Sound of silence leaves shame at the Lane
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Simon Hattenstone
Wednesday February 8, 2006
The Guardian
[/FONT]Bob is a big lad with a history of headbutting - though to be fair, he is the Robin Hood of headbutts, only redistributing violence in the name of justice. He has followed Spurs for 34 years, heard all sorts of nasty chants over the decades, and probably sung a few himself in his time. In short, he's no delicate flower.
On Monday he came into work, distraught. He'd been at White Hart Lane on Sunday and said he'd never heard anything like it.
"It was bloody horrible," he said. "You know me, I can take most things, but ... I felt embarrassed to be there." Spurs fans have chanted against Sol Campbell ever since he left for the enemy, Arsenal, in 2001. Last week, as Campbell broke down and did a runner from Highbury, the abuse reached its nadir.
"Well, go on then?" I asked Bob, half-expecting to enjoy it.
"No," he said, "I'll send it you." If it was too awful for Bob to repeat it had to be bad. A couple of minutes later I got this email.
"This is it to the tune of Lord of the Dance: Sol, Sol, wherever you may be/You're on the verge of lunacy/And we don't give a feck if you're hanging from a tree/You Judas cnut with HIV."
No wonder he sent it rather than sang it. To its credit, it is a brilliantly tight verse, addressing any number of prejudices in four little lines. There's something to offend everybody here - the mentally ill, HIV sufferers, gay people, women, with an allusion to racist lynching thrown in for good measure.
When the White Hart Lane faithful tired of this chant they reverted to the following classic ...
"He's big/He's black/He takes it up the crack/Sol Campbell, Sol Campbell."
There is nothing new about football and homophobia. Many football fans know the one salient fact - Justin Fashanu, the only professional footballer who came out as gay, killed himself some years later. And footy fans tend to be offensive even when on their best behaviour. But this was something else. A little boy near Bob asked his dad why people were singing so many angry songs. His dad didn't know what to say - because they were racist, homophobic, united in bile and loathing? Too many depressing concepts to introduce to a child.
What disturbs me almost as much as the chanting is media silence, which then becomes collusion. Why didn't newspapers mention it in the match reports? Some would say that to even refer to it is giving the bigots what they want, and serves as a form of "outing". But it's gone beyond that. Did silence defeat Nazism or apartheid? As Pastor Martin Niemöller observed all those years ago, silence can be as deadly as the bullet.
When Campbell has been discussed in recent days most media reports have euphemistically alluded to personal problems/girlfriend problems/worries about his brother/his ambition to model. Most of these pieces fail to mention that his older brother John is serving time for beating up a Spurs fan who suggested Campbell was gay. In the real world virtually everybody I spoke to had heard that a Sunday tabloid was preparing an "exposé" on him. As it happened there was no exposé, but no wonder he was in bits.
Whether Campbell likes it or not, and whether he is gay or not (I haven't got a clue), he's a victim of homophobia. Just as Graeme Le Saux - a Match of the Day 2 pundit and father of two - was when he played. So why didn't the MotD team highlight the verbal assault on Campbell, why didn't they ask Le Saux why it is such a poison in modern football, why didn't he talk about how it almost destroyed his career, and why he found it so hard to laugh off?
As for the racist chants, we were quick enough and smug enough to point out when Spain fans made monkey grunts at our black players. So don't we have a responsibility to highlight the same despicable behaviour of our fans?
The Let's Kick Racism Out of Football campaign has been successful, but now it needs to be broadened to Let's Kick Prejudice Out of Football. And commentators, clubs and police must show they really mean it. Last November the Football Association launched its anti-homophobia drive. But this is pure tokenism unless clubs back it (bizarrely, the FA has only asked five clubs for support so far - Manchester United, Manchester City, Brighton and Hove Albion, Burnley and Coventry City) and unless the Crown Prosecution Service is prepared to prosecute offenders.
Meanwhile, Bob is mourning a lost innocence. In his email he asks: "What happened to the light-heartedness of the days when we sang songs such as this one for Man Utd games (to the tune of My Old Man's a Dustman): Posh Spice is a slapper/She wears a Wonderbra/ And when she's shagging Beckham/ She thinks of Ginola."
