Boro Fans Get Rome Result

The police in the Italian capital could be censured by Brussels and Roma themselves could be named and shamed over their inability to control their fans. That would force UEFA's hand and could lead to much needed action to stem the tide of ultra violence engulfing the troubled Italian game - already on a yellow card - before it results in away fans leaving bodybags. If European political pressure sparked by our action can help stop the madness then Boro fans will have done the game a great service.

That the issue is on the political agenda at all is testiment to the determination of passionate Teessiders fired up by righteous anger and to the ability of the Gazette to organise a groundswell of local feeling into concerted action.

In Rome I genuinely thought someone was going to get killed. I came back steaming, incensed by the provocation, intimidation and the appearance of collusion between police and vicious criminal gangs. When I vented my spleen in the Gazette a few days later it would have been easy to dismiss it as my usual lefty rabble-rousing.

But then the letters started to arrive. In newspaper terms readers' letters are measured exponentially. If you get one impassioned screed on a subject it goes almost unnoticed. Get three or four making the same point then there is clearly a bandwagon rolling and a reporter will be assigned to dig a bit deeper. But when the bulging mailbag is measured in hundreds all telling the same tale and the internet server crashes with the volume of angry e-mails demanding action then you know you have struck a chord.

The letters were from as broad a spectrum as is possible. As well as the ex-Holgate diehards there were doctors, lawyers, managing directors (following your team abroad is an expensive habit and the football demographic has changed dramatically), people who were unimpeachably respectable, law abiding, articulate and, crucially, who knew how to seek redress.

Your letters kick-started the 'Protect Our Fans' campaign. Quickly it won support from local MPs - they read the letters pages too and their populist attenna were a twitching - Euro MPs and political backing from Sports minister Richard Caborn and Europe minister Geoff Hoon. Questions in the House. Complaints made at ministerial level. A pledge of action from UEFA. And now this debate in the European parliament and the possibility of censure. It is as good an example of the public and the press acting in unison as you are likely to see anywhere.

Of course, nothing may come of it. The brutal Italian police may continue their harassment of peaceful visitors to their historic and beautiful city unchecked and Roma fans may bombard other unsuspecting innocents with padlocks, pool balls and bottles of urine. In that event our leaders will have failed us and failed the European ideal that all citizens can travel freely and safely and be treated equally under the law throughout the union.

* The legal fall-out from Rome has revealed a shocking anomaly. Only one European Union member state has not signed up to the common criminal compensation treaty allowing victims of crime abroad to seek redress through the judiciary in state they were injured in. Go on, guess which one.

This leaves Teessiders injured in Rome in a legal limbo. With no mechanism through which to pursue a claim in Italy solicitors acting for the victims have hit a brick wall. It is an outrage that one of the great powers of Europe does not operate on the same legal norms as its neighbours and that it does not acknowledge its legal duty of care for foreigner visitors who fall victim of crime while within its jurisdiction.