Kevin Whitcher
This season’s Annual General Meeting will be held shortly. At the 2016 meeting, a question was submitted referencing the behavior of Arsenal’s stewards at the Manchester City away game in May 2016, in which all banners going into the stadium were examined and removed on the say so of the stewards concerned. The club denied this in spite of photographic evidence of Arsenal stewards examining banners that were not allowed into the stadium.
In response to the question and my informing him afterwards that he had not been accurate in his denial, Ivan Gazidis bristled at the accusation that the club were censorious and could be compared to North Korea.
In further subsequent discussions with supporters’ liaison officer (and former RedAction mainman and AST board member) Mark Brindle, it was confirmed that banners that did not break the ground regulations were ok, as long as they were not likely to cause a disturbance.
However, it looks like nothing has changed. At Arsenal’s game against Bate Borisov last week, Arsenal’s travelling stewards were examining what was going into the ground, and in co-ordination with the local security, there was a decision made to allow Wenger In and In Wenger We Trust banners into the stadium, but not banners that called for change. Details can be seen on the Twitter account of Russian Gooner Ivan Mercury.
Certainly there some stewards that travelled on behalf of the club to Belarus for the match. And according to the tweets on Ivan Merc’s account, they were actively screening the visiting supporters (Ivan has told me this has been corroborated by others), in the same style of operation witnessed at the Etihad. As at Manchester City, it was the local stadium stewards that actually did the physical confiscating. Significantly, they were only confiscating anti-Wenger banners. The conclusion is that the Bate stewards were under instruction to weed out such banners, and allow pro-Arsene ones in. Where could such an instruction have come from? Do you think that Bate would have issued such instruction without a request from Arsenal? Draw your own conclusions. Mine haven’t changed since the Etihad incident in spite of all the words of denial emanating from Highbury House.
The club say one thing and the reality is the opposite. It seems to me that Ivan Gazidis’ denial that the club operate like a North Korean dictatorship is just so many hollow words. And let’s face it, he has history for saying things that don’t actually turn out to be true. I’ll do a list one day and make an article out of it.
So, nothing’s changed. Arsenal claim freedom of speech is allowed, but their stewards seem to be under instruction to ensure the opposite when the views are those they don’t want to see expressed by fans.
