Friends at the club have contacted The Gooner and other supporters organisations regarding some anti-Semitic chanting that occurred on the 8pm train from Norwich to London on Sunday evening, requesting that we make it clear that such activities will not be tolerated and that although maybe something in our past that it is not what being an Arsenal fan is all about in 2015, the reason being that if the condemnation comes from supporters rather than the club it will have more effect.

Below we reproduce the text of the email sent to the club. As this was a private email and the individual concerned has not expressed the desire to have it published under their name, we will not credit it.

However, what we will confirm is that The Gooner considers racist chanting of any form, including anti-Semitic songs, something that is simply plain wrong and unacceptable. There are plenty of chants that can be sung about Tottenham Hotspur without needing to sing anti-Semitic songs. Those chanting such vile refrains should also realise that Arsenal probably have as many Jewish supporters as Spurs do, and possibly more. Both the late Danny Fiszman and former vice-chairman David Dein are Jewish. By chanting such things, you are disrespecting men who have done a great deal for the football club you purport to support.

Here is the text of the email which was forwarded to us by the club to get the message out there…

“I’d like to raise a complaint about the action of some of our ‘fans’ on the 8pm train from Norwich to Liverpool Street station on Sunday night.

I was sitting with a group of friends and, as you’d expect, we were singing some Arsenal songs – trying to take our mind off the disappointing result!

We were singing about players and general Arsenal songs, at which point another group of Arsenal supporters, all men mostly in their 50’s, who were standing up around the train shop area started singing songs about Tottenham.

Within the space of about a minute, the generic songs about Tottenham quickly descended into blatant and overt racism, all led by this group of men.

It started with “I’ve got a foreskin haven’t you, f***ing Jew” and then they started singing “gas them all, burn in hell”.

My friends and I were unsurprisingly appalled by this - I immediately went and got the two British Transport Police who were a couple of carriages down from us. The men weren’t stupid enough to continue singing those songs with the police around, however they continued to look over at us, calling us “grasses” as if that was worse than being an anti-semite and a racist – on top of the obvious disgust at grown men being so openly racist, it was frankly embarrassing that they were trying to intimidate myself and my friends.

I just wanted to bring this up with the club so that you had a record of this happening. I don’t know how such behaviour can be stopped but as an away supporter I feel that incidents like this have been on the increase in the last couple of years. I had friends on the same train (in a different carriage) who also had a similar experience with a different group of people so this wasn’t a one-off.

I love travelling away with Arsenal but find that the selfish actions of a small minority of ignorant people end up ruining a lot of trips for us and giving a bad reputation to the club as a whole.”

So there you have it. By all means support the team, but grow up and cut out the racist chanting.

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