Ian Black believes it is ultimately up to England's decent supporters

HAVE you ever been part of afacilitating forum? A couple of weeks ago I went to London at the behest of the Home Office to take part in a discussion on English football violence. The reason I know that it was a facilitating forum is that it says so in the minutes of the meeting, all 11 pages of them.

"This group was a facilitating forum to clarify recommendations andobjectives and hopefully set targets and deadlines." B****cks. And not just the grammar. The group was set up as a rubber stamp so that the government can say they consulted a lot of people, and I wasted my time, not to mention your money, in going.

I was asked, presumably, because I once wrote a book about the Tartan Army and its merry peregrinations around the world. I am listed in the minutes as "Ian Black, Tartan Army". It made me proud, though how this makes me an expert on footballviolence escapes me. However, I have to say that I felt I had more solutions to the English hooligan problem than any other of the 21 people in the room, who ranged from a professor at Liverpool University through the Arsenal travel manager to several anti-racist and anti-violence groups and a couple of very defensive members of the England Members Club.

The EMC is the English version of the Scotland Travel Club and the onlyreason for joining it is to accumulate loyalty points so that you can buytickets. The EMC don't, unlike theScotland Travel Club, send you helpful advice and lists of foreign phrasesbefore you travel, or even key-rings which say "Voted the Friendliest Fans France '98". The EMC doesn't do thisbecause they can't, and if there was a world-wide vote at the moment for the world's unfriendliest fans then England would win by acclamation.

The two defensive EMC members deny this. It is all the fault of the forum, police, foreign fans and the FA, not the English fans, no way, Jose. Both told me to my face that I was a liar when Idescribed watching gangs of thugs, complete with arm bands, organising themselves for violence in Dublinairport during their infamous foray in '95. I was there, guys. I saw it. Honest.

The meeting was chaotic. It lacked coherence and organisation and you couldn't hear yourself think for the grinding of axes and the rustling orpre-prepared agendas. There was no consensus of any kind. The HomeOffice and the marketing manager from the English FA had an agenda, however, and it was this.

There are around 27,000 members of the EMC, almost 100% white, male and in the 20-35 age group. The English FA and the Home Office think they can change this by fiat. They intend, after, of course, formal consultation, questionnaires, et al, to dilute the EMC membership by cancelling the loyalty scheme andoffering discounts to ethnic minorities and, wait for it, women and children.

I don't imagine that anyone will be killed in the rush by these groups to join the chair-throwing race-hate chanting, drunken louts who so predictably shame themselves and their country, but this measure will do one thing. It will remove all constraints whatsoever on the hooligans. If they can't get aticket from the English FA, they'll go anyway. Withholding tickets was their only controlling factor. More and worse horrors are to come, I fear, if this daft policy is implemented.

But what to do? Schadenfreude issatisfying for the Tartan Army, but we all know that the majority of theEngland support are decent folk, there to support their team, anxious to avoid trouble. How do we empower them? How do we focus the headline makers on merriment rather than mayhem? I've thought about this long and hard because I really would like to help, even the English, and I came up with this. It's off the wall but it's cheap and do-able. Did they listen? Of course not. Itisn't even in the minutes.

The English FA has to make the fans their friends, not their enemies. Isuggested giving every English supporter one of these throw- away cameras with a cord for round the neck. They cost pennies and MarkPerryman, an EMC member and one of the few positive voices there, believes he could get a sponsor to supply them. What you have then created, if you'll pardon the pun, is the world's biggest focus group.

Any bother, and it's snap, snap, snap, hundreds of photos. And you will also have created abonding factor, a bigger gang than the thugs.

If you wear your camera, you are proclaiming that you are a photo- vigilante and if enough people do it, then there won't be any trouble.

The English supporters will become self-disciplining, like the Tartan Army, and, who knows, they might even have a good time - and use the cameras to take happy snaps, with their pals and the locals having a jolly knees-up or whatever it is they do.

And what will theTartan Army make of a happy, friendly England support when theScotland-Englandfixture is re-instigated, as is currently planned?

Dream on. I can hardly wait.

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