Should use of the word - and please let's not be all Lord Voldemort about this - "yid" be banned in football grounds? In the last 24 hours the media has been full of prominent Jews - Danny Finkelstein and David Baddiel amongst others - denouncing the word as a "racist slur", so perhaps we should start by putting that canard to rest.
I don't agree with much Richard Dawkins says, at least not on the subject of religion, but the other day he wrote, "Yes, you can convert to Judaism and no, the Jews are not a race. You can argue about whether Judaism is a religion or a cultural tradition, but whatever else it is not a race".
Correct. And so whatever else it might be - sectarian abuse perhaps - "yid" is not a racist slur. If you're still not convinced, look at these two pictures here and here. All Jewish people. Ask yourself whether they are the same race.
"Words", Paddy McAloon wrote, "Are trains / For moving past what / Really has no name". Words are mere signifiers. So what does the word actually signify? It depends who utters it of course. Amongst Tottenham Hotspur fans "yid" means "us". Amongst Jew-haters it means "you Jewish people who we loathe and despise". Amongst Chelsea or Arsenal fans it means "you supporters of our most bitterly hated rivals", perhaps with a bit of anti-semitism thrown in.
It won't come as any surprise to Jews to find that some people don't like them. It is a sad fact of life. Will the Jew-haters, if any, amongst Spurs' North London rivals, dislike Jews any less because they can be banned from football grounds for shouting "yid"? No. It will not stop them disliking Jews. It will only stop them articulating their dislike in a football ground. I hope Jewish people find that some consolation, but I rather doubt they will.
There is a small element of Arsenal and Chelsea's support that likes to make a hissing sound at Spurs games, to mimic the gas chambers of Auschwitz. That this is in desperately bad taste I don't doubt. Actually not many of Spurs supporters are Jewish, but of the ones that are I'm absolutely sure that some will have relatives who died in Auschwitz.
What to make of such insouciant stupidity? Do you ban it to protect the feelings of Jewish supporters? Perhaps. I can't think of a better demonstration that words are particular arrangements of sounds that carry meaning to and fro than this evidence that a mere hiss can be ten times as offensive as the word "yid".
I am on the whole in favour of people being able to say what they like, unless it is really, really necessary to stop them. Abusing the other team's fans has always been a part of football, and it's one whose rich inventiveness would be desperately missed, even by members of the prawn sandwich brigade like me. As an occasional attender at Old Trafford, I have sometimes found myself in the middle of thousands of others all shouting "You Scouse bastard", or singing "Could be worse / Could be a Scouse / Eating rats in a Council house". "Scouse" here also means "you supporters of our most bitterly hated rivals". Liverpudlians are, like Jews, another social group who might well be able to argue for an end to this pejorative slur. Liverpudlians, like Jews, are not a race. But if Jewish people can get away with it, why not Liverpudlians?
Like another well-known thoroughfare, the East Lancs Road is paved with good intentions.
