Millwall Football Club: The Truth

Expert Opinion

12Feb

Millwall Football Club: the truth

by Mike Calvin

It is open season on Millwall Football Club. An incendiary TV programme has depicted it as an irredeemably racist institution, and, by implication, damned thousands of decent, well-intentioned football supporters who are loyal to a much-maligned cause.

I have absolutely no intention of defending the indefensible. I trust the principal character in the programme, a so-called Millwall fan captured by an undercover camera apparently screaming the most vile abuse at Leeds forward El Hadji Diouf, will be identified, prosecuted and, if found guilty, banned from football grounds for life.

The images of him using the N-word were, in a literal sense, repeated ad nauseam. It made me feel sick to the stomach because I knew the damage it would cause to a club which works proactively as a force for good in a multicultural, economically depressed community.

To declare an interest, I spent a season embedded at Millwall for my book Family: Life, Death and Football. I tried to do justice to a unique club, one which has warmth, vitality and a raw honesty. Suddenly, the stereotypes I sought to challenge have been strengthened. An agenda has been reset.

All clubs are prisoners of their history. The moment Millwall were drawn to play at Luton Town in the fifth round of the FA Cup. it was inevitable that grainy images of infamous scenes at Kenilworth Road in 1985 would be recycled. Any disturbances on Saturday will be magnified. Perspective – Millwall have played at Luton 13 times since 1985 without major incident – will be lost. The danger of attention seekers causing havoc is very real.

As is so often the case, perception is more important than reality. Fans talk of media bias as if it is applied by vengeful editors who just happen to support a rival club to the one in the firing line. Millwall’s misfortune is that they are an easy story. It is simple to dive into the archives and illustrate any point you wish to make.

There were unmistakable aspects of trial by tabloid TV in the latest programme, which was intellectually and journalistically flawed. It was surprising that, unlike other contributors, Lord Herman Ouseley was not shown watching the most offensive footage. The chairman of Kick it Out grew up in Peckham and began to follow Millwall as a boy. As a young black man in the seventies, he was driven away from the game by violence and naked prejudice.

This is what he said about the club at an FA hearing: “Millwall Football Club have made enormous progress in making football a safer and more enjoyable spectator experience. The Den is no longer a no go area for decent football fans. Football fans do not learn their racism through football; they take it to football. As much as clubs have been doing to tackle effectively the worst excesses of anti-social behaviour associated with a minority of their fans, the problem has not gone away.

“It is well managed, better controlled, sensitively suppressed. The present social and economic climate, coupled with the rise of BNP activities, poses huge challenges, including a resurgence of unacceptable behaviour from so-called football fans. I know that Millwall have done as much as anyone, and more than most, to get rid of the louts and, while we must encourage them to do more, we must not penalise them for not doing what was not possible to do.”

Such sentiments would not have fitted the narrative. Just as it is absurd to present racism as a football issue, detached from society, it is wilfully ignorant to imply that it is a problem that exists mainly in a small corner of south east London. All clubs have their knuckle draggers, and fans need to be self-policing. The Millwall I know is rough and ready, but colour blind. Community programmes counter such evils as gun crime and racially induced violence. Just ask the parents of murdered boys Jimmy Mizen, David Idowu and Damilola Taylor. They’ve worked with the club – they know the truth.

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Follow Mike Calvin on Twitter @CalvinBook

Follow Life’s a Pitch on Twitter @BTLifesaPitch

Watch Millwall live on BT Vision:
Luton v Millwall, midday, 16 February, ESPN

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Comments

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hamish

Michael – I’m a Leeds fan who’s gone on twitter record as saying I loved your book Family. But over the last season I’ve been disturbed to – only on occasion, mind – see you indulge in the “dirty Leeds” cliche of old. Not that I want to hijack the topic on discussion here, but the wider point seems applicable: the actions of a few bad eggs should not define a club that, behind the scenes, is trying to push football as a force for social good. Neither should Leeds, my team, be defined by a few players – Michael Brown and EHD – that you personally dislike, or by one pissed-up fan that took it upon himself to attack Chris Kirkland.

Anyway – looking forward to Nowhere Men.
Wallplug

Thanks Michael but as you know it won’t make any difference to peoples prejudice against Millwall. As a close knit club we are passed wanting to be loved and to be honest we don’t care….. But this kind of gutter journalism by Sky is typically Murdoch. Nobody sitting anywhere near me since the 1960′s has ever called a black man the N word , there are obviously some low life’s out there they belong to society not Millwall. Who are his parents his teachers his friends? They are more responsible for him than a place he goes to for 90 minutes of his life 23 times a year.
UpTheBracket

Good article and as a Rangers fan I can see where you’re coming from. A small number of idiots and a compliant media and the whole club/support is tarred with the same image. If the club is actively trying to fix the problem and not just telling the press what they want to hear then it should be highlighted for doing so. The focus should be on the clubs that refuse to even recognise sections of their support have problems.
Nuff Said

Mike its only when anyone takes the time to really get to know any football club and its fans really well that they should pass judgement on the MAJORITY of the fans that follow a club like Millwall and Leeds. I really hope this backfires on SKY and the F.A. if indeed the F.A. do punish the club even further than the damage this will inevitably have already done before they act on it, as i think you can imagine the vast majority of Millwall fans are fuming yet again at being persecuted by sky and the media as a whole but either WE the fans or the CLUB itself can show that this RACISM issue isnt just confined to Millwall but it still goes on in isolated verbal name calling up and down the country and how can we do it ??? By investigating it ourselves and filming it undercover like sky did and then when Millwall have the evidance producing it to the F.A. and see what theyve got to say about it !!! But for me the beauty of it is if WE the fans do it we can put it on You Tube so it goes viral across the world for all to see now that really would be EMBARRASSING for the F.A. because if we the fans or the club asked the media to put it on tele they would edit it and spin it, but by putting it on You Tube we would have all the power in showing every single bit of filming we took and their isnt a thing anyone could do about it !!! Weve had more than our fair share of being knocked at Millwall and ENOUGH is ENOUGH and as much as we say ‘No one likes us and we dont care’ its about time we had a new catchphrase with something along the lines of ‘If you pull the Lions tail too many times then it might bite your head off’. Mike their is a group called ‘The 45k Millwall group’ on facebook that might just be prepared to make such a stand against this SKY portrayal of us fans so watch this space my friend !!!
LFB

Thank you. Sensible words
silversmfc

Brilliant thanks for your support.
Sordells fin rot

Well said Mike.

All the footage showed was one idiot off his face at a high profile game. Big games always bring some morons down to the Den, who cause problems for the club and just want to cause aggravation.

You won’t see these fools week in week out, and it is appalling the picture sky has painted about the club.

Things will never change though, we just have to stick together and remember that No One Likes Us, We don’t Care.
Former Lion

Is the problem magnified by a lazy media? Undoubtedly.

Is the situation at the club better now than when I started going in the late eighties? Certainly.

Was it still worse at Millwall than most other London clubs nearly 10 years ago when I stopped going regularly? Unfortunately.

It is true that generally football and certainly this club as an organisation are not responsible for creating racism. I would say however, the clubs historic reputation (created at least in part by that lazy media) has meant that my local team has more than its fair share of a particular kind of what you describe as ‘Knuckle Draggers’.

Having, stood on the terraces, sat in the stands and worked for the club on a matchday AND regularly gone to watch games elsewhere, including being a season ticket holder, I say this with no malice to Millwall as an organisation, but with a sense of perspective few fans of the club (or fans of any other club for that matter) could offer. Being black and having argued with racists in the stand only serves to underline that fact.

I have heard things have continued to improve, I hope that is true, but in my middle age I just got fed up of fighting this stuff in my leisure time.

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