Hooligan Behaviour

The Times follows up on the story about Chelsea football fans ganging up on a black man who was attempting to board a Paris tube train only to be met with racist abuse and bullying behaviour.

Chelsea FC have since suspended three club members and one of the fans caught up in the tube incident is Josh Parsons, a privately educated UKIP supporter apparently with a well paid job in the city.

Apologists for the Chelsea fans behaviour have been trying to get their excuses in early with claims that the racist chanting was directed at their club captain, John Terry (i.e. that Terry is a racist and not necessarily his admiring fans) and/or that the black man trying to board the train was behaving aggressively and deserved what he got.

All of which is complete bollix, of course, so I hope Chelsea acts to withdraw their club membership permanently and makes it clear that they are no longer welcome because of their ghastly behaviour.   


Fan in abuse storm was punished at private school over ‘racist tweet’

John Parsons' Twitter profile picture

By Georgie Keate - The Times

With a £35,000-a-year education, a career in finance and a passion for football, Josh Parsons looked to be a young man whose life was ready to take off. But he is now at the centre of an outrage after his appearance in a video showing Chelsea fans racially abusing a black man on the Paris Metro.

Mr Parsons, 21, was named on social media as having appeared in the video that showed Souleymane S, 33, being pushed off a train amid chants of “we’re racist and that’s the way we like it”.

Those who knew Mr Parsons from his days at Millfield School in Somerset told The Times yesterday that he was banned from playing in a crucial football match at school in February 2013, after he allegedly sent a racist tweet about a black referee.

Terry Akhurst, a housemaster at the school and the coach of Mr Parsons’s football team in 2013, said that staff had “taken action” after the tweet so that “he was stopped from playing in a particular match”, the national Independent Schools Football Association final.

“I did not see the tweet but I know there was something amiss,” he said. “I was part of the discussion of whether it was a racist term. Apparently it might have been, so the school took action — it’s very strong on that kind of thing.”

A pupil who shared a boarding house with Mr Parsons said: “It was a big move from the school because he was very talented. He was one of the best players in the school and the team had to play without him in the final.” Another said: “He was angry about a decision against the team and sent a racist tweet about the referee, who was black.”

A spokesman for the school said: “Millfield school has always taken incidents of inappropriate behaviour extremely seriously and continues to have a robust policy for addressing misconduct within the school.”

It is believed that Mr Parsons went to Paris to see the match with a number of friends and his younger brother Beno.

Mitchell McCoy, 17, who travelled with the group, told LBC yesterday that “there was no room” for Souleymane S on the carriage and that he was “ really aggressive”. “I’d say it was self-defence, pushing him off,” he told the radio station.

However, Mr McCoy is reported to have sent a tweet at the time of the incident that read “Our captain is a racist a racist a racist and that is why we love him we love him we love him” and claimed that the men in the video were his friends. The tweets were later deleted.

About four months ago, Mr Parsons posted a photo of himself with Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, on a social media page with the comment “UKIP BOYS! What a geezer”. Ukip have denied that Mr Parsons is a party member. Friends at his former school also said he displayed no affiliation with Ukip. “The photo was just a joke,” said one. “He bumped into him at a pub and decided to pose with him.”

However, one friend told The Guardian that both Parsons brothers were part of a group at Millfield who “left you with no illusions looking at their social media that they were a) Chelsea fans and b) Ukip supporters”.

A friend of Mr Parsons said he had often been “aggressive” at school over football and had smashed plates when Chelsea lost a match.

It is unclear from the video whether Mr Parsons is involved in the racist chanting or in pushing Souleymane S from the train. There is no suggestion that his brother, if he was on the train, was involved in the pushing or chanting either. Neither Mr Parsons nor his family were available to comment on the footage or on the school football ban yesterday.

Paris prosecutors have said that anyone convicted of pushing the Frenchman could face a prison term of up to three years and a fine of up to €45,000 (£33,000) while Scotland Yard has said the perpetrators could be banned from football matches for up to ten years.

Miranda Khadr, Mr Parsons’ boss at the Business and Commercial Finance Club in Mayfair, said yesterday morning: “He is not that type of person at all. He works with me and I’m not English. He is a 21-year-old little boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

However, a spokesman for the company said later: “We are utterly opposed to racism in all of its forms and would never tolerate racist conduct among any employee. We are investigating the events in Paris and Mr Parsons will not return to work until we have conducted a full and thorough investigation.”

The gardener at Mr Parsons’s grandmother’s home in Dorking, Surrey, where he used to live, said: “He is not a racist.” Tim Rosta, 30, from Hungary, said: “I’m an immigrant myself and he’s never treated me badly. He loves Chelsea. I always see him wearing his Chelsea top and he has a Chelsea flag on his goal posts.”

The Business and Commercial Finance Club was founded in 2008 and aims to advise companies on property, providing accounting and tax services as well as business and capital loans.