(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #243 - England Supporters, not consumers (fr, pt)

 [machine translation]

Far prejudices that can meet about football, violence, racism, or the trafficking mafia, 
many clubs at the base, were created by workers who saw football link social and a 
battlefield. In England, fans and supporters decided to take things in hand. ---- In the 
UK, football and working class have always forged strong ties. Mention may be made of the 
teams created by the workers themselves independently, bringing workers in royal dockyards 
(Arsenal), a jam factory (Millwall) or steel mills in North London (West Ham). But the 
examples are not lacking in the English working class history: Derby team who flocked 
their shirts in support of Bombardier workers and workers threatened es dismissal in 2011 
and the Liverpool player Robbie Fowler, emblazoned on a field shirt supporting the 
dockers' strike of 1997.

The English soccer has experienced the dark years punctuated by violence and tragedy at a 
time when the system Thatcher crushed the workers. In response, the clubs have increased 
the price of the seats in the stadium and began to silence supporters without 
distinguishing between hooligans and spectators. In the 1990s, English football clubs are 
entering the stock market, resulting from colossal fundraising on the financial markets. 
It is in this context that the club Manchester United was bought in 2005 by the Glazer 
family, magnates food and sport. This club, strongly attached to the labor soil created by 
the railroad to the north of England industry, sees fans angered by the takeover of their 
club, go and start their own team: Football Club United of Manchester. The principle is 
interesting because every fan can participate democratically in the club that has the 
statutes of a cooperative nonprofit. The club policy is to keep the entry fee affordable 
stage and encourage local, without any discrimination, to participate in the field and in 
the stands.

For a rebel football

The club participates in the life of the area surrounding the stadium, with schools and 
social workers and refuse any excessive commercialization (a minimum sponsorship is still 
conceded). The FCUM has led other clubs whose Affordable Football Club of Liverpool, on 
the same cooperative basis. The tribunes of the two clubs were again chanted slogans that 
fans no longer heard in stadiums mastodons: fascism, supporting workers in struggle... It 
is undeniable that these constitutions teams are not a revolutionary democracy perfect and 
still quite limited, but they allow to see that football is still discordant voices. They 
allow us to reflect on the repositioning of a more political center of gravity and pave 
the way for an anti-fascist football antipatriarchal and anticapitalist. For a rebel football!

Martial (AL Saint-Denis)