Bread and circuses is an often used term to critique modern sports, alluding to the Roman bread dole and the Colosseum games. The idea being that the state funds and pushes these sports onto the workers to distract us from the class issues of the day. This idea is most noticeable in the US with the National Football League and the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl usually costs $50 million and 203.4 million people watched the most recent one. The capitalist class then has millions to push ads onto and political issues disappear in favour of competitive issues about teams. This level of bread and circuses within the American system has led to some opinions that all sport is a function of the capitalist class to depoliticise the working class. But if we look at Europe, more specifically Britain and Ireland, football and sport in general have a different basis.
Football came out of the working day on Saturday being reduced to 6 and a half hours. The church saw the creation of football clubs as a way to steer workers away from gambling and drinking. Capitalists also saw merit in these clubs as the workers who played in them were more fit for the working days. However, not all of these clubs were set up by the church. In 1878 the workers of the Carriage and Wagon department of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot set up the club Newtown Heath LYR Football Club which would become Manchester United. The team was instrumental in forming the Association of Football Players’ and Trainers’ Union Professional Footballers’ Association. Thames Ironworks Football Club,which would later become West Ham United, was set up by the workers of Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding. This team was distinctly working class with a community based on solidarity. The team’s crest still has the crossed hammers that represent the rivet hammers of the workers.
The political issues of the football clubs went beyond local trade union issues. Although the number isn’t confirmed, many professional and amateur footballers from both Britain and Ireland joined the International Brigades and fought in Spain against Francisco Franco. There is also a broad history of football fans supporting or driving anti-fascist movements to combat attempts by fascists to push their ideology on supporters. Dublin’s Bohemian FC have shown huge solidarity with Palestine. Their friendly women’s match with the Palestine national team in Dalymount Park on 15 May 2024 was reported on in Socialist Voice in the June 2024 issue[1]. This match was historic as it was the first time the Palestinian team played in Europe, but it’s also important that it was the women’s team as it demonstrated that football is for everyone. Bohemians have more recently partnered with the band Fontaines D. C. with a new jersey design from which 30% of profits go directly to Medical Aid for Palestinians; as of February 2025, this was the club’s best-selling jersey to date.
Football has been a political force not just in Britain and Ireland but throughout Europe. France has a strong history of football linked to anti-fascist and labour struggles. In Germany, football brought together people who resisted the Nazi regime. Algeria and Palestine have historically used football as a means of de-colonialisation. These examples are often overlooked by those who see sport as nothing more than the circus to placate the working class.
Football can be a real community-building force that brings politics, both local and international, into these communities. Anti-fascist organising and international solidarity have been a core part of teams with working-class roots, especially those that are supporter-owned such as Bohemians. Sport has a long history of being a force for good, and has to be taken from those who seek to solely profit from these clubs. Sport is more than a circus to placate workers; it is a community of solidarity for the working class.
[1]O’Riordan, Neil (2024) “Report from Bohemian FC vs Palestine, 15th May 2024, Dalymount Park”, Socialist Voice website: https://socialistvoice.ie/2024/06/report-from-bohemian-fc-vs-palestine-15th-may-2024-in-dalymount-park/
