From Viv Anderson to Black Lives Matter: Racism and Anti-Racism within British football fanzines and fan websites, 1970-present

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From Viv Anderson to Black Lives Matter' will capture how print and online fanzines/websites have both reproduced and challenged dominant racial discourses within British football from the 1970s to the present. It will be based on case studies of independent and club-based fanzines and websites drawn from the British Library's collections over a 50-year period.'To speak of the British or English people is to speak of white people' (Gilroy, 1993). That the history of 'our nation's' most popular sport - football - is replete with examples of overt / covert racism comes as no surprise. A vibrant body of research within sociology has examined how this racism is experienced and expressed (Back et al. 2001; Burdsey 2007; 2011; Carrington 2008; Cleland and Cashmore 2014; Ratna 2014). Regrettably, this important issue remains largely untouched by contemporary historians. To address this historiographical lacuna, 'From Viv Anderson to Black Lives Matter' will capture how print and online fanzines/websites have both reproduced and challenged dominant racial discourses within British football from the 1970s to the present. Based on case studies of independent and club-based fanzines and websites drawn from the BL's collections over a 50-year period, it will force us to reconsider existing scholarship. Through forensic analysis of responses to key historical moments (see below), it will expand our knowledge and understanding of diachronic expressions of racism and anti-racism within fan communities. Significantly, this will reveal how printed and digital cultures have developed over time and assess their impact on the present.The project will have two distinct methodological components:1. A series of case studies scaffolded around responses to key historical moments. Starting with Viv Anderson, the first black player to play for the men's senior England team in 1978, these moments might cover the intervention of the National Front in the late 1970s/early 1980s; responses to Paul Ince, the first black player to captain the England football team in 1993; the emergence of antiracist groups and campaigns; the Bosman ruling in 1995 and the rise of non-British players in the leagues; the emergence of football-related Islamophobic social movements, such as the English Defence League and the Football Lads Alliance/Democratic Football Lads Alliance; through to the recent Black Lives Matter campaign.2. Library-based research to identify relevant material with the holdings of football fanzines and within the UK Web Archive, comprising two overlapping phases. The first involves locating, collating, and further cataloguing of source materials drawn from British Library collections from the 1970s to the present day. The second involves inductive qualitative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2019). This archival research could be supplemented with oral history (Leavy, 2011), involving semi-structured interviews with creators of, and contributors to, the fanzines and online communities, as well as with representatives drawn from anti-racist organisations (e.g., 'Kick it Out' and 'Show Racism the Red Card'). Research questions include: - When, and why, did print fanzines first engage with racist representations? - What role have both print and digital cultures played in the (re)production of racism within fan communities? - When, why, and how did certain fanzines and websites challenge racism? - What role have new digital technologies played in the creation, circulation, and experience of both racist and anti-racist content? - What are the archival and methodological opportunities and challenges presented by the British Library's holdings of print publications and archived websites (primarily the UK Web Archive), and how can these be addressed, and their access and profile enhanced?