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Factual: Crime & Justice

Sport: Football

24/05/2010

BBC Radio 4 - Football Fights Back

Hardeep Singh Kohli reports on efforts to stamp racist abuse out of professional football.

Hardeep Singh Kohli talks to those who are dedicated to removing all kinds of abuse against football players and supporters.

When the former professional football player Leroy Rosenior made his debut for Fulham football club as a teenager in the 1980s, he was one of the few professional black football players. He remembers the racist abuse as threatening and uncontrolled. In this programme he talks to Hardeep Singh Kohli about the progress that has been made since that time, but also emphasises that there is work still to be done.

Hardeep also attends an educational event organised for local schoolchildren by Show Racism The Red Card, and finds out how the organisation takes its message to the youngest fans.

Also in the programme, Kick It Out director Piara Powar talks about one of the latest cooperative ventures between Kick It Out and the Football Association - the short film aiming to show the ugliness of homophobic abuse. Hardeep questions the value of this kind of initiative, and meets Ivor Baddiel, who together with his brother David Baddiel, is launching later this year a similar film which attacks anti-semitism. 

Hardeep visits Sue Law, Head of Equality at the FA, and to gain a European perspective he also talks to Rafal Pankowsky, who has made a study of far right-wing and neo-Nazi influences on football behaviour, and who has worked with FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe) to take his message further afield. 

Producer: Richard Bannerman
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