Sentimentalised Recovery of Sanitised Heritages?

An Exploration of Calls for the Reintroduction of Standing Areas in

English Football Stadia

Justin Gill
200937379

Submitted as part of fulfilment of MA (Research Methods) in Contemporary Human

Geography

Word count: 16,345

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UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL

DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AND PLANNING

DECLARATION

I Justin Gill agree that my dissertation may be:

i. Consulted
ii. Lent
iii. Reproduced

so long as the provisions for the Copyright Act are respected.

Date: Thursday 28th September 2017 Signature…………………………………………….

I confirm that the material presented for this dissertation is entirely my own work, and that
all secondary sources used are properly acknowledged.

Signature………………………………………………………
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Abstract
Through semi-structured interviews with those campaigning for their return, this
dissertation explores the importance of standing areas to football supporters in terms of
culture and identity and seeks to understand the means through calls for their
reintroduction have been articulated and expressed. The research finds that whilst
supporters were not always critical of the decision to mandate all-seater stadia, it is
perceived as having played a role in the loss of young, working-class supporters, which in
turn is perceived as having negatively impacted upon the atmosphere insides stadia. Despite
many participants seeing the reintroduction of standing areas as something which could
help to would reverse this trend, many were skeptical that this would occur. The research
concludes by arguing that the desire for the reintroduction of standing areas is best
articulated as a desire to fuse what are perceived as the best aspects of the modern, in
terms of safe standing technology, with what are perceived as the best aspects of the past,
in terms of the atmosphere and community of the terraces.

Acknowledgments
I would like to place on record my thanks to Andy Davies for his support in supervising this
dissertation project. I would also like to thank all those who gave up their time to participate
in the research.
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Contents
1) Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 4
2) Context: All-Seater Stadia and “Safe Standing” ................................................................. 5
3) Literature Review ............................................................................................................. 11
i. The Reintroduction of Standing: A Divided Debate .................................................. 11
ii. The End of the Terraces: An Attack on the Working Class? ...................................... 13
iii. Beyond Class: Masculinity, Age and Place ................................................................ 17
iv. A Form of Resistance? ............................................................................................... 25
4) Methodology .................................................................................................................... 28
5) Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 31
i. The Reintroduction of Standing: A Divided Debate?.................................................31
ii. The End of the Terraces: An Attack on the Working Class? ...................................... 35
iii. Beyond Class: Masculinity, Age and Place ................................................................ 38
iv. A Form of Resistance? ............................................................................................... 43
6) Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 47
References ............................................................................................................................... 49
Appendices............................................................................................................................... 53

List of Figures
Figure 1: 'Safe standing' section at Celtic Park……………………………………………………………………...9
Figure 2: Proposed safe standing section at Shrewsbury Town FC………………………………………10

List of Tables
Table 1: Standing terraces by league (as of start of 2017/18 season)……………………………………8
Table 2: Sample of recent safe standing surveys……………………………………….………………………..10
Table 3: Average number of supporters who remain standing for duration of game, by
club………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…25

List of Appendices
Appendix 1: Summary of research participants……………………………………………………….………….53
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“With more nerve and some consciousness of being a space invader, I do stand on football
terraces – and love it” – Doreen Massey (1994, p. 185).

1) Introduction
For over 100 years, most supporters at football matches in England stood on terraces, to
which admission was cheap and could be accessed by direct payment at the turnstile.
However, since 1994, football clubs in the top two division of English football have been
required to play in all-seater stadia, signaling an end to this way of watching football at
many stadia across the country.

However, despite initial assumptions that supporters would become accustomed to sitting
down (Taylor, 1990), this has not proven to be the case, with supporters continuing to stand
in all-seater stadia (Caton, 2012; Pearson, 2012). Furthermore, recent surveys have
indicated that support for the reintroduction of standing areas in the form of “safe
standing” maintains widespread support among football supporters. This support has been
formalised through numerous campaigns at both individual club, and national cross-club
levels, which has led to the issue being debated in parliament.

Through 13 semi-structured interviews with supporters who are campaigning for the
introduction of safe standing, this dissertation therefore seeks to explore these campaigns
as a form of “new social movement” based around ideas of “collective identity and values”
(Hara & Huang, 2013, p. 2098).

To do so, this dissertation explores the various ways in which this collective identity is
conceptualised by participants, aiding understanding of the standing area as a space which
becomes a place through the meanings attached to it (Cresswell, 2004). Following this, the
means through which supporters can be considered to have resisted all-seater hegemony
through both formal and informal means are discussed.
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The dissertation concludes by addressing the following broad aims of the research:

• The motivations of supporters for a reintroduction of standing areas and the role of
identity within this.
• The ways in which the campaign for the reintroduction of standing areas in English
football stadia can be considered successful, and the extent to which this is the case.

In doing so, the research addresses Welford et al.’s (2015, p. 323) concern that within
existing football-related research “there is limited acknowledgement of supporters’
involvement” and understood as a changing use of space, the reintroduction of standing
areas is an inherently geographic issue.

2) Context: All-Seater Stadia and “Safe Standing”

The Harrington Report, published in 1968, considered measures to combat the growing
problem of football hooliganism. The report considered whether perimeter fences should
be introduced to stadia to prevent supporters encroaching onto pitches, but concluded that
this should not be done, as it “could be dangerous in the event of massive crowd
disturbances as safety exits to the field would be blocked” (Harrington (1968), quoted in The
Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel (2012)).

Nine years later, the McElhone Report into Football Crowd Behaviour was published, it was
on the same issue as the Harrington Report – hooliganism, but reached a very different
conclusion regarding potential solutions. The McElhone Report recommended that ‘open’
terraces be divided in to smaller pens using radial fences, so that hooligans could not
‘charge’ other areas of the terrace. The report also recommended the erection of perimeter
fences, with a height of at least 1.8 meters, to prevent encroachment of spectators on to
pitch (Scottish Education Department, 1977).
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Following the introduction of pens, it did not take long for serious crushes to occur, with 33
spectators being injured in the central pens of the Leppings Lane terrace at Sheffield
Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium at an FA Cup semi-final in 1981. As a result, Hillsborough
Stadium was deselected as an FA Cup semi-final venue. In the same year, Coventry City
aimed to demonstrate an alternative means of tackling hooliganism, as their Highfield Road
ground became England’s first all-seater stadium. It did not prove successful. The
experiment was abandoned after two years as the seats lent themselves to being used as
missiles, ultimately exacerbating, rather than placating, the problem (Inglis, 1985).

The next report into football crowds came in the form of the Popplewell Report in 1985,
after 56 people lost their lives in a fire at Bradford City’s Valley Parade. Started by a dropped
cigarette, the fire was fuelled by decade’s worth of accumulated litter beneath the seats
which, in combination with antiquated timber construction and flammable bitumen roofing,
saw the entire stand engulfed in flames in little more than three minutes (Popplewell,
1985). The Popplewell Report into the Bradford fire soon found its scope expanded to
incorporate a riot at a Birmingham City game in which a young supporter was killed, and
was expanded further still when 39 spectators were killed in a European Cup final between
Liverpool and Juventus at Heysel Stadium, Belgium, when supporters ‘charged’ across a
terrace causing a wall to collapse.

Whilst the Popplewell Report made numerous recommendations, ranging from the
construction materials of stands, to the banning of smoke-bombs within stadia, the most
dramatic changes to the laws governing English football stadia were proposed four years
later in the Football Spectators Act (1989). The act made several far-reaching proposals,
including:

• Mandatory ID cards for all football supporters

“Securing that the only spectators permitted to attend at designated football matches are
authorised spectators” (p.5)

• The precursor to Football Banning Orders (FBOs)

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“Any person convicted of a relevant offence is disqualified from becoming or continuing to be

a member of the national football membership scheme, and the following provisions of this
section have effect in relation to such a person” (p.7)

• The introduction of all-seater stadia

“The Secretary of State may, by order, direct the licensing authority to include in any license
to admit spectators to any specified premises a condition imposing requirements as respects
the seating of spectators at designated football matches at the premises; and it shall be the
duty of the authority to comply with the direction” (p.10)

The plans, however, were put on hold when the single greatest disaster, in terms of loss life,
to occur in a British football stadium took place at Hillsborough Stadium on April 15 th, 1989.

Despite lacking a valid safety certificate and previously been deselected as a venue due to
safety concerns, the stadium was chosen to host the 1989 FA Cup semi-final between
Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Crucially, since the 1981 incident, the Leppings Lane
terrace had been further divided into even smaller pens. When an exit gate was opened to
relieve a crush outside the Leppings Lane terrace, supporters were directed by signs into the
already overcrowded central pens. With the perimeter fence and locked exit gates
preventing escape, the ensuing crush claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool supporters and
caused non-fatal injuries to an additional 766 (Hillsborough Independent Panel, 2012).

The subsequent Taylor Report into the Hillsborough Disaster saw some aspects of the
Football Spectators Act - including mandatory ID cards - removed, and Taylor made
numerous additional recommendations aimed at improving safety within football stadia in
England and Wales, including:

• A maximum height of 2.2 meters (the same as the minimum recommended by UEFA)
for perimeter fencing, which must have no spikes and must include provision for
emergency access to the pitch.
• Each ‘pen’ within a terrace being assigned an individual capacity.
• All crush barriers being inspected annually.
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• Agreements between police and football clubs for the monitoring of terraces to
prevent overcrowding be put in place.
• Ticketing and turnstile systems which enable clubs to log every spectator who enters
the stadium and more accurately monitor the number of spectators in each area be
implemented.
• CCTV and signage in and around stadia be improved.
• That gangways within terraces be painted, and that standing within them is
forbidden.

In addition to these recommendations, and despite Coventry’s failed experiment, Taylor

opted to follow the plans of the Football Spectators Act by recommending “the Secretary of
State should ensure that spectators are admitted only to seated accommodation” (Taylor,
1990, p. 76). Taylor also set a timetable within which this should be achieved – with the
intention being that all clubs in the top two divisions of English football would be playing in
all-seater stadia by 1994, and by 1999 in the third and fourth tiers (with recently promoted
clubs being given a reasonable time frame to convert to seating).
While most of the measure recommended by Lord Justice Taylor were implemented in full,
the all-seater recommendation was eventually watered down to cover only the top two tiers
of English football, although clubs at all levels were financially incentivised through grants to
do likewise (York Community Stadium Website, 2015). The last terrace in the top flight –
Fulham’s Hammersmith Terrace - was demolished at the end of the 2001-2002 season
although, as of the 2017-18 season, there are two second tier stadia which still incorporate
terracing. A full summary is provided in table 1.

Table 1: Standing terraces by league (as of start of 2017/18 season)

League (tier) Stadia which retain terracing
Premier League (1) 0 / 20
Championship (2) 2 / 24
League One (3) 6 / 24
League Two (4) 13 / 24
Total 21 / 92
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As Scotland has a devolved parliament, all-seater legislation does not legally apply to
Scottish football clubs, and in 2011 the Scottish Premier League relaxed the requirement for
clubs competing in the league to have all-seater stadia, opening the door to clubs with
previously all-seater stadia to introduce standing areas (Scottish Professional Football
League, 2011). In 2016, Celtic F.C. became the first club to do so, introducing a 2,975
capacity “safe standing” section. The section utilises a technology known as dual-purpose
rail-seating, which allows spectators to stand, but can be used as a seat if the need arises -
such as for UEFA fixtures (BBC Sport, 2016).

Figure 1: 'Safe standing' section at Celtic Park (Robin Buchanan)

In early 2017, the Sports Ground Safety Authority, which is responsible for football stadia
safety in England and Wales, changed its legislation to allow clubs which have all-seater
stadia, but are not required by law to do so, to convert areas of conventional seating to rail-
seating (Sports Ground Safety Authority, 2017). Following this, in June 2017 Shrewsbury
Town announced their intention to introduce 550 rail-seats at their stadium (Shrewsbury
Town FC, 2017), and numerous Premier League clubs are designing their stadiums with the
future introduction of rail-seating in mind (The Stadium Business, 2017). As table 2
illustrates, survey data suggests that the desire among football supporters for the
reintroduction of standing areas (specifically in the form of ‘safe standing’ rail-seats)
remains strong 27 years after the publication of the Taylor Report, in contrast to the
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assertion in the report that supporters would “become accustomed and educated to sitting”
(Taylor, 1990, p. 14).

Figure 2: Proposed safe standing section at Shrewsbury Town FC (tifosy.com)

Table 2: Sample of recent safe standing surveys

Survey Fieldwork dates Sample % in support of
size safe standing
Everton Supporters’ Trust November 2016 ~ 1,400 90%
Arsenal Supporters' Trust February -March 2017 7,329 96%

Spirit of Shankly (Liverpool 22 – 28 July 2017 17,910 88%

Supporters’ Union)
Union FS (Leicester City) 25 June – 2 July 2017 1,267 87%

Middlesbrough Supporters’ Forum June and July 2017 3,398 94%

The following chapter, through a review of existing literature, provides an outline of the two
sides of the debate regarding the reintroduction of standing areas. It then explores how the
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identity and culture of football supporters is considered to have been impacted by the
introduction of all-seater stadia, situating this within the broader political context. Following
this, it reviews how supporters can be considered to have resisted all-seater hegemony,
through both formal and informal means.
Subsequently he methodology of this dissertation is outlined, before the data collected is
discussed following the themes identified in the literature review. Within this, the extent to
which the campaign for the reintroduction of standing areas fits within the framework of
existing literature is discussed, before the dissertation concludes with an appraisal of what
the future of the campaign for the reintroduce standing areas in English football stadia may
hold, and in what respects it may be considered a success.

3) Literature Review

i. The Reintroduction of Standing: A Divided Debate

Although research specifically regarding supporters’ calls for the reintroduction of standing
areas in English football stadia is not particularly abundant, it is not wholly unresearched.
For example, Finnegan & Rookwood (2008, p. 110) found in an interview based project that
in justifying their support for the reintroduction of standing areas, “participants compared
the experience of watching football to other spectator events” at which they are able to
stand, with participants highlighting that this illustrates “that terracing
is not intrinsically unsafe(p.100)”. However, despite identifying widespread support for the
reintroduction of standing areas, Finnegan & Rookwood found that among their interview
participants “any doubted such plans would ever be implemented in British stadia” (p.100).
This doubt was commonly attributed to the spectre of the Hillsborough disaster, with the
recommendation for all-seater stadia being perceived as an injustice which, given the scale
of change it encouraged, would never be corrected. In addition to this, respondents also
highlighted a lack of political will as a reason why they were doubtful standing areas would
return.
The researchers highlighted a divide in the debate regarding the return of standing areas,
which on one side had a group generally comprised of “fans, writers and academics” who
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were in favour of reintroducing standing areas – and on the other side had “those
responsible for ensuring the safety of supporter and controlling their behaviour”, who were
“inevitably more conservative” about any potential reintroduction of standing areas (p.110).
The conservative attitude of the authorities identified by Finnegan & Rookwood is
supported by research carried out by Caton (2012), who contacted several bodies
responsible for overseeing football governance in England and Wales, each of which cited a
host of reasons for their preference of all-seater stadia.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, for example, argued that all-seater stadia
“not only provide a safe, controllable, environment, but enable the clubs to control the
crowd and deal with issues of public disorder, including coin throwing and abusive
behaviour, swiftly and effectively” (DCMS, in Caton, 2012, p.164).
The Football Association (FA) argued that “a return to standing would be a retrograde step”
(ibid. p.166), and highlighted the benefits that all-seater stadia bring in terms of tackling
hooliganism and broadening the diversity of those attending games, affirming that “the
introduction of all-seater stadia, following the Taylor report, has helped to change football,
from decreasing levels of football related violence, to increasing numbers of female and
young fans attending match”. The FA argued that “any potential change to safe standing as
well as having a potentially detrimental impact of crowd management and control, could
dissuade female fans, younger supporters and families from attending matches” (ibid.). The
potential impact of reintroducing standing areas upon the diversity of supporters attending
football matches was also cited by the UK Government, which stated that “all-seater stadia
are the best means to ensure the safety and security of fans and that they have been a
contributing factor to the increased diversity of those attending matches in recent years”
(UK Government, in Caton, 2012, p.171). This view has also been expressed more recently,
with Tracey Crouch, The Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport in 2016 maintaining
that “all-seater stadiums are the best means to ensure the safety and security of spectators
at football grounds in England and Wales”, Crouch argued that “all-seater stadiums have
helped improve crowd management, crowd behaviour and policing. They provide better and
more comfortable facilities to enjoy football matches, which has helped encourage
inclusivity and diversity amongst those attending” (Crouch, 2016).
Even among critics, the introduction of all-seater stadia has been acknowledged as
something which has helped to bring about important improvements to stadium safety, as
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Tempany (2016, p. 161) remarks, “in the Premier League era, the safety-first approach
demanded by Lord Justice Taylor remains an outstanding legacy” to the extent that “English
football has never been safer, better televised or more entertaining” (Tempany, 2016, p.
175).
Tempany, however, also contends that English football “has never been less about the
culture of the people who shaped our football clubs” (ibid.).
The role of the all-seater stadia in changing this “culture” is one which, as will be reviewed,
has already been theorised in existing literature, and is worthy of further exploration with
explicit reference to the campaign for the reintroduction of safe standing areas.
Furthermore, now that the “accidental death” verdict of those who lost their lives in the
Hillsborough disaster has been reversed, officially clearing fans of any responsibility, and
safe standing has been introduced in Britain at Celtic Park, the context of the debate has
changed considerably since Finnegan & Rookwood conducted their research - meaning that
the time to address calls for a better understanding of contemporary fan culture (Frosdick &
Newtown, 2006; Finnegan & Rookwood, 2008) in relation to all-seater stadia and calls for
the reintroduction of standing areas has come.

ii. The End of the Terraces: An Attack on the Working Class?

In The End of the Terraces, King (2002) explored the changes to the culture of football
supporters in the all-seater era by drawing upon Marxist theory in order to highlight the
importance of “the dominant framework of any society” (p.23) in making rituals - the
customs of behaviour adopted by certain cultures within society - obsolete. King claimed
that the rituals of football supporters in the late 1980s became out of step with this
dominant framework, and that therefore “both the organic (political economic)
development of football and its conjectural moment of crisis in the mid-1980s can only be
explained through an understanding of the wider social transformations in which these
organic and conjectural moments occurred” (ibid.).

It is therefore appropriate, following King, to situate the removal of standing areas within
the context of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, which was in office at the
time it was mandated. Elected in 1979, Thatcher’s government quickly set about
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dramatically altering the dominant framework of British society by introducing a series of

neoliberal reforms aimed at promoting free-market capitalism and the middle-class. This
social transformation saw many of the state-backed, blue-collar industries which had
employed Britain’s working-class collapse, which often led to high levels of unemployment
among traditionally working-class communities1. The neoliberal framework imposed by
Thatcher’s government has been described as “a concerted attempt to dismantle the value,
institutions and traditional industries of the working class” (Jones O. , 2011, p. 48). Football,
a sport “at the centre of working-class identity” (ibid., p. 136) it has been reasoned, came
under attack within this through the way in which it was “identified as a potentially lucrative
piece of working class culture, so it was taken away and repackaged” (ibid.).

The removal of the standing terraces, where the working-class communities had previously
“sang, swayed, and surged” (Scraton, 2016, p. 40), King argues forms just one aspect of the
wider repackaging of the sport based on Thatcherite principles. Crucial to this process was
the sale of television rights to Rupert Murdoch’s British Sky Broadcasting satellite television
company – which saw the launch of Sky Sports. Acting in tandem with this was the
breakaway of First Division football clubs from the Football League to form the Premier
League, a move which meant that top tier football clubs could retain all the television
revenues they generated, as opposed to sharing them out with football clubs in the lower
league.

Following King’s Marxist framework, the way in which this was facilitated, despite the
introduction of all-seater stadia being described as “as “unthinkable” (Inglis, 1985, p. 220)
just five years previously, can be understood as a deployment of the ideological state
apparatus (Althusser, 2014 [1971]). The ideological state apparatus can be used to reframe
what it is acceptable for what actions the state can, in the eyes of the public legitimately
take, as Bates (1975, p. 363) explains: “Public opinion is strictly linked to political hegemony.
It is the point of contact between civil society and political society, between consensus and
force. The state, when it wants to initiate an unpopular action, preventively creates the

1
The unemployment rate in the United Kingdom doubled in the early 1980s, from ~6% to ~12%. See:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-rate
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adequate public opinion; that is, it organizes and concentrates certain elements of civil
society”.

One aspect of the apparatus which creates such conditions, according to Althusser, is the
media - and understood in the context of the desire to legitimise the removal of the
previously working-class communities of the terraces from football stadia it should not be
overlooked that two years previously, it was the Murdoch owned Sun newspaper that
accused, on its front page, Liverpool supporters of causing the Hillsborough disaster.
The newspaper claimed that in the immediate aftermath of the disaster – Liverpool
supporters had “picked pockets of victims”, “urinated on the brave cops” and “beat up PC
giving kiss of life”2. Whilst there was no evidence for the accusations, they stuck,
successfully vilifying not only football supporters, but those who were victims of a disaster.
The media served to perpetuate a discourse of violent, uncontrollable football fans even if
the face of declining hooliganism. It is through doing so that the media can be considered to
have played a role within the ideological state apparatus of creating a justification for the
subsequent gentrification of the working-class game.

The success with which this was achieved is evidenced in an article published in The
Economist, just seven days after the Hillsborough Disaster, which opined that “…the game is
irredeemably tied to the old industrial north, yobs and slum cultures of the stricken inner
cities – everything, in fact, that modern Britain aspires to put behind it” (The Economist, 22
April 1989, quoted in King, 2004). The discourse that (working-class) football fans were
“yobs”, it could be argued, forms part of the broader state ideology which attacked the
working-class, and promoted the middle-class.

With the end of the terraces, came the rise of the seats, and with this so too came the rise
of the rise of the stadium as a venue for hybrid consumption (Bryman, 2004). The stadium,
according to Bryman, is no longer simply a venue for watching a favourite team play - it has
become additionally a shopping centre, a conference venue and in effect, a venue not for
the supporter, but for the consumer. Turner (2017, p. 126) has more explicitly situated the

2
A copy of the The Sun's 1989 coverage of the Hillsborough disaster can be accessed at:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/Hillsborough_disaster_Sun.jpg
 16

introduction of all-seater stadia as an aspect of this transformation, stating that “within a

25-year period, the English football fan has witnessed the replacement of the traditional
terraces with hyperreal all-seater stadia and the game increasingly defined by media
technology, consumerism and commercialization”.

It is in this environment, it is commonly argued (Bale, 2000; Guilianotti, 2000; King, 2002),
that clubs sought to replace the working-class occupants of the terraces, with typically lower
levels of disposable income, for higher income middle class consumers with the disposable
income necessary to participate in the hybrid consumption of the hyper-real stadium. It is
worth noting, in the context of the deployment of the ideological state apparatus, that this
process was not one which occurred secretively, but was openly advocated by the Football
Association, which in its 1991 Blueprint for the Future of Football, had highlighted the need
for football clubs to attract a more affluent type of consumer into stadia – and to achieve
this, fundamental changes to the space of the football stadium needed to occur.

“Control over space” Castells (2012, p. 11) argues, “symbolises the control over people’s
lives”, and this is significant in the context of advocates of all-seater stadia highlighting the
role of seats in enhancing the ability to “control” the space of the football stadium. This is
indicative of the stadium becoming a “panoptic”, or “disciplinary” space (Foucault, 1977;
Gaffney & Mascarenhas, 2005) in which supporters, because there is the possibility at any
given time that they are being watched, must regulate their behaviour to the accepted
norms of the space. The enforcement of new norms through this “panoptic space” could
therefore be considered to have regulated the traditional displays of supporters’ embodied
cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) in its manner of standing and chanting (arguably an
investment of labour, at the very least in emotional sense, in the team).

The supporters’ passion for their team, it has been argued, was subsequently repackaged
and sold back to them, with the new cultural norm symbolising passion being re-shaped into
the customer, who displays their support through consuming goods – an illustration of
support being less embodied, and more objectified. It is this nouveau post-terrace football
fan who Giulianotti (2002) terms a “flaneur” – somebody who supports a team with cool
detachment, and can be considered the opposite of the “carnival” supporter who stands
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and sings at games (Pearson, 2012). The normalisation of this new mode of consumption
has been identified in depictions such as that found in the book Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby,
an author who Pearson (2012, p. 9) describes as a “middle-class out-of-town fan who hated
violence and expressed a liking for all-seater stadiums”.

If the working-class fan decided they did want to take their place in the newly seated stadia,
and succumb to their role of as a consumer, the rapid price rises associated with the
introduction of all-seater stadia, Tempany (2016, p. 168) argues, made this difficult: “cost,
clearly, has exerted severe pressure on the working man wanting to take himself and his
children to the game”. It could be maintained, as Fisher (2009, p. 7) described the striking
miners of the 1980s, that the working-class fans who managed to cling on were rapidly
becoming “the last actors in a doomed proletarian romance”.

If we are to view the introduction of all-seater stadia as a component of a larger-scale

ideological assault on the working-class, it raises the question of the extent to which
contemporary calls for the introduction of “safe standing” represent a desire to return to
the working-class tradition of the terraces, and if so, does this represent anything more than
a desire for the “the sentimentalised recovery of sanitised heritages” (Massey, 1994, p. 1)
representative of a bourgeois fetishization of working-class culture?

iii. Beyond Class: Masculinity, Age and Place

Class, however, is not the only lens through which the identity of football supporters has
been explored, and considering the intersectionality – “the mutually constitutive relations
among social identities” (Shields, 2008, p. 301) - of the identity of supporters can help to
build a more complete picture of how this identity has been impacted upon by the all-seater
stadia. The first intersection which will be discussed is that of the “masculine” environment
of the terraces, a lens which highlights and explores the importance of gender to the
cultural identity of football supporters. Following this is a consideration of the importance of
age, and of place identity.
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Gender, Jackson and Scott (2001, p. 9) argue “is never simply given, but is interpreted,
theorized and mediated through the meanings which are culturally available to us.
Moreover ‘experiences’ happen and are made meaningful through social interactions within
particular social locations”. Understanding gender in this way can aid understanding of how
the standing areas of football stadia can be considered gendered spaces through the way in
which supporters interact on them.

To this end, Francis (2002, p. 642) argues that in the 20th century, in politics, there became
“increasingly less space for the exercise of unrestrained and visceral masculinity in public
life” and so too, it could be argued was this the case for working-class males in 1980s. As
neoliberal policies saw the closure of male-dominated industries, which represented the
masculinity of those who worked in them, the terraces of football stadia continued to offer
a space where men – or as they have been termed, “the lads” (King, 2002) - could
collectively continue to exhibit their masculinity in this way. King highlights how supporting
a football team can fulfil “a masculine desire for status and honour” (ibid., p.173) in terms of
the success of the football team itself, or even the ferocity of a team’s support – something
also central to the performance of regional identity, which Dunk & Bartol (2005, p. 29) argue
is “bound up with expressions of masculine and class identity”.

This desire to publicly perform a masculine gender identity has also been cited as an
explanation for the emergence of football-related hooliganism and violence, as Dunning
(1986, p. 88) argues: “it is reasonable to hypothesise that it is the ‘violent masculine style’
which is generated in this manner in the ‘rough’ working class that is principally expressed in
football hooligan fighting. That is to say, the current available evidence suggests that it is
youth and young men from this section of the working class who form the hard core who
most persistently engage in the more violent acts that take place in a football context”. In
this respect, the “masculine” environment of the terraces was one which could be
legitimately challenged, though the neoliberalisation of the sport, in order to tackle the
issue of hooliganism.

In doing so, a new type of football supporter, Giulianotti’s “flaneur” began to attend to
fixtures, challenging the traditional identity of football fandom. This is illustrated by (King,
 19

2002, p. 169), who in exploring reactions to fans who wear replica shirts while attending
matches – a trend arguably illustrative of the new consumer oriented environment - notes
that “the shirts… are very often worn by the type of people whose presence at Old Trafford
rankles so deeply with the lads’ notion of ecstatic masculine solidarity”. Nonetheless, this
unease with the perceived commercialisation and sanitisation of football fandom and loss of
the traditional masculine spaces is not necessarily a clear-cut issue, as it “plays out in
contention with the desire for such status and honour as a result of the team they support
being successful – something often aligned to a greater degree of commercialisation” (ibid.).
Weed (2007) hypotheses that the perceived sanitisation of football stadia means many such
football supporters now consider the pub to have a better atmosphere and communal
experience than the stadium itself, by extension it could argued that the pub now offers a
better venue for visceral expressions of masculinity in public life and has come to fulfil the
role the terraces traditionally played.

Regardless of where it may have moved to, if anywhere, the view that traditional working-
class, male supporter has become less hegemonic within football culture is a common one,
as Cashman & Cleland (2012, p. 383) summarise: “traditional conceptions of masculinity
remain in football culture, though they are in decline. Rather, there is evidence of multiple
masculinities of equal cultural value in existence. … suggest a movement towards inclusivity
and an acceptance of multiple masculinities”. We can also interrogate the notion that the
“masculine” performativity of the supporters is necessarily confined to males through
drawing on Butler (1990, p. 7), who states that: “When the constructed status of gender is
theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself become a free-floating artifice, with
the consequence that man3 and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a
male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one” - thus
masculinity becomes a “subverted identity” independent of the sex of an individual.

Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that the loss of the “masculine” environment does not
appear to have translated into the “increasing numbers of women and families attend[ing]
games” (Malcolm et al., 2000, p. 129) authorities have claimed to have occured. Secondary

3
Original author’s emphasis.
 20

survey data analysis by Malcom et al. found little evidence to support any increase in the
number of women attending matches in the all-seater era, remarking that the most striking
feature of the data regarding the sexual composition of football crowds is its “highly
uniform nature”. Further empirical research has, however, been conducted into the stadium
as a gendered space. For example, a survey of 2,729 female football supporters conducted
by the Football Supporters Federation in conjunction with anti-discrimination organisation
Kick It Out found that 2% of respondents were put off attending football matches because
of the perceived “male environment” of the stadium (Fans for Diversity, 2015), although it is
worth questioning whether this is understated given that the methodological approach,
being a survey aimed at match-going football fans, could be considered to have excluded
those put off by the male environment to the extent that they do not attend matches.

Further empirical evidence with regard to gender is highlighted by Tempany (2016, p.172)
who notes that “when Cardiff City began to get rid of standing at Ninian Park in 2007, they
discovered that 45% of the standing area was taken up by women”. Additionally, a 2017
survey by Arsenal Supporters’ Trust found that 91% of female participants in a survey were
supportive of the concept of reintroducing standing. This indicates that standing areas are
not viewed by females as necessarily a space which is exclusionary to them and in turn
raises question as to what is implied by assertions such as that “as a spectator sport football
is being feminised” (Malcolm et al., 2000, p.130) and the assumptions that this makes about
how females express their fandom in relation to their male counterparts.
In challenging assumptions about the “feminising” effect of an increasing proportion of the
football supporters being female, Pearson highlights that females may in fact actively
choose to conform to the norms of the masculine “lad” culture of the “carnival fan”, finding
that both male and female supporters alike bemoan the perceived influx of “flaneur”
football fans, who they feel only attend football matches because it is “fashionable”. Given
Pearson found that standing at football matches, particularly “away games” is central to this
form of football fandom, we can challenge the notion that the all-seater environment is
necessarily preferable to the female football supporter, and consider, following Butler
(1990) the extent to which the “masculinity” of football supporters is a subverted identity.
 21

In support of this, Jones (2008, p. 532), highlights that, in her study, “several women did not
want to be seen as women4 at football matches because of the negative connotations
surrounding emphasized femininity within this setting”, noting that “women are doing
fandom at a time when there is nostalgia in the wider football fan culture for a traditional
masculine past and resentment at the (perceived) feminized and gentrified present; this
helps to explain why their fan identities are more important to them than their gender
identities” (ibid.). The performatively of gender in this way, and the differing established
behavioural norms applied to male and female fans are particularly important
considerations within the context of the notion of “feminising” English football stadia. It is
also important in relation to the concerns of authorities that the introduction of standing
areas may turn female football supporters off attending games.

The sexual composition of crowds has been linked to age by Malcolm et al., (2000, p. 129),
who note “given the distinct lack of evidence of change in both the age and the sexual
composition of football crowds, there is little to support the contention that football is
increasingly becoming a family game” (ibid., p.133). As opposed to changes in the sexual
composition, the researchers found that the most significant change in the all-seater era
had been a decrease in the number of younger supporters (under 30 years old) attending
fixtures. With respect to this trend, it has been argued that “there are plenty of children at
matches, but far fewer teenagers and young adults than used to be seen” (Caton, 2012,
p.220) and that “the price to be paid for all-seater stadiums is that young adults are
disappearing from the match” (Tempany, 2016, p.162). Tempany evidences this by
highlighting that the average age of supporters on Manchester United’s Stretford End has
increased from 17 in 1968, to over 40 in 2008, and that in 2015, the average age of a match-
going supporter in the Premier League was 41. Tempany hypothesises that young adults
often find themselves unwelcome as football matches due to their low spending habits
compared to family groups, and that this illustrates the loss of the “social function” of
football clubs for young adults. Illustrating the intersectionality of age with gender, he states
“as we gave lost the terraces, and younger crowds have lost the chance to mix freely with

4
Original author’s emphasis
 22

older men, so we have lost a means to navigate our way from boyhood to manhood” (ibid.,
p.169).

As Tempany alludes to, the terraces can be considered as a space with which individuals and
crowds interact, and space becomes a place through the meaning attached to it (Cresswell,
2004). In exploring the importance of place to identity, academics have applied the concept
of “topophilia”, which can be defined as a love of place which incorporates “all of the
human being’s affective ties with the material environment” (Tuan, 1974, p.93). Tuan
broadly categorises these affective ties into three types: The aesthetic – the visual appeal of
a place, the tactile – the non-visual ‘feel’ of a place, and thirdly, the way in which a place can
act as “a locus of memories”.

Bale (2000, p. 92) argues that the concept of topophilia is one that this can be applied to the
place of the football stadium, stating “the psychological benefits to be derived from football
have led the stadium to be seen by some as a source of topophilia” whilst Giulianotti (2002,
p. 33) further develops the concept of topophilia within the context of football fandom in
greater detail: “Supporters habitually have a “topophilic” relationship toward the club’s core
spaces, primarily the home ground. Supporters attend regularly, coming to know the
ground’s nooks and crannies in a very familiar, personal manner. The ground enhances their
thick solidarity with fellow supporters, crowds of whom generate an atmosphere on match
days that is considered to be special or unique”

Viewing football fandom through the lense of topophilia can aid understanding of how
people come to feel a “sense of place” (Massey, 1991) within their surroundings in the
stadium, and in turn the way in which this helps to form the “imagined community”, of
people who “will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of
them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, 1991, p.2)
within the stadium. Viewing the space of the football stadium through the lense of
topophilia way opens the door to an exploration of the way in which this process of
community forming operates differently between seated and standing accommodation. In
this regard, Gaffney & Mascarenhas, (2005, p. 11) state that “this new stadium model has
lost many of its particularities that were collectively and historically constructed. The place
has lost its soul”.
 23

How this can be considered the case is evidenced with regard to the first of Tuan’s affective
ties, the aesthetic. In order to foster topophilia through aesthetic menas, there is a
requirement for the place to impose a “sense of beauty” upon the beholder (Tuan, 1974,
p.99). Whilst it could be argued that many of the larger, new build all-seater stadia have
been built with aesthetic beauty in mind, leading to them being described as “postmodern
cathedrals of consumption” [ref] the extent to which this has been successful overall in the
all-seater era is debatable, as Giulianotti (2002, p. 40) highlights, “such locations are devoid
of topophilic meaning, are emptied of any sense of home, but house instead the cool and
ungrounded circulation of football’s commodity ephemera” – far removed from the type of
location likely to foster a sense a topophilia, particularly among the ‘traditional’ fan. The
plastic seats which now dominate the aesthetic of stadium interiors have arguably taken on
emblematic role – with the “flaneur” supporters who sit on them frequently being referred
to as “plastics” themselves by the ‘traditional’ supporters (Pearson, 2012).

The second of Tuan’s affective ties, the tactile, is one that has also undergone dramatic
change within the football stadium as a result of the introduction of all seater-stadia. Where
previously supporters “swayed and surged” (Scraton, 2016, p.40), making direct physical
contact with those stood around them, they now sat in individual seats, making none or
minimal contact with those around them. The physical contact between supporters was
perhaps representative of the community on the terraces, something which has broken
down with the individualisation seats provide, which supporters who wish to see a return to
standing areas are seeking to revive. Evidence of attempts to revive this is arguably found
the example Manchester City supporters “doing the Poznan”, where supporters join arms
and jump up and down facing away from the pitch, which Turner (2015, p.128) highlights
has been “to generate a new sense of optimism and fan experience which according of
many football supporters, has been lost as a result of the introduction of all-seater stadia
post-Hillsborough and the Taylor report commissioned by the then Conservative
government”. The behaviour exhibited by the Manchester City supporters, which was based
on witnessing the supporters of Polish club Lech Poznan do the same thing, is in fact
commonplace throughout much of continental Europe, even at clubs which, like Lech
Poznan, have all-seater stadia, perhaps indicating that the introduction of all-seater stadia in
 24

such countries has not seen quite as drastic a move towards the “postmodern” stadium as
has been seen in England.

In an ethnography of the ‘RBB’ supporters’ group at Australian football club Western Sydney
Wanderers, Knijnik (2016, p. 16) further outlines the importance of the physical aspect of
football fandom:

“‘Who do we sing for’ is the RBB’s ‘call and response chant’, when one side of the group
shouts something at another, and then receives a reply. The RBB sector starts by raising
their arms, waggling their fingers and vocalising in the direction of a non-active sector of
Wanderers fans who respond in the same way. Then, the RBB leader, in synchrony with the
drums, counts to three, and all RBB members shout, ‘Who do we sing for?’ The other sector
replies, ‘We sing for the Wanderers!’. After a few repetitions, every Wanderers supporter in
the stadium is screaming, clapping, dancing and making as much noise as possible. It is the
RBB’s carnival’s apotheosis”.

It is through this “carnivalesque atmosphere”, Knijnik (ibid.) explains, that the supporters of
Western Sydney Wanderers “proclaim their collective identity” through what could be
considered an example of an “acoustic community” (Paramio et al., 2008). This is worthy of
further investigation in terms of supporters’ perceptions of the impact upon this
“community” when they are seated as opposed to standing.

The third of Tuan’s ties, the way in which a place acts as a “locus of memories” can also be
applied in the context of football fandom. For instance, Bale (2000, p.92) highlights how a
football club can serve to provide “a focal point for local pride and awareness and a source
of dynamic geographical memories”. The memories attached to fans’ experiences on the
terraces – for the people who accompanied them, the games they watched, and the
atmospheres they experienced, could lead us to understand calls for their return as
something driven by nostalgia, for what is arguably “an idealised past, where atmospheres
in stadia were ‘better’” (Welford et al., 2015, p. 329). The process of fans sharing their
memories in this way, it has been argued, creates a kind of folklore (Seddon, 2004), which
enables a sense of nostalgia to be passed down through generations, continuing the
demand for a return of standing areas in the hope that the “old days” can be relived. To this,
end Pearson (2012) notes that some supporters will choose to stand in the stairwells of
 25

stadia, where there are steps but no seats, partially because it reminds them of the terraces,
not only can this be considered nostalgic, but also as representative of a resistance to all-
seater hegemony. But to what extent does this resistance exist?

iv. A Form of Resistance?

Caton (2012) has attempted as to the approximate percentage of away supporters who
remained standing for the duration of matches (table 3), although presented with the
caveat that the figures may vary, sometimes dramatically, from game to game (note the
figure for the away supporters is given as a percentage as away capacities vary by stadium)
and the methodological rigour for the data (being based on estimates made by eye) is
questionable, it does give a clear indication that significant number of supporters continue
to stand at football matches, to the extent that amongst the away support of many clubs
standing can be understood as the ‘norm’. King argues that the ‘traditional’ football
supporters still attend ‘away’ fixtures and if we understand these supporters as being more
likely to stand up (Pearson, 2012), this evidence appears to back this up. The Sports Ground
Safety Authority has warned that the number of supporters choosing to stand in seated
areas is still increasing (Rumsby, 2017), suggesting that Caton’s figures may now be
considered an under-estimate.

Table 3: Average number of supporters who remain standing for duration of game, by club
(Caton, 2012)

Club Stand at home games Stand at away games

Arsenal 1,500 90%
Aston Villa 5,000 95%
Brighton 800 75%
Bristol City 900 60%
Chelsea 1,000 80%
Coventry 1,000 50%
Derby 1,000 50%
 26

Leicester 1,200 70%

Leeds United 8,000 99%
Liverpool 4,500 99%
Manchester City 4,000 90%
Manchester United 7,500 97%
Newcastle 1,000 99%
Norwich 2,500 95%
Nottingham Forest 1,000 60%
Preston North End 600 35%
Southampton 2,000 99%
Stoke City 800 90%
Sunderland 1,000 60%
Swansea City 1,250 80%
Tottenham Hotspur 2,500 90%
West Ham United 7,000 95%
West Bromwich Albion 1,600 10%

While social movement theory can aid understanding of the organised campaign, everyday
actions of supporters at football matches are also an important aspect of the ‘resistance’ to
all-seater hegemony.

To this end, Bryman (2004) writes about customer resistance in venues of consumption,
citing the example of visitors to Disneyland attempting to overcome the ‘norms’ imposed on
the space, often in the form of rules, by deliberately behaving in a way which goes against
them. This too is arguably evident with regard to football supporters, with Pearson’s
description of supporters standing in seated stadia being an example not only of a nostalgic
topophilia, but also as a tactic of resistance against all-seater stadia in direct contradiction of
Lord Justice Taylor’s assertion in his report that supporters will become used to sitting.

Similarly, through Scott (1985), the act of supporters standing at football, particularly en
mass, can be understood as an “everyday form of symbolic resistance” (p.304), which does
not necessarily seek change in its own terms, but rather provides a clear and visible means
 27

of subverting the rules by which the supporters are expected to abide. These forms, Scott
argues are central to the “social experience of class”, something which, as discussed,
arguably the football terraces were central to. On the other hand, though de Certeau
(1984), that supporters continue to stand at football matches could be understood as simply
“a practice of everyday life”, subverting the rules but with no specific intention of
“resistance”, but done simply because supporters find it easier or more convenient to stand.

Whilst it is probably reasonable to accept, based on the empirical evidence available, that a
significant majority of footballer supporters in England support the introduction of safe
standing areas (see table 2), Welford at al. (2015, p.328) state that “fans, whilst aware of
intricate problems in football governance, also understand the limit of their influence on the
game”. This raises the question of whether supporters see calls for the introduction of safe
standing as being within their influence, and if so, how supporters have gone about
campaigning for it.

With regard to the strategy of supporters, formalised campaigns exist at a number of clubs,
whilst cross-club supporter campaigns have emerged with the ‘Stand Up, Sit Down’
campaign, which later merged into the Football Supporters Federation Safe Standing
campaign. Castells (2012, p.13) argues that “at the individual level, social movements are
emotional movements”, but when individuals connect to form a social movement,
leadership emerges to suit an agenda” it is worthy of exploration as to the extent to which is
the case in the campaign for the reintroduction of standing areas at English football stadia,
particularly given critiques that the leadership of football supporters’ social movements are
often not representative of groups they claim to represent – typically being middle-class and
able to afford to continue matches even in the face of increasing ticket prices (Nash, 2001;
Millward, 2011).

With regards to factors which may potentially limit the success of the movement, citing the
example of supporter led movements at Manchester United and Liverpool, Millward (2011,
p. 179) observed “fan rivalries often forming a barrier” between similar supporter
movements at different clubs meaning than “formal connections across the supporter
movements based at different clubs are unusual as ‘typical’ networking practices across
 28

social movements become refracted by fan rivalries” (ibid., p.174). Given that campaigns for
the reintroduction of standing areas in English football stadia exists at both a club and
national level, it is worth exploring the extent to which the movement has overcome these
barriers. One of the ways on which may have been achieved is through the internet, which
Castells (2012) has highlighted as an important tool of mobilisation in new social
movements. Although at an individual club level, Millward has identified how supporters of
supporters of FC United of Manchester, internet forums served to “bolster the group’s
motives for collective action” (2011, p.169).
Despite the lack of existing research on the campaign for the introduction of standing areas,
understanding it as a form of “new social movement” based around ideas of “collective
identity and values” (Hara & Huang, 2013, p. 2098) means that within this dissertation, the
motivations of activists can be more thoroughly explored through reference to the aspects
of identity covered throughout this literature review.

4) Methodology

The research project was carried out in line University of Liverpool’s ethical research policy
and full permission for the project was granted through the university’s ethics committee.

With regard to positionality, it is important to note that during the time at which this
research was conducted, the author was involved in the campaign to introduce safe
standing at Shrewsbury Town FC. Whilst this enabled access to several key informants, it
must be acknowledged that being involved in this campaign has inevitably impacted upon
the interpretation of the data collected. There is additionally the possibility that
participants, in being aware of the author’s positionality, will have been inclined to provide
answers which they felt would be desirable in light of this (Partington, 2001).

The research was interview based, with participants recruited using a multi-stage sampling
strategy. Initial approaches to key informants resulted in eight interviews being conducted,
one of which was a joint interview with two participants. These participants were selected
because they have played an active public role in the campaign for the reintroduction of
standing areas in English football stadia through campaigns at individuals clubs, through
 29

national campaigns, or through political involvement. It was decided that one of the
interviews, conducted with a member of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, would not be
used in the research owing to ethical concerns regarding to the ongoing trials in relation to
the Hillsborough Disaster. Of the interviews with key informants, seven were conducted
face-to-face, and one was conducted via telephone.

Following interviews with key informants, an open invitation for secondary informants to
participate in the research was placed on social network site Twitter. The invitation
requested “female football fans to conduct short interviews with about safe standing”, with
further details being provided to those who expressed an interest in participating. The
invitation was directly shared to four ‘gatekeepers’: The Football Supporters’ Federation,
The Safe Standing Roadshow, Stand Up For Town, and This Fan Girl. The ‘tweet’ was
subsequently ‘retweeted’ by 20 accounts, resulting in a total of 7,474 individuals seeing the
invitation.

The use of social media was advantageous as it enabled the inclusion of participants “who
may not consider themselves activists [who] are actively participating in online
mobilisation” (Hara & Huang, 2013, p. 2097) whilst targeting the invitations specifically at
female participants broadened the diversity of the sample, something which was considered
important given that themes surrounding gender identity would be explored in the
research. This second sampling stage resulted in a further five interviews being conducted,
four of which were conducted via telephone, and one via e-mail. A summary table of all
interviews can be found in the appendices.

The interview approach was semi-structured, a form of interviewing which “has some
degree of pre-determined order but maintains flexibility in the way issues are addressed by
the informant” (Dunn, 2010, p. 102). The interviews opened with a general primary question
to initiate discussion, with more specific secondary questions following up dependent on
the response to this. The use of a semi-structured format is, according to Bariball & While
(1994, p. 331) beneficial as it allows the interviewer and interviewee to “establish a sense of
rapport and reduce the risk of socially desirable answers” – a key concern given the
concerns raised regarding the potential impacts of the author’s positionality on participants’
responses.
 30

In terms of the method of interviewing, face-to-face interviews were initially preferred, but
for practical reasons could not be conducted for interviews beyond the first stage of
sampling. However, Novick (2008, p. 391) notes that there are advantages and
disadvantages to both face-to-face and telephone interviews, with neither method
necessarily being preferable: “The absence of visual cues via telephone is thought to result
in loss of contextual and nonverbal data and to compromise rapport, probing, and
interpretation of responses. Yet, telephones may allow respondents to feel relaxed and able
to disclose sensitive information, and evidence is lacking that they produce lower quality
data”. For practical reasons, it was decided that conducting one interview via email was
appropriate. Although email interviews can result in a substantially altered power dynamic
between interviewer and interviewee in comparison to face-to-face interviews (James &
Busher, 2006), Meho (2006, p. 1284), argues that “while a mixed mode interviewing
strategy should be considered when possible”, when used appropriately, email can provide
“a viable alternative to face-to-face and telephone interviewing”.

Each of the interviews used in the dissertation was audio recorded, which enabled the data
to be prepared for analysis broadly using the methods recommended by Dunn (2010):
Firstly, a preliminary coding system was prepared based on the literature review and notes
taken during interviews. Following this, the interviews were transcribed and coded by
theme using Microsoft Word. Similarly coded text was then retrieved, enabling the data to
be reviewed according to theme.

All participants were offered the choice to be named, or to remain anonymous within the
research. Each of the key informants expressed a preference to be named, whilst the other
participants all expressed a preference to remain anonymous and as such were referred to
under a pseudonym in all data collected.
 31

5) Discussion

i. The Reintroduction of Standing: A Divided Debate?

In line with the findings of Finnegan & Rookwood (2008), many participants compared the
experience of watching football to other spectator events, such as rugby, cricket and music
concerts. Participants frequently suggested that the different legislation which applies to
football stadia in comparison to these events contradicts arguments that all-seater stadia
are necessary to ensure to safety, as Jon Darch reasoned: “if standing was inherently
unsafe… you wouldn’t have standing in rugby grounds, you wouldn’t have standing at horse-
racing courses”. Roger Godsiff, a Labour Party MP, perceived the introduction of all-seater
stadia as a as a “ridiculous contradiction” based on prejudices about the behaviour of
football supporters. Citing the example of “the posh person’s sport, racing”, which whilst
attending, “people stand up”, Godsiff argued that the “implication is it’s because people
behave themselves at those sort of events” - unlike those who attend football matches.

This “implication” was not only highlighted in relation to all-seater stadia – many
participants also cited what they perceived to be unfair regulation relating to the
consumption of alcohol in football stadia: “you can drink within view of the pitch at a rugby
match, but you can’t at a football match” (Cheryl, Norwich City supporter). This was often
illustrated by participants specifically through the example of stadiums which host both
football matches, during which alcohol consumption in view of the pitch is illegal, as well as
non-football events, during which there are no laws governing alcohol consumption, as
Nadine, Norwich City supporter pointed out, “at Wembley Stadium, it’s exactly the same
stadium, with the same stewards, but whether you can drink in the stands depends on what
sport you’re watching”. Roger Groves of the Shrewsbury Town Supporters’ Parliament
furthered this argument in terms of himself as an individual: “I can go and have a nice day
out at the cricket at Lords, and sit there and have a few beers in the sun, but I couldn’t do it
at a football ground – yet I’m the same person”. For these reasons, James Chisem, of Stand
Up For Town and the Huddersfield Town Supporters’ Association, argued that the football-
specific nature of the alcohol ban is “illogical” and “doesn’t make sense”.
 32

Whilst supportive of Finnegan and Rookwood’s finding in relation to the perceived

unfairness of all-seater legislation applying exclusively to football-stadia, the frequency with
which alcohol legislation was raised by participants, despite being prompted to specifically
discuss all-seater legislation, suggests that this is an important issue among football
supporters and one that, it could be argued, has taken on an emblematic role in illustrating
the ways in which football supporters are treated differently in the eyes of the law in
comparison to those attending other events. The debate surrounding alcohol legislation is
one which adds to the growing body of research of the “criminalising of football fans”
(Waiton, 2012) though football-specific legislation which has seen otherwise legal
behaviours become illegal if conducted while attending a football match. That many
participants opted to discuss alcohol legislation at greater length than all-seater legislation
could be considered as result of all-seater legislation not amounting to a ban on standing
per se, as former Liberal Democrat spokesperson for culture, media and sport John Leech
highlighted: “the legislation says that everybody has to be provided with a seat. It doesn't
say that everybody has to sit down”.

In Finnegan and Rookwood’s study, most supporters who participated were in favour of a
reintroduction of standing, but “doubted such plans would ever be implemented in British
stadia” (p.100), something which was partially attributed to the spectre of the Hillsborough
Disaster. Although, with the introduction of “safe standing” at Celtic in 2016, this has since
proven not to be the case, Roger Godsiff considered the legacy of the Hillsborough Disaster
as having prevented a “rational consideration” of the need for all-seater stadia from a safety
perspective, stating that “a lot of people have been reluctant to raise the issue [of the
reintroduction of standing areas] too much out of respect for the survivors of Hillsborough”.

However, following the 2016 inquests which, Godsiff stated, proved “it wasn't standing that
caused the Hillsborough disaster” Jon Darch, of the Safe Standing Roadshow, highlighted the
changing nature of the debate surrounding the reintroducing standing areas in relation to
the Hillsborough Disaster: “I had a local councillor come along who had lost a relative at
Hillsborough and he said me at the end of the event ‘I came here determined to be against
your idea, but having seen the rail-seats and stood behind them, and felt how safe they are,
I’m totally in favour of it. Good luck with your campaign’”. The reluctance to raise the issue
out of respect to the Hillsborough families highlighted by Godsiff, however, was still
 33

perceived as a factor preventing political support for the reintroduction of standing areas, as
John Leech, of the Liberal Democrats argued: “Labour’s position, while being untenable, is
still as it is because every single MP in Liverpool and those areas where there's big Liverpool
support, they've stopped Labour from taking the logical position in relation to safe
standing”, highlighting that the lack of political will identified by participants in Finnegan
and Rookwood’s study is still apparent, if not to such a great extent. Leech, however,
highlighted the increasing support for a reintroduction of standing among clubs themselves,
stating that “when I was first arguing the case politically… none of the clubs were even
remotely considering it. Now, every club, bar Liverpool, in the Premier League, wants this
resolved. That is a massive step forward from not that long ago. There's been massive
strides forward.”

The changing attitudes of football clubs towards the debate arguably illustrate that the
divide between those in favour of reintroducing standing areas (consisting of fans, writers
and academics), and those more cautious about doing so (who are responsible for ensuring
safety and control in stadiums) identified by Finnegan and Rookwood can be considered to
have broken down somewhat in the nine years since their research was conducted. This
viewpoint is shared by Jon Darch, who highlighted that: “the EFL has been mandated for
four years to pursue rail-seating with the government. The FA, we know the chairman there
has said he’s very much in favour of it. We’ve now got the Premier League having sounded
out their clubs”.

Whilst this dissertation only encompassed those explicitly in favour of reintroducing

standing areas, the breaking down of this divide was further evidenced through participants
expressing views sympathetic to arguments in favour of all-seater stadia. The introduction
of all-seater stadia was seen by some participants as something which “had to happen to
make it safe for fans to attend games” (Cheryl, Norwich City supporter), and an issue which
“required very swift action” (Paul Cuffe, Stand Up For Town and Huddersfield Town
Supporters’ Association). Roger Groves argued that the introduction of all-seater stadia was
necessary as the authorities responsible for stadium safety needed “to try and find a way of
bringing stadia into the modern day” which, Groves argued, to be achieved, required them
“to go quite far from where they were”. Similarly, some participants felt that given the
options faced by Lord Justice Taylor, he had little option but to recommend the introduction
 34

of all-seater stadia, supporting the view of the introduction of all-seater stadia as forming
part of a “safety-first approach” (Tempany, 2016, p.175):

“Lord Justice Taylor was faced with a bit of a dilemma: Should he allow clubs to continue to
admit spectators to crumbling, poorly-managed stadia – fenced in, with no escape in the
event of an emergency, or should he say that the only type of accommodation that clubs
would be allowed to put spectators in were traditional grandstands” (Jon Darch)

“Lord Justice Taylor essentially had two choices. He could send people back in to what, in
many cases, were crumbling stadiums that weren’t fit for purpose, or he could go for the all-
seater option to modernise the stadia” (James Chisem)

In addition to arguments regarding safety, participants also highlighted the role they felt all-
seater stadia played in helping to reduce hooliganism, illustrating support for the need for
“controllable environment of the all-seater stadium” which “enable the clubs to control the
crowd and deal with issues of public disorder… swiftly and effectively” (DCMS, in Caton,
2012, p.164). To this end, Mike Davis of the Shrewsbury Town Supporters’ Parliament
explained: “We didn’t have a great reputation, for the right reasons really. You look back at
some of the things that happened and you can fully understand why the authorities wanted
to clamp down on that”, whilst Norwich City supporter Cheryl argued: “I’m not saying
everybody in the 80s was a hooligan, because clearly they weren’t. But football was a
different beast then and had to evolve. It had to move on, and that has to it being much
more family friendly”.

Not all participants, however, felt that the introduction of all-seater stadia was justified.
Some argued that the introduction of all-seater stadia “was a knee-jerk reaction” (Roger
Godsiff), or “an over-reaction” (Peter Caton, Stand Up Sit Down). Those who felt that the
decision to mandate all-seater stadia was not necessary consistently expressed it as forming
an aspect of the government agenda of the time - as being “something that the government
wanted to do anyway” (Peter Caton). All-seater legislation, far from being purely a matter of
safety or a necessary means of tackling hooliganism, was according to Roger Godsiff, a form
of “punitive action against football” which was an aspect of the “class war going on between
those in the establishment, as represented by Mrs. Thatcher, and working people”.
 35

This provides a clear example of participants situating the introduction of all-seater stadia
within the “broader framework of society” (King, 2002, p.23) at the time at which it was
mandated - and it is this juncture at which calls for a better understanding of contemporary
fan culture (Frosdick & Newtown, 2006; Finnegan & Rookwood, 2008) can be addressed
within the context of the introduction of all-seater stadia and call for the reintroduction of
standing areas.

ii. The End of the Terraces: An Attack on the Working Class?

The framing of the introduction of all-seater within the political context of Thatcher’s
government was common among participants, regardless of whether they felt that all-
seater legislation was, in itself, justified. For example, James Chisem claimed that “phasing
in all-seater stadiums wasn’t just about the Hillsborough disaster, or the infrastructure of
stadiums. It was an attempt by the Thatcher and then Major governments to sanitise
football”, whilst Jon Darch made the case that “it was not a safety issue, it was not that the
Thatcher government thought that us darling fans need to be protected because we might
fall over and hurt ourselves… it was a very blunt measure to counter the hooliganism of the
1970s and the mid-1980s” (Jon Darch). This suggests that participants were able to separate
the motivations of Lord Justice Taylor’s all-seater recommendation from the government’s
desire for all-seater stadia, with the latter being seen as less legitimate, or at least as an
over-the-top response to the issue it was intended to address.

Peter Caton took this further, contending that the Taylor Report itself was a political tool
used to help the government achieve its goal of all-seater stadia, raising the possibility “that
Lord Justice Taylor was told to come up with all-seater regulation” Caton argued that “if you
look at his report carefully, all the way through it talks about increasing the proportion of
seated accommodation, and then suddenly he came to the conclusion at the end that
everything should go all-seated”.

The introduction of all-seater stadia was understood as part of a broader political project
and was considered by participants to have “gentrified football” into a “sanitised version of
what it was in the 80s”, enabling it to become “a middle-class sport rather than a working-
 36

class sport” (Nicola, Liverpool supporter). This supports Jones (2011), who in Chavs: The
Demonization of the Working Class identified football as a sport “at the centre of working-
class identity” which “was taken away and repackaged” (p.136). Jones’ book can be
considered important through its role in creating a discourse – a viewpoint which “implants
and reinforces the notions it contains” Carling (2004) – regarding the impact of the
neoliberalisation of football on working-class supporter, as evidenced by two participants
independently referred to a “demonization” of the working class and of football supporters:

“There was a demonization of the working classes and football was an unashamedly
working-class sport” (Nicola)

“It’s this idea of the demonization of the football fan” (Nadine)

That converting the standing terraces of stadia into seating was something which, shortly
before it was mandated, was considered “unthinkable” (Inglis, 1985, p. 192), is indicative
the scale of the political challenge in making it acceptable, and the process of
“demonization” of working-class football supporters can be considered to have played a role
in this through its incorporation within the deployment of the ideological state apparatus in
order to “create the adequate public opinion” which enables the state to “initiate an
unpopular action” (Bates, 1975, p. 363). Althusser (2014 [1971]) identified the media as an
aspect of the ideological state apparatus which can help achieve this, and through the
discourse it has reproduced, was also identified in this way by participants.

In this respect, Roger Groves highlighted that “there was always a lot of negative press
around football violence”, whilst Sarah, a Huddersfield Town supporter, felt that “in the
media, there’s more negative perceptions and stories about football fans than there is of
other sports’ fans”. The response of the media to the Hillsborough Disaster in particular
was highlighted by King (2002) and so too was emphasised by Roger Godsiff, who felt that,
more than just helping to facilitate the introduction of all-seater stadia, the media played a
role in covering up the real causes of the disaster: “at the time there was mass hysteria,
with the press blaming Liverpool fans, making the most outrageous suggestions – that they
were fleecing dead bodies, and all this sort of thing. Standing was a convenient scapegoat,
fans that stood up were a nice, convenient scapegoat for police incompetence and
corruption” (Roger Godsiff). Other participants felt that in the wake of the disaster, “the
 37

media were pushing an agenda” (Nadine) which made it “easy back then to buy into the
narrative that the fans were a bit to blame” (Nicola).

In discussing the responses to these perception, Jon Darch noted the role of CCTV in altering
the behaviour of supporters:

“All-seater stadia do not eradicate bad behaviour totally, but the modern stadia helped.
With CCTV these days, if you're wearing a pin badge, the camera can zoom in and read that
pin badge… that if they misbehave, whether in a seated area, or in the future, in a rail-
seated area, they will be found out and they will lose they season ticket, and they might get
a stadium ban. That's what has eradicated poor behaviour, not the fact that the grounds are
all seater”.

Through Foucault (1977) and Gaffney & Mascarenhas (2005), this can be viewed as an
example of the internalisation of rules and regulations by supporters through the creation of
the disciplinary space” of the modern football stadium, which conditions ‘acceptable’
behaviours through, firstly, the risk of being seen to be behaving in a way which goes
against what is considered acceptable, and, secondly, the risk of being punished as a result
of this. By extension, this panoptic space can also be seen to discourage other behaviours
considered unacceptable in the modern “hyperreal” (Turner, 2017, p. 126) stadium, helping
to reshape the norms of football fandom. That fans are encouraged to report ‘anti-social’
behaviour is indicative of supporters becoming "part of [the] mechanism" of the panopticon
(Foucault, 1977, p. 217). Although designated seating may be viewed as an element of the
creation of “panoptic space”, it could be argued CCTV plays a greater role in terms of the
regulation of supporter behaviour.

It was evident that, although the exact mechanisms through which it has been achieved are
not universally agreed, participants generally perceive the modern all-seater stadium as
being a space in which the norms of behaviour have changed to become more “sanitised”
and this was generally perceived as fitting within the frameworks developed in existing
literature as being part of a wider neoliberal project. There was a general perception that
there has been a deliberate effort to replace the “traditional” working-class supporters of
the terraces with a more middle-class form of supporter, although this did not manifest
 38

itself in the form of hostility – as identified through ethnographic study by Pearson, 2012 -
towards these supporters - with participants generally taking greater issue for those
perceived to have imposed the neoliberal agenda. It is, however, worth considering that
none of the participants had themselves been excluded from stadia in the way in which they
describe the working-class as having been, raising questions as to the extent to which the
participants in this research can be said to speak for this group, and indeed, whether the
working-class culture of the terraces is something which was fetishised by participants.

Class, however is not the only lens through which the collective identity and values which
form the culture of football supporters can be viewed, and participants referred to a host of
aspects of identity - which were often viewed as intersectional with one another - as having
been influenced by the introduction of all-seater stadia and as being relevant to calls for the
reintroduction of standing areas.

iii. Beyond Class: Masculinity, Age and Place

Whilst some participants did refer to the importance of attracting young male supporters
specifically, generally, participants saw gender as being of little significance in shaping
support for the reintroduction of standing areas. The notion of reintroducing standing could
potentially be exclusionary on the basis of gender was described, respectively, as “not very
strong” (Sarah, Huddersfield Town supporter), “nonsensical” (Roger Godsiff) and
“fundamentally sexist” (James Chisem). Many participants questioned what they perceived
to be an assumption from football authorities that women necessarily preferred to sit down
– highlighting that “you’ll find that loads of women are standing” (Sarah), and that “there’s
plenty of men who want to sit down” (Nadine, Norwich City Supporter). Participants also
expressed doubt that the environments enjoyed by male and female supporters in stadia
are necessarily different, instead arguing that “actually lots of young girls are as rowdy as
lots of young lads are” (James Chisem), although this could equally be understood as being a
product of “the negative connotations surrounding emphasized femininity within this
setting” (Jones, 2008, p.532). Participants were also critical of the refences to the role of all-
seater stadia attracted “female and young fans” (the FA, in Caton, 2012, p. 166), with
Norwich City supporter Nadine, stating “one of the things I absolutely hate is women and
 39

children being bracketed as one thing”, demonstrating support to safe standing may be to
some extent a reaction to the perceived infantilising of female supporters by authorities.

It was evident that there was a hope among participants that the reintroduction of standing
areas would help to attract “rowdy” supporters who will help to recreate what is
traditionally considered the masculine environment, reminiscent of the “carnival” support
described by Pearson (2012), within the stadium. Although some participants indicated they
would not necessarily wish to be a part of that environment themselves, it was perceived as
important to the overall “atmosphere” of the stadium - something highlighted by King
(2002) as important to the pride and status of football supporters - that these supporters
were attracted to matches. That male and female participants both expressed a desire for
this type of environment within the stadium, as well as an outright rejection that this would
be exclusionary in terms of gender, suggests that the masculine identity of “the lads” (King,
2002) standing at the football and engaging in traditional modes of support is a contested,
or “subverted” (Butler, 1990) one. This is particularly interesting in the context of claims
that “football is being feminised” (Crinnion, 1998, p. 16) and, in line with existing research,
leads us to question the extent to which this is linked to the sex of supporters attending
games and following Cashman & Cleland (2012), the changing way in which masculinity is
expressed in the environment of the football stadium.

More so than gender, the type of supporter participants hoped would be attracted to
stadiums by the reintroduction of standing was generally represented by “the teenage fans,
early 20s, who used to stand on the terraces and travel around the country” (Peter Caton).
Supporters of this age were assigned a greater cultural capital through the way in which
they were perceived as being important to generating the “atmosphere” of the stadium
because, as James Chisem explained: “younger people tend to have a lot more energy, tend
to be a lot more rowdy, tend to sing more” (James Chisem). Participants, in line with
Tempany (2016) and Malcolm et al. (2000), perceived this demographic to have largely been
excluded from modern all-seater stadia: “If you look at the Anfield Kop, the average age of
that has increased. Usually those people would have moved to the seated stands, but that
doesn’t happen anymore. If you could get back to that natural moving on of people and get
younger people coming in, that’s where the atmosphere come from” (Nadine).
 40

Participants linked the perceived lack of supporters in their teens and 20s directly to the
wider project of neoliberalisation which has seen admission prices rise in the all-seater era
as clubs market themselves towards more affluent consumers. In this respect, Peter Caton
referred to “the young rowdy people who didn’t pay so much on a terrace, didn’t go in to
the club-shop and spend as much money as the families they tried to replace them with”
and highlighted the central role this demographic had played in football stadia: “People of
all ages and both sexes want to stand, and indeed often already do so in front of seats
without causing trouble, but who are we to say that we shouldn’t have young males coming
to football? That’s always been a core support”

Jon Darch highlighted how the unappealing nature of all-seater stadia to this demographic
was a key motivation in campaigning for the reintroduction of standing, linking this to his
own personal experiences, and supporting Tempany’s theorisation of the loss of standing
areas as something which means young supporters have lost their ability to navigate their
“way from boyhood to manhood” (ibid., p.169) through the natural progression to different
areas of the stadium as they grow older:
“I grew up standing on an open terrace at Ashton Gate, then for a few years sat with my Dad
in one of the stands, and then stood again on the covered terrace with my schoolmates, and
thoroughly enjoyed it. 20-odd years later, when I was taking one of my nephews to the
games when he was 13-14… I thought it was a shame that when he and his brother were 16,
17, 18, they couldn't enjoy themselves with their mates on the terraces. Because it's almost
a traditional rite of passage. You went with your Mum, Dad, Uncle as a kid, but when you're
old enough to go by yourself, you go with your schoolmates, your friends and enjoy that
slightly more boisterous experience standing up” (Jon Darch).

However, the extent to which standing areas would attract younger supporters into stadia
was doubted by Mike Davis, who cited the example of the response to proposed
introduction of “safe standing” at Shrewsbury Town FC: “When you talk about standing, you
would expect the younger generation of fans to be the ones clamouring to go in that area.
What we’ve actually found is that is that it’s not the case. It’s actually people that are at an
age that they were used to standing at football matches previously, for instance here 10
years ago when me moved to an all-seater stadium. It’s the sort of guys who stood at Gay
Meadow for 10, 15, 20 years before that who are the ones pushing and are more open to
 41

standing again” – this indicates that nostalgia is an influence (as per Pearson 2012) in
supporters’ calls for a reintroduction of standing areas.

On this respect, following Bale (2000) and Giulianotti (2002), the space of the football
stadium can considered important in terms of the way it shapes the “place identity” of
supporters through fostering a sense of “topophilia” – a term used to desribe the ways in
which one can be endowned with a love of place (Tuan, 1974). In exploring the importance
of identity and culture to participants, it is therefore important to explore how the concept
of topophilia can be applied to the desire for a reintroduction of standing areas in the
context of claims that football “has lost it’s soul” (Gaffney & Mascarenhas, 2005, p. 11) in
the all-seater era .

One of the ways in which topophila can be fostered, according to Tuan (1974) is through
aesthetic appeal, and the ability for a place to impose a “sense of beauty” (ibid., p.99).
Although the visual appeal of standing areas in comparison to seated areas was not directly
referenced by participants, evidence of this being a factor in support for a reintroduction of
standing areas can be found in the references made by participants to the standing terraces,
the scale of which evoked a sense of pride among some participants: “I used to stand on The
Kippax… it was the biggest terrace in the country, it held 26,500 fans” (John Leech); “The
first team that I was taken to was Charlton Athletic. They had these massive open terraces,
so all my formative years were stood watching football on these massive open terraces”
(Roger Godsiff). Regardless of the extent to which this is representative of the “aesthetic”
element of topophilia, such references to illustrate the type of place attachment typical of
topophilia.

Another means through which topophilia can be fostered is through the “tactile”, aspects of
the environment which are felt but not seen. The importance of standing areas in this
respect were articularted by participants as being important through references to the
“atmosphere” of the stadium. Contrasting Manchester City’s current and former homes,
John Leech felt that “the atmosphere at the Etihad is nowhere near what it was at Maine
Road”, but did not directly attribute this the all-seater nature of the stadium “whether or
not that's purely because its all-seater, I'm not sure”. Roger Godsiff, however, was more
explicit about the link between standing areas and the atmosphere of the stadium, arguing
that allowing fans to stand “massively increases the experience - the atmosphere”. One of
 42

the reasons for this, according to Paul Cuffe, is that “you can't jump about, sing enough
when you're sat down”, evidencing the importance of standing areas to the formation of the
“acoustic community” (Paramio et al., 2008) of the football stadium. Cuffe argued that “the
idea of standing is it allows you to have that kind of party atmosphere”, and it is through
this environment, Knijnik (2016, p. 16) argues, that supporters are able to “proclaim their
collective identity”, something crucial to the formation of the “imagined community”
(Anderson, 1991) of supporters of a football team.

Topophilia can also be fostered, according to Tuan, through the way in which a place acts as
a “locus of memories”. Evidence for this could be found primarily among participants from
the Shrewsbury Town Supporters’ Parliament, perhaps unsurprising given that, unlike the
clubs other participants supported, within more recent memory, Shrewsbury Town played
in a stadium which retained standing terraces5. Mike Davis, for example cited an example
from a consultation with the supporter base regarding the proposed introduction of a safe
standing area: “We actually had a 78-year-old woman who stood on the Riverside at Gay
Meadow, she stated that when she moved here she didn’t like sitting, she was used to
standing and her comment was ‘if there’s a standing area, I’m moving there’”. Roger Groves
also cited memories of Shrewsbury Town’s former home as a motivation for reintroducing
standing areas, seeing it as somehing that is “almost giving us a bit of Gay Meadow back”.
Similarly, the references by some participants to the now demolished terraces of other
stadia can also be understood as being examples of topophilic attachment, not only in terms
of aesthetic appeal, but also a place which has acted as a locus of memories in the
participants’ lives. In this respect, the reintroduction of standing was seen as something
which will bring back aspects of the past, demonstrating the nostalgic appeal of standing
areas.

For one participant, this was combined with the percieved inconveniences which arise in all-
seater stadia, illustrating that the reintroduction of standing can be understood as being
something benefical in terms of “the practice of everyday life” (de Certeau, 1984) of the
football suppprter: “I always go for the terracing as I prefer having that flexibility of
watching the game stood up, it's usually a better atmosphere and I like the freedom to

5
Doing so until the clubs move from Gay Meadow to New Meadow in 2007.
 43

move around. If you're stuck near someone annoying, you can get away from them. You
also don't have that disruption you have in an all-seater, where people are getting up to go
to the toilet, leaving early, coming in late, which can be disruptive if they're right in front of
you” (Nadine). This illustrates that issues of culture and identity can not be used to entirely
explain calls for a reintroduction of standing and that this research, with its focus on these
issues, should not be considered all-encompassing in respect of this.

iv. A Form of Resistance?

The importance of standing areas to the cultural identity of supporters is arguably

evidenced through expressions of resistance to all-seater hegemony. In this respect,
participants highlighted examples of the deployment of “symbolic acts of everyday
resistance” (Scott, 1985, p. 304) to all-seater football stadia. Jon Darch, for instance, cited an
example of supporters utilising the acoustic community of the stadium in vocalising their
opposition to all-seater stadia through song: “Liverpool fans on the Kop in 93-94 used to
sing ‘you’ll never seat the Kop!’”

Furthermore, participants consistently raised the fact that long after the introduction of all-
seater stadia, supporters continue to stand in all-seater stadia (as referred to in almost all
literature on the topic) – and this can be interpreted as an example of the deliberate
challenging of expected norms and behaviours imposed upon the space (Bryman, 2004).
This behaviour can be considered significant through the way it was openly acknowledged
as going against the presumptions of the Taylor Report (1990) that supporters would
become accustomed to seating, as Jon Darch stated: “I think one of the things he [Lord
Justice Taylor] did get wrong in his report was the assumption that fans would get used to
sitting down” (Jon Darch). Instead, as Roger Godsiff explained, “what happens now is that
fans quite literally vote with their feet. When I’ve been to football matches at Charlton, the
whole of one stand behind the goal is allocated to away fans. When Charlton were in the
Premiership, they all used to stand up. Likewise, the Charlton fans at the other end of the
ground also stood up”.
 44

Although the introduction of all-seater stadia was viewed as something which would have
improved safety if supporters had behaved as expected “the thinking was that it would
make everyone safer – this is assuming that people will abide by the rules and not stand,
which of course they don’t” (Kim, Shrewsbury Town supporter) Participants almost
unanimously saw the introduction of “safe standing” as a means of improving safety within
all-seater stadia. The justification for this was that supporters who stand in seating areas are
“standing to some extent unsafely” (Nadine) and that since “it’s impossible to stop people
standing up at the football” (John Leech) due to the sheer numbers now engaging in the
behaviour - “stewards weren’t going to take on 3,000 people standing up behind the goal”
(Roger Godsiff) – the sensible solution is to acknowledge the reality of the situation and
provide designated standing areas.

In direct contrast to the arguments put forward against the reintroduction of standing areas,
Jon Darch argued that by introducing designated standing areas, stadia would become more
diverse and inclusive, arguing that “what we have now excludes kids, old men with dodgy
knees, from going to away games. If you’re an 80-year-old man with dodgy knees… Or if
you’re a small child, you can’t go to away games because there’s no way you can be sure
you’re going be able to see. If every ground split its away section in to partly seats and partly
safe standing that problem goes overnight, and they become far more socially inclusive”.

As well being used to put forward arguments in terms of safety and diversity at football
stadia, the “symbolic” act of continuing to stand in seated area has also been a motivating
factor in the creation of formalised campaigns for standing areas, as explained by Peter
Caton in describing the origins of the “Stand Up Sit Down” Campaign: “In the 2000s at Upton
Park we were in the Bobby Moore Lower, which was all-seated, and they were trying to get
people to sit down. There was one game where the atmosphere was rubbish and a group of
lads got up and tried to get the crowd standing – they got chucked out”.

For Caton, it seemed that a full-scale reintroduction of standing areas was beyond the limits
of the influence of supporters, in line with Welford’s et al.’s (2015, p.328) statement that
“fans… understand the limit of their influence on the game”. Caton therefore formed the
“Stand Up, Sit Down” campaign, which encouraged clubs to acknowledge that supporters
continued to stand at football matches, and to sell tickets with this in consideration by
 45

ensuring those who wished to stand could do so without obstructing the view of supporters
who wanted to sit down.

The “Stand Up Sit Down” campaign was also a recognition that in order to achieve success, a
campaign must transcend multiple club with campaigning at an individual club level,
something which Millward (2011) highlighted as a barrier to the success of other football
related campaigns, in recognising this issue, Caton noted that “there was bit of a campaign
at West Ham to try and keep standing there, but it was never going to succeed because you
couldn’t do it on a club by club basis”. Whilst it is difficult to directly attribute the success of
this campaign at a specific club, it was evident from the responses of participants that clubs
appeared to have largely given up attempting to ensure all supporters remain seated, and
were instead tacitly allowing standing in certain sections of stadia: “at home we have an end
behind the goal, next to the away fans, we’re allowed to stand – the stewards are very good
about it” (James Chisem). The Stand Up Sit Down campaign also provided a means of
engagement with the issue among supporters, through which participants James Chisem
stated he became engaged with the campaign for standing areas.

In terms of a campaign specifically calling for the reintroduction of safe standing areas, Jon
Darch noted that the aims of the movement needed to be narrowed down into a clear
proposal, therefore, the Football Supporters Federation took up the mantle of the Stand Up
Sit Down campaign, and decided to “focus [their] campaign on rail-seating”. This served to
clarify the aims of the campaign, and following Welford et al. (2015) acknowledged the
parameters of the limits of influence the supporters felt they had. “What we’ve achieved in
the last few years, is we’ve got that message crystal clear” (Jon Darch). If the campaign for
the reintroduction is to be understood as a form of “new social movement”, it was Darch’s
intervention and narrowing down of the campaign into this focus which can be considered
the moment at which “leadership emerges to suit an agenda” (Castells, 2012, p.13). Setting
the agenda of the campaign to this limited scope was seen as successful by Paul Cuffe, who
stated that “a lot of people have bought into rail-seating as the compromise solution”.

As was noted by Caton as being necessary to succeed, participants also highlighted the way
in which the safe standing campaign has overcome traditional fan rivalries, and has achieved
what Millward (2011, p.174) described as “unusual” among football supporter activism –
the existence of “formal connections across the supporter movements based at different
 46

clubs”. An example of this was cited by James Chisem as existing between Huddersfield
Town and Bradford City supporters’ organisations, and further examples were cited as
having been facilitated by use of the internet, which has allowed safe standing connect
activists to connect at a transnational level, both among supporters’ groups of individual
clubs. Mike Davis highlighted this at an individual club level: “a lot of clubs have contacted
us as well, even if it was just to sort of give their support, we’ve even had contact from
Orlando City”, whilst James Chisem highlighted this at the level of cross-club supporters’
organisations: “supporters Europe, who have a much bigger wealth of experience to draw
upon… they’ve been very helpful” (James Chisem). This is illustrative of the role of the
internet Castells (2012) outlined as being important in the formation of new social
movements.

Despite the cross-club nature of the campaign, for the Shrewsbury Town Supporters’
Parliament, it was clear that a sense of pride in their club being the first in England to
introduce a “safe standing” area was a major motivation for being involved: “this could be
great for Shrewsbury Town and it’s about time that we became first at something… There’s
no prize for being second” (Roger Groves), suggesting that alongside the results of the team
and the atmosphere of the stadium (King, 2002), the introduction of safe standing is one to
which supporters ascribe competitive value, although rather than “refracting” (Millward,
2011, p.174) support for the campaign, in fact aids the campaign through the way in which it
encourages supporters to take action.

However, despite cross-club support, and the clarification of the aims of the campaign from
a diffuse demand for standing in various forms into a campaign specifically for “safe
standing” at rail-seats, one participant felt that a general lack of awareness could potentially
be a restraint on the success of the campaign, albeit one than be overcome: “a lot of people
aren’t educated on the subject, so I think it’s important to educate people on how it actually
works in terms of safety” (Sarah).

Many participants expressed hope that the reintroduction of standing areas could provide
an antidote to the hegemony of the “neoliberal”, “commercialised” space of the football
stadium (King, 2002). However, given that the introduction of standing areas can ultimately
only be achieved with the approval of the institutions perceived as responsible for these
processes, it is worth considering whether standing areas do have the potential to achieve
 47

this, or whether they even provide an additional space into which this hegemony can
expand. In addressing this concern, James Chisem highlighted the existing resistance among
supporters to this hegemony:

“Last season, a Sky Sports producer ran to one of the lads at the front of the South Stand...
The producer said to the capo [fan leading chants at front of stand] “can you do that ‘he’s
better than Klopp’ song?”. There’s a video of him going ‘fuck off!’… They do try and
choreograph it, but I think safe standing is the opposite of that – it creates an organic
culture where you’re creating your own norms and behaviours”.

This is illustrative not only of existing resistance to all-seater hegemony, but also a hope that
the reintroduction of standing areas could create the conditions for an alternative to
develop.

6) Conclusion

Although many participants were keen to highlight their desire to improve safety at football
stadia, it was evident that improving the “atmosphere” of the stadium was a key motivating
factor in campaigning for the introduction for safe standing. Most participants perceived
their clubs home atmosphere to be too quiet, whilst those who didn’t saw the introduction
of safe standing as something which, as participant Paul Cuffe stated, would take the
atmosphere in their club’s stadium “to the next level”.

Several participants highlighted the importance of attracting younger working-class

supporters, and allowing them to stand collectively, as a means through which safe standing
could achieve this improvement in atmosphere. It was, however, highlighted that would
only prove successful if tickets either remained, or became, affordable for these supporters
- something which supporters were generally less convinced would occur than they were
that safe standing would be introduced.

References to the need to attract this particular demographic also raises questions
regarding assumptions that supporters of a given class and age would behave in a certain
 48

way, which can be considered important in the context of participants rejecting that
supporters of a given gender would do so. It can also be interrogated in terms of the extent
to which supporters who have only ever experienced the all-seater environment of the
modern stadium will buy into the more ‘traditional’ modes of fandom, regardless of their
class, age or any other factor.

Are the calls of football supporters for a reintroduction of standing areas, therefore,
anything more than a sentimentalised recovery of sanitised heritages? To some extent,
participants did see a reintroduction of standing areas in the form of “safe standing” as an
opportunity to recreate the atmospheres of stadia which existed before the all-seater era,
but in doing so aligned this with progressive notions of attracting a new generation of
football supporters and improving safety for those attending games. This indicates that the
introduction of safe standing is not necessarily seen as a full-scale “recovery” of the heritage
of the terraces, but a suitable compromise within the framework of the existing debate.

With regard to the success of the campaign to date, on the face of it, the campaign has
already been successful as standing areas are set to be reintroduced in the form of safe
standing (even if only on a very limited basis) in the near future. However, contextualising
the success of the campaign within the aims of participants demonstrates that the real
success lies in whether the structural changes to the demographic of those attending
football matches can be reversed, and whether this will result in the improvement of
“atmospheres” in stadia. If, and when, standing areas are introduced widely, this will be
something well worth revisiting.
 49

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Appendices
Summary of research participants
Sample Name Organisation Interview Technique
Key Informants Mike Davis Shrewsbury Town Face-to-face
Supporters’
Parliament
Roger Groves Shrewsbury Town Face-to-face
Supporters’
Parliament
Jon Darch Safe Standing Face-to-face
Roadshow
Peter Caton Stand Up Sit Down Telephone
Roger Godsiff Labour Party Face-to-face
John Leech Liberal Democrats Face-to-face
Anonymous Hillsborough Justice Face-to-face
Campaign
James Chisem Huddersfield Town Face-to-face
Paul Cuffe Supporters’
Association / Stand
Up For Town
Secondary Cheryl* Norwich City Telephone
Informants supporter
Nadine* Norwich City Telephone
supporter
Sarah* Huddersfield Town Telephone
supporter
Nicola* Liverpool supporter Telephone
Kim* Shrewsbury Town Email
supporter
*Name changed to protect anonymity