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Gypsy Chants and Traveller Rants:

Stuart Butler

Sunday, December 11th, 2005

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 It’s against the law
To shout and bawl
Racialist obscenities;
Fanatics are taken from the ground,
For no-one can be allowed
To abuse players for their ethnicity
Or for the colour of their skin.
It’s a generation ago
When bananas littered the snows
Of the winter of our game,
When Asian and Black
Were routinely attacked
In the name of Ingerland.
And don’t we all now pride ourselves
On Cool Britannia?
We’re all so chic and fashionable
And we’re simply quite unable
To behave like the Spanish bourgeoisie,
Who show their fascist sympathy
Whenever they see a football player of colour
Perform for the opposition.
Why, it’s only the BNP
Who’d do anything like that,
Because we’re all rainbow this and that,
With our love of diversity
And multicultural plurality –
So why is it OK to shout anti-gypsy racist rants
And all those pikey traveller chants
That can be heard in the stadiums
Of New Millennium
Cool Britannia?
Is it ignorance or pusillanimous myopia?

© Stuart Butler

Notes

I know I’ve posted this before but it needs to feature in the poems section rather than the editors’ section so that the title will appear in the search box – the lesson plans for the KIO work ask students to search for this poem via the search box. I would imagine that the sample lesson plans will go up on this site either just before or just after Christmas. I will put the sample lesson plans in the editors’ section.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/gypsy-chants-and-traveller-rants/