Are you lost? See if these links help.

Y-word Focus Group 2

 

Following a delay caused by the pandemic, these focus groups took place in August 2020, at a time when discrimination and protest was regularly in the headlines and provided reference points for the discussions.

Participants were asked for their personal view on the use of the Y-word and also asked what they believe should happen in the future and how that could be achieved. A summary of the initial consultation survey was also provided during each focus group.

Comments have been edited for brevity, comprehension and to ensure the anonymity of participants. For context, we have included whether they are Jewish, their gender and their age.

We are immensely grateful to our participants for their time, honesty and engagement on a complex, nuanced and often very personal issue.

Participant

Comment

Jewish female, aged 45-54.

I'm Jewish. My partner is black, we have two mixed race kids. My son is a Season Ticket Holder also. I personally have no problem with the use of the Y-word. I have been known on many occasions to chant it myself in the ground. I say in the ground. It's a really tricky one because outside of the ground or if it’s used towards us – when I say us, I mean Spurs supporters – by other supporters, I take it in a different way.

 

It's something I've discussed with my son, with my partner in relation to the equivalent of the N-word, when black people use it themselves as opposed to when it's used at them. I think we relate it in a way to we're owning the word, we've taken back ownership after however many hundred years of it being used against us. We're taking that ownership of it.

 

Interestingly, I've discussed it quite a bit with my father recently, who’s 83, also a long time Season Ticket Holder as was his father. I’ve been able to get a perspective from my dad over the years of when he remembers the chant first starting and the use of the word and how it was changed over the years and the feeling he's had towards it. He feels the same as I do. That for so many years of being persecuted by use of the word, he actually feels pretty good that his daughter and grandson in 2020 are pretty proud to stand on the terraces and shout it proud and loud.

 

On the other hand, when opposing supporters use it at us, it is not okay. Now I know that can be seen as hypocrisy. I’m also aware that there are a lot of Spurs supporters that find it offensive. I overheard an argument once when we were at Wembley, when a man turned round to the guy next to me who was chanting the Y-word and he asked him to stop and said that he found it offensive. The man chanting’s immediate response was ‘Are you Jewish?’ The guy said no and he said ‘Well I am, so I can use it.’ As a Jewish woman, I'll be very, very honest, that would probably have been my initial response if anyone ever said that to me, that they found it offensive, because of this attitude of ‘we can own the word now’.

 

Now, that’s not to say that it’s only Jewish supporters that should chant it, because it’s not. It's become somehow interwoven in the identity of the Club because it was such a Jewish supported… it has this identity of North London, North West London supporters and there’s no shame in that.

 

I understand it can cause offence, but I don’t think we should be stopped saying it, but I appreciate the fact that it's a double edged sword. We don’t like it being said to us, but we think we have the right to say it and I know it's problematic, but that's the best I can say on it. I know it's offensive to some, I know it's really problematic. I understand it from all sides, but I'll still want to stand up and shout it loud and proud and own it.

 

 

 

Jewish female, aged 55-64.

I'm Jewish. My husband isn't. I'm not Orthodox but I do practice the high holidays, you know certain food and stuff like that. Personally, I can’t chant it. I just can’t. I can’t and my friends who I go with, some are Jewish, some aren’t. I'm a Season Ticket Holder as is my husband. My husband can’t chant it, not because he thinks it will offend me, but it’s just a word… I think… he's from the East End, so I think he sort of goes back to his mum and dad who were always working for Jewish people and it was quite a derogatory and racist comment and antisemitic word, which it is you know, if we’re honest. But personally, I can't chant it.

 

I am surprised that a Jew can chant it but I wouldn’t have a go at anyone for it. A couple of my cousins do, which I must admit, I was really shocked by and I didn’t know until I was in Amsterdam last year at the Ajax game. I was taken aback, only because I didn’t think he would. I remember going to a game and all of a sudden West Ham fans started singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and I’m thinking whose birthday is it? It's Happy Birthday to Hitler. Then the hissing sound, you know the hissing.

 

I read somewhere before, that people use it, so other people can't use it against us, we're taking it, we own it. So therefore straight away, they're shut up. Outside, I do get annoyed when you know, you might be talking about football with somebody you've just met and they go “Who do you support?” and I go “Spurs” and they go “Oh you're a Y*d”, and I go, “Well actually I am and by that I mean I'm Jewish and I'd rather you didn’t use that word”. Because then I think it's totally taken out of context, the way it was said to me and I said “You need to go and look up actually what that word… how it was used all those years ago and you'll understand why people do get offended”.  “Oh, I wouldn’t use it anywhere else” and that's like saying to somebody something against the Jews but oh yeah, but you're different. We're not different, we're all the same.

 

So, I'm not offended by it, used in the context we use it or Spurs fans use it, because I think in a way they're supporting us. If you sat down and asked some of these Spurs fans that used it, probably half of them don't even know actually what it meant all those years ago. I spoke to my dad who's 91 and he's horrified that I don’t have a problem with it, if I'm honest. He was a part of The 43 Group when you had Mosley and Cable Street. But he hates it. I say to him it's a bit like a pet term really, you know, they're not having a go at the Jews, they're taking it back. No, he will not have it. But I understand where he's coming from.

 

Everybody's got their opinions but it would be interesting if actually some people that used it knew actually what it meant all those years ago and why some people are offended. I'm not offended if it's used in the right way, but don't call me a Y*d because then I do get offended. I'm a Spurs fan, full stop.

 

 

 

Jewish male, aged 25-34.

I am a third generation Jewish Spurs fan. My grandfather was about as stereotypical a Tottenham Jew as you can get. He used to go to games back in the day and yeah he said once upon a time things were quite unsavoury on the terraces, there were some pretty nasty things being said.

 

My take on it now, is if someone were to call me a Y*d outside of football, I don’t think anyone here would disagree, that's a pretty offensive thing, no-one should ever be using language like that and I think even amongst the Jewish community if we started trying to say Y*d to one another, the way black people would use the N-word amongst one another, I personally would find that quite distasteful as well. If one of my friends who was Jewish said that to me just non-football related, I'd still find that a bit odd.

 

In a football context, it's a completely different story and actually my take on it is this is one of the great anti-racism stances within sport, let alone football. It’s more than a taking ownership, deflection tactic. From some of the stories I've heard from my grandfather, it was also a case of when people were trying to target the Jewish fans in Spurs you know you had National Front members leading the charge, it was also a case that the non-Jews would stand next to these guys and say “Look, we're all Y*ds, you want to fight them you have to fight us.” It's like I am Spartacus. It's like now we’re all Y*ds, it doesn't matter who you are, you're white, black, Jewish, Christian, gay, straight, it doesn't matter. If you're Tottenham, you're a Y*d, which means you're one of us. So now, when we start singing that term we don't mean Jews it's nothing to do with it anymore. Maybe that's where it came from, that's the start of it all, but now on the terraces if you're a Y*d that's because you're one of us.

 

When people outside say “you're Spurs, oh so you're a Y*d.” Yeah, you shouldn’t really say that, but then I also don't think that if Spurs stopped chanting it that would make any difference to things, because people who are scumbags are always going to be scumbags. People who are racist are always going to be racist.

 

I just think if we've at least got a sign of unity amongst our fanbase, something that we use as a chant to say we don’t care who you are, as long as you're one of us then, then we're all part of the same group. Context is the important thing here, as long as it's being used in the right kind of context, I'm very, very happy. I'm quite happy to sing it loud and proud on the terraces, so are my brothers, so are other people in my family. We’re good for it and I'd encourage other people to do so as well, provided it's within those four walls of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish male, aged 25-34.

I'm 25, a Season Ticket Holder. I'm not of Jewish faith myself, nor is anyone in my family. Have I chanted the word before? Yes, I have. As I've got older, it’s something I've become more aware of. Do I continue to chant it now? Not so much, no.

 

We’ve been talking about the history of the word and how it is a kind of an anti-racism stance and something that essentially I'm a bit proud of as a Spurs fan, that, you know there was a time when a large proportion of the Tottenham supporters were Jewish, people targeted them because of that and they kind of adopted the word and deflected it on to people.

 

I don’t chant it anymore. I know that there are lots of Jewish fans that are okay with the use of the word and there are others that are not so much. However, for me, as a non-Jewish person and someone who doesn’t have Jewish people in my family, as I've got older, I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to say it so much.

 

David Baddiel's argument, where he was speaking about how when he was on the terraces at Chelsea he'd hear people saying “Gas the Jews”, “Gas the Y-word”, etc. His argument to me sounded a bit like ‘If Tottenham fans stopped adopting the word, opposition fans wouldn’t call it that.’ Well that’s just not true, as far as I'm concerned. I feel like even if we stopped using the word completely and that we all like kind of put our PC cap on and said ‘Yes, let’s not use this word anymore”, are fans of other clubs going even if we do move away from the word, it's not going to stop fans of other clubs suddenly saying ‘Oh they stopped saying it so we’re not going to say it now either’? No, of course not.

 

I went to a game at Wembley and was stood in front of a fan who was saying the Y-word all the time and we went to the toilet at the same time and I heard him go on quite an unpleasant antisemitic rant at the urinal. It shows there are people that don’t have an understanding of the word. There are lots of fans unfortunately I think say the word because it’s a bit of football tribalism. They love getting involved. However, they lack the kind of historical understanding and context of the word and about how for a long time it was quite an unpleasant, nasty term, a derogatory term used for Jewish people.

 

I know there are lots of Jewish fans among us who say “Yeah, it’s okay for you to say it because of you know, the anti-racism stance”. However, for me I think because of the complexities and the loadedness of the term, I think for a lot of the non-Jewish fans it should be something that… even if we do move away from the word, it's not going to stop Chelsea and West Ham fans. I've used them a lot, but they are the worst ones, let’s face it. It's not going to get those fans to suddenly stop saying the word.

 

A friend recently said that antisemitism is the one form of racism that people look over a bit and if the kind of racial term we adopted belonged to the Black community or other communities, it might have been pushed to the side or been scrutinised a lot earlier, but because antisemitism is like a hidden form of racism for a lot of people, it's not taken as seriously.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish female, aged 25-34.

I'm an avid Spurs fan and Season Ticket Holder. My parents actually came from India so I'm not of Jewish faith. Me and my dad had been on the list to get Season Tickets for years. Since a kid, he had me being a Spurs fan. Unfortunately, when we both got offered the tickets, he passed away so I ended up going alone.

 

I was always raised to be sceptical about using the Y-word because I was very clear on the antisemitism of it and I didn’t think it was very correct. However, I always try to understand why it was said and what the history of it was. Other teams’ fans use it as an antisemitic term and I don’t think that's appropriate. There needs to be a lot of education provided to these people.

 

I actually think there needs to be a lot of education provided to the Spurs fans as well, because for a lot that chant it, it is a tribal thing, they don’t understand where it comes from and why we say it. I know it's said as an embracing term, we stand with the community, we are with them, we are one of them and that’s why I would chant it loud and proud because I'm not saying it in an attacking form and I'd never use the word against anybody else that is in the Jewish community.

 

I've grown up in North London. I have always had friends of Jewish faith. They use the term. Even though they use it comfortably in a football context, I never said it, even when they were chanting it. I actually did a DNA test and found out I was part Jewish, which I had no idea about. Once I found that out, I actually stood up and said it loud and proud because it felt even more tribal, even more at home. To me, being a Spurs fan is being from the history of where this all came from.

 

When it comes to a football context, we are one, we are at one with that community, we're not using it against them. It’s not an antisemitic term. I don’t think you can put a Spurs fan and antisemitism in the same sentence. It makes no sense. We're trying to unify the background of this community and we're trying to say we're with you. We don’t think it's a bad thing. You should be proud to be where you're from, proud to be where you are and we support this and it is the history of our Club and always will be. You can't rewrite history.

 

I love using it in terms of a football context and I know that everyone around me, when they use it, they use it for that same reason and we chant it proudly. What’s interesting is, I've noticed the term and the songs being used less and less as we go but as soon as it’s brought up again as a topic, it’s sung and used more often.

 

We use it as a positive term. I'm proud to use it, I would only probably use it in the ground, I wouldn’t use it on the street, I don’t sing it when I'm outside the ground. I only sing it when I'm inside the ground.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish female, aged 55-64.

I've been a Season Ticket Holder for a long time at Tottenham. I'm not Jewish. I’ve been going to Tottenham, with my dad initially, for a very long time. I took time off when I had my baby and when I came back, it felt like the world had changed because when I used to go to Spurs, being a woman was a real issue. You didn’t wear a dress to football or anything like that, it was a really toxic atmosphere actually.

 

That had changed, it changed gradually as society changed. I remember sitting in the East Stand and I could hear this chant coming. First of all, I couldn’t hear what it was, then I was thinking, I cannot believe what it is, when I realised they were shouting out Y-word, Y-word, Y-word. I was really horrified, but I sort of moved quite quickly from there when I understood what was going on and found out why the crowd were doing that and I felt fantastic actually, because I’d been in the crowd when Bosnich had done Nazi salutes. This was a footballer on the pitch, doing Nazi salutes to the crowd in the Park Lane Stand and our association with being Jewish was really seen as a negative thing, because it was just a way of being abused all the time. West Ham would come and make the sound of a gas chamber, so to take it as a positive thing I thought was really amazing.

 

But of course nothing is that simple and it's so nuanced. The implication of children using the Y-word is huge. This fantastic discussion we’re having here with really interesting views… but how do you explain to children? That you can shout the Y-Army in the stadium, you can have children leading it – I heard Troy Townsend talking about it on a podcast and he saw a six-year-old child leading the chanting. What happens when he goes to the park with his friends, to his school and is using that word? He doesn’t understand the nuance behind it and where it’s appropriate, where it's not.

 

Also, of course with Black Lives Matter, this is a really, really big issue at the moment and I think it is a time to really think about what is appropriate now, you know things that we do with good intentions, are they still appropriate?

 

Thinking of supporters, I was really shocked when some were arrested in the ground for chanting the Y-word a few years ago.  They were no different than anyone else who uses the word, but they were arrested, they were put through that huge stress of facing criminal charges and the possibility of being banned. Imagine being banned from the Club you adore for chanting a song along with everybody else in the stand? I would be very worried about moving forward and individual supporters being punished in that way.

 

I think it’s a huge issue about how do you get people to drop something? As much as I can’t bear the man, the Campbell song is actually worse, about hanging from a tree, because we all know actually where that comes from. But I do feel that in the ground, that song has sort of diminished. So, I would rather, if we are going to lose the Y-word, I think it’s going to be incredibly difficult, but I absolutely would be against punitive measures about the Club saying “You’re no longer allowed to do it”, etc. It's just going to cause huge problems.

 

I also think there are issues, I think the Club are probably worried about the branding of the issue. When you’re trying to sell us to, America I don’t mean the Club, but American football and such like, we want to be squeaky clean and gorgeous don’t we?

 

We want to be a Club to be proud of. We don’t want to offend groups of our community. We don’t want to offend people outside of the Club. But it is something that I think really kind of speaks to the heart as well and I've always really enjoyed that association, I just think it isn’t black and white.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish male, aged 55-64.

For me, this is an incredibly simple subject and an incredibly simple analysis is required. You can't talk about language and its use without considering two critical factors. Context and intent. There isn’t a single Spurs fan that uses that word with any malicious intent. It’s only and always used as a celebration. I think it’s become a virtually agnostic word in a way and you can use the word Spurs or Y or Tottenham or Lilywhites. They all mean much the same thing to many, many Spurs fans. It is used without any target and for something to be racist or abusive or discriminatory, you need to tell me who the target is. There is no target when that word is used by Spurs fans and as such, I can’t see who is offended.

 

If you want to tell me a single word in isolation is racist, let’s examine the word black. Is the use of the word black, without any word before or after, racist? The preeminent language spoken in Israel is Yiddish. Is the use of that word offensive? I think that to try and sanitise the terrace is a very dangerous road to go down.

 

I think we can’t ignore context and intent. We started using it because it was used at us, so it came second, we didn’t start it. So I can’t imagine I would ever use that word in spoken language outside of Spurs. I don’t think i ever have, it’s not in my language but if I’m on the terrace or if I’m walking into the Bernabeau or wherever it is and people are singing in celebration with their chests puffed out, ‘we are the whatever’, then I am part of that and I always want to be able to do that. That’s who I am and that’s part of my identity. I'm not aiming it anyone and I'm not using it with any malicious intent and it’s as simple as that for me.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish male, aged 45-54.

 

I'm probably a demographic which is the least discriminated against. I’m a white middle-aged man. I don’t want to offend anyone and if I felt it was offensive to people, it would concern me. I’ve always sung the Y-word, only in the ground, but I've done it in support of my Club and the intent was always positive towards supporting the Club and not at a target for anyone at all. The Sol Campbell and Arsene Wenger songs in the past, were far worse than using the Y-word in my opinion.

 

 

 

Jewish female, aged 45-54.

Earlier points about education are really valid. At least Abramovich, probably because he’s Jewish, has put in an antisemitism education campaign. He has taken the players to a concentration camp, I believe it was Auschwitz, not a hundred percent sure.

 

Spurs has not done this. Spurs has not put out any educational material, any information to the supporters on the whole about the background of the Y-word, not to my knowledge. I think that is something that should be addressed. The supporters, a majority of them, probably do not know why it’s an issue and I think that should be addressed.

 

If we want to move forward, if we want to have a cohesive policy on this, we cannot ban the word. People will sing the word. We cannot ban it. It’s against freedom of speech if anything else and then what, if you sing it you’re going to start throwing supporters out and taking away their Season Tickets?  I do not believe it is feasible. Educate supporters, let us understand why some people have an issue with it and it might just naturally take its course one way or another. Spurs have a responsibility to educate our supporters on the background of the word and why it’s such an issue.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish male, aged 45-54.

 

I totally agree with you, but I do wonder whether if Tottenham did something, are they worried that they’re drawing attention to it and by association people will say there’s an issue, there’s a problem? I agree with the education, but I wonder if it should be wider and done by the Premier League or something like that, so that all clubs are educated and all fans are educated because I do worry if Tottenham did something it’s just highlighting the use of the word and possibly bringing even more bad press or whatever to the Club.

 

 

 

Jewish female, aged 55-64.

It needs to be across professional footballers. You had the Christmas party with the Crystal Palace goalkeeper Hennessey saying “That’s not what I was doing”. I totally agree that I think the Premier League need to step in. We've now got the Black Lives Matter, getting on the one knee, banners all around the ground.

 

Maybe those that sit on the hierarchy up at the Premier League and across the board need to be educated as well. It needs to start at the top and work its way down and proper action needs to be taken.

 

We’ve got young players coming into the Club, they need to know the history. If you said they obviously know that the Y-word is used, ask them if they know what the Y-word means. Do they really know the history? I bet near enough all of them say they don’t, they'd just say ‘Oh yeah it means you’re a Spurs fan’. So it does need to come from within.

 

 

 

Jewish male, aged 25-34.

Education is definitely something that should happen, speaking about all sorts of racism. As we’re seeing now over the last few months, it’s been quite good to see, although you’ve had to have been living under a rock to never have heard this sort of debate with Spurs before. I appreciate we have younger fans or foreign players coming into the team where it’s a little bit different, but it’s not something that has just happened now. I mean we've all heard and had these sorts of debates over a period of time and actually I think that it’s starting to swing a little bit, now people are starting to take it a bit more seriously.

 

I think the bigger issue comes with a sort of level of consistency being applied across the board with regards to all sorts of racist incidents. There was the Chelsea fan caught on camera shouting things at Raheem Sterling. As soon as people saw that, the whole world piles in on this guy and everyone knows that immediately that is wrong. Is antisemitism given the same level of scrutiny? Probably not. What people are looking for is not just education, it’s the even application of justice. It’s when we have found something to be genuinely wrong, that’s what we need to be focusing our attention on.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish male, aged 55-64.

The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for Y*d and it’s a slang term for a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. So reclaiming is neither here nor there really. It’s in the dictionary and if people want to educate themselves, without being facetious, if you want to read a dictionary, it will tell you what the word means and how it’s used by Spurs fans.

 

I think something that’s often overlooked is how democratic a terrace is. Terraces are largely self-policing places, they have been for decades. If someone misbehaves to a big enough extent… you won’t find the N-word being used much at Spurs because you’ll get a clump straight away. I think that if it becomes more socially unacceptable to use the Y-word in any context, let’s imagine we just don’t use it, let’s all agree, then organically the terrace will dribble that down and it will become redundant and I think that’s a far more likely outcome than some kind of diktat that you can’t use that word among 62,000 likeminded people.

 

 

 

Jewish female, aged 45-54.

I’m ashamed, but I feel I am in a safe environment, I can admit I live with a Gooner. My father is yet to forgive me, but my son can’t accept the fact that his father’s a Gooner because I brought him up as a Spurs supporter. He grew up in White Hart Lane but as a young black guy felt a safer environment amongst Arsenal supporters. Whereas as Jews, we felt a safer environment in the 1970s and 1980s as Tottenham supporters. I hear this a lot.

 

There is change that takes over you as you walk down White Hart Lane and enter the stadium, your persona, you become a Spurs supporter. It is not always who you are when you’re at home or out with your friends. It’s the person you are when you're in your football bubble. That is who you are when you're in your football bubble. I’m not saying you’re a completely different person, but I notice your voice changes slightly, your speech changes slightly. I don’t talk this way when I’m on the stands necessarily. I’m not aware of it, it’s an unconscious change. I become the Tottenham supporter, the Y*ddo, sorry but it’s the word we're all treading on eggshells, but that’s what I am as I get closer to the ground, I become the Tottenham supporter that I am inside. That’s not who I am at work and that’s not who I am when I’m out socially, but it’s who I am. I do believe we do exist in a football bubble and our behaviour and the things that we say is in context of the stadium and within the ground but that does not excuse or justify anti-social behaviour, racist language, antisemitic language, homophobic language, anti-disability, any unsavoury behaviour or language just because we are in a bubble. The big issue here is, we are trying to define whether the Y-word is antisemitic or not.

 

As was mentioned before, it’s about intent and context. If we’re using it, we don’t see it as intent. If it’s used against us, we see it as intent because that same person in the other terrace, who has come in his or her football persona has switched to intent, which they might not well have when they’re in the office or the bar or anywhere else, but in the stadium they do.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish female, aged 55-64.

I suppose one of my worries about losing the ability to use the Y-word is, it will then still be used against us and then will then only be an insult, whereas at the moment it isn’t within the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

 

 

Non-Jewish male, aged 25-34.

The best way forward in terms of educating both supporters and the football community as a whole would be some kind of collaboration between both the Jewish community and the Club going forward and educating supporters would be a good place to start. We’re here because it’s a complex issue, it is a loaded word, it is something that we’re not going to solve overnight. We’re not going to solve it in five minutes either, but we can try, as long as there’s collaboration between relevant parties, the Jewish communities, the Club and maybe the Premier League.

 

In terms of tackling racism as a whole, the Premier League and Kick It Out are not doing an amazing job. They do good work with schools, so they do a reasonably good job educating the youth and working with partners, universities, etc, but in terms of working with supporters, not so much, because not every football supporter is currently at school. A lot have had different paths in life that might have missed out on education about the word. It has to come from the top down but it’s just deciding how we’re going to start it.

 

 

 

Non-Jewish female, aged 25-34.

It needs to be a collaborative effort, not just top down, but bottom up almost and it’s going to take quite a long time for this to be embedded. It’s not just something that you start doing and it happens.

 

I also think when you’re marketing this information about reclaiming the word... if you say that to a Spurs fan, they’re going to ask what we’re reclaiming. We’re already using it as a positive term. But if you say to other Premier League teams or UEFA, etc it’s going to be used as an antagonising tool. So, I think marketing needs to be key in terms of what we are doing and how it’s communicated to other people in terms of what we are doing about the Y-word, how we are using it and how people feel about it, including education. But it’s a huge collaborative effort, everyone needs to be on board and there needs to be one direction and common goal.

 

 

 

Jewish female, aged 45-54.

When you mention the Jewish community, who represents the Jewish community? There is no one Jewish community in London, so who’s actually going to represent it and who says that they speak for the Spurs supporters? There’s a number of Jewish people in this group and we probably all identify separately so I think that’s going to be a problem if that’s the path we go down.

 

Apart from within the Club, is there generally any feeling of an issue about Spurs using the Y-word with other clubs, apart from when they use it against us? I'd really like to know if any other clubs have a problem with us.

 

 

 

Jewish male, aged 25-34.

They say when you put two Jews in a room, you get three opinions. So, it’s not like we can just sort of have one unified messaged.

 

I agree there is a natural policing of things. Thinking back to when I first started going to games in the late 1990s, there’s a completely different atmosphere now. You used to get a lot of homophobic chanting. There was a really racist song about Adebayor before he used to play for us that I never used to get involved with in singing. You just wouldn’t hear that now and I think that’s something that’s come over time where people do start to have these discussions, they start to reflect and messages do start going out. I think it will start to evolve over time.

 

I hope putting trust in humanity, that people at other clubs and other fans will stop doing what they’re doing and won’t just look at the fact that Spurs are singing these sorts of things and saying well therefore it gives us a right to do it. No one starts using the N-word now because they hear black people using it amongst themselves. I'd like to think that over a period of time, general messages and reminders are put out there and these things will naturally rule themselves out without having to compromise on the fact that Spurs fans have actually taken a stance with this, they’ve tried to do something about it, they've tried to unify the fanbase and tried to sort of have a message of strength and unity going out.

 

 

 

Jewish female, aged 55-64.

I think you’re going to point the finger more at us if we make a massive thing out of it outside the football community. There are certain clubs that will use it against us, not because of the Jewish stuff but because it’s Tottenham.

 

One of the things that maybe we do need to look at and I don’t know if the Jewish people here agree, is when fans come in wearing payots, like the Orthodox Jews. They sell these things to wear. That is totally over the top and ignorant. I don’t think that’s anything to do with supporting Spurs you know. That’s more to do with the religion side of it.