For the past year our professional football players have taken part and been fully committed to the most powerful non-political, human rights silent protest ever seen on the pitch asserting Black Lives Matter, as a united team they take the knee together before each football match choosing to make a stance and a public call against racism.

The racists are free to racially abuse without any serious consequence, and the ugly face of racism STILL lives and thrives in the national game of football. We now need a life time ban to be implemented, it’s the only way to remove racists and to stamp out racism from football.

During this time of taking the knee our Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused to publicly support our players calling for Black lives to matter and at the same time our Home Secretary Priti Patel publicly criticised the team labelling the anti-racism message as a “gesture of politics” and then defended the racists who booed our teams, our Prime Minister also refused to call out and condemn football fans booing the England taking the knee.

At the end UEFA EURO 2020 Cup final match on 11th July 2021 playing at home in England, Wembley Black players, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho received a torrent, barrage of racial abuse, insults and imagery content published on social media’s as well many reports of verbal and physical attack directed at Black and Brown people offline from England’s football fan as soon as England lossed to Italy during the EURO cup final 2020.

Shortly after The Football Association issued a statement which said:

“We strongly condemn all forms of discrimination and are appalled by the online racism that has been aimed at some of our England players on social media.

We could not be clearer that anyone behind such disgusting behaviour is not welcome in following the team.

We will do all we can to support the players affected while urging the toughest punishments possible for anyone responsible.

We will continue to do everything we can to stamp discrimination out of the game, but we implore government to act quickly and bring in the appropriate legislation so this abuse has real life consequences.

Social media companies need to step up and take accountability and action to ban abusers from their platforms, gather evidence that can lead to prosecution and support making the platforms free from this type of abhorrent abuse”

As history has previously revealed times over and most of us know a statement alone will just not be enough to make any impact on future events of this kind, it will not suffice and come no where near in changing the culture of racism in football, football stadiums or from fans on social media. SO we must finally act after decades of racist abuse. As long as we’ve have professional Black and Brown players is as long as they have be subjected to endured racism at work, on the field by so call “fans”. And we’ve all witnessed and tolerated as if we immune accepting as part of the English culture. Enough is Enough.

We are now calling for the Football Association and the government, Prime Minister to act and to implement a lifetime ban to all those found and known to have carried out racist abuse and to put on notice to any football fans they too will be banned for life should they choose to racially abuse our sports person in any future events, whether this be in the stadium, found published online, social media’s and or verbal, physical abuse offline.

Zero tolerance to racism. 

A life ban, zero tolerance policy in the only route to take to seriously combat racism in football, potentially leaving room for redemption and review in policy after a significant number of years have lapsed.

A life ban from all football matches in England is the only conceivably way forward to combat and eradicate racism from the national game.

Why are we as a society prepared to continuously allow racism to thrive, racism must have serious consequence levelled at racists, and why do we continually allow ‘racist fans’ to be closely associated bringing shame on the national game, shame on England - Let’s get racist and racism out. WE must be united in ending racism in football now!

This is one conversation that needs to end, we’ve had the same exact conversation for decades. We need to end this conversation with a life time ban, it’s the only way forward. The time for talking has to come to an end. Act Now!

Our England players played hard, our united England team played hard, they put their blood, sweat and tears to bring it home for THEIR country. Yet it still it’s not enough - if you happen to be Black.

IT’S TIME TO BAN KNOWN RACISTS FROM FOOTBALL AND WE ARE CALLING FOR A BAN FOR LIFE.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

www.blacklivesmatter.uk

#BlackLivesMatter