(Guest post by Peter Lloyd) The Manifesto Club was instrumental in highlighting the discriminatory behaviour of the police towards football fans (see the reports here), especially ‘bubble matches‘ that led to the kettling of supporters and restrictions to travel and assembly on match days. Mercifully, and partly because of the Manifesto Club campaign, the practice of bubble matches has almost entirely ended. Now we see something more insidious, and covert, in a case highlighted and taken up by Toby Young at the Free Speech Union. A Newcastle United member and season ticket holder Linzi Smith wrote three moderately worded tweets, in which…

(A guest post by Amanda Jacks, caseworker at the Football Supporters’ Association). A few years ago, a group of supporters got in touch. Could I help arrange a celebratory walk from their local pub to the stadium to mark their historic promotion? Of course I would, it’ll be a piece of cake. How wrong was I! Suffice to say I had to seek legal advice from a specialist solicitor and assist the supporters in a fair bit of negotiation with the local police (who seemed determined to make this as difficult as possible) to ensure their plans came to fruition. Among the…

A guest post by Peter Lloyd: There has been some welcome reduction in the number of football matches subject to the draconian restrictions on freedom of movement that make them ‘bubble’ matches, as their discriminatory approach and blatant unfairness have become better known and objected to by clubs and fans alike. But already this season supporters of Burnley, Bristol City and Wrexham have been forced to travel on official coaches and severely restricted if they wanted to watch their team play at Blackburn, Cardiff and Chester respectively. Match kick-off times have been moved, pat-down searches carried out, roads closed and fans filmed by…