Interesting and insightful book on the safe standing movement in football

Jonas Havelund
Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics
University of Southern Denmark

Mark Turner, with his book The Safe Standing Movement in Football: Fan Networks, Tactics, and Mobilisation, has created an insightful description of how the debate around safety and particularly safe standing has evolved from 1985 to 2023. The book’s main focus is on how a small group of persistent football supporters have managed to influence and drive the debate on safe standing. This topic has been particularly sensitive in England for several decades due to perceptions among politicians and the general public that the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989, the nation’s most tragic and traumatic stadium disaster, was linked to supporter behaviour that could have been avoided with better safety measures and all-seater stadiums. The empirical chapters of the book are thus a micro sociological study of how individuals, their relationships, skills, networks, and impressive persistence have contributed to changing the debate.

The book consists of four parts. The first part outlines the theoretical and historical frameworks. Here, Turner’s firsthand experiences with life on the terraces are brought into play and contrasted to his experiences of all-seater stadiums and how they completely change the dynamics and the way of being together among these fans. Turner nicely frames life on the terraces in the time before all-seater stadiums in England, which in Nordic countries is often taken for granted among those who prefer to stand at football matches:

Standing together on the terraces, football supporters and the social networks they formed produced the atmosphere and spectacle which characterise the collective memories and social histories of generations of men, women, and children in Britain and Europe. Whilst the level of emotion, ritual, and memory attached to standing on football terraces varied for different supporters, what bound them together according to Wagg (2004), was a mythic sense of freedom to actively express support in under-constrained, or under-regulated ways. (p. 5)

The feeling of being united on the terraces in a kind of “free playing, interacting interdependence of individuals” ended post-Hillsborough in a situation for many with all-seater stadiums, where one practically finds one’s place, sits down, (maybe) sings, and only talks to those closest around. It is thus easy to extend this interpretation to the expression “Supporter as Customer,” while Mark Turner and the people he has interviewed have a picture that the vibrant life on the terraces contributed more to the slogans “Supporters Not Customers” and “Football is nothing without fans”.

Time thus also plays a role. The further away from the tragedy at Hillsborough, the more objectivity can be brought into a debate that has otherwise – and understandably so – been emotionally dominated.

In the second part of the book, the theoretical foundation is presented and set in a historical context of social, political, and cultural changes that occurred in English and European football from 1985 to 2023. The concept timescape is particularly applied as a concept to specify the macro-level, spatio-temporal, boundaries in which the actions of the supporter movements are located.

In the third part of the book, Turner’s empirical material, the micro-level, is brought into play in descriptions of the development of supporter organisations, particularly focusing on safe standing. The theme was particularly highlighted by the tragedy at Hillsborough in 1989, which was investigated by Lord Taylor. Taylor’s report was the starting point for all-seater stadiums. The book describes how this very connection between the tragedy and all-seater stadiums made it immensely difficult for decades to convey the message that there can be safe ways to stand and watch football in England. The book also describes how difficult it has been for supporter organisations to get the English authorities and politicians to dare to have qualified discussions. Time thus also plays a role. The further away from the tragedy at Hillsborough, the more objectivity can be brought into a debate that has otherwise – and understandably so – been emotionally dominated. As the book shows, several politicians over time have been in contact with the people behind initiatives for safe standing, but when organisations like the “Hillsborough Family Support Group” loudly criticise measures pointing towards standing fans, it is not a clear winning case to speak out.

The book centers around the people involved in the Football Supporters Association, but it also covers a number of other organisations and their interactions both locally, regionally, nationally, and transnationally. Sometimes it is easy to lose track of the various organisations that arise in different geographical locations and at various times, but all cross each other’s paths. One could almost wish for a graphical overview including a timeline. Organisations arise, change names, and merge, and if one is not already familiar with the respective organisations, one risks getting lost in their interactions, not least due to the many abbreviations used continuously. The same applies to the key actors we as readers are presented with. Turner presents them in an excellent and colourful way, so one gets a sense of who we are dealing with and what they bring with them from experiences gained in other arenas. The book describes, for example, how experiences from politically motivated movements (e.g., Anti Poll Tax) are brought in and the individuals become an asset due to the experiences they have gained elsewhere. Similarly, the author shows that many of the scholars who have written and shaped much of the academic literature on the subject have simultaneously had highly active roles in various supporter-led campaigns within, for example, anti-racism. One could almost wish for an actual cast of characters as an appendix. Conversely, the interaction between organisations and individuals underscores a point in the book, namely that things are so intertwined that such an attempt at an overview would quickly become unmanageable.

The fourth part of the book summarises and dwells on the fact that there is a development towards safe standing in England, although this development is still met with scepticism and reservations.

Mark Turner’s book contributes excellently to an understanding of how the various initiatives over time to promote safe standing are interconnected and simultaneously driven by a few key actors. So, for anyone interested either directly in the topic of safe standing or in (supporter) activism and social movements, this book is fascinating reading.

Copyright © Jonas Havelund 2025