Football Hooliganism

Debate between Gregory Campbell and Gareth Johnson

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered football hooliganism.

It is a pleasure, as normal, Mr Rosindell, to serve under chairmanship. I bring this debate to Westminster Hall not claiming in any way to be a football expert—a lot of people in England might be claiming that right now, but I do in particular. In many respects, I am not a huge football fan, but I am proud to be English, and over the past few weeks I have been sickened, frankly, at the all-too-familiar sight of English football hooliganism on the television. It is not something new, unfortunately; it is something we have had to endure over a long time.

I wanted to secure this debate simply because I am sick and tired of watching scenes of disorder and violence following the English football team around, in particular during the recent Euro football finals. The scenes were depressingly familiar and, frankly, embarrassing for anyone English. Time and again, England has witnessed its name dragged through the mud by a group of people who want to use football as a vehicle for their love of violence. We do not tolerate drunken behaviour on the high street or anywhere around the rest of the country, so we should not tolerate it when it follows football either.

The strange thing about football hooliganism is that a mob mentality often seems to take over. The crowd encourages intolerance of, and turns on, anyone not in their group, whether a member of another fan club, a local resident or someone in some way different from them. Such disorder simply puts decent people off attending games.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the converse is the impeccable behaviour we witnessed at the Euro 2016 championships of, for example, the Welsh and Northern Ireland fans? Their behaviour was exemplary and outstanding. I assume he will go on to say that we need to encourage the vast majority of fans throughout the United Kingdom who are decent and well behaved to ensure that such behaviour is the standard by which everyone else is judged. Those who fall short of that standard ought to be penalised very heavily indeed.

[Gareth Johnson]

I am happy to congratulate the fans from Ulster and Wales on their behaviour, generally speaking. Some incidents were reported that involved those groups of fans, but it is right to say that, generally, they were a credit to Northern Ireland and to Wales. The majority of English fans were also well behaved— I do not think anyone disputes that—but there were those actions by a tiny, selfish group of people.

Northern Ireland can be very proud of reaching those finals. It is a shame in many ways that England did not face Northern Ireland, because it would have ensured one further UK team—[Interruption.] I am not claiming that England would have won the game; if we could not beat a team from a country with 300,000 people, we might have struggled to beat Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, that might have enabled another UK team to go further forward.

Northern Ireland can hold its head high and be proud of the fans who followed its team and who, without doubt, helped the team. Another aspect of the problem is that the hooliganism cannot help the England team to play well. Wayne Rooney being forced to condemn the behaviour of some of his own fans on television must have an effect on the team’s morale and performance. I am not for one minute claiming that football hooliganism caused England to play as badly as they did, but it cannot have helped the overall atmosphere in the England camp if they had to deal with hooliganism issues.

People see the incidents that we all witness on the television and simply will not risk getting involved in the inevitable problems. There is no way that I would take my wife and children to follow England in a football tournament, because I would not want to run the risk of my family getting caught up in those problems. It is incredibly sad that a proud English person who takes an interest in football might not be willing to take the family abroad to follow the England team. Some families, of course, do so without any problem, but I would not run the risk with my family, and that is sad.

Many of the hardened football hooligans have been kept away from international tournaments by banning orders. A drunken yobbishness, however, has taken over from that hard-core hooliganism, with some people still being generally aggressive and unpleasant, leading, inevitably, to antisocial behaviour. We saw many such instances in France in the recent tournament. It is right to say that other fans also behaved badly in Marseille, with problems emanating from various different countries, and the irresponsible comments by Vladimir Putin certainly did not help the situation in France.