In the Newcastle of the 1980s, where I spent my teens, there was one Saturday of each year on which all the black people I knew kept a low profile. The home fixture between Newcastle United and Chelsea, at St James’ Park, was not a good Saturday for black Geordies to hit the Toon.
The reputation for violence and racism that Chelsea’s hooligans acquired over the course of the 1970s and 80s was known to young black people and, not that we ever admitted it to one another, we feared these fans. Had we known then of their strong links to white supremacists groups such as Combat 18 and the National Front, we might have feared them even more. Three decades later, and the racism of a small section of Chelsea’s fanbase has, again, impacted on my plans.
I was to have spent last week reading, scripting and having discussions with colleagues, friends and academics about a new BBC TV series we’re producing, exploring the long history of black people in Britain. Despite all the horrors and tragedies of that history, there are, I believe, elements of our joint past about which black and white Britons can feel positive and optimistic.
But in my conversations last week, my sense of optimism and progress has been partially derailed by the racist chants that echoed from the tunnels of the Paris metro, radiating across the world.
This has not been a good week to ask people to look at the positive sides of black history.
One short clip, filmed on the cameraphone of a passerby – perhaps significantly, an outraged English resident of the French capital – seems in so many ways to belong to another era, when I would stay at home to avoid the attentions of an earlier generation of Chelsea supporters.
Like most racist incidents, it was as much about humiliation as intimidation. A young man on his way home from work is assaulted in the city of his birth by a group of thugs, speaking a language he did not understand. What makes it an almost uniquely powerful incident, however, is not the violence or the palpable menace but the open and repeated admission of racism, delivered through the turgid medium of the chant “We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it.”
Almost no one in western societies admits to being racist. Public figures caught on camera saying the most outrageously racist things, such as US policemen filmed beating or shooting unarmed black men, will admit to their words and defend their actions, but will almost never self-identify as racists. That the victim of the incident on 17 February, Souleymane S, a 33-year-old family man, did not at the time fully comprehend the chants might have been for the best. His attempts to reason with the Chelsea supporters across the language gap, to stand up to their intimidation and resist their violence is terrifying to watch. Having been the victim of a serious racial assault on a London Underground train in the 1980s, I shudder to think about the incident we might have spent this week discussing, had Souleymane gained access to the carriage and then been sealed in that space, with his tormentors, beyond the gaze of the cameraphone that recorded the incident. The humiliation of Souleymane S thrust Chelsea FC’s management into full damage-limitation mode on 18 February. One fear will have been that the club’s new legions of supporters, recently recruited in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, might view the images from Paris and question their allegiance to a club over which there already hung a sizeable cloud of suspicion. Despite signing a string of sensational African players, and unveiling a procession of talented, black youngsters from their impressive youth programme, Chelsea has never fully rid itself of the stain of racism.
What did the modern club most damage was that incident in 2011 when Chelsea captain John Terry hurled a mouthful of racist abuse at QPR’s Anton Ferdinand. The assault on Souleymane S and a few seconds of drunken chanting have gone a long way to reaffirming suspicions that many people already harboured about the club.
This is not only unfair to the majority of Chelsea fans, it also risks undermining the enormous efforts English football has taken in recent decades to – as the campaign promises – kick racism out of football. Most significantly, this incident took place abroad, putting English football’s dirtiest laundry on display in another European capital.
When the barrage of condemnation began in the early hours of 18 February, one of the loudest laments was that the “events in Paris” risked damaging the reputation English football has gained in the wider world. No longer – so the argument went – would English clubs be able to point accusing fingers at Russian and east European sides, whose supporters routinely unleash tirades of racial abuse against “our” black players.
But this is a much bigger issue, and there might be more at stake than just the standing of English teams or the FA. What took place at Richelieu-Drouot station last week was an act of retro-racism that is at odds with the image that we have of ourselves as a nation. We have convinced ourselves and the rest of the world that we are a cool, tolerant and relaxed people. London’s fame as the greatest melting pot on earth – far more diverse than New York or, indeed, Paris, is spreading.
Central to this was the “2012 moment”, when an Olympic opening ceremony set out that version of Britishness. Then a multiracial, multicultural Team GB hammered home the point with an avalanche of medals, fixing that version of Britishness in the global imagination. We have, arguably, become accustomed to seeing ourselves as that effortlessly cool, inclusive Britain, and as part of the bargain, many of us, myself included, have grown used to tut-tutting at other, less-enlightened European nations, particularly those in the east.
Yet it is possible to draw positives as well as negatives from this grubby incident and its aftermath. First, the condemnation of the travelling Chelsea fans has been vocal, persistent and almost universal. The assault and the chanting were too ugly to be dismissed as an aberration, but what took place this week might yet have a positive effect. Any grumbles from within British football about the importance of support and funding needed by the various anti-racism initiatives will now evaporate. In this way, the humiliation of Souleymane S could, perversely, strengthen the hand of the men and women who are leading the long war against racism in football.
The results of the incident for our standing as a nation, and a footballing nation abroad, may be humbling. But what I felt, when I first saw the film from Paris, was not a sense of national embarrassment but one of annoyance. We have come too far – in our football stadiums and on our streets – for us to permit the thuggery of a gaggle of drunks to define us and our Britain in 2015.
David Olusoga is a historian and documentary maker at the BBC
