Policing the Field: exploring historical tensions between the South Wales Police and Cardiff's Tiger Bay through community football initiatives

Description

In 2014 the inaugural Cardiff Community Cohesion Cup took place. The community football tournament organised teams of comprised of each of Cardiff’s most robust ethnic communities – ranging from the longstanding Somali and Sudanese populations to the more recent influx from Palestine and Eastern Europe. Joining the ethnic communities was a team drawn from the South Wales Police. The latter also included a number of ex-professional footballers, who joined the SWP for charitable reasons. Despite the interruption during the COVID-years, the annual tournament ran through 2022 when the community initiative shifted to its current iteration as workshop and youth camp-based programs as opposed to an adult tournament.
At the heart of this examination is an examination of the motivations behind the origins of the tournament. Tiger Bay – the problematized then reclaimed name for Cardiff’s dockside communities which housed the majority of the ethnic communities participating in the tournament – consistently featured as an easy target and scapegoat for the South Wales Police force. Two of the UK’s most egregious miscarriages of justice, each thirty years apart, comprised the wrongful arrest of black individuals (some with Somali heritage) from Butetown/Tiger Bay. The most recent of which admitted to the errors a mere three years prior to the start of the community tournament. As such, this work examines – through community archives and local news reports – the historical impetus for the tournament and sheds light on the role of sport in forgiving and forgetting unforgivable and unforgettable sins.

Period	22 Aug 2025
Event title	British Society for Sport History
Event type	Conference
Location	Belfast, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International