parkrun and free public parks consultation

The government 'is consulting on proposals to legislate to put it beyond doubt that local authorities, including parish councils, cannot charge parkrun or junior parkrun for the use of public parks'. This would apply to all Councils in England.

Parkrun has grown to be massively popular in the past few years, with free, volunteer-organised 5K runs taking place in parks all over the country and now internationally. Most local Councils have seen the benefit of this in terms of encouraging use of parks,  promoting healthy exercise and building communities (not to mention generating income for the Council indirectly through runners spending on car parks and cafes).

However there was controversy last year when Stoke Gifford Parish Council (in the Bristol area) insisted on charging parkrun for the use of Little Stoke Park which it had previously allowed to be used free of charge.  Parkrun cancelled this event, anxious not to set a precedent which could lead to cash-strapped councils round the country levying charges and therefore potentially undermining the model of free events for runners.

It is precisely to prevent this eventuality that the government is now proposing to explicitly prohibit councils from charging for Parkrun. The paper 'Running Free' argues that charging for such activities undermines the  'the long tradition of the free use of public parks. Our public parks and green spaces are, at once, places where individuals and groups can to go to for exercise, to relax, to enjoy being part of a community, or to find peace and solitude'.

This is very welcome. It does however raise some quite complex questions. Firstly other sports routinely pay for the use of parks, such as hiring football pitches, and there is no proposal to change this. The consultation paper draws a distinction here on the basis that with parkrun there 'is no exclusive use of the park. Parkrunners share the park with other members of the public during the parkrun. This is quite different to the use of a facility in a park that is subject to exclusive use such as a tennis court, or even a facility such as a football pitch that is exclusively used by groups of players at certain times of the week'.

But what about other runs in parks? Most other events do charge an entry fee and/or generate income for the organiser. On this basis the Government argues that they are distinct from parkrun and whether to charge for them would be left for local Councils to decide.

The Government leaves open as a consultation question whether there 'Is there any specific activity, in addition to parkrun or junior parkrun, that takes place in a public park, that does not require exclusive use of the park or a part of the park, that should be considered for inclusion in provisions to prevent local authorities charging for that activity?'.

It would seem unusual to give legal exemption to one organisation in this way, in this case limiting exemption to events organised by parkrun UK. At the moment and for the foreseeable future parkrun is the main organiser of these kind of events, but that may not always be the case. In principle if a group of people wanted to organise something similar - i.e. a weekly free run in the park- but did not do so under the parkrun umbrella, should they be financially penalised? It would be far better to establish the principle at this stage of free use of parks for runners where there is no exclusive use, no charge and no profit. Activities of a similar kind should be treated in the same way, regardless of who is organising them. For instance I take part in Assembly League races held in a number of London parks. These are free to enter, do not have exclusive use of the parks and are low impact - once or twice a year in each park and all pretty much over in half an hour. I believe we have never been charged for this, but this summer for the first time Wandsworth are charging us for the use of Battersea Park. I think this should be treated in the same way as parkrun.

I have seen criticism elsewhere  of the principle of making what is in effect a private company – Parkrun Limited – such a special case. Having looked into the company structure of parkrun – which anybody can do with the records online at Companies House – I think the company status is a bit of a red herring. Parkrun is a company limited by guarantee which means that any profits get ploughed back into it work. No dividends are paid out to shareholders – it is in effect a not-for-profit company, though parkrun's website could perhaps be a bit clearer about this. Some people assume it is a charity while others think that it is a profit making vehicle on the backs of which some are enriching themselves. Neither is true.

Another interesting point is whether Councils have the power to prevent parkruns happening. Looking around London it is obvious that some Local Authorities have actively encouraged the development of parkrun, including providing start up funding.  Southwark Council for instance hosts four parkruns in its parks (Burgess, Southwark, Dulwich, Peckham Rye). Wandsworth Council only hosts one, in Tooting, and this was only agreed after a long local campaign. The sticking point in Wandsworth was that the Council wanted to charge parkrun and agreed to Tooting only as a special case. If the government proceeds with banning charges does that mean that parkrun could start up in other Wandsworth parks or could the Council put other obstacles in its way?

As well as parkrun, the consultation asks for views on the thorny question of whether activities that involve a financial charge to a client or clients by a professional or business, but do not involve exclusive use of a public park or part of the park... should be considered for inclusion in provisions to prevent local authorities charging for that activity'. This would include for instance fitness groups or paid dog walkers. Some of these are small local businesses, but others (such as British Military Fitness) are big national concerns that make a lot of money from charging users - it doesn't seem unreasonable for them to make a contribution to the upkeep of the parks they use. 

It is easy enough for the Government to insist Councils should not charge, but at the same time Councils are struggling to keep parks and other community facilities going because of funding cuts. A recent report found that 'between 2014/15 and 2015/16 local authorities across England closed 214 children’s playgrounds, and when asked about future plans they admitted their aim to close a further 234'. Continuing to deliver free access requires funding as well as law changes.

Nevertheless it is great news that the future of free parkruns looks to be secure and the principle has been restated 'that the use of public parks by the public for everyday use is, and should remain, free'.

The public have until July 7th 2017 to respond to Running Free: Consultation on preserving the free use of public parks.

(a coincidence that they used the same name for this paper as for Seb Coe's autobiography?!)

Hillsborough 1989 (& Football Fans not Criminals 2016)

Earlier this month the BBC broadcast Daniel Gordon's moving documentary 'Hillsborough' about the terrible events of 15 April 1989  at the Liverpool vs. Nottingham Forest FA Cup semi-final which led to the death of 96 people. The film - minus its updated conclusion - was actually made a couple of years ago, and had been shown in the US, but could not be shown on British TV because of new inquests into the deaths after the High Court quashed the original verdicts in 2012.

In April 2016  the jury in the new inquest ruled that the 96 Liverpool fans had been 'unlawfully killed' in Sheffield, in effect confirming the verdict of the documentary that the police and the stadium's owners were responsible for the tragedy, not the actions of the fans.

This is what the Hillsborough Justice campaign has been arguing since day one, and in that respect the documentary was not surprizing.  That senior police officers, the Police Federation, and much of the press seem to have deliberately mis-represented what happened on that day to try and shift the blame on to the victims is nothing new either.  Out of respect for the dead some of the footage had been pixrlated so viewers were not exposed to the full horror of some of the images I recall from the time. But still I was shocked by details of the level of callous treatment meted out to relatives of the dead on the weekend of the disaster and for many years afterwards.

 The focus was very much on specific decisions made by senior local officers on the day, but it is also important to consider the broader picture. It is quite right that individuals should be held accountable for their actions, but the simple fact is that however clueless these decisions may have been, 96 people wouldn't have died if they hadn't have been penned in by fences at the side and in front that made it impossible for people to move away from overcrowded areas. It was the punitive official culture of treating football fans as dangerous animals that helped created this danger, and this was fed into by senior politicians and sports administrators. 

In the lead up to the disaster, for instance, a major focus of Margaret Thatcher's government was on trying to bring in a compulsory Football Membership Scheme ('football ID cards' to opponents) despite warnings about the risks of bottlenecks of fans building up around entry points to grounds (Hansard, 25 January 1989). Sports minister Colin Moynihan was widely criticised by fans for spearheading this policy (he went on to be a key figure in the athletics establishment, chairing the British Olympic Association from 2005 to 2012).  

Prime Mnister Margaret Thatcher at Hillsborough immediately after the tragedy
with Home Secretary Douglas Hurd and Sports Minister Colin Moynihan

I went to Hillsborough in that fateful season, to see Luton Town play away at  Sheffield Wednesday in August 1988 - an uneventful match, with only 16,000 present.  Like most football fans in the aftermath of the disaster I found it both unbelievable that something so terrible could happen in such a place, but also not entirely surprizing in a period when people's safety seemed to be a low priority. This was the era of the Bradford City stadium fire (56 dead in 1985), the Kings Cross station fire (31 dead in 1987), the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster (131 people unlawfully killed in 1987) and the Clapham Rail crash (35 deaths in 1988), among others.

When Saturday Comes 1989

I write this not with the benefit of nearly 30 years of hindsight. While it might have taken the BBC and much of the press many years to catch up, football fans were making these same points at the time of the Hillsborough disaster. Here's a few extracts of an article from football zine 'When Saturday Comes' in June 1989:

The Football Association, police and Prime Minister all agree 'it wasn't our fault'.
The fans respond 'Oh well it must be our fault again'

'Like you, we have read a hell of a lot about Hillsborough over the last couple of weeks. We quickly reached saturation point, partly because there are a limited number of ways in which the same points can be made without becoming repetitious and partly because so many stupid things have been said. One thing deserves to be re-iterated, however. The deaths of ninety people at a football ground in Sheffield were not just another tragic accident. Instead, they were a predictable consequence of the fact that the people who run English football have stumbled from one crisis to another without evolving a coherent, consistent, policy to deal with any specific problem.

...the attitudes are as entrenched as ever. The same policemen adopt the same aggressive attitude to football, insisting that it should be treated as a public order problem rather than a form of entertainment. The same prejudice is attached to all football fans, deemed to be passive accomplices to the sociopathic minority. The police see us as a mass entity, fuelled by drink and a single-minded resolve to wreak havoc by destroying property and attacking one another with murderous intent. Containment and damage limitation is at the core of the police strategy. Fans are treated with the utmost disrespect. We are herded, cajoled, pushed, and corralled into cramped spaces, and expected to submit passively to every new indignity.

The implication is that 'normal' people need to be protected from the football fan. But we are normal people. The Football Fan' is not an easily defined social stereotype, whatever the tabloid cartoonists may choose to believe. All manner of people go to football matches. A few of them are intent on unleashing aggressive instincts which are also manifested in wine bars on a Saturday night or in tourist hotels on the Costa Del Sol. Thuggish behaviour is rarely reported in any detail when it can't be directly linked to a football match. Football is being made the scapegoat for a society brutalised over the last decade...

Complaints about safety and comfort were ignored because they were being made by supporters. Official action will be taken now, because the same points previously raised by fans are now being made by the government and the media. Their stupidity and cowardice over a long period of time allowed Hillsborough to happen. Symptomatic of their paralysis is the frequency with which a certain phrase crops up in their public pronouncements. We are informed, with wearying regularity, that football needs to 'put its house in order'. This is, of course, a laughably imprecise phrase, intended to imply a commitment to resolute action. Needless to say, it means absolutely nothing. Clubs have to accept a proportion of the blame. They own the fences and turnstiles that helped to cause the disaster. Sheffield Wednesday officials seemed to believe that, in an emergency, it would be possible to evacuate a large number of people thorough a tiny gate in the perimeter fencing. They and their colleagues at other League grounds across the country insult loyal, put-upon customers with the pathetic standard of amenities on offer. They have failed to develop long term strategies that rely on anything beyond glib slogans about families and the importance of sponsors. The executive box holders get central heating and smoked glass but the huddled majority don't deserve even an unobstructed view and a roof. 

There is very little commonsense applied to football. In no other area of life is the victim treated with as much disrespect as the perpetrator, nor the majority held to be guilty of the crimes perpetrated by a minority. But, ultimately, what happens to us doesn't matter. It is our own fault for being football fans. That is why MPs always ignored pleas from supporters' organisations seeking to prevent the sort of disaster which has become a reality. Whatever they may say, few politicians gave any indication that they cared about football fans before Hillsborough happened. Suddenly everyone knows the answer. A fortnight ago, they didn't even hear the question. It didn't take very long for Hillsborough to become our fault. Indeed, initial reports pinned blame on supporters who were believed to have broken down a gate. Later, as the analysts set to work, blame was heaped upon the large number of fans who arrived without tickets. Then the police's press department piped up, revealing that many were drunk and generally doing all the things that fans are famous for. Had the television cameras not been present to record the disaster as it unfolded, many people would have unquestioningly accepted the garbage that has been pumped out by some of the tabloid hacks. Fans have been both the prophesiers and the victims of Hillsborough, but who believes that they will be invited to play an active part in solving the problems which it highlighted? We will be obliged to meekly accept the remedy offered.

....Identification of the real culprits is lost amid desperate, scurrying attempts to avoid blame. The same people who indignantly call for the fences to be torn down now are the same ones who demanded that they should be put up in the first place. Thanks were duly said for there not having been any perimeter fences at Bradford, but no long-term lessons were learned from that fire' ('Surveying the Damage', When Saturday Comes, June 1989)

Football Fans not Criminals 2016

Football has changed so much since 1989, but many argue that one thing that hasn't changed is how fans can be treated. In fact this week a new campaign 'Football Fans not Criminals' is being launched which argues:

'ordinary law-abiding football fans are being treated like criminals. For merely attending a match and supporting their team, fans are subject to a series of special controls and restrictions which do not apply to supporters of other sports. There are 11 laws which apply only to football fans, creating offences which would not be an offence in a rugby or cricket stadium.

It is an offence to carry alcohol into a football stadium, to drink in view of the pitch, to sell or give away tickets, or to throw any item in the air, however innocuous. Football fans are also subject to special powers. Under Football Banning Orders, they can be banned from attending matches or asked to surrender their passports when club and country play abroad. Police forces can control fans’ travel to away matches, in some cases creating ‘bubble’ match restrictions, which ban independent travel on public transport or in cars. This regulation exists at a time when football-related violence and disruption is at an all-time low'.

The new campaign will be launched on Thursday 2 June 2016  from 7 pm upstairs at the Yorkshire Grey, 2 Theobalds Road, London WC1X 8PN. Speakers will include Ken Meech (Grimsby fan ludicrously prosecuted for assault with an inflatable shark), Martin Cloake (Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust), Amanda Jacks (Football Supporters Federation), Duleep Allirajah (Palace-loving Spiked columnist), Peter Lloyd (author of 'Criminalising Football Fans') and solicitor Sarah Ricca.

Running into the Prime Minister

So you're going for a lunchtime run down to the gym and you spot David Cameron looming up on the pavement in front of you. What ya gonna do? Maybe charge into him and then say it was an accident, though we'll have to take Dean Farley's word for it when he says that he didn't know it was the Tory Prime Minister when he ran into him in Leeds today  (see film here at BBC website).

According to the BBC, 'A member of the public who caused a security alert when he bumped into David Cameron in Leeds has said he had "no idea" it was the prime minister. Dean Farley said he was only aware that he had collided with Mr Cameron an hour after he had been arrested by police. He insisted he was "not particularly political" and was just going out on his daily lunchtime jog to the gym when he ran into a "bunch of men in suits"'.

'Guess who I ran into the other day?'

Must admit when I heard about it I was slightly disappointed that no ex-members of the once Leeds-based band Chumbawamba seem to have been involved, as some of them have both the radical track record and running skills needed for such an audacious piece of street theatre/direct action. Danbert Nobacon from the band famously tipped an ice bucket over Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at the 1998 BRIT Awards, and has also run in fell races for Pudsey and Bramley Athletic Club along with Chumba co-founder Boff Whalley (author of Run Wild)

Save Don Valley Stadium

Talk of the Olympic Legacy will ring somewhat hollow if the second largest athletics stadium in the UK is allowed to be destroyed.  Don Valley Stadium was originally built for the 1991 World Student Games, and has hosted numerous sporting and cultural events since. Most famously it is the home track of Olympic heptathlon winner Jessica Ennis-Hill. She was discovered there on a children's athletics scheme and has trained there for all her big events.

Jessica Ennis-Hill training at Don Valley (photo from Huffington Post)

Sheffield City Council announced earlier this year that the Stadium would be closed in September 2013 and then demolished as part of a cost saving exercise, following massive government funding cuts to local authorities. The Save Don Valley Stadium Campaign is mounting a last ditch challenge to the planned closure, including trying to get it listed as a 'community asset' (where the Council would transfer ownership to a community organisation). As Ennis said earlier this year, '"It's a huge shame. To see it demolished would be a massive, massive disappointment... We've achieved so much as a country in the London Olympics, so to lose some great facilities sends out the wrong message, really. I understand budgets and costs, but I think we need to find a way to keep it."

Another Sheffield facility, Woodbourn Road athletics ground, is being revamped and will be run by Sheffield Hallam University, though clearly it won't be on anything like the same scale as Don Valley.

Really it shouldn't be down to one local Council and/or group of local people to take sole responsibility for keeping a facility going that has wider regional and indeed national significance. It is true that there is now the Olympic Stadium in London for international athletic events, as well as the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, among others. But the vision should be to translate the growing enthusiasm for running into more people wanting to come and see top level athletics, and to have a a network of decent stadiums around the country where big events can be held and young athletes can get experience of running in this kind of environment.