Tribalism and the Acceptance of Football Hooliganism
If you were asked to name a prominent aspect of English culture, you might say anything from the widespread love of tea, to the novelty of the long-reigning British monarchy. You might even quip that England has no real culture of its own, and that’s a broad statement that may or may not be true. One thing that would undoubtedly be true, however, something England would first bring to mind for many people, would be football.
The history of football in England stretches all the way back to written references to the game in the 14th and 15th centuries. An early version of football known as ‘folk football’ was played from the 1700s, sometimes involving up to a thousand players as well as a lot more violence than is typical of modern football. Through the 1800s, football increased in popularity thanks to the British Empire, who used it as a means of teaching certain values, like order and discipline, to the population. In 1863, the official rules of modern football were set down with the establishment of the Football Association, and from there, football continued to explode, both in England and beyond.
From the very beginning there has been tribalism embedded in the game of football. It is, after all, a team game, and that necessitates at least some amount of rivalry. Even in relatively slower, no contact sports like tennis and cricket, tribalism still runs deep between the fans of different players. This rivalry is often based on which player or team is perceived to have the most skill, or something as irrelevant as geographic location, something many sports teams are based on.
Tribalism is defined in the dictionary as ‘the state or fact of being organised in a tribe or tribes’. Traditionally, of course, this refers quite literally to real tribes that have existed the world over throughout history. Some tribes that still live on in the 21st century include the Native American Apache tribe, and Khoikhoi and San tribes of Africa. But although many features of what we might call traditional tribalism have died out with the growth of Western society, tribalism seems to be an instinctual and enduring part of the human condition. It simply has a different look for the new age.
Where traditional tribalism often brings to mind the image of groups banding together for survival, modern tribalism as we’d recognise it today seems to stem mostly from recreational activities. This can be seen in videogame, music and television/movie fandoms, as well as in religious sects and political parties. It can be seen in almost anything where people band together over any common interest, and a major common interest, not just in England but the world over, is sport — more specifically, football.
Tribalism will often bring with it, by definition, feuds or rivalry. Any recreational interest will often have an alternative that necessitates a rival tribe — PlayStation vs Xbox, Conservatives vs Labour, and almost any religion against any other religion. The way most sports are played will fan these flames — players or teams facing off against each other competitively, often for what fans perceive as very high stakes, like a trophy or great renown.
Hence the more popular and well-performing English football teams, teams that have earned their distinction like Liverpool or Manchester United, have deeply committed fans who display their passion with great enthusiasm. Therein lies the problem — with regards to football, this passion and enthusiasm can, and often does, if left unchecked, lead to scenes of violence. The phenomena of British football ‘hooliganism’ is so apparent that it even has its own Wikipedia page, and as a country, we’ve been developing such a reputation since the 1960s.
This ‘hooliganism’ has been around as long as football has, which perhaps says something about the nature of the game itself. Either way, by the 1970s, many football clubs of various repute had their own organised hooligan firms, the main aim of which was to create mayhem. Burnley F.C.’s firm, known as Suicide Squad, were responsible for riots and even the murder of a teenage fan from a rival team, Nottingham Forest. The Leeds United Service Crew caused numerous riots, a particularly infamous one occurring at the 1975 European Cup final, leading to Leeds being banned from European competitions for several years. Manchester United’s Red Army would travel to stadiums up and down the country to instigate violence. Their exploits led, in 1974, to the crowd segregation and fencing at stadiums around England.
Not only was the widespread use of such outright violence deeply unsettling, so too were the racially motivated attacks, such as the chant of “Zulu, Zulu”, aimed by Manchester City fans at Birmingham due to their multicultural following. Racial abuse was also directed at black players. While the phenomena of football hooliganism has died down with the advent of the new millennium, many of the firms disbanding in recent decades, it’s far from being stamped out completely. Attacks on fans of rival teams by English fans still happen, some racially motivated. Riots are still commonplace and have broken out as recent as 2021. This is all without even mentioning the countless match day brawls that go unreported.
The violence of football hooligans is only an extreme display of the tribalism deeply engrained in football culture. Even when that extreme isn’t reached, the attitudes of tribalism alone permeate through society in questionable ways. Children raised by football fans are dressed in their team’s colours before even knowing what they mean. Flags are flown from windows. Many bars in inner-city areas, such as Manchester, serve drinks in plastic cups on match days in anticipation of violence. It’s a common notion that those who don’t enjoy or support football steer well clear of busy areas on match days. While there’s nothing wrong with wearing the colours of your team, it’s all part of a culture that instils fear in the general population, even when it doesn’t mean to.
Certainly, not every fan of football is a hooligan, but every hooligan is a football fan. People cannot be blamed for tarring the majority of football supporters with the same brush. Years of destructive and violent behaviour associated with football have certainly led some people to draw that conclusion, and justifiably so. Wearing the same football shirt as every other football fan means that the peaceful cannot easily be distinguished from the aggressive. The best bet at safety, then, means keeping your distance from the packs of supporters that roam the cities or town centres on match days.
However, alongside the undercurrent of trepidation felt by many, there’s also a level of acceptance felt and expressed by much of the country. Granted, there’s not much that can be done by the general population to curb the rampant behaviour of football fans across the country. From this, an indifferent tolerance is adopted instead. There’s the sense that these people do not approve of football or the behaviour associated with it, but are willing to live and let live. Similar to the old tautology that boys will be boys, so football will bring hooliganism with it, as it always has done.
But football seems to be the only area in which this indifferent tolerance has been granted. In the face of such unrestrained violence, it seems odd that anyone should bequeath any kind of acceptance or allowance. Nowhere in other fandoms do we come across this kind of behaviour, or, at least, not to such an extent. One notable example would be the storming of several McDonald’s restaurants by fans of the television show Rick and Morty, in their demands for Szechuan sauce. While police were called to these scenes, there were no casualties or fatalities. The incident was more an angry protest than a riot. Even if such events were more common, it’s unlikely that they would receive the same tolerance as football hooliganism.
Generally, though, the likes of music, movie, television and gaming fandoms are largely non-violent. Much of that can perhaps be put down to the necessity of staying indoors to game, or watch television. But even when big groups of people come together to enjoy these activities, at the cinema or at live music events, violence is limited. This doesn’t mean that strong, divisive opinions don’t exist within these fandoms, and certainly the use of verbal aggression in online gaming circles is an issue, but violence itself is not a problem typically associated with these groups. We don’t even see hooliganism in other sports to the extent we see it in football. The same cannot be said for politics or religion — in fact, it’s perhaps telling that football is treated more like a religion, by hardcore fans in particular, than a recreational interest.
It goes to show that enough bad behaviour over time will necessitate more tolerance than good behaviour from the start. It throws up an image of the good child losing out on attention or love because of the loud cries of the naughty child. Eventually, given enough time, a self-fulfilling prophecy comes into effect. Why shouldn’t football fans cause havoc when the rest of the country is looking on, expecting it to happen? It’s almost as if those plastic cups used on match days are like the red cape to a bull — an invitation, almost. We expect it to happen, and football fans know that. Why not make it so?
Perhaps the issue is something of a gendered one. A 2021 UK survey published by Statista Research Department found that only 17% of female respondents identified as avid football fans, while 47% of male respondents identified as avid football fans. We don’t need statistics to deduce that the vast majority of football supporters are men, and thus, the main perpetrators of football hooliganism. Sport itself is seen as a more masculine hobby, and the fandom of football specifically no doubt provides an echo chamber of toxic masculinity. Couple this with team rivalry and heady tribalism and you’ve got a good environment in which to cultivate aggression.
Surely, the intertwining of drinking culture with football culture doesn’t help matters either. Drinking heavily is considered something of a rite on match days, hence the aforementioned plastic cups served by some bars on such days — the mixture of competitive spirit, intoxication, and mob mentality is surely a potent cocktail for aggression, and before too long, violence. That’s not to say that alcohol is the sole cause of hooliganism, but its status as a contributing factor cannot be understated. However, the importance we place on our strong drinking culture as a country is a problematic phenomenon in its own right, and deserves its own article.
We have to ask ourselves why we accept such behaviour as football hooliganism as a society. Perhaps, as such a defining part of English culture, football itself is considered almost sacred by some — not to be criticised or panned, even when the behaviour associated with it is terrible. That behaviour then, too, becomes sacred in an almost perverse way. It’s as if we’re afraid to condemn such conduct in fear of condemning something we’ve held up as part of our own collective identity. As such, hooliganism goes unchecked, and persists into the modern day.
History has shown us time and time again that the proclivity for aggression and violence is a dogged part of human nature, and the culture of football is perhaps a convenient outlet for that. Perhaps we understand that there is no solving such a complex and widespread problem, at least not this late in the game. Perhaps, quite rightly, we take hope in the idea that football hooliganism will correct itself — it’s not a likely solution, but a plausible one. After all, the vast majority of the perpetrators of this violence are men, fully-grown and as rational as anyone else. It’s not unreasonable to hope and believe that adults can act like adults, and not only take accountability for their own actions, but also care about improving those actions.
It’s certainly a shame that our country’s love of football has been tainted with years of destructive behaviour. That behaviour has sometimes been a product of its time, a product of its environment, but never has it been acceptable or tolerable. Even in the vicious, Medieval games of football’s infancy, there was no real call for violence. What a pity that in the several centuries since then, almost nothing has changed — what a pity that passion could become such an ugly thing.
