The 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Peace Agreement was almost universally supported by nationalists in Northern Ireland, and Sinn Féin’s high-profile role in the discussions was the foundation upon which it would transform itself from the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army to second biggest party at Stormont. However, dissidents pointed out that the compromises made by Sinn Féin during the Peace Process were a sell-out of the political and ideological aspirations held by republicans for at least a century. New dissident groups emerged in opposition to the course taken by Sinn Féin, and the period since 1998 has been one of the most dynamic in republican history since the Irish Civil War. New political parties and organisations like the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, éirígí, Republican Network for Unity and Saoradh emerged reflecting this state of flux and the existential fears felt by those for whom the Good Friday Agreement fell far short of delivering the republican aspiration of a united Ireland. Although Brexit provided a curious and fortunate opportunity for momentary public attention, these groups have remained peripheral actors in the Irish and British political public spheres.
This article is concerned with an emerging trend in political participation: the role played by football fans in engendering activism and protest. The role of fan activism in the debate on patterns of civic and political (dis)engagement – in the age of so-called anti-politics – has been ignored by the scholarly literature thus far. As a corrective, this article examines the development of football fan activism over the last thirty years, since the creation of the English Premier League in 1992. It adopts a case study approach centred on supporters’ movements since 1992. It argues that the political activism of football fans has both quantitatively and qualitatively changed over this period. Employing the sociological theory of Manuel Castells it claims that collective identities developed in resistance to the commercialisation and commodification within football have developed into more distinct ‘project identities’ that seek bring about more profound social change through football.
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