Do not mourn for the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act – spit on its grave

Politicians of one party made football fans subject to special laws and extraordinary police attention. Its death knell should be welcomed

Keep politics out of sport, we were once told. A noble ideal.

Let the dreamers dream and the players play, without the cynical machinations of a different world

Political, offensive or criminal? 50 years ago,
Tommie Smith & John Carlos shocked the
USA with this gesture at the Olympics,
calling attention to Black Human Rights 

turning fair athletic endeavour into another field of conflict.

Moscow was the target in 1980, when Soviet intervention in Afghanistan led to the US leading a boycott of the Olympic Games.

Four years later, the Games were hosted in Los Angeles, providing a perfect opportunity to 14 Eastern Bloc countries to retaliate by implementing their own boycott.

Not for the first time, the Olympics had been made into a political football.

It was difficult to see who had won in either case, apart from the competitors who won medals that boycotting non-participants would likely have secured.

The fans didn’t win. Both Olympiads had been significantly diminished.

But who has ever really cared about the fans?

Politicians just couldn’t and wouldn’t keep their noses out.

Politicians are the weirdest of breeds. The most successful of them see everything – but everything – as a political opportunity to be exploited or a risk to be mitigated. (Watching The Thick of It or Veep gives something of a feel for that politicking mentality for those who are not politics fans.)

When you hear them saying, “Don’t play (party) politics”, on any issue, you know they believe that they cannot win.

Yet this is the preferred message of some to the Scottish Parliament as it prepares for what should be the final nail in the coffin of the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act (OBFA).

Scottish politicians chose to interfere in sport with the OBFA – but only one sport.

The only one that could be considered the Scottish national sport, which vastly exceeds all others in participation, attendance, television viewing, and economic contribution. Football.

Would you expect a “Gouging at Rugby” Act? A “Cheating at Golf” Act? A “Hooliganism at Outdoor Music Festivals” Act?

I’m guessing not.

But the OBFA created a special class of citizen under the law that would be subject to prosecution and police action in circumstances that did not apply to any other section of society.

In fact, it was specifically contrived to exclude every other section of society. And, in doing so, it made football fans an underclass subject to special treatment in other areas.

You fancy packing a few tinned G&Ts or Mojitos on a bus trip to a pantomime? Fine – nobody is going to harass you.

Set up for the journey to Pittodrie? Let’s pull over and search that bus for six-packs of beer.

Why? Because the roads to football grounds are paved with unrepentant or unwitting sinners – the distinction does not matter because they are all potential criminals, though they know not yet what they do.

And, yes, the wording of the Act is so vague and all-encompassing as to include offences of “offensiveness” that could only occur if people who might have been present, but weren’t, had only been in attendance to claim offence.

And it takes no consideration of the mere technicality that the offenders may have had neither the desire, intention nor knowledge of the potential criminality of their hypothetical offensiveness – as long as it was in a tangentially-related football context.

This was deemed to be good law by the Scottish Government and was pushed through against all objections from every opposition party.

Now that it faces what should be its death knell, the only party that has ever supported the OBFA is claiming to be the victims of political expediency – or put another way, saying, “Don’t play party politics with this issue.”

Holyrood members of that party have, remarkably, all supported the Scottish Government’s position on an act that has been condemned by Sheriffs, Human Rights organisations (such as Liberty) and pressure groups claiming to represent plebeian football supporters.

The politicians even made it a criminal offence to express political views within a football context.

One of the Act’s most vociferous supporters, SNP MSP, John Mason, even noted that wearing a Yes badge (supporting Scottish independence) should be considered unacceptable while watching football, commenting: “We should all know by now expressing political views is no longer acceptable at football matches.”

Of course not – they might be offensive.

But only at football.

At the Olympics, it’s a different matter.

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