Football Chants: A Living Legacy of the 1984–85 Miners' Strike

Abstract

On the 31 January 2004, Notts County played Barnsley in a Nationwide League Division Two fixture. Meadow Lane, the home of Notts County Football Club echoed to the chilling cries of 'twenty years and you're still a scab' and other chants displaying similar sentiments, sung by Barnsley fans to their Nottinghamshire rivals. Just five weeks away from the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the year long national Miners' Strike of 1984-85, it was painfully clear at this match that the wounds that had been reopened twenty years earlier; and that initially occurred during an earlier miners' strike in 1926, between striking and non-striking miners and their respective communities were far from healed. Drawing primarily on data collected at the match as part of a wider study examining the role of football chants in the continuity of the blason populaire tradition. The playing out of the hostilities of the Miners' Strike through football chants will be explored, together with how such chants act as powerful vocal weapons against rival fans. Their content relies on an event which continues to produce highly emotive responses many years after the event. The opinions of Barnsley fans regarding the appropriateness of such chants will also be examined, using data collected from several discussions on an unofficial Barnsley FC internet chatroom in the days following the match.