Thatcher Bill to Curb Hooliganism at Soccer Games Could Be Doomed
An indirect casualty of last weekend’s British soccer disaster may be Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s virtually unblemished record of getting her way in Parliament.
The government introduced the so-called Football Spectators Bill last January as its answer to the problem of soccer hooliganism. It would establish a government-controlled, Football Membership Authority to administer a compulsory scheme that would effectively close the country’s soccer stadiums to all but registered club members.
The plan envisions a computerized, national registry of football fans who would gain admittance to the country’s 92 professional club stadiums by inserting special membership cards in electronic scanning equipment at the gate. Convicted hooligans would be banned.
The bureaucratic plan was unpopular with clubs and fans to begin with, but given Thatcher’s solid majority in Parliament, it appeared unlikely that enough of her fellow Conservative Party members could be persuaded to jump ship to defeat the measure.
Now, however, the tragic deaths of 94 fans crushed at a semifinal national championship game in Sheffield has pointed more eloquently than any critic to what is seen as the biggest danger of the government bill: Equipment failure that could result in jammed turnstiles and a buildup of frustrated fans pressing to get into the stadium.
“We feel that Saturday’s events at Hillsborough were a preview of what is likely to happen in more places if this bill goes through,” said Peter Garrett, co-founder of the Football Spectators Assn. He said government insistence on its plan amounted to an “insensitive, disgraceful, arrogant display of the kind of pompous thinking this government continues to show because it believes itself to be superior to all the expert opinion that is given to it.”
“This bill had few friends before Saturday’s events at Hillsborough,” added Roy Hattersley, shadow home secretary of the opposition Labor Party. “It has even fewer today. And Mrs. Thatcher now has her work cut out if she is to convince her fellow Conservatives that the ID card solves some more problems than it creates.”
Conservative member of Parliament John Carlisle, a former backer of the plan, said Monday that the authorities “should rethink their particular ideas and postpone the bill and bring it back in a different form.”
Despite the growing opposition, however, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd made it clear in Parliament on Monday that while it may postpone a decisive vote on its Football Spectators bill by a few weeks, the government is intent to push it through eventually.
Referring to the hooliganism that the bill is designed to fight, he commented: “I don’t think we can afford to ignore the lessons of the past.” And he rejected the argument that it would lead to bigger and more dangerous crowd buildups before games.
“We don’t accept that,” he told a British Broadcasting Corp. television interviewer. “People who haven’t got the cards won’t be traveling to the game.”
