Football Hooliganism in Britain before the First World War.

This article focuses on football hooliganism in Great Britain. Over the past two decades, football hooliganism has come to be regarded as one of Great Britain's more serious social problems. It has been the subject of an enduring moral panic and has recurrently drawn forth demands from the media, politicians and a variety of self-appointed moral entrepreneurs for tough action. A number of attempts have also been made to explain it but, so far, popular theories on the subject have tended to outnumber their academic counterparts. Discussion of what has been written will show why the author regards an analysis of football hooligan violence before the First World War as an important precondition for moving towards an adequate sociological understanding of the present-day phenomenon. The author shall outline some of the common features of the early theories first and then summarize what he takes their central arguments to be. After that, and before discussing some of the research findings, the author shall examine the work of three historians who, without claiming to make a direct contribution to the understanding of football hooliganism today, have begun to undertake work on its late 19th and early 20th century counterparts.