Events

15 March 2006

The Kick It Out Campaign: Fighting Racism in the Football Industry

The Kick It Out Campaign: Fighting Racism in the Football Industry

Room G01 – Clore Management Centre,
Birkbeck College,
Torrington Square,
London WC1 7HX

Wednesday 15th March 2006 at 6pm

Given by:

Piara Power

Piara Power is the Director of football’s anti-racism campaign, Kick It Out; shorthand for the campaign slogan “Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football Campaign”. The campaign was launched in 1993-1994 as a partnership between the Commission for Racial Equality and the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) with the aim of tackling the very severe problem of racist behaviour that pertained at English football grounds at the time. In 1997 the various footballing organisations decided to fund the campaign as an independent organization with support from the Football Trust (now the Football Foundation), the FA Premier League, the Football Association (FA) and the PFA. Since then the campaign has grown in influence and is widely recognized as the most influential and effective campaign of its kind in Europe . The comparative success of the campaign is underlined by the fact that the kind of overt racist behaviour at Spanish football grounds is no longer a regular feature of the English domestic game.

In this seminar Piara will discuss the history of the campaign, focusing on the reasons for its success, and the continuing challenges it faces in the future. He will then go on to the developing role of Kick It Out in the Football Against Racism in Europe  (FARE) network where Kick it Out has been cited as an example of good practice by football’s  European governing body  UEFA , football’s world governing body FIFA , the Council of Europe, the European Commission, European parliamentarians and the British Council.

Reading

For further details on this seminar series contact:

Sean Hamil
Department of Management
Birkbeck College
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX

Tel: 020-7631 6763
Email: s.hamil@bbk.ac.uk

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