ABSTRACT
Due to their public and publicized nature, sporting events have been recognized increasingly as venues in which broader social struggles have been reproduced and redefined. 1 Examining violence and racism in British football shows that from the late 1960s anxieties about race politics, class relations and state repression were represented and contested through violence and racist aggression at football matches. Class violence and racial abuse in football not only reflected broader cultural struggles and fractured social relationships in post-war Britain, but also produced new social anxieties and political questions. The state and leading political authorities responded to the presence of violence and racisms in one of the nation’s central cultural institutions by re-examining policing and disciplinary policies for working-class citizens.
