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Football team must drop far-right logo UK
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Football team must drop far-right logo
Fri Sep 13, 9:19 AM ET
By John Joseph
LONDON (Reuters) - A football team sponsored by the far-right British National Party (BNP) has been told it is not allowed to wear kit emblazoned with the party logo.
The Tipton Boilers, who compete in the Sandwell Premier and District Sunday Football League in the Midlands, have already played twice this season sporting the Union Jack-based party logo.
But now the Football Association, the game's governing body, has called foul.
"Our regulations stipulate that you cannot have a political message on your kit, so...the kit must be withdrawn," an FA spokesman said on Friday.
The anti-immigration BNP won just 0.2 percent of the vote in the general election last year but was given a substantial boost in May this year when three of its members were elected as local councillors in Burnley.
It also did well in Sandwell's Princes End ward, taking 24 percent of the vote. Some members of the Tipton Boilers team drink in a pub in Princes End.
Sandwell itself is close to the Wolverhampton south-east constituency, whose former MP the late Enoch Powell, a one-time Conservative government minister, made an infamous "rivers of blood" speech 30 years ago about non-white immigration.
The team's manager Tom Cooksey could not understand what the fuss was about.
"We had a seven-year-old kit which was tatty and ripped," he said. "When the BNP offered to buy us a new strip we took it gratefully.
"I haven't got a clue where all this racism lark comes from. It hasn't offended the two teams we've played and one of those had nine black players. At the end of the day when the whistle goes, it's just 22 players trying to play football."
Local Sunday football is far removed from the glitz of the premier league, where some players are paid reputed weekly wages of over 50,000 pounds.
The Tipton players, who have to put up the goals' nets for their home games, each pay three pounds a week to help pay for a pitch at the local park and for a referee.
Cooksey said the idea for the controversial strip had come from the BNP, who are advertising replica Tipton shirts for sale on their website.
A spokesman for the BNP, who described the strip as "a nice bit of kit", added the deal was a way of thanking the local community for their support. "Sponsoring the team helps puts the party on the map," he said.
A different sponsor -- www.magneticjewellers.com - has already offered to donate 450 pounds to fund a new kit for the team, who hope to wear the strip for their next match on Sunday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20020913/od_uk_nm/oukoe_britain_sport_bnp&e=2
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Fri Sep 13, 9:19 AM ET
By John Joseph
LONDON (Reuters) - A football team sponsored by the far-right British National Party (BNP) has been told it is not allowed to wear kit emblazoned with the party logo.
The Tipton Boilers, who compete in the Sandwell Premier and District Sunday Football League in the Midlands, have already played twice this season sporting the Union Jack-based party logo.
But now the Football Association, the game's governing body, has called foul.
"Our regulations stipulate that you cannot have a political message on your kit, so...the kit must be withdrawn," an FA spokesman said on Friday.
The anti-immigration BNP won just 0.2 percent of the vote in the general election last year but was given a substantial boost in May this year when three of its members were elected as local councillors in Burnley.
It also did well in Sandwell's Princes End ward, taking 24 percent of the vote. Some members of the Tipton Boilers team drink in a pub in Princes End.
Sandwell itself is close to the Wolverhampton south-east constituency, whose former MP the late Enoch Powell, a one-time Conservative government minister, made an infamous "rivers of blood" speech 30 years ago about non-white immigration.
The team's manager Tom Cooksey could not understand what the fuss was about.
"We had a seven-year-old kit which was tatty and ripped," he said. "When the BNP offered to buy us a new strip we took it gratefully.
"I haven't got a clue where all this racism lark comes from. It hasn't offended the two teams we've played and one of those had nine black players. At the end of the day when the whistle goes, it's just 22 players trying to play football."
Local Sunday football is far removed from the glitz of the premier league, where some players are paid reputed weekly wages of over 50,000 pounds.
The Tipton players, who have to put up the goals' nets for their home games, each pay three pounds a week to help pay for a pitch at the local park and for a referee.
Cooksey said the idea for the controversial strip had come from the BNP, who are advertising replica Tipton shirts for sale on their website.
A spokesman for the BNP, who described the strip as "a nice bit of kit", added the deal was a way of thanking the local community for their support. "Sponsoring the team helps puts the party on the map," he said.
A different sponsor -- www.magneticjewellers.com - has already offered to donate 450 pounds to fund a new kit for the team, who hope to wear the strip for their next match on Sunday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20020913/od_uk_nm/oukoe_britain_sport_bnp&e=2
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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