Antisemitism and Other Racism in Football

Debate between Christian Wakeford and Alex Sobel

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer, both as a neighbour and an MP covering a large and proud Jewish community. Women and men, girls and boys, northern and southern, blue and red, and religious and non-religious meet arm in arm and stand side by side at our football stadiums, supporting their beloved teams. Communities come together to passionately rally behind their sides in the hope of that everlasting and euphoric victory. There is no feeling quite like it and as a United fan, it has been a while since I have felt that feeling.

We all remember the glorious scenes across the country last summer as that inspiring England team came so close to bringing it home. However, what we saw directed at our three lions, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho, after the game shows that a serious and worrisome trend continues to infiltrate our games and spread like a poison across our stands. It is the poison of racism, aimed mostly at working-class black lads merely for doing the job they love.

Discrimination wherever it occurs and in whatever format needs to be rooted out and eradicated. If the abuse directed at players on pitches in this country and elsewhere is not stamped out, it will send a worrying message to the next generation of stars and spectators. That is why I was heartened to see the immense courage of Blackpool player Jake Daniels, who recently came out as gay, giving gay players a role model and normalising the fact that football is a game for everyone regardless of sexual orientation.

There is a growing trend of Jews attending games hoping to see their team defend with vigour, but instead finding themselves defending their children from racist vitriol. However, this is news to no one. Everyone knows that antisemitism has haunted the stands of British football for far too long. Antisemitism seems to be a common feature of the sport. While some clubs have shown an increasing commitment to stamping out prejudice and discrimination in their clubs through the adoption of the IHRA definition, as well as Chelsea’s “Say No to Antisemitism” campaign, it seems to have had little traction as of yet.

We see examples of antisemitism in football everywhere. Tottenham Hotspur football club is, of course, home to a large Jewish population, and rival supporters have used the pejorative Y-word, as has already been mentioned, with little consequence for doing so. West Ham fans found themselves banned from attending club games after they sang antisemitic songs on a commercial flight. Arsenal fans spat at Spurs fans that they would be “gassing Jews”. Even at grassroot and junior football, I have heard local reports from Maccabi of their Jewish players—some only seven years of age—being hissed at by players on the opposite side, replicating the noise of the gas chambers. I am sure that we can all agree that is truly shameful, shocking and abhorrent.

This racist abuse is widespread, though, with most Premier League clubs having witnessed antisemitic abuse within the last decade, so I am happy to contribute to the debate to address what has been done and what remains to be done to fight this concerning trend of antisemitism and racism in British football. I am delighted to see that some clubs across the UK have taken steps to combat antisemitic behaviour among their fans as well as among their players. Clubs like Chelsea have recently been in the news for doing just that. Much more needs to be done within football and throughout wider society—indeed, other sports, too, as we saw in cricket with Azeem Rafiq and the Islamophobia that came out just last year.

Sport provides an opportunity to create new friends and be part of a community, and it teaches young people how to co-exist in diverse politics. Sports is an incredibly powerful tool. Football, in particular, reflects society, and that is why I am concerned to see examples of antisemitism during the local elections this year from Conservative candidates in my own area of Bury because, again, antisemitism needs to be rooted out from our stands, society and politics. There is no time or place for it; it has to stop.

We need to do much more to ensure that British football players can play the beautiful game without being subject to unacceptable abuse. We need tougher sanctions against offenders, action by social media companies, better education about the plight of Jews and all other races who find themselves subject to racist attacks, and a zero-tolerance policy that does not allow for repeat offenders, as well as—perhaps—policies that punish offenders retrospectively.

The normalisation of racist abuse is a significant step towards the normalisation of racist attacks. We need to be hard on this issue, otherwise we will bring about a worse situation in which our ethnic minorities are physically abused. Nipping this problem in the bud is the correct course of action in order to get back the community and family feeling at British football games, and to finally give antisemitism the two-footed slide tackle that it deserves.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend mentioned online antisemitism. I am a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Taskforce To Combat Online Antisemitism. We found that popular subjects, such as football and other sports, were being used on social media, for instance in videos, and people included things such as tropes and conspiracy theories to gradually groom and recruit people into the far right and racist gangs. And these practices actually become prevalent in sporting arenas, such as football grounds. Do we not need more to stamp that out online, so that it does not appear in the grounds?

[Christian Wakeford]

We absolutely need to do that, because if antisemitism and racism are allowed to breed online, it ultimately ends up on the streets, in our football stands and in any sporting arena, as well as—again—in our politics.

The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) who secured this debate spoke about the great work of Lord Mann in tackling this issue. I was very fortunate to speak in a conference in Jerusalem last year about antisemitism and how it is tackled on a global scale. We heard from representatives from Hungary, from Borussia Dortmund and from Chelsea as to how they have seen antisemitism not only grow but start to be tackled. In some stands, we saw swastikas being flown just a couple of years ago, but those clubs are now very family-friendly, because they nipped the problem in the bud and have a zero-tolerance approach. We need to see the same on our online platforms, which is why —again—the Online Safety Bill was a fantastic opportunity. However, it has been a missed opportunity, when so much more could be done to tackle this harmful abuse online.

That is why we really need to tackle this problem. We need to tackle it seriously and make sure that it is banished to where it belongs—in the history books.