Football Association welcomes a 70% rise in reporting racist abuse
A still from a video that shows Chelsea fans preventing a black man from boarding a metro train in Paris.
Reported incidents of racist abuse, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination have sharply increased at all levels of football this season, the game’s anti-discrimination campaign, Kick It Out, and the Football Association, have revealed.
Kick It Out recorded 184 incidents of abuse reported to it at the midway point of this campaign, a 35% increase on the same period last season.
Mark Ives, the FA’s head of judicial services, told the Guardian he estimates the governing body has received 70% more reports of racist abuse and other discrimination this season in grass roots amateur football, and he expects by May the total will exceed 800 cases nationwide.
Racist abuse, with faith-based incidents, are likely to form 70% of the cases reported to the FA and dealt with by local country football associations, Ives said, with incidents involving sexism and disability abuse also having risen. Of the 184 incidents reported to Kick It Out this season by 28 December, 118 (64%) involved alleged racist abuse, while 32% involved complaints about antisemitism, the overwhelming majority on social media. Kick It Out also received 15 complaints of abuse involving sexual orientation, seven about disability, and 13 relating to sexism, the first it has ever received.
Both Kick It Out and the FA are viewing the increases as a positive sign, believing that actual incidents of racist and other discriminatory abuse are not increasing, and that the figures show people are now less willing to accept it and more prepared to report perpetrators to the authorities.
Lord Herman Ouseley, the chairman of Kick It Out, said that the widely reported filmed incident of Chelsea fans racially assaulting and abusing a black commuter on the Paris Metro a fortnight ago demonstrated that there remains a stubborn problem which has to be strongly dealt with. In a separate case, the British Transport Police was on Monday investigating more complaints of racist and abusive behaviour from Chelsea fans on a train from London to Manchester on Sunday night. “Because that incident was filmed, football was suddenly being associated with awful racism, but in fact it was no surprise,” Ouseley said.
“Major improvements have been made over the last 30 years, and the FA has strengthened its procedures recently and shown it has become much more forensic about its investigations.
“But that incident reminded people that such things still go on below the radar. There is a persistent problem, there is prejudice in society, which is being increased by the anti-Europe, anti-immigrant, anti-benefit scroungers drip-drip in politics.
“But people are increasingly prepared to report incidents, and to understand that, if we don’t complain, nothing will happen.”
Roisin Wood, Kick It Out’s director, writing for the Guardian, said that if the abuse on the Metro had not been filmed it would most likely have passed unchallenged, and she believes there are many such incidents not being reported.
Wood said she is encouraged by the 35% increase in reports received by her organisation, but believes the figures “barely scratch the surface of a widespread problem”.
The highest proportion, 27%, of racist and other discriminatory abuse by fans at professional matches were reported via the Kick It Out app. It enables supporters to report instances of abuse as they witness them, and the app instantly sends an email to the stadium’s safety officer, who can alert stewards. Six complaints were received by Kick It Out involving alleged offences by players or managers in professional or non-league football. Four involved social media use, including Mario Balotelli’s Instagram post of a racist and antisemitic cartoon figure for which the Liverpool striker received a one-match ban from the FA. Another involved the then Enfield Town manager, George Borg, who during a match in the Ryman League Premier Division responded to abuse from fans of Wingate & Finchley, a club with a Jewish following, by saying: “Hitler is going to get you.”
Borg, now coach to Burnham Ramblers in the Ryman League first division north, was banned by the FA from all football activity for five matches at the end of January.
Ives said he believes racism and discriminatory abuse have substantially decreased compared to the 1980s, and the game is more inclusive now, but the FA is better equipped to deal strongly with the problems which remain.
Every county FA must now have a local football anti-discrimination panel which hears disciplinary charges, with a chair trained to consider issues of racism and discrimination, of whom 12% are now women and 35% from black or minority ethnic origin. Panels produce and publish on their websites written reasons for all decided cases in adult local football, similar to those issued in the high-profile professional cases of players John Terry, Luis Suárez, Nicolas Anelka and the Wigan Athletic owner Dave Whelan, which have improved perceptions of the FA’s robustness in prosecuting incidents of discrimination.
Ives regards the increase in reported cases as encouraging, also believing it reflects less willingness to tolerate abuse. He said it is noticeable that more witnesses now come forward to give evidence, after years in which allegations of abuse relied only on the word of the person complaining. “It may seem strange to say that it is good to see cases increase from 477 last year at grassroots level to probably 800 this year,” Ives said, “but we believe anecdotally the problem itself is not increasing, and that this represents people feeling more confident about reporting abuse.
“In general, incidents of discrimination are thankfully reasonably rare, but until we have a society where these issues don’t occur, and people are accepted for who they are, not what they are, it is too many.”
Helen Grant, the sports minister, said: “These figures show that there is still hard work to be done to tackle racist, antisemitic, homophobic and sexist abuse in the game. The rise in the number of incidents reported is a concern; however it does also highlight that Kick It Out and the football authorities’ zero tolerance approach at every level of the game is cutting through, with people not willing to stand by and ignore or tolerate disgusting, deplorable abuse.”
Guardian
