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Racism at football

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Eagle Owl

Eagle Owl

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Since I'm only 20 years old, I haven't experienced the extremely rough times of football in England, when racist chants were more than common to be heard at grounds. Chelsea has obviously had its fair share of racist support back in the day, with the Headhunters gloryfying the SS and the Holocaust and the team being pretty much all white. This seems quite interesting to me, since there is no room for that in the stands anymore. Football has gone international in every European country, with black, Asian and Jewish players in clubs they would never have been able to represent back in the day.

Chelsea is to this date often seen as a far right club, with loads of supporters with racist ideologies in e.g. Eastern Europe. At the same time, it fields a team with African, Jewish and Latino players. How does this go hand in hand?

When I went to see Sparta Prague play last year, I bought my ticket to their ultras section, which is known for being pretty extreme. Taunting of their opponents with racist chants are common, especially when they face Slavia Prague, which is pretty much like the Spurs of the Czech Rep. Chelsea is also extremely popular among Sparta fans, for some reason.

The weird thing is, that even though 80 % of the ultras are bald wearing their Lonsdale and Adidas superstars, their support of a team with a few African players is passionate. E.g. when Wilfried Bony scored (now at Vitesse), the whole crowd went crazy for the Ivorian, chanting his name. This feels quite strange to me.

So in a nutshell, what's the situation like at Chelsea today? How do hard core fans look at this issue, and where did it all start, considering that Chelsea has had a black skinhead following ever since the 60s and 70s too?

 
I can't comment first hand about today, but in the old days Chelsea's support was very racist......but so were other clubs. My memory is very poor though becasue I thought it really was just a lot of skins on the terraces and NF material sold outside, don't remember too much abuse of black players.......then I watched my video of 6 Memorable Matches (or something like that) and whenever Viv Anderson went near the ball the monkey noises were very pronounced (and don't forget at Chelsea the TV mic was on a crane above the North Stand a couple of hundred yards from the Shed and quite hard to hear our vocal support on telly sometimes).......I really could not remember the monkey noises, despite having been at the match.....but it all came back to me after seeing the video.

As for our firm I didn't notice the racism at all.......B*** a prominent Chelsea leader in the 60s was half caste, and I used to go walkabout with BW after games in the 80s and heard he was still at it in the late 00s. There was at least one other prominent black fan in the 80s who delighted in chasing the local blacks in other towns on the way back to the station.

As for black players at the Bridge, well the two who gave away penalties in the 94 cup final were the most cheered the next day on the commiseration tour. People slag Chelsea for the racism, but what about the way our crowd changed for the better in this regard over the past 2 decades? Other clubs are far worse.

 
I'm sure I've described elsewhere attending a match on Hitler's birthday. The activists were out in full that day, wearing Hitler masks, standing in the benches (there seemed to be more of them there) singing Deutchland Uber Ales and various Tottenham songs (you know the ones) throughout the game.

Around that time right wing newspapers were on sale in Fulham Road, along with Chelsea NF badges. I knew a few blokes who went on NF marches, but most of them would tell you they were only along for the ruck. I've even heard black Chelsea fans chanting NF songs. Seriously.

".B*** a prominent Chelsea leader in the 60s was half caste" who I knew quite well at one time, was one of many black Chelsea fans However, Asian fans were NOT welcome. I can clearly remember an Asian fan fearful for his life because of comments directed towards him outside the Black Bull. He might have been ok but with a prevailing (and very vocal) attitude of "what the f**k is he doing here" you can't blame the bloke for not wanting to take the risk.

Back then that's how it was at most grounds. West Ham for instance, They had their share of black supporters but also an undeniably large section of out and out racist fans. The Southall Riots, for instance, were sparked off because a band called the 4Skins were due to play the Hambrough Tavern. The band had a large following among West Ham fans especially, who were expected to turn up in their droves at the Hambrough. Local Asians protested "we're not having these racists in our town", and petrol bombed the Hambrough.

That was the '70s, early '80s. You have only to look at TV programmes of the ear to realise how time has changed. Off the cuff remarks that weren't worth commenting on at the time would cause outrage nowadays. Society has moved on and so has football.

 
It was plain and simply a social fashion thing back then. The UK fashion scene also constantly moves on and turned Casual following the Punk,Skin and Mod era and the massive majority aren't actively involved in these aspects anymore and the issue was spread across many clubs as said. It just so happens that the most partisan/hooliganistic London fans did follow CFC, WHU and Millwall during the foregoing times... ;-)

 
Does anyone remember the programme on racism in football, it was shown on C4 in the early 90s & was called Great Britain Utd(i think) the Palace chairman Ron Noades got in trouble for saying something about black players wont make good managers because their more athletic or something along those lines, the black CFC lad BW Melbourne Blue mentions was on it, as was i in a still pic at QPR, i've been trying to find a copy for years as lost mine years ago.

 
Fast Eddie said:
It was plain and simply a social fashion thing back then. The UK fashion scene also constantly moves on and turned Casual following the Punk,Skin and Mod era and the massive majority aren't actively involved in these aspects anymore and the issue was spread across many clubs as said. It just so happens that the most partisan/hooliganistic London fans did follow CFC, WHU and Millwall during the foregoing times... ;-)
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I was on a special which had pretty much everyone on it hanging out the windows Sieg Heiling as it went slowly past Ninian Park. I don't for one minute believe everyone doing it was a fully paid up National Front or British Movement member, it was fashionable crowd mentality.

 
They used to sell Bulldog inside the ground I remember that.

Not sure it was "fashionable". Certainly not in the circles I mixed in. Racists were seen as not much more than a bunch of moronic cnuts.


 
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Peckham Blue said:
I was on a special which had pretty much everyone on it hanging out the windows Sieg Heiling as it went slowly past Ninian Park. I don't for one minute believe everyone doing it was a fully paid up National Front or British Movement member, it was fashionable crowd mentality.
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Must have been this game as our whole end at Cardiff also sieg heiling :unsure:

acrowd5.jpg


 
That's some interesting, and in many ways purely disgusting stuff. I was actually about to ask who the first black player at Chelsea was, and how he was welcomed by the home support. After all, we've got Google, so I had a read of my own instead.

The shocking revelations of Chelsea's first black player Paul Canoville

"They intimidated me, screamed vile racist abuse and threw bananas... and that was my own club's fans."

Do you remember this, older followers of Chelsea? That must've been a really rough time in the club's history - personally, I would probably not have been able to attend games in a crowd like that. At what point did the racial abuse disappear? I mean, I can't see anything like this happen in a Chelsea section nowadays, or in that case the person responsible would probably get a load of s**t thrown at him (rightfully so).

 
Eagle Owl said:
Do you remember this, older followers of Chelsea? That must've been a really rough time in the club's history - personally, I would probably not have been able to attend games in a crowd like that. At what point did the racial abuse disappear? I mean, I can't see anything like this happen in a Chelsea section nowadays, or in that case the person responsible would probably get a load of s**t thrown at him (rightfully so).
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I've never seen bananas thrown but I was there at his debut, a pre-season friendly away to Crystal Palace. It wasn't nice.

 
Peckham Blue said:
I've never seen bananas thrown but I was there at his debut, a pre-season friendly away to Crystal Palace. It wasn't nice.
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some of you must recall that grimsby town v chelsea game in the mid 1980's when paul cavonill

came on as a sub?

i might be stand corected here but this was the first time a black player was seen in a cfc shirt.

the away end seemed full that day as all the cfc fans went into the 'sieg heil'.

you could also hear the chant 'one white team in london'.

i laugh about that game as i took a sheff weds lad with us and he was a milk chocolate black lad,

even he was doing the 'sieg heil',and for sure he was not getting any stress from any chelsea fans.

mindyou if they knew he was sheff weds i would have expected different.

 
Peckham Blue said:
I've never seen bananas thrown but I was there at his debut, a pre-season friendly away to Crystal Palace. It wasn't nice.
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It was a league game mate, awful day during an awful part of our club's history.

 
MKBlue said:
It was a league game mate, awful day during an awful part of our club's history.
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The memory cells are fading I'm afraid. It was horrible. The friendly was good though, we chased Palace out of the Holmesdale End onto the pitch and then had a row with either Arsenal or Liverpool at Victoria who were playing in the Charity Shield, we ran across the railway lines at them and I nearly got hit by an incoming train.

 
Peckham Blue said:
The memory cells are fading I'm afraid. It was horrible. The friendly was good though, we chased Palace out of the Holmesdale End onto the pitch and then had a row with either Arsenal or Liverpool at Victoria who were playing in the Charity Shield, we ran across the railway lines at them and I nearly got hit by an incoming train.
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Yeah I remember that Palace friendly, we lost 5-0 to their team of the 80s I think, never knew about Victoria as I lived the other side of Croydon from Selhurst and didn't have to go back into town, used to be a lot of Chelsea lads from that part of the world who drank in the Horseshoe on Thornton Heath ponds.

 
I was at the game when Paul Canoville made his debut, it was April 82, not 100% sure but he may have come on as a sub.

I do remember he received terrible abuse and there was a large Chelsea NF flag hanging from the floodlight pylon.

I'm surprised he stuck around after that, but credit to him he did and went on to become a bit of a hero after his performance at Sheff. Wed when we was 3 down at half time in the league cup.

 
I went to a milk cup match at notts county in 1982. Crammed into a section of terracing, some fellas behind me unfurled a german flag with "chelsea ss" on it! Interestingly the emblem of the ss was the "deaths head skull" later adopted by the chelsea headhunters http://

 
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