The scenes of
racist and anti-Semitic behaviour among Polish and Ukrainian football fans
shown in the BBC’s recent Panorama programme speak for themselves. There is little
about these images that could be ‘manipulated’, as some Polish commentators
have suggested, to make these supporters look worse than they are. There is a serious problem. But does
it merit Sol Campbell’s warning to stay away, or risk ‘coming home in a coffin’? Luke Harding’s damning article on Ukraine certainly seems to concur
with Campbell. Harding was right to point to the mess that Ukraine is in; but
his analysis lumped several separate problems together, not all of which
represent a threat to travelling fans: Merkel’s boycott, for one, is nothing to
do with racism, but with political freedom, while the Femen group’s naked
protests are, while perhaps self-defeating, raising very legitimate fears about
sex tourism (though Harding’s warning’s may help to ease this problem if fans from Western Europe stay away).
Before we start cancelling our tickets, it is worth remembering that racism and anti-Semitism in
football are Europe-wide phenomena. Louis Saha recently singled
out Italy and Spain on Newsnight as particularly unpleasant places to play in. In the UK, West
Ham fans are notorious for making gas-hissing noises at matches with Tottenham
Hotspur (like Cracovia, one of the teams featured in Panorama, supposedly a
‘Jewish team’). What the scenes in Panorama show is what happens when
bigoted fans are allowed to express their hatred uninhibited by
police, football authorities or government. One can imagine what would happen
were the English Defence League allowed to purchase black tickets for football
matches and behave as they pleased. In this regard, the report was a shocking indictment of the bodies responsible for football in
Poland and Ukraine, of their complacency and incompetence.
Was Panorama an
indictment of Polish
and Ukrainian societies at large? Many
in the West have been rightly alarmed by the rise of right-wing politics in
Ukraine, where the right-wing Svoboda, or ‘Freedom’
Party, has become a clownish centre of attention, and won seats in local authorities. Yet while
Svoboda’s
rise should be a cause for concern, as yet it has no
MPs in the
national parliament. Recent Greek or French election
results show a more alarming swing to the right than current Ukrainian or Polish politics. With
regard to Poland, polls by the Anti-Defamation League in ten EU countries do
show high levels of anti-Semitism in Poland, but
even higher levels some Western European countries, particularly in Spain.
Poland doesn’t look good in these polls, but it also doesn’t appear unique.
