“It’s been nonstop, it’s just taken on a life of its own,” said Shaista Aziz. Alongside her friends and fellow football fans Amna Abdullatif and Huda Jawad, the anti-racism campaigner has had a busy few weeks.
The England footballer Bukayo Saka expressed his thanks on Thursday to all those who had campaigned on his behalf, and spoke of “people of all races, genders, religions and backgrounds coming together with one shared joy of the rollercoaster of football”.
Among those he referred to were the self-styled Three Hijabis, who set up an online petition calling on the Football Association (FA) and the government to work together to ban “all those who have carried out racist abuse, online or offline, from all football matches in England for life” after the racist abuse directed towards Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho after England’s defeat in the Euro 2020 final.
Aziz’s cousin had got in touch on Sunday evening after the match to say that the cheers she had been hearing through her open window from neighbours had morphed into racist taunts, including the N-word, directed at the players. “My hands are shaking as I write this”, she wrote. The following morning, Aziz said she thought of the children in her life, who had “gone to bed heartbroken” and would now wake up to headlines about the torrent of racist abuse and vandalism, and she started work on the petition.
It went viral, amassing more than 1.1m signatures and on Wednesday Boris Johnson announced that football banning orders, which can bar offenders from grounds for up to 10 years, would be changed to include online racism.
“I’m very proud of the three of us but also the 1 million-plus” signatories, Aziz said. “We have drowned out the racists and shown loud, proud solidarity with our magnificent England team, and the three black players in particular.”
The Oxford-based Labour councillor is a member of the FA’s Refugee and Asylum Seekers Football Network, a journalist and former aid worker who has also done stints of standup comedy. She is also campaigner against racism, violence against women and homelessness.
The Three Hijabis had already experienced viral fame during the tournament when Aziz tweeted a photo of themselves meeting up for the first time since the pandemic began to watch the Ukraine match, celebrating the team’s inclusive stance.
Now the campaign is only just starting, Aziz said. She welcomed the prime minister’s commitment as vital, but asked: “Where is the actual plan?” The three have yet to meet the FA, whom she thinks owes “all of us” – not just footballers and fans – a duty of care when football is “hijacked as a vehicle” for racism, homophobia or misogyny. Her diary is open, she said.
“There is absolutely no excuse for this ban to not have been in place, way before the Euros. There’s just not been the urgency.” One of the many exceptional things about Gareth Southgate, she said, is that as England manager, he has listened the “lived realities” of his players.
“These are young men who have experienced racial abuse way before they became world-class footballers, and when they became world-class footballers, it didn’t make them immune. It may have actually horrifically accelerated the levels of racism,” she said.
For Aziz, grassroots football remains “connected to communities, which are diverse and multicultural just like the England team”, but the reason the FA has “been left sleeping at the wheel” in terms of tackling racism is because of a disconnect between the “massive corporate capitalist beast” of the industry and ordinary people.
Nor does she let politicians off the hook, as she references Tyrone Mings, the England footballer who criticised the home secretary, Priti Patel, for stoking the fire by dismissing the team taking the knee as “gesture politics” and then feigning disgust when they experienced racism.
“He had to come out and make that statement because nobody else [was] willing to”, Aziz said. “When we talk about racism, we are shut down. We are minimised.
“The politicians in this country have to take responsibility for mainstreaming racism … they deny it and they gaslight us,” she said.
“There’s been too much poison flowing through this country because of the way politics has been conducted, and large sections of the media have fanned the flames as well, and maybe now, it has got to a point where people are just like: ‘OK that’s enough now, this can’t carry on.’”
Aziz points out the “bigger picture” of the current debate – a pandemic, where disproportionate numbers of black people and people of colour have died.
“The government has told us continuously that this is a world-class country, a place of opportunities and tolerance”, she said. “This is their rhetoric, but the action is what we’ve seen.”
