Following the racist speech exhibited online by football fans after the England v Italy Euro 2020 final on Sunday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called for all ‘online’ racists to be banned from attending any and all football matches.
After Sunday’s match, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho—three Black England players—were subject to a tirade of racial abuse online, having missed their penalties during the intense game. Rashford’s mural in his hometown of Manchster was also defaced in the wake of the defeat.
Because of this, the public has exhibited overwhelming support for the England team—especially the Black players. Many Black footballers, such as Saka and Sancho, were cherished and regarded as “British” when they got England through to the finals, but this quickly changed and they were deemed lesser than when they didn’t win on Sunday.
Currently, a petition to ban racists from football has over one million signatures on Change.org, and as a result, the Prime Minister, speaking at The House of Commons today, said that he will be taking “practical steps” to put a stop to the online abuse. “I utterly condemn and abhor the racist outpourings that we saw on Sunday night,” he said. “If you are guilty of racist abuse online of footballers, then you will not be going to the match. No ifs, no buts, no exemptions and no excuses.”
His statements were made after Home Secretary Priti Patel recently made disparaging comments about footballers taking the knee at th start of matches in support of Black Lives Matter, inferring that it was okay for fans to boo players for this show of support in the fight for racial equality.
Jo Stevens, Labour’s Shadow Culture Secretary, said: “If Boris Johnson wanted to extend Football Banning Orders to include online racism, he could have done this a long time ago. When will he put words into actions?” Current legislation only has the power to ban those who exhibit racist behaviour on the premises, but there were no clauses to punish those who did so online. Johnson lamented that the Bill would hold tech companies accountable if they failed to remove illegal and harmful posts from their platform quickly.
The Bill aims to hit tech companies with fines worth 10% of their annual global turnover. “I want to reiterate my support, our support, our total support for our fantastic team, and I support them in the way that they show solidarity with their friends who face racism,” Johnson added.
