As a Jewish Spurs fan, I saw Y-word chants as a form of solidarity. But they have to go | Mark Solomons
I never joined those chants, but I understood the motives of our fans who did, just as I see why the club now says it’s time to stop
In 1982, I started work, joined a union and bought my first Tottenham Hotspur season ticket with my first week’s wages. As a bolshie teenager I figured before too long that I could rely on the three S’s: Spurs, the Smiths and socialism. They’ve all let me down since.
Yet I continue to fork out on a season ticket, just as my dad and his dad did, along with thousands of other Jews who lived alongside them in Stepney and Whitechapel. My son is following the tradition. After 2,000 years of suffering, what’s a few more decades?
However, unlike his dad and previous generations, his experience at Spurs is unlikely to include the kind of antisemitism we faced from away fans, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. The Chelsea fans singing: “I’ve never felt more like gassing the Jews,” the West Ham fans with their version of I’m Only a Poor Little Sparrow, which included the Y-word and also the line “I hit him with a brick”.
Spurs fans, mostly non-Jewish, adopted the Y-word in their own chants as a form of defence and defiance. If we owned the word, then its use by others would cease to be so offensive. But in recent years, the whole Y-thing has become the subject of increasing debate about whether it is time to drop it from chants, particularly those emanating from the Park Lane end.
On Thursday, Tottenham put out a long and, it must be said, well-argued and considered statement calling time on the use by fans of the Y-word. It claimed most of the 23,000 supporters who took part in a club survey were, at the very least, uncomfortable with its use.
I suspect many of them are from the greater Spurs diaspora rather than those who go to matches – particularly away games, where songs such as The Thing I Love Most is Being a Y** and Y** Army are sung by, if not the majority, then a substantial minority.
Mark Solomons is a journalist and PR specialist
from The Guardian https://ift.tt/AITbn09
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