PREMIER LEAGUE

HOOLIGANISM

Early usage

The first use of the term is unknown, but the word first appeared in print in London police-court reports in 1894 referring to the name of a gang of youths in the Lambeth area of London—the Hooligan Boys, and later—the O'Hooligan Boys.

In August 1898 a murder in Lambeth committed by a member of the gang drew further attention to the word which was immediately popularised by the press. The London-based newspaper Daily Graphic wrote in an article on 22 August 1898, "The avalanche of brutality which, under the name of 'Hooliganism' ... has cast such a dire slur on the social records of South London".

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his 1904 novel The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, "It seemed to be one of those senseless acts of Hooliganism which occur from time to time, and it was reported to the constable on the beat as such". H.G. Wells wrote in his 1909 semi-autobiographical novel Tono-Bungay, "Three energetic young men of the hooligan type, in neck-wraps and caps, were packing wooden cases with papered-up bottles, amidst much straw and confusion".

According to Life magazine (30 July 1941), the comic strip artist and political cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper introduced a character called Happy Hooligan in 1900; "hapless Happy appeared regularly in U.S. newspapers for more than 30 years," a "naive, skinny, baboon-faced tramp who invariably wore a tomato can for a hat." Life brought this up by way of criticizing the Soviet U.N. delegate Yakov A. Malik for misusing the word. Malik had indignantly referred to anti-Soviet demonstrators in New York as "hoolgans." Happy Hooligan, Life reminded its readers, "became a national hero, not by making trouble, which Mr. Malik understands is the function of a hooligan, but by getting himself into it."

Modern usage

Later, as the meaning of the word shifted slightly, none of the possible alternatives had precisely the same undertones of a person, usually young, who belongs to an informal group and commits acts of vandalism or criminal damage, starts fights, and who causes disturbances but is not a thief.

More recently, the term hooligan has started to be used in a constructive sense, to describe people who are dissatisfied with the status quo and decide to challenge it through radically innovative efforts to either disrupt or re-invent the models that guide our lives, in collaboration with like-minded individuals across traditional boundaries.

An excellent example is the liberal/progressive, crowd-sourced political blog based in Asheville, North Carolina, which adopted the name "Scrutiny Hooligans" in 2004.

Violence in sports

The word hooliganism and hooligan began to be associated with violence in sports, in particular from the 1970s in the UK with football hooliganism. The phenomenon, however, long preceded the modern term; for example, one of the earliest known instances of crowd violence at a sporting event took place in ancient Constantinople. Two chariot racingfactions, the Blues and the Greens, were involved in the Nika riots which lasted around a week in 532 CE; nearly half the city was burned or destroyed in addition to tens of thousands of deaths.