Racists in Paris present depressing image of Chelsea, football and Britain

The thuggery and racism of the Chelsea supporters filmed shoving a black passenger off the waiting train in the Paris Métro on a prestigious European football night were laden with symbolism as well as shock. The fact it happened underground carried a powerful signal that such unabashed racist chanting, and these people’s sense of entitlement to casually assault a complete stranger, persist despite all football’s many campaigns and efforts to counter it, including by Chelsea themselves.

With similarly awful timing to the Wigan owner Dave Whelan’s appointment of Malky Mackay as manager– who was and remains under investigation by the Football Association for racism – the day after Wigan won an award for community club of the year, these Chelsea fans’ behaviour stuck two fingers up at the “Game for Equality” Chelsea are scheduled to hold against Burnley on Saturday.

That game highlights some of the efforts Chelsea have made in recent years to counter the racism for which a group of its fans from the 1970s onwards caused the club toxic notoriety. It is part of the “Building Bridges” initiative, running since 2010, advertising anti-discrimination on advertising hoardings at every home game, with a video promoting equality shown before the match. The game, carrying the slogan “Support Chelsea Support Equality” has been backed up by features on Chelsea’s website opposing racism, homophobia, sexism and all discrimination. The latest, an interview with star striker Diego Costa talking about the club “setting an example” on “eradicating all forms of discrimination from football and wider society” – went up on the same day the film of the fans on the Métro chanting “We’re racist, we’re racist, and that’s the way we like it” went global.

Lord Herman Ouseley, chair of football’s anti-discrimination campaign body Kick It Out and a veteran speaker of truth to those in power about the resilience of prejudice and need to work harder to counter it, acknowledged how hard Chelsea have worked to oppose racism.

The reaction of Paul Canoville, who suffered virulent public racism while playing for Chelsea in the 1980s, was significant. His struggles stand as a landmark example of that era when the football clubs, authorities and governments did and said nothing to oppose mass booing of black players, when racist chanting was simply accepted. Canoville himself now works with Chelsea, running anti-discrimination workshops in local schools, and he highlighted changed times and the good work done by his former club, condemning those fans in the Métro for overshadowing it.

“It puts a dampener on the work Chelsea has done in regards to Kick It Out and Red Card,” Canoville told ITV News. “It overshadows everything that is going on at the club – we’re top of the league and in a final next week, but we’re not talking about that. I know how seriously Chelsea will be taking this. They will be looking for the individuals.”

Yet looming over this admiration of Chelsea’s good works is the racist abuse for which the club’s totemic captain, John Terry, was found guilty by the Football Association in September 2012. The club backed him throughout, arguing Terry had a right to advance his defence – that he was only repeating back to Anton Ferdinand the words “fucking black cunt” rather than using them as an insult – which the FA panel rejected. There remains a perception, though, that the support for Terry, which included glowing character references from the club’s chairman, Bruce Buck, went beyond duty and edged dangerously close to condoning what Terry did. There has been a notable contrast between clubs’ support for star, multi-million pound playing assets accused of racism, and the decisive action taken against foul-mouthed fans whose season tickets can be taken by the next eager person on the waiting list.

Chelsea fans are currently second-highest in the table of club supporters being served football banning orders, according to Home Office figures, with 91 (Newcastle have 127), but not one was arrested in 2013-14 for racist chanting. Throughout the whole season at all 20 Premier League clubs, just nine fans were arrested for that offence.

The total – just 1,599 people arrested in 2013-14, of almost 30m who attended matches in all four divisions – bears out, on the one hand, football supporters’ general good behaviour and the admirable modern efforts to encourage it.

Football on the field of play is a spectacle of diversity beyond just about any other British workplace, and the anti-racism message could hardly be any clearer. Yet on the other hand, the fans on the Paris Métro were clearly not chanting those words for the first time, and there is a feeling that incidents of racism and thuggery are too messy and intimidating for culprits usually to be brought to book.

This lingering nastiness, as Ouseley said, remains in our society – not just attached to football – and he is concerned that anti-immigrant rhetoric, now legitimised by Ukip’s emergence as a political force, is breeding more prejudice. Football reflects the country it is played in, one where a “game for equality” will be watched by some people who still, despite everything, chant pride at being racist, and casually push a black man off a train.