(4 of 5)
Prime Minister Thatcher responded to the violence in Brussels by summoning a number of her country's football officials to confer with her on the problem of fan violence. She announced that Britain would be contributing $317,500 to a special fund for victims of the riot and families of the dead. Last March, Thatcher set up a panel that included members of her cabinet to study soccer violence after fans went on a rampage in Luton, England. The Prime Minister said last week that she will now meet sooner than planned with the group to review progress on implementing some of the measures that have already been agreed to, including a voluntary ban by clubs on the sale of alcohol in stadiums. A similar measure has led to a sharp decrease in violent episodes over the past five years in Scotland, where soccer brawls were once a favorite pastime. Faced with declining attendance and rising demands for expensive security precautions, team owners in England have so far been unwilling to give up the revenues from drink concessions. Now that the teams are banned from European competition, their losses are certain to be even greater.
Stadium design has also been cited as a reason for the frequency of English soccer violence. Trouble at games often starts among the working-class youths who fill up the low-cost, standing-room areas known as terraces, similar to the areas occupied by the Liverpool and Juventus fans in the Brussels stadium. Sir Philip Goodhart, a Conservative Member of Parliament, believes that one reason there is less fan mayhem at sporting events in the U.S., a nation that many Britons regard as violence prone, is that its stadiums have fewer standing-room sections. Says Goodhart: "It is very difficult to riot when you are sitting down."
To be sure, there are those who feel that soccer violence is largely a symptom of deeper social and economic problems, perhaps even a direct result of Britain's 13.5% unemployment rate. In Liverpool, for example, 25% of the labor force is out of work. "We have football," says Psychologist Peter Marsh. "Other societies have street gangs." A 1980 study of soccer hooliganism in Britain found that four-fifths of those charged with soccer- related crimes were either unemployed or manual workers. Says Sociologist John Williams of the University of Leicester: "We must go into the community to find out why young people find status in this kind of violence."