Why England's Wrongs Are So Right

By Steven Wells

Thursday April 17, 2003
The Guardian

We're at a party. It's full of experts on football hooliganism. Look, there's Doug and Eddie Brimson (authors of the scholarly tomes Knife The Bastard In The Neck, My Son and You Want Some Too, You Slag?). They're deep in conversation with a feminist author who reckons that the real problem is that horrid working-class men aren't more like nice middle-class women.

Over by the punch bowl there's a pack of woolly liberals stood around stroking their ginger beards in a vaguely patronising manner while being harangued by a Daily Mail columnist about how great life was back in 1953. And in the garden, the socio-biologist disciples of Desmond "Naked Ape" Morris have stripped off and are banging drums, beating their chests and wailing about their dads.

And over there in the corner, completely un-noticed, is an elephant. What do you mean you can't see him? He's the big grey fella, yeah? The one with the trunk. Look, damn you! The elephant. In the corner. The one with the David Irving cowlick, the mad staring Paul Johnson eyes, the Richard Littlejohn potbelly and the shiny black jackboots. Yes, him.

Why is it that whenever experts on football hooliganism gather in their masses like witches at black masses (da DANG!) and start waffling on about the disgusting behaviour of England football fans, none of them ever manages to put their finger on the raw, naked and - excuse my French -
totally bloody obvious truth? There IS a common denominator that links these vermin. Yes, lady, apart from gender. It's not social class. It's not a shared taste in naff sportswear. It's not even alcoholism. It is - and excuse me for stating the bleeding obvious - that they are all right-wing.

I'm willing to accept that loads of the lads who go to see England are decent, tolerant and innocent. But as for the rest of them: it's a
hard-core of Hitler-worshipping nazis leading a bunch of racist Tory thickos around by their piggy little English noses.

They don't always get on, these two groups. The nazis, for instance, have a problem with the "I'd rather be a Paki than a Turk/Kraut/Frog/Jock" chant (it's not racist enough, apparently). But such subtle ideological nuances are a strictly internal matter. The huge, 200ft-tall flashing neon FACT is that ALL xenophobic and racist England fans are, by definition, on the right of the political spectrum.

The Sun recently called racist England fans "plankton". These "plankton" are fed a diet of racist crap about asylum seekers and the like by papers like the Sun, the Mail and the Express. And these papers are, of course, the ones that scream most shrilly for "the scum" to have their passports removed.

And I have to agree. All England fans should be searched at the airports and ferry terminals. Any found in possession of one of the aforementioned papers should have their passport confiscated and shredded. And I would go further.

We know that the secret ballot is a myth. MI5 have been keeping tabs on those of us who vote for far-left parties for decades. It surely isn't asking too much that they do the same for those who vote BNP, UK Independence or Conservative, is it?

Look, in the 1996 general election, around 30% of the electorate still voted Conservative. These can be divided into two groups _ the stupid and the evil. The stupid are those who truly believe that the sum of human happiness can be increased by giving power to selfish, corrupt, racist, homophobic bastards. While the evil are, of course, the selfish, corrupt, racist, homophobic bastards themselves. You know, the sort of sicko that goes to see a Robin Hood movie and wants the Sheriff Of Nottingham to win, who cheers when Bambi's mum gets shot and who thinks that the underlying philosophy which unites all the world's great religions can best be summed up in the phrase "kill or be killed".

You take the passports off all of them, you tattoo barcodes on their foreheads so they can't gain admittance to any football ground ... and I guarantee that racist football hooliganism at England games will disappear entirely.

Yes, I know I'm stating the obvious. But how come nobody else is, eh?

Maybe the measures I suggest are a tad draconian. Maybe they'd stop perfectly decent and well-behaved Tories from travelling abroad. WRONG!
First off, there is no such thing as a decent Tory. Secondly, if these measures are adopted you will never, ever again have to cringe in toe-curling horror when, while on holiday abroad, you hear some braying Countryside Alliance-supporting Thatcherite fox-strangler ranting on about foreigners, immigrants and (yawn) "political correctness".

It's not like I'm suggesting a cull (although - in the New Labour spirit of "thinking the unthinkable" - I wouldn't rule the idea out entirely). No, I'd be quite content to see the wretches herded into re-education camps.
Hey, perhaps we could use the very same razor-wired institutions that both New Labour and the Conservatives want to build for asylum seekers? Both parties assure us that these are emphatically not "concentration camps". So they'd have no complaints on that front.

So there you have it. There's an elephant in the corner. And it reads the Sun. So are we going to shoot it? Metaphorically speaking? Or are we going to allow it to continue excreting bloody great dung swastikas all over our national reputation at every opportunity?

Hmm, it's a dilemma, isn't it?


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