to attend the football matches.
We’ve seen something similar in the days since the murder of three children at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport last week. Groups of mostly white men, uncannily similar in their appearance, clothing and tattoos to the firm members of the 1970s and 1980s, have taken to the streets in droves, all over the country, to attack perceived Muslim and immigrant targets and to do battle with the police. The police have struggled to maintain control. The authorities’ experience of tackling football hooliganism will prove crucial in the fight to restore law and order – and bring those thugs responsible for the violence to book.
During the 70s and 80s, a large number of those involved came from small towns in deprived areas of Britain, such as Sunderland’s notorious‘Vauxies’; members of these firms often aligned themselves with the far-right political movements of the day, including the National Front. Swastika tattoos – even on the face – were all too common.
Against this background, and in particular that of the Heysel stadium disaster in 1985 (when 39 Italians died and English teams were banned from Europe), Margaret Thatcher first convened a ‘war cabinet’ and, later introduced the Football Spectators Act 1989, in an effort to address the ‘British Disease’, as hooliganism became known. For the first time, the courts were given the power to issue ‘Football Banning Orders’, preventing convicted hooligans from going anywhere near football grounds on matchdays.
Improved policing and the introduction of all-seater grounds, following the Hillsborough disaster in April 1989 (itself wrongly and repeatedly attributed to hooliganism), led to a sharp fall in football violence in the 1990s. However, widespread outbreaks of violence involving British fans, at the Euros in 2000, led to the rushed introduction by Tony Blair of the Football (Disorder) Act 2000, which imposed some of the most draconian restrictions of movement on British subjects since the Second World War. Only the strict Covid lockdown laws, again introduced with little parliamentary scrutiny, imposed greater controls on the freedom of movement of our citizens in recent memory.
The courts were given increased powers to impose bans on football hooligans, even for those who were not convicted of, or even charged with, any crime. The police merely need to establish that a defendant ‘has at any time caused or contributed to any violence or disorder in the UK or elsewhere and that there are reasonable grounds to believe that an order would help to prevent violence or disorder at or in connection with any regulated football match’.
Should we look to the model of Football Banning Orders – or even Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, that provides for specially trained and authorised police officers to ‘stop, question and when necessary, search and detain individuals and goods travelling through the UK’s borders’ – to help respond to the racist riots on our streets? Should police officers be able to stop, search and detain people, potentially intent on rioting, with no grounds at all? Should the courts be given the power to ban those responsible for rioting from attending scenes of demonstration and protest in the first place? Should we go as far as imposing restrictions of movement upon those who have not been convicted of a crime at all? All in the interests of ‘preventing violence and disorder’ on our streets.
The solution to the explosion of mindless, racist hooliganism on our streets lies not in the expansion of the statute book
Faced with scenes of random, racist and factually misguided violence, up and down the country, it is understandable that politicians are talking tough and look for a quick fix, in the form of draconian new police powers and restrictions of movement. Facing his first real test as prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer has talked of using ‘the full force of the law’ against the rioters. That was precisely the thinking behind both Football Banning Orders and Schedule 7. And, of course, we saw the ultimate manifestation of this approach in 2020, when we could be stopped by the police, simply for leaving our homes. But we should be wary of such a crackdown.
As a criminal lawyer for over 30 years, I have seen the gradual erosion of basic rights and safeguards, in response to real or perceived necessity on the part of successive governments. The hallowed right to silence went in the 1990s. Hearsay and even evidence of bad character have been routinely introduced in criminal trials for over 20 years. For me, the Covid regulations, with their encroachment on every aspect of our lives, represented the nadir of British respect for the basic rights of the citizen. Every single additional removal of the right to be free from arbitrary arrest, detention and movement, is another nail in the coffin of our hard-won freedoms and democracy.
We already have plenty of laws to deal with rioters. Our basic freedoms are already more restricted than for generations. The solution to the explosion of mindless, racist hooliganism on our streets lies not in the expansion of the statute book, but in ensuring the police have the resources they need to combat this threat. We must also use our freedom of speech to call out those who spread hatred and misinformation and those who commit acts of violence. Let the majority of Britons be clear, at every opportunity, that this violence is not in our name. We have the power to defeat hatred on our streets, through the weight of our numbers and basic British standards of decency, rather than yet more rhetoric and ever more draconian laws, which are so often favoured by our leaders.
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