Profile on football
English football and community cohesion: progress and problems
The modernised and generally ‘progressive' national Football Association's recent public commitment to pursue centrally an effective new equity strategy for the sport is very impressive. It promises to address at least some of the problems of racialised exclusion in the English game of the sort identified in a survey recently undertaken by the Commission for Racial Equality - though the Premier League and its member clubs claim their own expertise and successes in these areas (see CRE, 2004).
Successfully devolving this new FA policy down to local County FAs is where it is arguably needed most:
- where the governance of the grassroots version of the sport is mainly delivered
- where the processes of ‘modernisation' experienced centrally have been much more slowly felt and have been generally more patchy in their effects
- where racially divisive forms of exclusion and marginalisation continue to impact against the possibilities of local football becoming a reliable site for community cohesion
Narrow approaches to community and customer relations in some parts of professional football in England can inhibit potential community cohesion gains in and around British sports stadia, especially in some racially ‘divided' British towns and cities in parts of the north of England. Also at risk are potentially fruitful sporting and commercial contacts with a new local BME supporter base including female ethnic minority fans and BME female football players.
British sporting stadia can still simultaneously evoke contrasting sentiments amongst the fans:
- a pleasurable sense of place for the mainly white ‘included' fan base
- a sense of fear or discomfort for those excluded sporting citizens who are more likely to be drawn from local ethnic minorities and communities of colour.
Real difficulties remain in domestic sport in Britain, problems that have no easy solution. They require directed local action, but also sensitive handling and the careful dissemination of training and best practice, as many British sports clubs believe themselves to be resolutely ‘colour blind' in their approach to access, marketing and local community relations. Despite local resistance to changes in sporting practices, substantial progress has been made in specific locales in British football and in other British sports to positively promote inclusion, anti-racism and community cohesion in and via sport.
