Europe’s new hooliganism problem – spiked

Following Morocco’s defeat to France in the World Cup quarter-finals last week, violent disorder broke out in central London. Footage on social media showed hundreds of people gathered on the street after the match had finished. Some are captured throwing fireworks, bottles and other objects at Met officers. A few people, seemingly injured, can be seen being tended to by police. One officer was injured, and four people were arrested.

It seems pretty clear who the protagonists were. Edgware Road is home to a long-established Arab population, including many people of Moroccan heritage. And plenty of those seemingly involved in last week’s disturbances were wearing Moroccan football shirts or were draped in the Moroccan flag.

What happened in Edgware was replicated in other parts of Europe. Moroccan fans in the Netherlands took to the streets after the France defeat in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, forcing riot police to intervene. This unrest followed the street ‘parties’ after Morocco knocked the Netherlands out of the World Cup in their round-of-32 fixture. During Moroccan fans’ celebrations, Dutch police officers were hit by stones, fireworks and other objects.

In Germany, Morocco’s defeat led to violent clashes between Moroccan fans and the police in Düsseldorf. These resulted in several arrests, as well as injuries to supporters and police alike. In France, the streets did remain comparatively calm. But this was largely thanks to the presence of over 20,000 police officers and gendarmes on the streets of Paris and other major cities.

It would be unfair to focus purely on the misbehaviour of Moroccan fans. There is a broader problem of football-related troublemaking among North African communities in Western Europe. In London, in the neighbourhood known as ‘Little Cairo’, also on Edgware Road, Egyptian fans clashed with police, climbed on double-decker buses and disrupted traffic after Egypt defeated Australia in their round-of-32 match.

In France, Algerian fans have, in the past, had serious clashes with the police, especially during the 2019 African Cup of Nations (AFCON). This year, there was trouble in several French cities following Algeria’s 2-0 loss to Nigeria in their AFCON quarter-final game. Much like the behaviour of Moroccan fans in the Netherlands during this World Cup, the results of the matches are not necessarily a predictor of whether or not disorder will unfold.

This new hooliganism shows that all is not well when it comes to integration in Western Europe. It also shows that the UK is far from being immune to trouble, despite its relative success historically at cohering diverse communities compared with its European counterparts. It seems that neither the UK’s laissez-faire multiculturalism nor France’s strict republican universalism is quelling football-connected disorder within North African communities.

It certainly looks as if the emotions prompted by an international football tournament are exacerbating pre-existing tensions in European societies – especially among Muslim youth of North African origin. Many are already estranged from, and antagonistic towards, mainstream European societies. And they now also have further cause for resentment as a result of Israel’s war in Gaza. They feel that the West has failed to express sufficient solidarity with the Palestinian people and has ultimately sided with Israel. This has turbo-charged their grievance levels. It seems their Muslim identity, their sense of solidarity with Muslim peoples and their attachment to their ancestral homelands have trumped their attachment to the European nations in which they live.

The drivers of the disorder may well vary, depending on the national context. But broadly speaking, anti-state resentment, hatred of the police, foreign-policy grievances and general feelings of identitarian victimhood are all at play. It’s this unhealthy concoction that is fuelling the surge in North African football hooliganism.

And if the Edgware unrest is any indication, Britain is in trouble, too. The claim that ‘diversity is our strength’ rings hollower by the day.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.