The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust has criticised their own fans for singing tactless chants about poverty and unemployment during the team’s match against Liverpool at Anfield on Saturday.
During the 1-1 draw which kept Spurs in contention for Champions League qualification but may well have denied Jurgen Klopp’s side the title, a section of the away end were heard singing “sign on”.
The chant is an adaptation of Liverpool anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone, which features the line “walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart”, changed to “sign on, sign on, with a pen in your hand – and you’ll never get a job”.
“Singing about the opposition has long been a feature of English football, and we are reluctant to tell fans how they should support the team,” the THST said in a statement.
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“Nevertheless, we were disappointed to hear the ‘sign on’ chant at Saturday’s away match at Anfield. Poverty and joblessness are not fair game for banter. There is a cost of living crisis throughout England, including in London.”
The song dates back to the 1980s, when it was used by rival fans to taunt both Liverpool and Everton about soaring unemployment in the city. The two clubs have also been targeted with the “Feed the Scousers” chant.
The Trust also pointed out that “our club represents an area and community with the fastest growing rate of unemployment in the country”.
According to official UK government statistics, Tottenham also has the highest unemployment rate in London at 6.8 per cent.
In recent years, its Supporters’ Trust has worked closely with the Tottenham Food Bank, which estimates that one in five people in the UK now live below the poverty line.
“We are rightly proud of our away support, and we want it to be noticed for positive reasons,” the Trust added.
“For most of the game at Anfield our fans gave superb backing to a great team performance. Spurs fans have provided financial backing to Marine FC on Merseyside, and regularly contribute to foodbanks and community initiatives in London. This is what we are about.
“The “Sign on” chant is not what we are about. We’re Tottenham Hotspur. We’re better than that.”
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Poverty chants are a grim example of punching down
By Daniel Storey, i‘s chief football writer
These chants are particularly tasteless at football matches because football was a working-class sport that eventually transformed into middle-class leisure pursuit through the rise in ticket prices and because it is one of the few places where people gather en masse and proudly display their tribalism.
As for the geographical slur to Merseyside, take a look around you. In January this year, 12 per cent of adults in the city were worried about having enough food. Rising energy prices, the end of the Universal Credit uplift and the impact of Covid-19 has only made things harder.
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This isn’t just football either. In this country, to suffer poverty is to somehow accept some culpability for your fate. It comes with the accusation that you are workshy, that you have massaged benefits culture for your own gain, by those who have been fortunate to avoid the same circumstances and in doing so have persuaded themselves – or been hardwired to believe – that their position has been achieved purely through skill or hard work.
And that matters. Societal inequalities are established by governments, but they are propelled by the people for as long as the people are happy to mock those worse off than them. They become foot soldiers of inequality, punching down on those who must know their place and accept their fate. And conversely, the only way to address this inequality is through love, support and sympathy. You might not think that a chant matters. It might only be banter to you. But it makes a difference.
This is an extract of Daniel Storey’s column ‘Feed the Scousers chant that mocks poverty is not banter and football fans can do better’ – read the full piece here
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