H. Cunnell.

Many of you will remember the splendid reception afforded to our players and Thierry Henry in particular, by the Portsmouth fans during and after our game against them in the Cup last season. Certainly Henry remembers and was moved by such a surprising and sporting recognition of what was a mesmerising display of football by the Arsenal; and in this context it is only fair to remember the standing ovation the Old Trafford crowd gave to Ronaldo (the proper one), after he was substituted during Madrid’s defeat of United in the European Cup. You’ll probably also remember the way the Pompey fans kept up a constant support for their team during that Cup game with us even when they were 5-0 down. Class and style, in other words, can come from surprising quarters; who can forget the mercenary and well known Mussolini admirer Paolo di Canio’s one act of sportsmanship when he stopped playing, rather than score a desperately needed goal for West Ham, to let the opposition keeper get treatment?

Many visitors and contributors to these pages having been getting hot under the collar about a song that the Chelsea fans may or may not have sung during the recent game.(Correspondents claiming they are Chelsea fan have admitted to it. Editor)  I didn’t hear the song on the day, but I hear it every time we play the Totts. The reason I didn’t hear it was because, after a two-season spell in the West Stand (the result of a wedding present), I am back in the Clock End, where the atmosphere was at its most raucous.

The song directed at PV4 is offensive, and it’s informed by racism, in as much as while cannibalism has been found in a great many societies at one time or another whether through custom, for personal gratification (step forward Messrs Gein, Neilsen and Dahmer), or because a bunch of people were stuck somewhere on a cold sea or up a mountain with no food, but each other, in the tiny minds of the f-.wit stiff right arm brigade cannibalism is somehow associated with ‘primitivism’ and, subsequently and by twisted logic, solely with Africans cooking missionaries in pots (although for my money the missionaries, a bunch of land grabbing enslaving crooks, deserved to end up being cooked and eaten more than most).

Incidentally, the Head-hunters of Borneo, rather than those of Stamford Bridge, used to eat their fallen enemies in order to honour them and ingest their bravery. So maybe Freddie has been eaten by Lampard, which would explain why Freddie’s disappeared, and Lampard is suddenly a good and brave player.

Whatever, as my younger daughters often say, message boards have been full of people accusing these people of that, and those people of this. I’d say two things about this. First, and most important, racism in any form should not be allowed to stand, a statement that is, of course, a great deal easier to write down here than it is to be put into practice. In the last couple of years I’ve had to take issue with a couple of Australian bikers in a bar in Sarawak, a feller I’d thought was a friend of mine in my local, and a bloke in the North Bank (where I was compelled to sit during last season’s Cup game against Chelsea), who called Mutu a ‘fucking Gyppo.’ This last chap had a lot of supporters, because hating Gypsies and Muslims (and I’ve heard ‘fucking raghead’ shouted in the Clock End before now) is the acceptable face of racism in this country at the minute. It was pointed out to this fool that we had a ‘fucking Gypsy’ playing up front for us; and when ours scored two goals the day was won for the forces of light.

I relate these anecdotes not to suggest that I am a brave man, I am not. I confronted these people because if I hadn’t I couldn’t have gone home and looked my three brown daughters in the eyes. I’ve also had to ask myself a lot of hard questions. When it’s personal the artificial divisions between racism you’ll let slide and that which you won’t disappears.

Which brings me to my second point. Any time Arsenal fans complain about racism directed at our players we are met with the accusation that we are hypocrites. To my mind this is entirely justified criticism. Arsenal fans need to put our own house in order. Specifically, of course, we need to stop the anti-Semitism. Using the word ‘Yid’ is racist, to say different is to be stupid at best, and lying at worst, and before somebody writes in and tells me it’s not, because ‘they call themselves that’, go and do some research into the tradition of marginalised and victimised people reclaiming offensive words directed against them in order to draw the sting of the insult.

You can’t be selective about these things. There will be a lot of racists at any given football ground in the country this weekend; any one of them that comes out with some poisonous remark about black players will most probably, and rightly, be shouted down because a lot of people, over a lot of years, have done a lot of good work. Can we say the same when people shout out things about Muslims, or Jews, or Gypsies? Why is it unacceptable for Spanish fans to make monkey noises, but it’s alright for English fans to sing ‘I’d rather be a Paki than a Turk’?

In my experience it is a lifelong struggle to resist and get rid of the racist bullshit fed to us by mass media and other cultural representations. Whether as Arsenal fans or human beings, we cannot afford to be smug. Me, I’m against racism, and I’d rather spend time with a right-on Chelsea fan than an Arsenal fan who uses the word Yid. The question is not whether some Chelsea or Arsenal fans are racist, the question is whether you are, or your neighbour is, and what you, and we, are going to do about it.