British Culture

[carefreeluke]

Why are things like the events at Wembley over the weekend more commonplace in our society?

Going away from football, why is there so much trouble up and down the country every weekend? Booze and drugs? But why do we drink to excess?  And why does it end up leading to trouble? What are the reasons that go about explaining the behaviour?

Why do we have a bad reputation abroad? Well, I guess the answer to that is obvious but what's causes people to behave the way they do?

It wasn't only the events at the weekend that have sparked me into creating this topic but also conversations I've been having with people this year. I don't know if it's just because I've been abroad for so long but I've been thinking about it this topic for a while now and am interested to know people's thoughts.

I've put British in the title but is the 'trouble part' more a problem of the English?

[ScoRoss]

7 minutes ago, carefreeluke said:

Why are things like the events at Wembley over the weekend more commonplace in our society?

Going away from football, why is there so much trouble up and down the country every weekend? Booze and drugs? But why do we drink to excess?  And why does it end up leading to trouble?

Why do we have a bad reputation abroad? Well, I guess the answer to that is obvious but what's causes people to behave the way they do?

It wasn't only the events at the weekend that have sparked me into creating this topic but also conversations I've been having with people this year. I don't know if it's just because I've been abroad for so long but I've been thinking about it this topic for a while now and am interested to know people's thoughts.

I've put British in the title but is the 'trouble part' more a problem of the English?

Definitely not just an English problem.

[DeadLinesman]

I received several videos on WhatsApp from Italy beating Spain in the semis. Cars getting smashed and kicked in the street, women with their tits out riding up and down the street. A moped rider being run over by a car doing a screeching handbrake turn in a city centre. Yes we’ve got massive issues as a country. Yes we’ve got cultural issues. Yes we’ve got louts who act like twats. 

Why are ours worse than anywhere else though? Today I saw written that our fans our worse than Russian hooligans. 
 

Mega. Fucking. Lolz.

[RandoEFC+]

Most of the trouble seems to come from a section of society which is predominantly middle-aged and male and full of unexplained rage and grievance which they can't explain because they've never learned the emotional or psychological skills to understand their feelings. They spend most of their time just being miserable and depressed but when they get in a big group and drink the anger boils over. I'm sure it exists in all societies in some shape or form but it does seem to be worse in Britain. I don't know if I'm being a doom-monger but it does feel like the UK has a lot more miserable people who think it's normal to just be unhappy with their lives, believe it's not their fault but don't know who to blame, so it's pretty easy to find an excuse to direct that pent-up anger at something or someone when they have a small excuse. 

I hope that's not too ungenerous on our population and it might be just the same elsewhere but that's more or less what it boils down to for me.

[RandoEFC+]

1 minute ago, DeadLinesman said:

I received several videos on WhatsApp from Italy beating Spain in the semis. Cars getting smashed and kicked in the street, women with their tits out riding up and down the street. A moped rider being run over by a car doing a screeching handbrake turn in a city centre. Yes we’ve for massive issues as a country. Yes we’ve for cultural issues. Yes we’ve got louts who act like twats. 

Why are ours worse than anywhere else though?

People going over the top with celebrations like that, which we also do, is a bit of a different thing in my opinion to seeing swathes of England fans pissed up and fighting each other before the match has even started? People going mental after winning a huge game is rational (if you understand football and are passionate about it). Dozens of pissed up idiots storming the stadium and fights breaking out in beer gardens and bottles getting thrown all over streets of London before the game has been won or lost, I just think that speaks to some real pent-up and misdirected anger, but like I said in my original post, maybe it's everywhere and just doesn't get reported.

To be honest though, I don't care about other countries and whether they're perfect or ten times worse. I'd still prefer to see less of that unnecessary carnage in our own country. I get that people want to go out on a mad one and most people know where the line is. You'll always get some idiots and you have to expect it but the extent to which things kicked off around Wembley on Sunday was a lot worse than you could just roll your eyes at.

That said, I read that someone actually got killed in the post-match celebrations in Italy so things must have got pretty wild there too. Again though, after the game when the emotions of the result sort of explain where the fuel for that behaviour came from.

[Honey Honey]

Said before on here, football fan culture started going down hill fast late 50s / 60s when things like segregation had to be introduced. Peaking in the 80s. You can correlate that to anything you want changing in society at those times. 

In other theories there was an article in the Guardian which says the following 

In his book This Sporting Life the academic Robert Colls traces the popular history of English sport, from the 18th-century bull-runners of Stamford in Lincolnshire to the fox-hunters of Victorian England. English sport, he argues, is inherently tied to personal liberty: the custom and ritual of public transgression, of articulating who you are in a country and society that affords you precious few opportunities to do so. “Sport,” writes Colls, “confirmed that in England, you could do as you pleased.”

You could see those folk-lines in the behaviour of English football fans over the last couple of weeks: a joyous if often unpleasant celebration of personal inviolability and civic pride. There’s a reason so many England flags bear the names of small towns. Where else are you going to see the word “Grantham” or “Matlock” emblazoned in huge capital letters in any public place of importance? And running through all this has been a larger phenomenon, one that predates the pandemic: the wild unquenched craving for shared experience and community in a society that has essentially hunted it to extinction.

[Danny]

I guess it depends what we're talking about specifically, because England for example will be held up as the hooligans who ruin football...yet we literally played an opposition on Sunday who's club fans are renowned for stabbing away fans, but no mention of that. I've heard Scottish fans take the morale high ground when they're are literally famed for the shitshow that is the Old Firm. The Dutch and Germans have spent the last 3 decades trying to prove that their firms are tougher than ours because of how famed hooliganism was during the 80s and 90s here, a lot of European fan culture and clothing literally comes from English hooliganism.

I think the problem the English have is that we are renowned as bad tourists on the continent and hooliganism abroad is the only real thing that English hooligans can get involved in because of how well it's been handled by the authorities in this country vs how badly it is normally handled abroad, much easier to get away with. When it comes to club football we don't see this sort of behaviour very regularly, mainly on derby days.

I do think it's alcohol based and how we treat a night out, holiday away with the lads...or England on tour, the love for a session and binge drinking that we have here...British people living in Australia, New Zealand or travelling around SE Asia behave so much differently than a lads on tour holiday to Zante. Even when we get pissed in these places, where we can still be a nuisance, the atmosphere is less of a session and more of an international party, you relax more, get to know different people, your lived experience begins to change. But when you go back to the ideals of a session in Britain....there are small, quaint market towns all across the country that have violent crime statistics of an inner city on a Friday and Saturday night because everyone gets pissed, get drugged up, goes to the same place and it ends up in a brawl. And I don't think it's specifically a class thing because your Rugby lads can be the worst of them all.

But with that said reducing British culture down to violence abroad and at England games is incredibly reductive, look at the backlash we've seen to the racism shown towards Saka, Sterling and Sancho. This country is nowhere near dealing with systemic racism, but there are countries across Europe that could do a lot to learn from how our communities in places like London, Manchester Birmingham etc respond to that sort of bigotry.

[Rucksackfranzose]

17 minutes ago, Danny said:

I guess it depends what we're talking about specifically, because England for example will be held up as the hooligans who ruin football...yet we literally played an opposition on Sunday who's club fans are renowned for stabbing away fans, but no mention of that. I've heard Scottish fans take the morale high ground when they're are literally famed for the shitshow that is the Old Firm. The Dutch and Germans have spent the last 3 decades trying to prove that their firms are tougher than ours because of how famed hooliganism was during the 80s and 90s here, a lot of European fan culture and clothing literally comes from English hooliganism.

I think the problem the English have is that we are renowned as bad tourists on the continent and hooliganism abroad is the only real thing that English hooligans can get involved in because of how well it's been handled by the authorities in this country vs how badly it is normally handled abroad, much easier to get away with. When it comes to club football we don't see this sort of behaviour very regularly, mainly on derby days.

I do think it's alcohol based and how we treat a night out, holiday away with the lads...or England on tour, the love for a session and binge drinking that we have here...British people living in Australia, New Zealand or travelling around SE Asia behave so much differently than a lads on tour holiday to Zante. Even when we get pissed in these places, where we can still be a nuisance, the atmosphere is less of a session and more of an international party, you relax more, get to know different people, your lived experience begins to change. But when you go back to the ideals of a session in Britain....there are small, quaint market towns all across the country that have violent crime statistics of an inner city on a Friday and Saturday night because everyone gets pissed, get drugged up, goes to the same place and it ends up in a brawl. And I don't think it's specifically a class thing because your Rugby lads can be the worst of them all.

But with that said reducing British culture down to violence abroad and at England games is incredibly reductive, look at the backlash we've seen to the racism shown towards Saka, Sterling and Sancho. This country is nowhere near dealing with systemic racism, but there are countries across Europe that could do a lot to learn from how our communities in places like London, Manchester Birmingham etc respond to that sort of bigotry.

Interesting logic considering Germans consume more alcohol per capita and still this brawls are far more seldom than in the UK. So this excuse doesn't erxactly wash except your assuming Germans and Britons process alcohol in different ways.

[Danny]

31 minutes ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

Interesting logic considering Germans consume more alcohol per capita and still this brawls are far more seldom than in the UK. So this excuse doesn't erxactly wash except your assuming Germans and Britons process alcohol in different ways.

Probably shouldn’t ignore an entire post and respond to only one word 

[Honey Honey]

Small sample size but I've never met a German truly off their face, never all the way. I personally only drink to get drunk. If someone suggests having a pint after work my internal thought is I'll come if it is 6 pints but not if it is 1.

 

[Rucksackfranzose]

17 minutes ago, The Premier Steve's said:

Small sample size but I've never met a German truly off their face, never all the way. I personally only drink to get drunk. If someone suggests having a pint after work my internal thought is I'll come if it is 6 pints but not if it is 1.

 

That's part of the issue than, no German I know would be drunk after only 6 pints, and my sample size is probably a lot bigger than yours.

[Tommy]

1 hour ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

Interesting logic considering Germans consume more alcohol per capita and still this brawls are far more seldom than in the UK. So this excuse doesn't erxactly wash except your assuming Germans and Britons process alcohol in different ways.

Maybe they just get angry because they drink shitty beer. 

[DeadLinesman]

I’ve seen Tommy bladdered off half a shandy.

[Beelzebub]

It's more to do with football culture than British. Look at their cricket crowd nicely clapping the good shots of the opposition too and wearing nice suits apart from the half naked guys which do seem part of British culture.

[Dr. Gonzo]

I'm not sure it's got much to do with British culture, either. There's a unique characteristic of alcoholism in Britain... but I think a lot of countries have their own struggles with alcoholism and their own issues that manifest in a lot of different ways.

I'd say it's an issue with football culture, maybe - but in other countries where other sports are bigger than football, there's similar types of scenes you could show (riots after basketball games, hockey games, etc...) that would look a lot like what you've posted English fans doing.

I think some sports foster tribal mentalities from their fans and when you've got big groups of people with a tribal mentality and a lot of alcohol flowing... you sometimes see shit like this. Are some countries much worse with it than others? Absolutely. But I've seen it said on here that England should never get to host a tournament and other hosts are so much better... but it wasn't that long ago we saw groups of Russian hooligans beating up random foreigners at a World Cup.

[Carnivore Chris]

4 hours ago, DeadLinesman said:

women with their tits out riding up and down

Pics?

[nudge+]

33 minutes ago, Carnivore Chris said:

Pics?

Hi @MUFC

[internationalsfan]

It's something that goes back decades with regard to English alcohol culture. We drink to get shitfaced, we always have. 

 

What you saw over the weekend is nothing you wouldn't see at a big festival anywhere in England, or probably in many other countries. This difference in England it's somehow become acceptable to behave like your at a festival in town centres every night of the week, and football is fair game for that behaviour now as well. The yob mentality that once fuelled English hooliganism now fuels matchday culture - i.e taking cocaine and ket/drinking to excess/doing other drugs/throwing beer about/smoking weed - at some point all these things went from something you do with mates for many people or in nightclubs or in summer at festivals, to something it's acceptable to do in family fan zones. 

 

The lack of festivals and gigs this summer probably meant a lot of these atmosphere chasers looking for an excuse to be cunts ended up at Wembley and fan zones or pubs over the weekend as well.

[DeadLinesman]

1 hour ago, Carnivore Chris said:

Pics?

Videos all over Twitter

[Stan]

They look a bit red and sore.

[CaaC (John)+]

In sport across here trouble always seems to stem  from footbsll related, you don't see this happening in Rugby, cricket etc

[carefreeluke]

Away from football though, in the context of nightlife, why does trouble seem to be more commonplace? Is it simply because of the drinking/drug culture? Of course, it's probably similar in the US and Australia etc. 

In Spain for example, you can be in an area full of bars and see barely any bouncers or security because in general, the people are relatively behaved. If that area is in the UK, you'd have security on every door and police getting called every 30 minutes. The Spanish approach is a lot different with drinking and they don't drink to the extent we do, half pints and food being more of a part of the night for example. 

I'm just curious to hear some reasons why in the UK we are how we are. Is it escapism?

I remember a friend of mine from New Zealand telling me that she was always shocked how people in her office in London used to go out straight to the pub after work, without eating anything beforehand or even during and spending the whole evening drinking. 

[Inverted]

It's something I've begun to even notice with my family. On special occasions, I find I reach a limit of how much I really want to drink, and yet my parents and my cousins will just keep going to ridiculous levels. At a certain point people start getting emotional and confused, and I have the distinct feeling that it's not even fun anymore.

I still get a bit drunk now and then but I don't seek it out. Once I've reached a point where I feel drunk, I will just gently sip on a beer for the rest of the night. I definitely won't open a new bottle of wine or start making cocktails. I mean, I love alcohol. My favourite cocktails are all pretty strong. I like whisky. I love the taste of beer and wine. 

But I just don't really have a big desire to get drunk anymore. When I was a teenager, and I was shy and single and a bit bored with life, getting drunk seemed much more important. As I matured, it seemed less and less important. 

[Danny]

36 minutes ago, Inverted said:

It's something I've begun to even notice with my family. On special occasions, I find I reach a limit of how much I really want to drink, and yet my parents and my cousins will just keep going to ridiculous levels. At a certain point people start getting emotional and confused, and I have the distinct feeling that it's not even fun anymore.

I still get a bit drunk now and then but I don't seek it out. Once I've reached a point where I feel drunk, I will just gently sip on a beer for the rest of the night. I definitely won't open a new bottle of wine or start making cocktails. I mean, I love alcohol. My favourite cocktails are all pretty strong. I like whisky. I love the taste of beer and wine. 

But I just don't really have a big desire to get drunk anymore. When I was a teenager, and I was shy and single and a bit bored with life, getting drunk seemed much more important. As I matured, it seemed less and less important. 

I don’t drink regularly but when a family party comes round I end up rat arsed with two drinks always in hand, more so when I was younger 

[CaaC (John)+]

One upon a time I could drink around 6 bottles of lager and a bottle of wine and still get up for work around 04.30, about 4 cups of black coffee soon sobered me up for a 12-hour shift at work, never in a million years I could do that nowadays at my age, 2 bottles of wine, get a wee bit tipsy and that is me.

The last time I went out for a pint was in Southend in 1978 with a mate of mine and I went out to celebrate the wife falling pregnant, that was the biggest mistake of my life as I ended up pissed as a newt, got into a fight then ended up in Southend nick for the night, I ended up getting a £50 fine and on top of that the night in the nick the wife threatened to leave me if I ever did that again, if I do go out for a wee drink nowadays it's always with the wife and the random pub, Miners Club or British legion.