Spurs fans applaud taking the knee at White Hart Lane & stand in a long anti-racist tradition
Spurs history suggests that it is not a football club to welcome racists or fascists.
Sometimes it has needed to be reminded. When Spurs Against the Nazis (part of the Anti-Nazi League) opposed the National Front in the 1970s the Club wasn’t so sure at first, but soon came on board. It took some campaigning effort and well-disposed long standing anti-racist Spurs supporters spoke up too.
Subsequent attempts by the BNP to cause trouble in the 1980s and 1990s were given short shrift.
These days Stand Up to Racism on the ground and Show Racism The Red Card at an official level continue the work of making sure that racist supporters of Tommy Robinson and the like have had no quarter at White Hart Lane.
Even so there have been self-styled Spurs supporters active in the far right ‘Democratic Football Lads Alliance’ whose efforts to stir up racism at WHL have had to be opposed and blocked.
One of them Phil Hickin tried to encourage fans, as they returned in small numbers today to White Hart Lane, to boo the players taking the knee in the game at Arsenal, as some fans had done at Millwall on Saturday.
The fans ignored that and applauded the anti-racist stance of the players. A reminder if it were needed that the work of keeping racists and fascists out of football is one that needs to be in perpetual progress.
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