There's meaning and value in here, and where that exists, there's solutions too.

So, a message to the Scottish Government, it's time to start bringing these young people into the fold, and hearing their side. The cancel culture around Ultras needs to stop.

There are voices within these spaces that SHOULD be heard, and are NOT.

Worth thinking about who gets to be heard and who doesn’t. Especially when they’re already doing the work. Because ultimately, this is the future whether people like to admit it or not.

Football culture – especially the more ultra side of it – can and does hold space for a form of social good. Of course it's not always neat, or palatable, or easy to work with, but that doesn’t mean it’s not legitimate and it certainly doesn't mean we should dismiss it.

And this is by no means a new phenomenon either. You see it in foodbank drives, solidarity banners, fundraising, and anti-racism campaigns. But that side rarely gets air because we know, it doesn’t suit the narrative, and kills the potential for moral panic around the youth.

But there’s a politics here in the way they claim space, support each other, and speak to local issues, even if it doesn’t come wrapped in the usual acceptable formats. The issue is, people just don't want to see it – certainly those in power.

Groups like this are dismissed or presented as a public order issue; deviant and unconscious. But what they actually are is organised, creative, value-driven communities for working-class youth who face the material realities of deindustrialisation, alienation and stigma.

But because it came from a group of fans – ultras in particular – it doesn’t register in the same way. So, who's the problem here?

That’s something I keep coming back to in research around youth culture.

But what’s been just as telling is the silence around this. There's been zero headlines, no pat on the back from local officials, no wider conversation. Yet, if this message had come from a council youth programme or a police-backed initiative, it’d be all over local press.

The article is open access, and so, I look forward to your comments and responses. Thanks to @crmnlgy.bsky.social and Greg Martin for making me aware of this edition, and the editors of the Journal who were very pleasant to deal with.

I hope you enjoy it.

Building from this, the article proposes a simple criterion for assessing resistance in the current context: what a practice shifts (vulnerability, legibility, infrastructure), for whom, at what level and duration, and how authority responds.

territorial rituals, aesthetic codes, grey economies, and non-market music circuits (PC-DJing), functioned as patterned practical responses to territorial stigmatisation, and spatial dispossession.

The article then uses original research on Ned Culture in Glasgow (circa 1995–2008) as a case study, drawing on archival materials, oral histories, and memoryscape to show how...

Against post-subcultural framings that privilege lifestyle pluralism and individual choice, the article re-centres class as the structuring presence through which difference is produced and penalised under neoliberalism.

My article 'Ned Culture, Rituals and Resistance: The Enduring Spectre of Class in Contemporary Youth Studies' explores the lasting significance of RTR 50 years on from its publication.

The Market Development Association, QCAP, and St Malachys YC worked to bring this together and will be back with the Youth in early 2026 to present a draft youth health strategy and programme.

Maith thú to all those youngsters stepping up to play their part in community development 🙌🙌🙌