You'll have probably heard about how Spurs fans reacted in Sunday's home match against West Ham to threats from the FA and the Met Police regarding their continued use of the word 'yid'.
Wading into an already-saturated debate as I may be, there is nevertheless a methodological point in the 'Y-word' controversy that requires some attention, having been swept aside by the storm around the word itself.
The problem is the approach of those who desire the eradication of 'yid' not only from football but from all sectors of society. They believe that the moral correctness of their view is so powerful as to negate the need for strategy or understanding of the supporters they are lambasting.
Thus we cannot be surprised that despite the irrefutable nobility of the cause Spurs fans continue to sing 'Yid Army' - and now with even greater conviction.
Football fans don't like being dictated to by outsiders on matters of their club's identity and tradition. Nothing gets the hackles up quicker on a football fan than someone telling them that they don't know what's best for their own club. Particularly in this instance, what has been a longstanding tradition left to develop in isolation is now being dragged into the light and condemned.
The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust stated last week that they didn't believe that any
Spurs fan "uses the term 'yid' in an offensive or insulting way," rather that it represented a "badge of
honour and a call to arms". Meanwhile, the Trust claims that "anti-Semitic abuse levelled at our fans by
supporters of opposing teams, appears to have been dismissed by the FA and the
Metropolitan Police".
Debate the rights and wrongs of the word all you want, but Spurs fans evidently feel misunderstood and ignored. Here the pack mentality is going to kick in and a team's supporters will look after each other. Spurs fans who don't care either way on the use of the term 'Yid' might suddenly find themselves a very vocal part of the 'Army' when they see another among their number threatened. Who hasn't seen this at a match when police try to eject individuals for other perceived misdemeanours?
This closing of ranks has an obvious effect; the Police can threaten all they want, but the likelihood of seeing several thousand Spurs fans queuing round the block at the local magistrates' court come Monday morning is slim indeed. Authorities' only recourse then is to shut out fans from games entirely - a whole other level of serious.
The arguments against Spurs fans are of moot value - tethered as they often are to broader agenda and campaigns into which the Spurs case doesn't fit very well. For a sample, see here the views of Gordon Maloney, president of NUS Scotland, and Clarke Carlisle, chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association.
It is an unforgiving approach by the authorities that rather bulldozes through Spurs fans' articulated perspective. Maybe this is a necessary evil in eradicating use of the word 'yid' altogether, but a total unwillingness to acknowledge the nature of football support will mean an almighty mess and great deal more controversy yet.
Had such extreme confrontation been avoided, it is more than likely that the term 'Yid Army' would have fallen into disuse as the society around football continues to expose discrimination as wrong and unpalatable. Spurs fans might have felt less identification with the term as it became increasingly anachronistic. However, it's an inescapable feeling that this whole furore - whatever the official outcome - has now perpetuated the use of 'yid' by Spurs fans for at least another generation.
Threats of arrest and disconnected bluster from those who don't want to understand football support are not the best ways of handling this issue. I am not a Spurs fans and I won't pretend to know exactly where they stand on the use of the word, but this kind of barrage has never made a football support do anything in the past - there is no reason to expect that it will win favour with them in this instance either.
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Photo Credits: laurencehorton; childzy talk
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