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Hooliganism is disruptive or unlawful behavior such as rioting, bullying and vandalism, usually in connection with crowds at sporting events. A hooligan is a person that engages in illicit reckless behaviors and is a public nuisance.
There are several theories regarding the origin of the word hooliganism, which is a derivative of the word hooligan. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary states that the word may have originated from the surname of a rowdy Irish family in a music hall song of the 1890s. [1] [2] Clarence Rook, in his 1899 book, Hooligan Nights, wrote that the word came from Patrick Hoolihan (or Hooligan), an Irish bouncer and thief who lived in London. In 2015, the BBC Scotland TV programme The Secret Life of Midges [3] noted that the English commander-in-chief during the Jacobite rising of 1745, General Wade, misheard the local Scots Gaelic word for midge—meanbh-chuileag—and coined the word hooligan to describe his fury and frustration at the way the tiny biting creatures made the life of his soldiers and himself a misery; this derivation may be apocryphal.
The word first appeared in print in London police-court reports in 1894 referring to the name of a gang of youths in the Lambeth area of London—the Hooligan Boys, [4] and later—the O'Hooligan Boys. [5]
In August 1898 the murder of Henry Mappin in Lambeth committed by a member of the gang drew further attention to the word which was immediately popularised by the press. [6] The London newspaper The Daily Graphic wrote in an article on 22 August 1898, "The avalanche of brutality which, under the name of 'Hooliganism' ... has cast such a dire slur on the social records of South London." [2] [7]
The inquest was carried out by Mr Braxton Hicks who "remarked that the activity of the gang he referred to was not confined to Lambeth, but extended to numerous other districts. It was composed of young fellows who scorned to do a stroke of work, and obtained a living by blackmailing. It was a common practice for three or four of these men to walk into a shop and offer the shopman the alternative of giving them a dollar for drink or having his shop wrecked. In connection with the Oakley-street tragedy intimidation had reached an unexampled case. Witnesses had been warned that it would be as much as their life was worth to give evidence against John Darcy. On Wednesday plain-clothes men escorted the witnesses from the court singly. He himself had been warned — not by anonymous letter but through a mysterious personal medium — that if seen in a certain neighbourhood he would be done for. A magistrate had also told him that he had been the recipient of a like indignity." [8] [9]
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his 1904 short story "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons", "It seemed to be one of those senseless acts of Hooliganism which occur from time to time, and it was reported to the constable on the beat as such." H. G. Wells wrote in his 1909 semi-autobiographical novel Tono-Bungay , "Three energetic young men of the hooligan type, in neck-wraps and caps, were packing wooden cases with papered-up bottles, amidst much straw and confusion." [7]
According to Life magazine (30 July 1941), the comic strip artist and political cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper introduced a character called Happy Hooligan in 1900; "hapless Happy appeared regularly in U.S. newspapers for more than 30 years", a "naive, skinny, baboon-faced tramp who invariably wore a tomato can for a hat." Life brought this up by way of criticizing the Soviet U.N. delegate Yakov A. Malik for misusing the word. Malik had indignantly referred to anti-Soviet demonstrators in New York as "hooligans". Happy Hooligan, Life reminded its readers, "became a national hero, not by making trouble, which Mr. Malik understands is the function of a hooligan, but by getting himself help."
Later, as the meaning of the word shifted slightly, none of the possible alternatives had precisely the same undertones of a person, usually young, who belongs to an informal group and commits acts of vandalism or criminal damage, starts fights, and who causes disturbances but is not a thief. [7] Hooliganism is now predominately related to sport. [10]
The words hooliganism and hooligan began to be associated with violence in sports, in particular from the 1970s in the UK with football hooliganism. The phenomenon, however, long preceded the modern term; for example, one of the earliest known instances of crowd violence at a sporting event took place in ancient Constantinople. Two chariot racing factions, the Blues and the Greens, were involved in the Nika riots which lasted around a week in 532 CE; nearly half the city was burned or destroyed, in addition to tens of thousands of deaths. [11]
Sports crowd violence continues to be a worldwide concerning phenomenon exacting at times a large number of injuries, damage to property and casualties. Individual, contextual, social and environmental factors interact and influence one another through a dynamic process occurring at different levels. [12] Macro-sociological accounts suggest that structural strains, experiences of deprivation or a low socio-economic background can at times be instrumental to the acceptance and reproduction of norms that tolerate great levels of violence and territoriality, which is a common feature of football hooliganism. [13] Furthermore, social cleavages within societies facilitate the development of strong in-groups bonds and intense feelings of antagonism towards outsiders which in turn can facilitate group identification and affect the likelihood of fan violence. [13]
 | This section should include a summary of Football hooliganism in the United Kingdom.(August 2019) |
Beginning in at least the 1960s, the United Kingdom gained a reputation worldwide for football hooliganism; the phenomenon was often dubbed the British or English Disease. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [ excessive citations ]However, since the 1980s and well into the 1990s the UK government has led a widescale crackdown on football related violence. While football hooliganism has been a growing concern in some continental European countries in recent years, British football fans now tend to have a better reputation abroad. Although reports of British football hooliganism still surface, the instances now tend to occur at pre-arranged locations rather than at the matches themselves.
Football (soccer) and other sports hooliganism overall is rare in the United States in part because of stricter legal penalties for vandalism and physical violence, club markets having their own territory of fans, venues banning weapons, stricter security during games, and a stronger taboo on politics, class, race, and religion into the American sporting culture. Although isolated drunken fights at games do occur, they rarely escalate to major brawling comparable to Europe and Latin America. [20]
In the Soviet Union the word khuligan (Russian: хулиган – transliteration of the English word) was used to refer to scofflaws. Hooliganism (Russian: хулиганство, khuliganstvo) was listed as a criminal offense, similar to disorderly conduct in some other jurisdictions, and used as a catch-all charge for prosecuting unapproved behavior. [2] [21]
Olympic medalist Vasiliy Khmelevskiy was convicted of hooliganism for setting a costumed person on fire during a celebration in Minsk in 1979 and sentenced to five years of imprisonment. [22] Mathias Rust was convicted of hooliganism, among other things, for his 1987 Cessna landing on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge next to Red Square.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, nowadays, hooliganism is defined generally in the Criminal Code of Russia as an average gravity crime. [23]
More recently, the same charge has been leveled against members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot for which three members each received a two-year sentence on 17 August 2012. Hooliganism charges were also levelled against the Greenpeace protesters in October 2013. [24] In March 2022, Marina Ovsyannikova, a Russian journalist who held up a banner protesting the Russian invasion of Ukraine during a national news broadcast, was convicted of flouting Russian anti-protest laws and fined ₽30,000 for her actions. The Kremlin called her actions an act of hooliganism. [25]
A riot or mob violence is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people.
Football hooliganism, also known as soccer hooliganism, football rioting or soccer rioting constitutes violence and other destructive behaviors perpetrated by spectators at association football events. Football hooliganism typically involves conflict between pseudo-tribes, formed to intimidate and attack supporters of other teams. Certain clubs have long-standing rivalries with other clubs and hooliganism associated with matches between them can be more severe. Conflict may arise at any point, before, during or after matches and occasionally outside of game situations. Participants often select locations away from stadiums to avoid arrest by the police, but conflict can also erupt spontaneously inside the stadium or in the surrounding streets. In extreme cases, hooligans, police, and bystanders have been killed, and riot police have intervened. Hooligan-led violence has been called "aggro" and "bovver".
The Chelsea Headhunters are a notorious English football hooligan firm linked to the London football club Chelsea.
Among the Thugs: The Experience, and the Seduction, of Crowd Violence is a 1990 work of journalism by American writer Bill Buford documenting football hooliganism in the United Kingdom.
Gang-related organised crime in the United Kingdom is concentrated around the cities of London, Manchester and Liverpool and regionally across the West Midlands region, south coast and northern England, according to the Serious Organised Crime Agency. With regard to street gangs the cities identified as having the most serious gang problems, which also accounted for 65% of firearm homicides in England and Wales, were London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. Glasgow in Scotland also has a historical gang culture with the city having as many teenage gangs as London, which had six times the population, in 2008.
Barra brava is the name of organized supporters' groups of football teams in Latin America, analogous to European ultras and British hooligans in providing fanatical support to their clubs in stadiums and provoking violence against rival fans as well as against the police.
The Zulu Warriors are a football hooligan firm associated with English football club, Birmingham City. The Zulu Warriors were formed in the late 1980s and the name allegedly came from a chant of "Zulu, Zulu" which Manchester City fans aimed at Birmingham in 1982, due to their multicultural following. However, both the "Zulu" chant and the term "Zulu Warriors", in the context of a fan following rather than as an organised gang, were in use from at least the mid 1970s.
The Leeds United Service Crew are a football hooligan firm linked to the English EFL Championship team, Leeds United F.C. The Service Crew were formed in 1974 and are named after the ordinary public service trains that the hooligans would travel on to away matches, rather than the heavily policed, organised football special trains. The Service Crew are one of the most notorious hooligan firms in the history of English football.
The Millwall Bushwackers are a football firm associated with Millwall Football Club. Millwall have a historic association with football hooliganism, which came to prevalence in the 1970s and 1980s, with a firm known originally as F-Troop, eventually becoming more widely known as the Millwall Bushwackers, who were one of the most notorious hooligan gangs in England. On five occasions The Den was closed by the Football Association and the club has received numerous fines for crowd disorder. Millwall's hooligans are regarded by their rivals as amongst the stiffest competition, with Manchester United hooligan Colin Blaney describing them as being amongst the top four firms in his autobiography 'Undesirables', and West Ham hooligan Cass Pennant featuring them on his Top Boys TV YouTube channel, on which their fearsome reputation for violence was described.
The MIGs are a football hooligan "firm" associated with the English football club Luton Town, which was originally formed in the 1980s.
The 6.57 Crew is an English football hooligan firm and Vigilante group linked to Portsmouth F.C. The name, 6.57 Crew is taken from the time that the Portsmouth to London Waterloo train left Portsmouth and Southsea station. The firm were one of the most active firms in the 1980s.
The 2008 UEFA Cup final riots were a series of public disorder incidents that took place in Manchester, England, on the day of the 2008 UEFA Cup final. Serious disorder was allegedly sparked by the failure of a big screen erected in Piccadilly Gardens to transmit the match to thousands of Rangers fans who had travelled to the city without tickets. Greater Manchester Police reported that a "minority" of the 200,000 visiting Rangers' fans were involved in the violence; while Detective Superintendent Geoff Wessell, of Greater Manchester Police, stressed that a "very, very low proportion" of the travelling Rangers fans had been involved in disorder. In addition to property damage, fifteen policemen were injured and ambulance crews attended 52 cases of assault. A Manchester City Council inquiry into the events estimated that over 200,000 Rangers fans visited Manchester for the match, with 39 fans were arrested for a range of offences across the city, while 38 complaints were received about the conduct of Greater Manchester Police officers. The report however said that the 37,000 Rangers fans inside the City of Manchester Stadium were extremely well behaved and good humoured – a credit to their football club.
The 2009 Upton Park riot occurred in and around West Ham United's Boleyn Ground, in Upton Park before, during and after a Football League Cup second round match between West Ham and Millwall on 25 August 2009. The match was won by the home side 3–1 after extra time, but the game was marred by pitch invasions and disorder in the streets outside the ground, where a Millwall supporter was stabbed. The disturbances were met with condemnation by the Football Association, the British government and the two clubs involved. The incident led to fears of a return of the hooliganism that had tarnished the reputation of English football in the 1970s and 80s. There were also concerns that it could have a negative effect on England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup - which was rejected in favour of the bid from Russia more than a year later.
The Capital City Service (CCS) is a Scottish football hooligan firm associated with Hibernian F.C. and active from 1984 when the casual hooligan subculture took off in Scotland. Their roots were in the previous incarnations of hooligan groups attached to the club and also the wider Edinburgh and surrounding area's gang culture. They are more commonly known in the media and amongst the public as the Hibs Casuals, although within the hooligan network they may also be referred to as Hibs Boys.
The 2000 UEFA Cup Final Riots, also known as the Battle of Copenhagen, were a series of riots in City Hall Square, Copenhagen, Denmark between fans of English football team Arsenal and Turkish team Galatasaray around the 2000 UEFA Cup Final on 17 May 2000. Four people were stabbed in the scuffles, which also involved fans from other clubs and were viewed by the media as part of a retaliation for the killing of two Leeds United fans by Galatasaray supporters the month before.
A sports riot is a riot that occurs during or after sporting events. Sports riots occur worldwide. Most riots are known to occur after the event is done, but some have been during the game. Whilst football (soccer) is one of the more well-known triggers for riots, other sports which have triggered riots include ice hockey and motorcycle racing. There are a number of factors believed to influence whether riots occur, including cultural factors; environmental factors such as temperature, darkness, and noise; and witnessing player violence.
Beginning in at least the 1960s, the United Kingdom gained a reputation worldwide for football hooliganism; the phenomenon was often dubbed the British or English Disease. However, since the 1980s and well into the 1990s the UK government has led a widescale crackdown on football related violence. While football hooliganism has been a growing concern in some continental European countries in recent years, British football fans now tend to have a better reputation abroad. Although reports of British football hooliganism still surface, the instances now tend to occur at pre-arranged locations rather than at the matches themselves.
The UEFA Euro 2016 football championships in France saw several recorded instances of football hooliganism and related violence between fans, both at the venues where matches took place, and in cities near the participating stadiums. The violence started immediately before the tournament began, and involved clashes between several countries. Some of the rioting came from established gangs and football hooligan organisations, which deliberately intended to provoke violence. They clashed with riot police who controlled the crowds using tear gas and a water cannon.
Clifford John Thornton Stott is professor of social psychology at Keele University. He is a specialist in the psychology of crowds, group identity, and football hooliganism.
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