IN SEARCH OF THE TRUEFAN: POPULISM, FOOTBALL AND FANDOM IN ENGLAND FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE END OF THE TWENTlETH CENTURY

Aleksendr Lim B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1997

THESIS SUBMITTED iN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

in the Department of History

O Aleksendr Lim 2000 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY January 2000

Al1 rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. National Library Biblioth&que nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. nie Weilington Ottawa ON KlAON4 WwaON K1A ON4 Canada CaMda Yaurhh Vam &lima

Our W Wro&lk.nc.

The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive Licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in rnicrofom, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic fonnats. la forme de microfiche/nlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.

The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT

The average soccer enthusiast has a lot to feel good about with regard to the sbte of the English game as it enters the twenty-first century. On the one hand, the explosion of 'fan literature' in the 1990s indicates that English soccer supporters, once feared as 'hooligans', could now talk 'football' and about themselves as fans with a renewed sense of confidence and pride. This is paralleled by a rapidly changing English soccer landscape, particularly in tems of administrative 'sawy'. At the time of writing, the English Premiership lays claim to king the most financially lucrative wccer league in the world, yet despite greater exposure of the game by the broadcast media in the 1990s, there has also been a rnodest rise in attendance. Even Second Division Wigan Athletic could boast of a new 25,000 all-seater stadium. From afàr, it seems that English soccer has indeed pulled itself out of the Victorian era and into the new millemium. Yet in the midst of this unbridled optimism is an ovenvhelming sense of gloom. This is conveyed by a very vocal section of the -fan population' who believe that 'football as we know it' is actually under threat. But what is exactly threatening the game? More importantly, what is it about the game that is king threatened? This work aims at providing a socio-cultural analysis of the values, beliefs and attitudes of soccer fandom in England and of the people who claim to uphold these values - the so-called truefuns. In answering these questions, it is also hoped that this thesis will break new ground in understanding soccer culture in England. Specifically, it aims at introducing a -populist' discourse - one that involves larger and greater considerations of the concept of the 'people' - into the overall socio-historical study of English soccer fandom. It is the firm belief of the author that these considerations are evident within the context of the 'community' of soccer supporters. In terms of methodology, this thesis will attempt to demonstrate this in two major respects. First, the question of how the game of 'football' was understood in a more distant past will be dealt with by re-evaluating the existing literature on soccer culture in England. This thesis also hopes to establish some idea as to how contemporary soccer supporters define themselves and their 'community' by way of an analysis of prirnary evidence from two key fan 'voices': the oral tradition of soccer songs and chants, and the written records as documented in club 'fanzines' and the football 'specials'. CHAPTER TWO - LOCATNG THE OLDFAN: CLASS, POPULISM AND FOOTBALL SUPPORTERSHIP ZN ENGLAND, 1 863- 1950 ------

ORIGlNS - THE ELITE AND THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL GAME O------CLASS 'CONFLICT' AND THE 'WORKING-CLASS' GAME ------WHERE CLASS =C'NFL[CTS' ------

REVISMG THE STORYLINE: SOCCER'S 'TWO SOLITUDES' ------O- SOCIAL IDENTITIES: THE 'LOCAL' AND THE 'NATION' ------SUPPORTMG ROLES: THE LO WER ORDERS ------SUPPORTMG ROLES: THE ELITE ------SOCIAL ROLES: EDWARDIAN SOCCER FICTIONAL LITERATURE - CONCLUSION ------

In the twenty-first century, it would not be unreasonable to assume that the average soccer enthusiast has a lot to feel gdabout with regard to the state of the English game. From a cornpetitive standpoint. Manchester United's 1999 Champions' League victory seems to promise a brighter future for English clubs in European cornpetition, as they hope to regain the same level of success that they had enjoyed just prior to the Heysel disaster and the subsequent

'hooligan' ban from 1985 to 1990.

Even the English fan has much to be optimistic about as fat as his image is concemed.

Once the scourge of Europe as the 'carriers' of the 'English disease', the soccer supporter has now become the 'in-thing' to be, with even prime ministers revealing their allegiances. Perhaps the most fitting testimony to the campaign to peel off the hooligan 'label' from the backs of supporters has been the tremendous explosion in the 1990s in tems of the production of soccer

Iiterature in England. What rnakes this trend particularly remarkable is the apparent enthusiasm by the fans themselves in talking about their experiences and opinions in relation to the game, whether in the form of the slightly anarchic 'do-it-yourself fanzines or the more polished autobiographies of the 'soccerati'. No longer the shedpariahs of British society, they eagerly and passionately talk about soccer and about themselves as supporters with a renewed sense of confidence and pride.

On the administrative side of things, the soccer elite dso have good reason to congratulate themselves. As the police point to the effectiveness of closeîircuit television

(CCTV) and the efforts of the National Cnminal Intelligence Unit (NCIU) as the main reason behind the successful war against hooliganism, the relent!ess implementation of the 'dl-seater' solution throughout England nears its completion. Given the human tragedies at Bradford and

Hillsborough. among others. one would be hard pressed to question the cornmitment of both the 2 Football Association (FA) and the Nationwide Football League in trying to, as Adrian Thriils

puts it, pull "Britain's football grounds out of the Victorian era and into the ~ineties".'

The early dividends have also been very encouraging. Despite greater exposure of the

gme by the broadcast media in the 1990s, attendances are modestly on the rise - a promising

development considering that crowds had been in a steady decline since the 1950s. Moreover,

the feel-good factor was considerabiy boosted by the successfùl staging of the 1996 European

Charnpionships. At the time of writing, the FA is putting together a strong bid to host the World

Cup competition in 2006. As the 1990s draw to a close, there is certainly ample reason to

believe that al1 is well with the English game. To coin the slogan fiom Euro '96, it seems that

football has truly indeed 'come home', afier years in the wilderness.

Yet in the midst of this unbridled optimism is an ovewhelming mood of gloom and

wony. This is clearly conveyed in the following letter from a Rochdale fan, written in the wake

of Manchester United's unprecendented decision to pull out of the 1999-2000 FA Cup

competition:

. ..Please, please for the benefit of thousands of kids playing on a windswept Saturday/Sunday and their mums and dads, for the thousands of part time and amateur players, for al1 the fans of Rochdale, Droylsden and Yeovil who dream of being drawn against the Reds, Arsenal; or Chelsea at home, support the decent Man Utd fans fighting the Cup withdrawal, it couid be our 1st chance to Save football as we know it.. ..!

Two things are immediately apparent from this heartfelt plea. The first is the evoking of images

such as 'family' and 'community'. In tandem with this is the stinging final line that seems to

suggest that, far from being *saved','football' in England is actually king threatened. But what

is exactly threatening the game? More importantly, what is it about the game that is king threatened? For one Manchester United fan at least, the answer could be summed up in the following passage: 3 It's no secret that United have experienced the best and worst of the Premier League's "whole new bal1 game". Trophies have been abundant but then so have the "newfan", the dreaded middle class, day-tripper element and any other type who has habitually embarrassed Our great club.. .. Everywhere in United's support idiocy has flourished ...... the only time you can go to a match without having to associate with imbeciles are mid-winter fiendlies in the Arctic (anyone who has travelled on a recent pre-season tour will testie to the banality of many foreign Reds). .. . 3

The sentiments above, taken fiom United fanzine Red Issue, is atypical of soccer-fan literature in

England as the 1990s draw to a close. Essentially, the excerpt above is a larnent of the loss of identity in the face of the recent phenomenai changes taking place in the upper echelons of the

English game, as the despised newfan is held up against some rapidly fading socio-cultural ideal about how one should support a soccer club.

What is this ideal? It is to the end of answering this question that this thesis will be focusing on. Specifically, this work aims at providing a socio-cultural analysis of the values, beliefs and attitudes of soccer fandom in Engtand, as 'we' - like the Rochdale fan - know it.

Invariably. this also implies a closer examination of who 'we' are - the truefans through whom the values are played out on match-days. In answering this question, it is also hoped that this thesis will break new ground in terms of providing a unique perspective to the socio-historical study of soccer culture in England.

THESIS OBJECTIVES: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY

To a great extent. both the nature of this inquiry and the research behind it are inspired by the academic 'tum' within the field of British social history by scholars who have become increasingly aware of the limitations of 'class' analysis, particularly in relation to the history of soccer as an English social and cultural institution. These limitations become especially clear when one has to take into consideration the more dogrnatic trappings of Marxist theory, such as the primacy of economic relations, as well as the notion of 'conflict' and 'confrontation' between 4 the working classes and their social 'superiors'. In the case of soccer, however, the class lines

are not as clear-cut as in other areas of English society. As Richard Holt puts it, "...in ternis of

Marxist theory, an analysis which focuses discussion on the involvement of capitalists and the

problems of class-consciousness cannot take us much Mer. Mamism has always been more at

home in 'work' than in 'play'...".4

Holt and a nurnber of other English sports historians have attempted to go Merby

exploring and examining other themes of social organisation and order. In this regard, the 1996

publication of Sport and identitv in the North of Enaland - which features a collection of essays

on the significance of 'northernness' in English soccer culture - can be seen as a good indication

of the growing awareness within academic circles of the need to extend the critical discussion of

soccer culture in England beyond class ana~~sis.~As theory goes. it is the expressed intention of

this thesis to add to the 'cross-class' discourse on English soccer culture. Specifically, the thesis aims at defining the notion of 'truc' supportership and the truefan by way of the introduction of a

-populist' discourse - one that involves the larger and greater consideration of the concept of the

'people' - into the overall socio-historical study of English soccer fandom.

On this basis, British social historian Patrick Joyce's 1991 publication Visions of the

People is especially crucial in establishing a working definition of 'populism' with which to proceed. For him, populism points to

a set of discourses and identities which are extra-economic in character, and inclusive and universalising in their social remit ...... extra-proletarian identifications such as those of .people' and .nation' are involved. As well as, or instead of, conflict, chiefly evident are notions combining social justice and social reconciliation. The accent on sociaI concord and human fellowship is very strong.. .6

In Visions of the People Joyce applies this definition to the political, cultural and work experience of the labouring people of industrial Lancashire in the years between the decline of

Chartism and the outbreak of the Great War. But what makes Joyce's work significant is that he attributes the element of popuiar agency in the way in which the "people patterned and gave meaning to the social order"' in industrial England in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Furthemore. this process of conceptualising (and reconceptualising) the social order is one whic h involves not just antagonism and opposition, but accommodation and inclusiveness as well:

Social distinctions were recognised but were met with in particular ways. in one respect distinctions of wealth and power are recognised so long as they can be given a moral foundation ...... moralised wealth is regarded as acceptable. Given certain kinds of behaviour the status quo was bearable.'

It is the firrn belief of this author that the same sentiments are aiso in evidence within the context of the 'community' of soccer supporters. In terms of methodology, this thesis will attempt to demonstrate this in two major respects. The first two chapters will deal with the question of how the game of 'football' was understood in a more distant past by re-evaluating the existing literature on soccer culture in England. Chapters three and four hope to establish some idea as to how contemporary soccer supporters define themsehes and their 'community' by way of an analysis of primary evidence fiom two key 'voices' of the fans: the oral tradition of soccer songs and chants, and the written records as docurnented in club 'fanzines' and the football 'specials'.

This inquiry into seeking out the English truefun also essentially represents an attempt to bring the areas of social history and contemporary cultural studies together. At one end, scholars of the latter are more engaged in specific social issues - particularly the hooligan question - and are therefore more 'presentist' in their chronologicai scope. At the other end, social historians have been more holistic in their approach to the cultural study of soccer, and more inclined to discuss the workings of culture and society of a more distant past. If the recent literature is anything to go by, it seems that both sides are content to stay behind their self-imposed historiographical 'fault-line', and limit their remarks about the opposite end to broad generalisations or brief concluding statements. Nevertheless, a 'populist' re-evaluation of the 6 arguments regarding the past and present state of English soccer culture promises the possibility of establishing some sort of continuity, not just in ternis of class divisions, but also of cross-class attitudes, as they pertain to the history of English soccer fandom over the past one hundred and fifiy years or more. This theme is especially important as a starting point for this inquiry, as the search for the truefan implies the need to look not only beyond 'class' - an issue which will be examined in chapter two with regard to the modem association game during the Victorian and

Edwardian penods - but also 'before' class. The search for the 'referent* by which the socio- cultural world of the English soccer fan is constmcted begins in antiquity, during a time when the game was a seemingly formless pastime involving scores of men, broken shins and an inflated bladder. It is during this time that the essential core values which govem the 'old game' as a socio-cultural institution took hold, and it is these same values which. in some fom or another. continue to assert themselves in the way the modem association gaxne is understwd by

English supporters right up to the present day. This will bc the central theme of the first chapter. NOTES

1. Adrian Thrills, You're not Sinpinpr Anymore!: a riotous celebration of fmtball chants and the culture that spawned hem, (London: Ebus) Press, 1998), p. 157.

2. Manchester Eveninn News: the Pink, 24 July 1999, (Manchester: Manchester Evening News Ltd, 1999), p.23.

3. "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall", fiom Red Issue (in association with 'Soccer Fanzine'), c.1999, at http:/~w~c~v.soccer-t';inzinc.co.u~manunited/curreiit/sto~2.htmI(Accessed on 29 March 1999).

4. R. J. Holt. '-Fwtbalt and the Urban Way of Life in Nineteenth-Century Britain", in .I.A. Mangan, ed., Pleasure. Profit Proselvtism: British culture and swrt at home and abroad, (London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, l988), p.68.

5. See Jeff Hill and Jack Williams, eds., Sport and Identity in the North of Ennland, (Keele: Keele University Press, 1996). In addition to the editors, it also features articles by Tony Mason, Alan Metcalfe and Brian Holland.

6. Patrick Joyce, Visions of the Peovle: Industrial Ennland and the question of class. 1848-1914, (Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne and Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.11. CHAPTER ONE REDEFININC RESISTANCE AND THE SOCIAL ELITE: INCLUSION AND THE PRE-MODERN FOOTBALL CAME IN ENCLAND

The values, beliefs and attitudes which were to influence the way in which the 'fan' culture of the modem association game is ordered were already present in relation to soccer's pre-modem counterpart. To a great extent, these values were very much the products of their time - of 'old' England. Romantic connotations aside, it is an England where more than eighty percent of the population lived in nnal communities, and whose -national' identity was still in its infancy. It is an England that was governed by a 'natural' sense of social order, in the sense that each and everyone was aware of their appointed station in life, and the roles and responsibilities that went with it. It is an England of Sunday wakes and saints' holidays, whereby everyday life was ordered by casual habits and work rhythms that were not necessarily understood in terms of reguiar schedules.

This chapter will attempt to provide a cntical analysis of these values by way of a

'populist' rs-reading of the existing literature surrounding the 'old game'. in how it has been presented and understood by scholars and contemporaries alike. Particular emphasis will be placed on extending the role of the English 'elite' beyond their customary role of the villain in the conventional histoncal script. If the socio-cultural history of football could be contextualised in tems of the upper against the lower orders, was there ever a time when the two sides found themselves arm-in-arm? In what way could the game be seen as king 'cross-class' in character?

THE HISTORICAL SCRIPT: CONFLICT AND RESISTANCE

Given the emphasis of Marxist theory on industrial development, pertülps it should not be surpnsing that the impact of class analysis in the study of .he pre-modem period has not been as substantial as in other areas of social history. Nevertheless, the themes of 'conflict' and 'rcsistance' continue to be important within the academic discourse. In the area of popular

culture, this can be seen in the application of the 'geat-versus-little tradition' model, whereby

the elite is locked in a stmggle to establish a cultural hegemony over the lower orders.'

Much of what is known about the pre-modern game of football is understood within the

context of this struggle. Existing records suggest the 'old garne' to have been an exceptionally

brutal and barbarous pastime that was opposed by the mling elite. both ecclesiasticai and secular.

At the forefront of the taie of popular resistance are of course the medieval 'pro-archery' laws

that prohibited football and 'other vain games of no value' as they were a distraction to the

practice of bows and arrows. which were seen as vital in terms of "honour to the kingdom and

advantage to the king in his actions of During Elizabethan times, the puritan Phillip

Stubbes described the 'old game' as a 'devilish pastirne', for it 'mot only withdraw[s] us from -podlines and vertue. but also hailers] and allure[s] us to wikednes and sin".3 The disapproving voices of the mling elite were also rnatched by the apparent refusal by

the lower orders to abandon the 'old game'. The pro-archery and other pronouncements that

prohibited the 'old game' from king played sometimes hsd to be repeated, and for scholars like

F.P. Magoun, this is a clear indication of 'resistance from below'. for despite the numerous

dictates from above, the people kept on playing. The 'resistance' argument was given fùrther

credence in a number of key historical studies of early modem England. For Keith Wrightson,

this period saw a growing rift between the upper and lower orders, not only in terms of

prosperity, but socio-cultural identity as well. This development can be seen in the context of an

'alliance' of respectability in the sense that "in the period between 1580 and 1660 the 'middling sort' - those members of rural and urban society who stood below but not too far below the traditionai governing classes of countryside and town - allied with their betters, whose cultural values they increasingly came to share and adopted an increasingly hostile and distant attitude towards the rural masses"?

REEXAMWMG THE SCRIPT

A closer examination of these historical 'myths' and 'stories' suggests that a straightforward application of the 'great-versus-little-tradition' mode1 in the case of the 'old game' was a qualified one. On the contrary, the pre-modern game, regardless of its regiond variations. was understood at a much more inclusive level in the sense that participation by the upper reaches of the English social hierarchy was more dynamic and less alienating. In terms of direct participation, accounts of football-playing in institutions of higher learning are numerous, albeit mainly in the form of prohibition orders. University football was not only popular; it also seemed to transcend social standing, professional occupations and religious convictions at the expense of 'gentlemanly' behaviour, as the Oxford university statutes fiom 1584 suggest:

...if any minister or deacon shall go into the feelde to playe at football or beare any weapon to make any fray or mainetaine mye quarrell, he shall forthwith be banished the universitie .... It is fùrder provided that, if any master, Bachiler, or scholler not beinge ministers, beinge above the age of eightene, shall offend in any of thease things in this statute specified, he shall forfeite for the first time xx S. and suffer imprisonrnent as in the case of perturbance of peace; the second tirne XI S. and to suffer as before; the third time banishment of the universitye withowt restitution.'

Intriguingly enough, available records on the plays fiom early modem England are not only replete with references of football, but they also present a more 'inclusive' image about how the

'old game' was understood in relation to the English social hierarchy. For instance, Thomas

Heywood's Four Prentices of London, published in 16 15, presents the not-uncharacteristic scenario of a football-playing son of an impoverished earl who was forced to become an apprentice-grocer.6 In The Whore of Babylon, Thomas Dekker provides the intrîguing possibility of lawyers actually king good footballers at the turn of the seventeenth century,' whife Peter

Hausted's 163 1 play The Rival Friends introduces the character of 'Hammershin', a Bachelor of

Arts with "an enviable reputation for hacking the shins of his adversaries":

Why he is sent for far and neere by the valiant of the Parishes, to play matches at football: 1 tell you hee is the onely Hammershin this Shire can boast of; not a Servingman can keep a legge or an arme whole for him, he ha's pension fiom al1 the Surgeons within the compasse of fortie miles, for breaking of b~nes.~

In these examples. the 'old garne' is described as king played by those who could be considered

as members of the upper echelons of early modern soçiety, but what makes these sources

particularly telling is the fact that these literary references also seemed to lack the

'confiontationist' imagery of the elite against the popular. This is mersubstantiated by the

rather ambiguous and contradictory nature of the elite's attitudes towards the 'old garne' itself.

For one thing. records fiom the pre-Reformation period indicate that the relationship between football and the clergy had not always been strained. For example. church landmarks were often used as part of the festival matches, a practice that continued right up to the mid-eighteenth century. In 1772, 'a great football match' between Gosmore and Hitchin in Hertfordshire saw the bal1 king "drowned for a time in the Priory pond, then forced along Angel Street across the

Market Place into the Artichoke beer-house, and finally goaled in the porch of St Mary's

~hurch.~

In terms of more recent work, David Dymond's innovative look at the East Anglian version of football provides some intriguing possibilities. In his examination of 'camping' closes in rural communities. Dymond finds that the 'playing fields' fcr camp-bal1 and other popular recreations were primarily located "either very close to the church and churchyard, ofien immediately adjacent, or is associated with a village nucleus, lying behind a row of houses or at one end of the street"." Although one cm only speculate on the underlying motive behind the association between popular pastimes and the church, Dymond's findings seem to suggest that

the latter's role as a focal point in socio-cultural relations in early modem English society may

not have ken as antagonistic as is ofien perceived.

Like the clergy. the secular authorities of early modem England were equally as

ambiguous in their disapproval of the old garne. Although James 1 had already expressed his

displeasure of football in the Basilibn Doron in 1599, his royal visit to Bromham in Wiltshire

around 161 5 was overseen by the local minister, who "entettained his Majesty with a foot-bal1

match of his own parishionen".'' Perhaps more signifiant is Magoun's fleeting mention in his

1938 work on pre-modern football of a football close king established at Hitchin in Elizabethan

days, despite adverse criticisrn and ~e~islation."Although this particular reference in itself was

apparently of little significance to Magoun himself, the Hitchin example is nevertheless

insightful by its similarity with the examples provided in Dymond's work on camping closes.

More importantly, the existence of a football close in Hitchin is also in concert with Dymond's

own conclusion that the camping close "was a facility used and acknowledged by the local

population, and [that] its establishment must have involved some degree of organisation and

general consent .... This new institution at parish level was supported by at least some of the

local gentry and clergy, yet was created for a game which was officia11y illegal". l3

At this juncture, an additional question can be posed - how does one explain this division in elite opinion in relation to the 'old garne'? Part of the answer lies in the administrative structure of early modern England - specifically, in terms of the diffusion of power and influence at a socio-political level. At the centre of this 'federation' lay the Crown, the Court, and the

Church. but as J.A. Sharpe correctly points out, "central government needed the landed orders to run the local administration and preserve order locally on its behalf'.'" What makes the local administrative system of early modem England even more rernarkable is the fact that the various

roles in local ofice were virtually served on an 'amateur' basis. Essentially, it came down to the

widespread willingness in English society "to serve in local office, constable, overseer of the

poor, or ewn as a juror".ls And as niling England "depended upon the goodwill and co-

operation of a broad section of property-owners",'6 it could be argued that room for

administrative dissent seemed ample. Justices of the peace might obstnict royal commands,

carry them out half-heartedly. or ignore them altogether. Similarly, parish constables might

worry more about the hostility of their neighbours than the sanctions which a distant authority

might impose upon them for any negfigence."

The highly decentralised nature of early modem English govenunent points to a couple

of key assumptions. The first is the importance of local identity - a notion that continues to be of

significance with regard to English soccer fandorn in the present day. Although a number of

prominent historians such as Keith Wrightson have argued that the trend towards centralisation

in English govemment began in earnest in the early modem penod. there is still some validity in

describing early modem England as "a federation of counties, each with its individual ethos". l8

Secondly, the autonomy afforded to local govemment pmvided the possibility for non- cornpliance and even solid resistance. Perhaps more impoitantly, the local elite could also conceivably be part of this resistance. As the Hitchin and Dymond examples show, this resistance was not characterised solely by social 1y horizontal divisions, but by locaiism and community in the face of outside forces. In identiQing with the local against the centre, the elite could belong on the side of the 'people'. Within the context of pre-modern football in England, this can fûrther be seen during what could be described as two 'crisis' points in the survival of the 'old game' - the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. REDEFiNiNG THE SCRIPT

As far as the issue of popular recreation is concerned, the English Reformaion is virtually synonymous with the sabbatarian movement, which aimed at suppressing popular

Sunday festivities and pastimes in an effort to preserve the Sabbath as a day of rest and religious piety. The sabbatarïan message seemed to become increasingly significant towards the end of the sixteenth century. and this was clearly indicated by the substantial number of records of

Sabbath offences, including foot bail-piaying on Sundays during the reign of the early Stuarts.

However. the voice of the elite remained divided and ambiguous throughout the Refonnation.

While this has often been attributed to the success of protest 'fkom below', it could be aryed that resistance came from 'above' as well. A good case in point would be the accounts of seventeenth-century Manchester, where there was a concerted attempt to ban the 'old game' from the streets. An order dated 12 October 1608 reads:

Whereas theire hath bene heretofore greate disorder in our towne of Manchester, and the Inhabitants thereof greatelye wronged and charged with makinge and amendinge of theire glasse windowes broken yearelye and spoyled by a companye of lewde and disordered persons usinge that unlawtirll exercise of playinge with the ffootebale in ye streets of the said towne. breakinge many mens windowes and glasse at theire plesures, and other greate inormyties, Therefore Wee of this Jurye doe order that no maner of persons hereafter shall playe or use the ffootebale in any streete within the said towne of Manchester sub pena to everye one that shall so use the sarne for everye tyme xii d. l9

The order was reissued the following year. More interesting, however, was the way in which this order was to be enforced. Robert Malcolmson notes that "for a number of years, 1610 to

16 18, the court appointed annually three oficers whose particular responsibility was to ensure that the order was effectively enforced"." In the mid-seventeenth century, the role of the

Manchester constable was again highlighted, when the order prohibiting Street football was reissued fiorn 1655 to 1657: The Jurie of this present Leet doth order the present Constables for this yeare shall take a care to prevent and present the players att the ffmieball in the streets and take a speciall Care to Punish the Offenders herein afier the publication hereof accordinge to their demerritts and accordinge as the statute hath provided.2'

What is particularly important to note about these Manchester records is that the emphasis of the

prohibition orders shified from the offenders to the constables, whose duty it was to 'prevent',

'present' and -punish'. The records in question above corne from two specific time periods some

forty to fifiy years apart, but both sets of accounts took place during a the when the zeal for

godly reformation of life in England was thought to be at its zenith. if this was the case, then

why were the constables constantiy reminded of their roles? Furthemore, what was the reason

behind the need to appoint three special officers to oversee the effective enforcernent of the

football prohibition?

In the absence of conclusive and substantive evidence. one can only speculate on the

answers. but it is clear from the repeated pronouncements that the Manchester constables were in

an antagonistic position, not just with the street footballers whom they were supposed to stop,

but also with the 'higher authorities' who introduced a new Ievel of officiais to ensure that their duties were carried out. Given the fact that so much attention was given to the constables rather than the actual offenders, one has to ponder not just whether the local elite's insubordination had some bearing on the 'old game's' survival into the eighteenth century, but whether this stance was borne out of passive resistance against what was evidently an unpopular pronouncement.

The sarne scenario cm be posed with regard to the second 'crisis' to the survival of the pre-modern football game. To an extent, this crisis could even be seen as a death blow, for the

Industrial Revolution essentidly destroyed the pre-industrial world which the 'old game' was an integral part of. In its place was an environment in which there was theoretically no room for popular recreational activities, both in terms of space and time. Not surprisingly, it was dso during this tirne that voices that lamented the passing of the game began to be heard. In 1 80 1. antiquarian Joseph Strutt States that "it was forrnerly much in vogue arnong the comrnon people of England, though of late years it seems to have falien into disrepute, and is but little

Stnrtt's verdict is certainly exaggerated, given the fiequency of existing records of

Shrove Tuesday football in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, there is some truth to Strutt's statement, for the period between 1750 and 1850 dso contains nwnerous references which pertain to the -death' of the 'old game' throughout England, the most notable king the Shrove

Tuesday match at ~erb~."However, what is most intriguing about these two seemingiy contradictory signals is that Stnrtt's sentiments can be folrnd not only in accounts of the 'dead' and 'dying'. but also in accounts where the 'old game' survived the *crisis' brought about by the

Industrial Revolution - at least for the time being.

A good example of this is the Shrove Tuesday match at Kingston-upon-Thames in

Surrey. which was supposedly played in commemoration of a victory over the an es."

Apparently, sometime during the early 1790s, there was a very detennined attempt by the

"corporation of Kingston.. .to put a stop to this practice, but the judges confirmed the right to the wme". 25 In 1799, however, a more coercive attempt was made, as the following account from three Kingston magistrates reveals:

On the Shrove Tuesday a great nurnber of persons having assembled and begun to kick a bal1 in the market place we caused three that seemed the most active to be taken into Custody hoping that would induce the others to disperse but not having that effect we then caused the Riot Act to be read and the Mob not then dispersing but increasing in Number and threatening to Use violence in liberating those in Custody we addressed another Letter to the Officer on Command at Hampton Court requiring him to send part of the Cavalry to our assistance but not receiving an answer in a reasonable time one of Us went to Hampton Court in search for the Officer when it was said that Major Hawker was the Office on Duty there but was gone from home and not to be seen nor could any other be found who could Act and the Men at the sarne tirne kicking foot bal1 on Hampton Court ~reen.'~

This particular excerpt is invaluable in that it shows the degree of antagonism of those in positions of power and influence towards football. More importantly, the examples above not only contextualized the existence of the 'old game' in terms of 'antiquity' and 'custom'. In the

Kingston case, its survival was actually justified on this basis. On this point, one sees elite and popular culture coming together; where custom is concerned, Wrightson believes that

"inhabitants of a locality (or large sections of them) found common ground":

The defence of custom was 'quintessentially local politics' .... It could mobilise whole communities, or sections of hem, with a conviction of their rectitude in disputing power, and to those involved their causes might seem every bit 'as ciramatic and important as the stmggle against arbi trary...p ower within the national body politic'. ... Here if nowhere else, subordinate groups could clah equality of a kind in the assertion of what they took to be their ri&t~.~'

Wrightson's argument is echoed by Malcolmson, who argues that "persons who exercised authonty were expected to make particular concessions in the interest of the labouring people. A custom. then. involved the assertion and recognition of a popular privilege".'8 In other words, the language of custom is essentially the language of the popular. It is a language that the elite could share in some cases. but never dictate. In the case of the 'old game', however, a number of references seem to suggest that the elite did add something new in terms of how custom was understood and expressed dong the way. Probably the most colourfiil of these comes fiom a song Sung by one Mr. Fawcett on 21 February 1821 at Ashbourne Theatre describing the

Derbyshire town's traditional Shrove Tuesday match:

1'11 sing you a Song of a neat little place, Top fiill of good humour and beauty and grace; Where coaches are rolling by day and by night, And in playing at football the people delight. Where health and good humour does always abound, And hospitality's cup flows freely around, Where fnendship and harmony are to be found, In the neat little town of ~shbome.'~

m..

Words like 'health', 'good humour', 'hospitality', 'fnendship' and 'harmony7 are certainly a far cry from the darnning descriptions of Phiilip Stubbes about 250 years earlier, yet these were nevertheless employed in reference to the 'old game' dunng a time when it seemed to be fading away in other parts of England. The change in outlook becomes especially telling when put in juxtaposition with an excerpt from a local newpaper reponing on the Shrove Tuesday match at

Dorking, Surrey in 1887:

The ancient custom of playing a football match in the public streets on Shrove Tuesday is still perpetuated in the old Surrey tom of Dorking, the inhabitants of al1 classes giving it a cordial support, and submitting to a considerable amount of inconvenience for the sake of preserving the popular vestige of Old English sport. 30

The application of the term 'Old English sport' presents the 'old game' in a different light, for in the nineteenth century, custom was not only understood in terms of 'class' relations, elite concessions and popular privileges. as Malcolmson sees it, but also in terms of 'time' and 'age'.

With the Industrial Revolution the language of the popular became a language of nostalgia as well. One might even be tempted to describe it as 'romantic' in the sense that while the 'old game' no longer fitted in the rational industrial order of nineteenth-century Britain, it managed to retain its symbolic significance as a living tradition through the institution of Shrovetide and other similar festivities - less as a violent yet rightful pastime of the lower orders, but more a co~ectionto an England which its subjects feared they might lose. As a mid-nineteenthsentury parson put it,

It is an important consideration.. .whether a great means of promoting good-will between the different ranks of society, has not ken wholly lost by suffering the old popuiar meetings [for sports and pastimes] to fa11 into disuse.. .Old England once had its joyous holida s, when rnaster met man, no longer as his superior, but as his fetlow and brother. 37 CONCLUSION

It seems that the context of the pre-modem football game allowed for a level of participation fiom the so-called 'elite' groups that was not only influentid, but dso emotional, to a degree. Moreover, it can even be said that, even in relation to other popular recreational activities, the 'old game' stood out in the sense that it always seemed to have an 'inclusive', even ppulist. quality about it. This is not to say, however, that football was actually understood as a

'respectable' game in early modem England. Nevertheless, ruming alongside scathing condernnations which hini at the emergence of a class-structured society, proverbial expressions like 'al1 friends at football' and 'al1 fellows at football' can be f~und.~'In the long run, it was this -fellowship' which ensured not only the continued existence of the 'old game' as a reminder of 'old England', As the next chapter will show, it also proved crucial in establishing the modern association game as an English sporting institution* NOTES

The 'great-versus-little tradition' model is based on Peter Burke's working definition of 'popular culture' in his 1978 publication Po~ularCulture in Earl~Modern Euro-pe, (London: Temple Smith, 1978). In this context, 'popular culture' could be essentially defined as the attitudes and values of ordinary people, as expressed in aspects such as folk art, folk songs, folk tales and festivals. For the purpose ofthis chapter, 1 include 'football' in this kt.

Quoted in Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr, Histow of Football: From the Be~inninns- to 1871, (Bot hum-Langendreer: Verlag Heinrich Poppinghaus 0.H.-G., 1938), 9.7.

Cited in AIan G.R. Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State: The commonwealth of England, 1 529- 1660, (London and New York: Longman, l984), p. 1 84.

Quoted in Magoun, Histow of Football, p.74.

Thomas Heywood, The Drarnatic Works of Thomas Heywood, Volume 2, (New York: Russell & Russell Inc, 1964, c. 1874), p. 1 7 1.

Thomas Dekker, The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, Volume 2, ed., Fredson Bowers, (London and New York: Cambridge University Press. 1955). p.550.

Peter Hausted, The Rivall Friends: A Comoedie, (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terramm Ltd; New York: Da Capo Press, 1973, c. 1632), Act 3, Scene 2.

Cited in Magoun, Histow of Football, p.68.

David Dymond, "A Lost Social Institution: The Camping Close", Rural Histow, vol. 1, no. 2, (Cambridge and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1WO), p. 166.

II. Quoted in Magoun, Historv of Football, p.35.

12. Cited in Magoun, Histow of Football, p.32.

13. Dymond, "A Lost Social Institution: The Camping Close" (1990), p. 173.

14. J.A. Sharpe, Earlv Modern Enpland: A Social Histow. 1 550- 1 760, (London: Edward Arnold, i 987). p. 164.

-9lbid p.106.

--7lbid p.106.

-9Ibid p.106.

Smith, The Emeraence of a Nation State, p. 138.

Cited in Tony Maçon, Association Football and Ennlish- Societv. 1863-1915, (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1 980), p.33. Cited in Robert W. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in Ennlish Society. 1700-1850, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 973), p. 1 39.

Quoted in Magoun, Histow of Football, p.52.

--•lbid p.69.

For a detailed account of the Derby Shrove Tuesday game, see Magoun, Historv of Football, pp. 1 12- l 18; and Malcolmson, Po~ularRecreations in English Society, pp. 14 1 - 144.

Cited in Magoun, Historv of Football, p.123.

William Hone, The Everv-Dav Book, vol. 1, (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1%7), p.245.

Quoted in Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Societv, p. 140.

Keith Wrightson, "The Politics of the Parish in Early Modem England". The Exwrience of Authoritv in Earlv Modem Enaland, eds., Paul Griffith, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle, (New York: St Martin's Press, 1996), p.24.

Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in Enalish Societv, pp. 1 10-1 1 1.

Quoted in Magoun, Historv of Football, p. 108.

Quoted in Magoun, Historv of Football, pp. 129- 130.

Cited in Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society, p. 167.

The ongins of this proverb is unknown, although according to Magoun, James Shirley's play sr John Oldcastle (1600) makes a reference to it in Act IV, Sc 1, 1 1. 30 ff. See Magoun, Historv of Football, p.43. CHAPTER TIiVO LOCATING THE OLDFAN: CLASS, POPULISM, AND FOOTBALL SUPPORTERSHIP IN ENGLAND, 1863-1950

If the Red issue excerpt in the Introduction is any indication, it must be said that the state of English soccer in the 1990s can hardly be described as 'fellowly' in any way. ' At the level of popular perception at least, one could even argue that there is a class dimension to the clash between the newfan and the rruefan as well. In this sense, the newfan is not just an unwelcorned outsider, but a principal villain, for he represents a threat to what the rruefan believes to be his game - the game of the working class.

Who is this rruefan? What socio-cultural soccer ideal does he represent? The aim of this chapter is to re-examine these questions as they pertain to the development of the modem game in England between 1863 and 1950. Particular attention will be placed on the values, beliefs and attitudes which govemed this development during the formative stages. To what extent did soccer's 'social order' in England adhere along class lines? What were its rules and roles?

Where can one see 'populist' attitudes corning into play? Ultimately, this chapter seeks to find the essential character of English soccer fandom by way of a historical inquiry. In other words, this paper will attempt to seek out the fruefon in history by locating the oldfan.

ORIGINS - THE ELITE AND THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL GAME

A good place to begin would be within the hallowed walls of the public schools of

England, where the rough-and tumble game of pre-modem times had ken played for centuries.

By the rnid-nineteenth century however, a concerted effort was made to codifi the seemingly forrnless versions of the 'old game'. Between 1845 and 1862 pupils and staff between them had written down the rules of the football games played at the seven leading public sch~ols.~This process of harmonising the multiple variations of football culminated in 1863 with the establishment of the Football Association, which decided to adhere to the non-handling version -

hence the sport's official name, association football - as opposed to the handling game supported

by the Rugby 'faction'.

In a sense, association football owed its rather 'noble' origins to the English public school elite, who began to take an active interest in sport and recreation in the mid-nineteenth century. A popular explanation for their involvement is the emergence of the 'muscuiar

Chrïstians' like Thomas Hughes and Charles Kingsley who advocated the promotion of morality by promoting 'manliness' as well. For his part, Kingsley favoured a more 'down to earth' approach for the priesthood. while Hughes believed that playing garnes led to individual independence and self-relian~e.~On a less spiritual note, however, J.A. Mangan argues that the irnpetus on sports in English public schools had less to do with Christian virtue than it does with social Darwinism. and that sentiments such as that of agnostic philosopher Leslie Stephen were not uncommon:

.. .the world is in many respects a big public school. The training it gives is of the rough and ready order, with plenty of hard blows and little allowance for sentiment. The men who succeed in later life generally owe that good fortune to the same qualities which raise a boy to be the leader among his fellows."

In a sense, soccer's place in the cult of the 'new athleticism' can be explained as a 'preparation' for the imminent Dawinian struggle. Equally important is the fact that the cultivation of manliness and the spirit of intense competition through public-school sports was carried out within proscribed parameters. According to Peter Bailey, these parameters suspended the absolute judgment of success or failure, affluence or bankruptcy, which could befall commercial or professional life, and allowed for its practitioners to enjoy a sense of cornpetitive striving which stopped far short of self-destr~ction.~These were defined not only in ternis of written rules which govem these garnes, but also dong the largely unwritten guidelines of 'sportsmanship' . Although academic scholars oflen cringe at the prospect of having to spell it

out in detail, Tony Mason does an admirable job of sumrnarising the essentials:

What were the major tenets of this ethic? First, playing for the side and not for self. Being modest and generous in victory and staunch and cheerful in defeat. Playing the garne for the game's sake: there might be physical and moral benefits but there should be no other rewards and certainly not prizes or money. No player should ever intentionally break the rules or stoop to underhand tactics. Hard but fair knocks should be taken and given courageously and with good temper.'

The sportsmanship ethic received widespread public acceptance in middle-class circles by the

second half of Victoria's reign, and football, in its modem incarnation, certainly started out as

part of this ethos. As the nineteenth century drew to a close however, it could be argued that

soccer had become a 'working-class' garne, with Ian Taylor even going as far as to claim that the

English male proletariat, by virtue of the game's social and psychological meanings to the

historical working-class experience. acnially have 'soccer consciousness' .'

CLASS 'CONFLICT' AND THE 'WORKNG-CLASS' GAME

In what way was soccer a 'working-class' game? From a statistical standpoint, the

numbers seem to confirm this. According to Mason. as the crowds grew larger tiom the mid-

1880s they becarne increasingly working class in composition, with the 'stand' a bourgeois

island in a sea of working-class faces.8 The same can be said about participation. Whereas initially the players of the first soccer clubs were ex-public-school boys who wanted to continue playing the garne they enjoyed, by the turn of the twentieth century, the majority of players at the elite level hailed from the lower end of the English social order. This is funher supplemented by

Nicholas Fishwick and Jack Williams, whose examination of early twentieth-century soccer at the junior and recreational levels in England also suggests that working-class involvement in the garne was not just limited to top-flight ~occer.~ Perhaps more intriguing however, is the culrural appropriation of soccer by the English working class tram their betters, in the sense that they rejected the cultural baggage of their social superiors which the game seemed to carry in the early years. Once again, religious evangelism seems to have taken up a large chunk of this baggage initially, as a growing number of athletic churchmen urged their colleagues to develop games skills as a means of reaching and extending their working-class congregati~ns.'~Furthemore, the virtues of soccer were extolled in 'patriotic' terms in its promotion of a 'nationaf character'. Lord Rosebery. when presenting the FA Cup in 1897. said he was sure the game helped to bnng out those 'splendid characteristics of the British racestarnina and indomitable pluck'.i '

It was also hoped that soccer could prove usehl against that most cornmon of social vices

- the English working man's penchant for a dnnk down at the pub. Apparently, there were some who were convinced of its beneficial efiects. In an 1896 testimony given to the Royal

Commission on the Liquor Licensing Laws, the Chief Constable of Liverpool argues that "now when there is a match on the Everton or Liverpool ground3, a great number of working men, the instant they get paid, rush off home as quickly as they can, get a wash and a change, leave their wages with their wives, and are off to see the football ....Yi2 Closely associated with the fight for sobnety of course was soccer's role in improving relations in the workplace. According to

Mason, the establishment of workplace teams "not only help to attach workers to the firm or company, providing the young worker in particuiar with an aid to identity, but may even attract some workers to join the firm in the first pla~e".'~This rationale resonated even more during the first half of the twentieth century with the implementation of new industrial welfàre policies, which argued that sport could "positively [infïuence] worken' attitudes to the company - as well, no doubt, as improving their fitness - which would in tum, it was hoped, lead to increased productivity".'J

It could be argued chat the arguments outlined above for spreading the garne beyond the elite circle were essentially part of a concerted effort by the English middle class to tarne the working-class beast. This meant not only the regdation and rationalisation of work habits, but also the perceived need to reform the working man's leisure space as well. As Bailey puts it:

...they [were] apprehensive about the effects of leisure and its freedoms on a working class with a traditional taste for wantonness and irn uncertain allegiance to the authonty of its betters. Viewed fiom above, leisure constituted a problem whose solution required the building of a new social confonnity - a play discipline to complement the work discipline that was the principal means of social control in an industrial capitalist society. ' From this perspective, the sportsmanship ethos which permeated the game did not serve merely as a refùge fiom the competitive strains of real life. Within the context of rational recreation, it was also a doctrine through which the English working class could be disciplined and controlled.

If the latter were to get involved, emphasis would be placed on extolling the value of soccer as a participatory sport. Here, he too was expected to adhere to the same parameters set by his social superiors, while reaping the moral benefits which supposedly folfowed. In a sense, while the sportsmanship ethos provided the English elite with an escape from the pressures of the real world, it injected yet another dose of 'reality' into the collective arm of the working class, with the hope that it would affect them still once the game was over.

By the end of the nineteenth century, however, it could be said that the English elite's attempt to transform the working class through soccer seemed to have been largely ineffective.

For one thing, soccer historians have generally been sceptical about whether religion ever tmly succeeded in putting 'the foot in the door of working class culture' through soccer. For the most part, the initiative came fiom within the church membership rather than from the church ~fficers.'~Williams' andysis of early twentieth-century church soccer suggests that while clerical support was widespread, "the dominant attitude among most clerics appears to have been closer to indifference than fervent enthusiasrn"." Soccer did not stop the English working class from having a good drink at the pub altogether either. While it could be argued that the Saturday aftemoon outing did contribute to a decline in drunkenness in some places, it must be admitted that the most impressionable effect that came out of this was not so much soccer's role in counteracting the effects of dnnk, as much as it was the incorporation of soccer as part of the

English proletarian Saturday afiernoon ritual - aiongside the traditional pub get-together.

Furthemore, by the 1880s, the English working class had already begun to put their own unique cultural stamp on the way soccer was experienced and understood. By this time, soccer had already begun to dominate the leisure time of the wider society of working-class men.

However, the leisure experience for them meant soccer not as a porticipatory spon but as a spectator spon. What makes this even more significant is the fact that the soccer experience at the level of spectatorship is govemed by a socio-cultural ethos that seems to run counter to the parameters set by the public-school elite which characterised the way the garne was played. This is probably best exemplified by the unbridled expression of emotion traditionally associated with the soccer crowd, especially during cup competitions. The following description of a Cup-tie atmosphere in Swindon in 1925 was typical on such occasims:

Cup-tie fever was at a very high pitch ...Motor charabancs, cars motorcycles, push-bikes, horses and traps and even donkey carts were brought into use to convey spectators to the match.. . [Wlhen the gates were opened at one o'clock there was a tremendous rush to secure the best position ... Swindon coiours were freely wom, whilst a nurnber of followers of the Town carried red and white umbrellas.. .. 18

Two crucial points cm be made in relation to the description above. First of all, one is presented with the imagery of the *carnivalesque' in the sense that Saturday afiemoon soccer - and the cup-tie in particular - seems to consistentiy provide the occasion for a suspension of behavioural noms. Secondly, the atmosphere generated by the soccer crowd also implies a lack of control and discipline - notions which Bailey's middle class was hoping to inculcate among the English working class through the 'playing of the game'. In a bizarre sense, soccer became an escape for the lower orders, just as it was for the elite. But unlike the latter, soccer represented an opportunity to get away from the rigid, rational, cold and calculated constraints of the industrial wortd. Fishwick even goes as far as to suggest that by the inter-war period, soccer had corne to represent an indictrnent of work. As he puts it, "excitement, discussion and argument, ...fun and the fieedom to complain and to some extent behave as one Iiked: the presence of these qualities in football gained fiom their absence in most other areas of life".I9 In a sense, the soccer experience. particularly 'spectatorism' - as defined by the English working class of the Iate

Victorian period - could be described as a triumph of the 'irrational' and the 'emotional', in the face of an ever-increasing Cemand for a more controlled, rational lifestyle prescribed by the

English industrial order.

Finally, the cultural appropriation of soccer by the English working class can also be seen on the field of play as well, with the establishment and growth of the professional game from the mid-1880s onwards - largely at the expense of amateurism. To an extent, the arnatew- professional divide was clearly drawn along class lines, for underlying it was the issue of work.

A professional was someone who would play for money, and for the upper orders of English society, this very notion was initially viewed as despicable, for it went against the sportsmanship maxim of 'playing the game for the game's sake'. It was also believed that professionalism actively encouraged the reckless and undesirable attitude of 'winning at al1 costs'. As a June

1891 issue of The Field argues, "at football the paid man is simply one who is called upon to give us as good a display of his powers as he can, in order that the club which engages him may

make its matches as attractive as possible, and so draw ~ogetherlarge attendances. When he can't do this, he is replaced by others, hence the concentration on wi~ingby fair means or

f0u1".'~

It is interesting to note that soccer historians ofien portray the success of professional soccer in England in the late-nineteenth century as a triumph of working-class sensibilities in that the supposed association between professionaiism and the emphasis on winning dso coincides with the clearly partisan nature of the largely working-class soccer crowd. As a critic laments in

1913:

.. .A magnificently fought out game ending in a goalless draw will leave the crowd sullen and morose; they will wend their way frorn the ground with black looks, cursing the bad luck of the home side. An undeserved victory for their own team svili leave no regrets as to the result.. .. There is no sportsmanship in a football crowd.. .. Partisanship has dulled its idea of sport and warped its moral sense. It cannot enjoy a game that has ken won by the visiting team. A referee is good or bad (with adjectives), according to the manner in which his decisions affect the home side.. .. 2 1

On the flip side, contemporary proponents of the professional game were equally aware of the discriminatory nature of the amateur ethos in tems of class. Probably the most blatant of these was that of the Amateur Athletic Association, which in 1866 defined an amateur as, arnong other things, a person who ?vas not a mechanic, artisan or labo~rer".~' It could be argued that soccer also faced a similar attack from the elite, but by the 1880s, the general Ievel of resistance was greater as well, as supporters of the professional game were clearly more vocal in their protest against a ntling that seemed to discriminate against the lower orders, particularly in a financial sense. As the Sporting Life succinctly put it in 1884, "there can be no possible objection to the recognised payrnent of men who cannot afford to pay for amusement, and we cm see no reason why the principle which exists in almost every sport should be considered detrimental to footbal~".'~

With the official recognition of professionalism by the FA in 1885, and the establishment of soccer as a major spectator sport at around the same time, one is tempted to conclude that the

English working class had succeeded in breaching the class barrier. However, in labelling the success of the professional game as a working-class triumph in resisting middle-class sensibilities, one runs the traditional Marxist risk of historical reductionism. For one thing, contemporary cornmentaton of the lefi were often at a loss to define the soccer phenornenon.

While some, like the London soçialist weekly the Willesden Call, argued that "al1 socialists should take an interest in whatever interests the workers", others like the Daily Workr and the

Labour Leader subscnbed to the 'capitalism's dope' argument prior to the 1930s."

The class mode1 also implies a straightfonvard conflict between two socially homogenous sides, with each being held together by a unifjing ideology. In the case of the amateur-professional divide however, this very assumption is immediately challenged. It has to be remembered that professionalism not only entails the notion of the sportsman playing for money, but also the notion of someone paying the sportsman for his services. In other words, soccer's cultural 'capital' may seem to be owned by the English working class, but its subsequent development and establishment as an English sporting institution would not have been possible without the support of the more privileged elements of English soçiety.

From this, two interrelated questions cm be posed. First, why would the English middle class want to support, or continue to support, a game which had, for al1 intents and purposes become 'working-class' in its socio-culturai make-up? More intriguing however is the underlying meaning behind this support: might this be construed as a middle-class 'challenge' to

the middle-class ethos as well?

WHERE CLASS 'CONFLICTS'

Conventional argument in the field of social history would suggest an economically and

politically motivated rationale behind this so-called middlc-class support for soccer, such as the

search for publicity. prestige, or profit. In the first instance, providing basic faciiities for a young

soccer club could turn out to be a shrewd business investment. As the 8 December 1888 issue of

The Licemed Vistuallers ' Spo~smanpoints out, "Iucky is the hotel giving shelter to a visiting

team. It is besieged by those wishing to get a nearer glimpse of the favourites of the hour, the

consequence king that the house does a roaring ~ade".~'However, victory is rarely a sure thing

in sports, and soccer's promotional appeal cm hardly be described as a guarantee to attract

business. Moreover, one often overlooks the level of 'knowingness' on the part of the English

working class, particularly when politics are involved. For example, the public backing of the

Lrnionist incumbent candidate Colonel Calley by Swindon Town star forward Harold Fleming

did not Save Calley from defeat in the December 1910 election. According to the report fiom a

local paper. "'[Fleming] was told to stick at football', white others thought Calley's atteinpt to

exploit football patronising to the working cla~s".~~

In addition, existing evidence during this period also seems to suggest that as far as

moneymaking ventures go, soccer was not a lucrative investment. Dividends paid on club shares as limited liability companies were iimited to five percent since the late-nineteenth century. The

figure was raised to seven-and-a-half percent in 19 19 - hardly monstrous figures by any stretch of the imagination. In his analysis of club incomes during the first half of the twentieth century, Fishwick finds that more ofien than not, most smaI1-market clubs like Swindon Town were just concemed with staying afloat:

...Swindon depended much more on profits on the sale of players, with gates in 1 9 10 and 1948, for example, arnounting only to about 50 per cent of total income. Thus the smaller club was partly dependent on the wealth of other clubs, and could not rely on the finances of the supporters alone."

The seemingly inherent lack of profitability of soccer clubs was mercompounded by the introduction of the entertainments duty in 1916. Although introduced as a wartime measure, the duty soon became a fûrther drain on club coffers. At the worst of the Depression around 18 per cent of clubs' income was going on entertainment duty, and as much as 40 per cent irnmediately after 1945.'~ While there were some who were successfùl in making money out of soccer.

Mason agrees that these were few and far between, and that the real picture was not unlike the one painted by the Athietic News of 6 September 1909:

We look in vain in the financial papers for quotations in shares of football cornpanies.. .. No one who is out for a business return would look at football shares. Directors have to do al1 the work Freely. Not one club in fifiy has paid interest on shares, year in year out."

The relative weakness of the 'non-football' argument serves to demonstrate the danger of reductionism, for it assumes that the elite's reasons for getting involved has nothing to do with soccer. In addition, it also exposes the label of 'working class' as being a highly qualified one, and runs the risk of reducing the eiite's contribution as a subservient and unwilling participant at best, or an unwanted outsider looking in at worst. However, far from king unwilling or unwanted, the English elite not only continued their involvement in the game, but also actively contributed to a cultural ethos that was socially heterogeneous and inclusive in character. The oldfan may be working-class in chamcter, but the soccer fan culture of which he is a part is one that is 'cross-class'. REVISING THE STORYLiNE: SOCCER'S 'TWO SOLITUDES'

It can be said that this heterogeneity had always been present in the English game right

from the very origins of the first soccer clubs. The role of the public-school elite in defining and

developing the modem game has already been established, but it should also be noted that most

of the early clubs were formed via pre-existing institutions, such as churches, public houses and

the workplace. Of the four categories briefiy rnentioned here, only one - the public school and old boys' teams - can be said to be tmly upper class in composition. While this cm be attributed to working-class initiative, Mason argues that the creation of socially-mixed teams can also be partly the result of the desire of ex-public and grammar school or college-trained boys to enjoy the game and foster it in their own communities. While the myth may be more melodramatic, there is some truth to A. Gibson and W. Pickford's romantic 1906 description of how the game spread throughout the country:

A younger son. with his school career behind him, was dumped down in a distant county. and as winter came dong and he pined for the thrill of the beloved game, he would gather round him the village tenantry, the squire's boy, the blacksmith's 'prentice, and the schoolmaster, and in one of the Manor fields, there would be transplanted the old game under new condition^.^^ A similar critique cm be directed at Bailey's argument of a play discipline as a means of fostering positive work habits, in tenns of the British education system in the late-nineteenth cenhq. According to the Clarendon report on public schools in 1861, character training through sport was reserved for society's leaders, not the led. The same rationale was applied in the 1870

Education Act with regard to the voluntary elementary school system. Physical education for working-class children meant not games, but drill, which would provide industrial training for each new generation of the labour force and pararnilitary training for a potential citizens' army.3'

However, despite official pronouncements, graduates of teacher training colleges made a concerted effort to introduce team games, including soccer, into the elementary schoois during this period. Moreover, their actions also suggest no small cornmitment on the part of these

teachers, for organised games were still not actuaily tirnetabled. They were played outside

normal school hours and this brought extra work and ate into the leisure time of the masters who

were responsible for organisation and supervision.-'2

To an extent, it was enthusiasm for the game that allowed for the promotion of a more

socially-mixed atmosphere for soccer to thrive in. Moreover, it could aiso be argued that the

development of soccer in England over the first two decades or so of its existence can be

characterised by the presence of two kolitudes'. On the one hand, there was the decidedly elitist

public-school 'old boys' network, made up of clubs which could maintain the exclusivity of the

game by king selective in picking and choosing the opposition. Moreover, its exclusivity also ailowed the amateur ethos to flourish, as it could be sustained by those who were committed to

upholding its ideais. On the other hand, existing outside this intimate network were several other networks. made up of teams which tended to be more sociaily-mixed in its origins. Not surprisingly, in this environment. away from the public-school atmosphere, amateurism suffered, as these teams were less concemed about infringing the finer points of the sportsmanship ethos and more concerned with the results. This in turn led to the promotion of a highIy cornpetitive atmosphere as well as a more favourable attitude towards attracting quality players with monetary incentives or emphasising fully on the development, dedication and devotion to footballing skills by way of wages.

But as mentioned before, the advent of professionalism could not have materialised without the support of the more privileged elements of English society. On that note, another important thing to add with regard to the 'two solitudes' mode1 is that the dividing line was not drawn along notions of class aione. On the one hand was a cultural ethos in organised soccer that was given to closed social ranks and clear-çut class divisions. By the inter-war period, the

public school ethos, as exemplified by the stubborn zeal to keep amateurism alive, was no longer

a dominant influence in English soccer, but in its place was a cultural ethos which could scarcely

be descnbed as working-class, at least in a strictly proletarian sense. If anything, its ideology is

'populist' in that the theme of resistance is still prevalent within the context of cross-class

sentiments.

in a sense, the institutionalisation of the professional game and the supposed cultural

transformation of soccer into a 'working-class' sport did challenge the sporting ethos of the

capitalist industrial order of nineteenth-century Britain. But while the latter was a product of

conflicting class interests and irreconcilable di fferences which can ody be resolved through

some form of control - overt or otherwise - its soccer 'anti-thesis' was not borne out of a similar

'progressive' awareness that working-class interests can only be truly achieved by antagonistic

means. It was a challenge which did not seek to overthrow the English elite's administrative control over the association game, nor was it a challenge that was made up exclusively by the so- calIed lower orders. The socio-cultural focus of its participants was not tmed towards higher moral ideals like sportsmanship or amateurism, of Empire and the greater stmggle, or of bourgeois ambitions like profit-making. Instead, the focus seemed to turn inward towards a more localised direction, where the concerns that mattered most are looking out for the team, cheering it on, celebrating its successes and commiserating its defeats. iT anything, the alternative socio-cultural ethos which was established within the context of the English soccer

'cornmunity' was one which reflected the values, beliefs and attitudes of an older tirne, of an

England thought to be long gone, or at least, one that was believed to be fast going. It has its own rulers, its subjects and its heroes, and each has his own part to play. The English 'soccer order' was one which cut across class boundaries, and in its place was an identification with a

sense of localism that bordered on the parochial.

How did this order manifest itself in tems of English soccer fandom? To what extent

was class a factor? What about aspects such as camaraderie and conciliation? While a thorough

analysis of the cultural mores and maxims of English soccer fandom may be beyond the scope of

this thesis, the remainder of this chapter wilt attempt to provide a critical comrnentary on two

key concepts - that of sociai identity and social roles.

SOCIAL IDENTITIES: THE 'LOCAL' AND THE 'NATION'

England as a footballing nation can be seen as king made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of soccer communities. Each soccer comrnunity revolves around the soccer club, and supportership of the club is ordered by an unwritten 'code' of ethics, roles and niles that is very much reminiscent of an England governed by age-old customs and traditions. It represents a celebration of local identity in that 'localism' is the major social unit by which other socio- cuItural relations are understood. Added to this is the emphasis of 'localism' over the 'nation', although it could be argued that soccer played a large role in the way 'greater England' was understood by the majority of Englishmen in the late-nineteenth century. Together with music hall, and sometirnes war. it was the League and Cup competitions which exposed the English lower orders to a greater awareness of an England beyond their immediate surroundings.

Furthemore, the institution of the Saturday half-day in the 1870s and improved transportation both in tems of cost and efficiency allowed for the opportunity to explore and experience this greater England for themselves. As fat as the Iate nineteenth and early twentieth century were concerned, however, travelling was limited, according to Richard Hoggart. to the "'chara' trips, footbail excursions and perhaps an annual holiday, and occasional train trips to the fimeral or wedding of some member of a branch of the family forty or fifiy miles awayW." If one were reaily lucky, the big

FA Cup Final excursion to London could also be in the offering. It seems that for most English soccer fans during this period, the concept of 'nation' was not necessarily that of a larger unified entity. Rather. it represented stature and pre-eminence for the ilocal' to aspire to. But pride of place aside, it could be argued that for many who still saw themselves as part of the local cornmunity, the -nation' could be seen as part of an 'outside' world that was increasingly getting larger and more complex, even a little threatening. This can be likened to Hoggart's analogy of having to deal with the worlds of 'Us' and 'Them'. In reminiscing about his working-cfass childhood in early twentieth-century Leeds, he argues that

Everyone is expected to have to have a double eye, one for his duties as an individual person, and another for those as a citizen in a democracy. Most of us, even the more-or-less intellectual, find it dificult to relate these worlds to each other. Working-class people, with their mots so strongly in the homely and persona1 and local, and with little training in more general thinking, are even less likely to be able to bring the two worlds into focus. They are, if they think of it, il1 at ease; this second and complex world cannot easily be dramatized, is too vast, too much 'beyond' them.3J

Given the tremendous changes that have taken place in England over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century in terms of the scope and perception of social identity, it could even be argued that the soccer club was in many respects one of the last bastions of 'localism' and its values that one could still embrace in the face of an ever-changing and increasingly impersonal society. Having said that, the essential values and beliefs celebrated as part of 'localism' cannot be seen as exclusively 'working-class' in character. In fact, both the working class and the upper orders, in their own unique way, contributed to the overail socio-cultural definition of what it means to be a soccer supporter. Although their perception of the game's social and cultural significance and their role as supporters differ quite substantiaily, both elements are integral in the ordering of the English soccer community.

SUPPORTING ROLES: THE LOWER ORDERS

For the lower orders who make up the majority of the players and the rnajority of the fans, the debate over the significance of soccer in their lives has been extensive to say the least, and shows no signs of abating. Scholars and commentators alike continue to ponder why soccer cm appeal to the masses as widely and as intensely as it does. At one level, Holt argues that the game reflected the sense of local identity of the Victorian English urban pro~etariat.'~Taylor. for his part, argues that soccer's appeal cm also be partly attributed to the fact that the qdities inherent in the game were also part and parcel of the working man's e~istence.'~

At another level, it cm also be argued that soccer became part of the modem English working-class notion of 'salvation' in a way that perhaps religion and education never was. The

'rags-to-riches' story can certainly be ascertained fiom studies of wage comparisons, as the working-class man could, and still cm, earn more money as a professional footbdler than he could in any other 'typical' working-class occupation.37 For most working-class boys growing up, however, it also seems that notions of 'adulation' and -acceptance' played a big part in the soccer fantasy. Their importance are clearly hinted at in 'football' poetry; in Jeff Cloves's

"wonder boy". these themes feature especially prominently": .. . and so the heroes of Wednesday Albion & Hotspur beamed their psychic messages across the years to the child of the forties who dreamed not only of Stella Coxon who shared his pitchpine desk at school but of Dixie Dean and Alex James played every night at Wembley received the cup from the King and was borne shoulder hi& round the ground to the sound of bras bands and cheering crowds3'

These notions also extended to the real world as well, for the soccer fantasy of the working-class boy was one that was shared by others like him. As such, soccer did not just provide an imagined social and community acceptance, but a very real sense of belonging, as David

Trembath's "When Wembley was a Drearn" indicates:

It was the surest way out of solitude You just walked into a lane, kicked a ball, The thumping rebound from foot to hedgerow Carried a message certain as radio waves. Mat began as a lonely dream of sco~gthe last goal In the last second to win at some distant Wembley. Becarne a running pattern of ski~y,scuffling boys. The swerve. trap, tackle, the shot, Ieap, goal, Was our best, most honest mimicry of the greats Who stared out from cigarette and chewing gum ~ards.~~

The relationship of English working-class men to soccer, however, is epitomised by their role as loyal fans of their respective clubs. Interestingly enough, this role of the lower-class soccer supporter is one which can be characterised by 'sacrifice' and 'suffering' - two themes which seem to resonate particularly strongly when it cornes to defining the English proletarian existence. For the working-class fan of the Victorian, Edwardian and even the inter-war period, going to a soccer match was not just an appealing leisure option. Rather, it involved the time- honoured ritual of paying between sixpence to a shilling to stand on the uncovered terraces for a couple of hours and brave the forces of Nature, be it min, sleet or snow. This physical cornmitment was Meraccompanied by an emotional one, and is best exemplified by the level

of vocal participation fiom the crowd. The shilling supporter was expected by his peers to

exhort his team to victory, and subject the opposition to a relentless barracking as best he

possibly could.

In a sense. the themes of 'suffering' and 'sacrifice' defines the moral worth of the soccer

fan's loyalty to the club. At the same time, both also represent the culturai standard by which he judges other soccer €m.particularly those who belong to a visibly higher social standing. More often than not, these become a point for derision. For example, the very act of sitting down on a sheltered stand could be interpreted as a lack of 'heroism' on the part of the more privileged offender. Similarly, a lack of vocal participation - or worse, a claim of neutrality - implies a

lack of cornmitment to the club.

These attitudes were clearly evident when it cornes to stereotyping the female supporter as being upper-class ignoramuses who "'snuggled into their furs' in the stands ...while the

-shilling supporters' shivered, and their expensive hats ruined the view of the men sitting behind them"."' In a particularly lively exchange between a Sheffield Wednesday supporier and two fernale fans of Sheffield United. the former writes that "anyone can travel to away matches when they have the necessary means. A11 praise to the man who pays his humble *bob"'.'" Clearly, the Wednesdayite was talking about 'sacrifice', and that somehow, the wry act of giving up that hard-earned 'bobo for the team is as e~oblinga gesture that any loyal soccer fan couid make.

The point was certainly not lost on the two United fans, who replied in defence against the accusation by saying that they too were 'shilling supporters' as well. SUPPORTiNG ROLES: THE ELITE

This does not mean an outright rejection on the part of the lower orders of the English dite's place in the English sxcer community. Far from king outsiders looking in, the upper and middle classes truly believed that there was indeed a place for them. Not surprisingly,

'patronage' and 'paternalism' seem to be common themes, especially with regard to the establishment of the professional game as a major English sporting institution. Newton Heath, for instance. originally a railway works tearn, was rescued fiom bankruptcy by a local publican- tumed-brewer in 1902, after which the team was subsequently renamed Manchester United. In addition, Mason's brief description of the origins of Woolwich Arsenal - his example of a tmly

'working-class' team that was forced to turn to local business and professional men to secure fiscal solvency - further serves to illustrate the dificulty of surviving without the necessary financial ba~k-u~.~~

This chapter has already mentioned that the argument of the motives behind the involvement of prïvileged elements king largely self-serving is highly dubious. While this may have been primarily because of the very lack of profitability in the soccer business, one can also argue that this was because the profit motive was deliberately muted. It was the FA which set the limit on dividend earnings from club shares to five percent right through to the end of World

War One. Moreover, soccer clubs were in Peter Sloane's words, 'utility maximisers' rather than

'profit-maximisers', in the sense that when money could be made, the revenues were channelled back into the club for purposes such as strengthening the tearn and the club's facilities, not into the directors' and shareholders' pockets!3

Underlying this was the implicit notion that soccer should not be treated as a business - the club was not to be run for 'commercial' reasons. In a very real sense, it could be argued that the insistence on the absence of the entrepreneurid 'capitalist' element in soccer was part of the sportsmanship ethos so heartily encouraged by the public-school elite. However. this particular aspect was one which was echoed by the English lower orders, as the disapprovd of cornmercialism could also be attributed to the latter's own conviction that a sense of justice and

'fair play' within the 'soccer order' in England has to be rnaintained by the elite. This is not

Bailey's definition of 'fair play' which stresses the establishing of order through unquestioning respect for auth~rit~,~but rather 'fair play' of an older time - one that attempts to establish order by adhering to the expected obligations that accompanies one's station in life.

In early modem England. this notion can clearly be seen in two instances. The first was of course the so-called 'food riots', involving the "seizure or detention of fimd by a crowd.

However, these riots took place not because the protesters wanted to overthrow the social order, but because they merely wished to "assert certain basic rights to which they believed al1 men were entitled, above al1 the right to subsistence - enough to eat and drink at reasonable prices''.45

Essentially, the food nots were a reminder of the social need to maintain traditional moral values in economic relationships, radier than a challenge to the established social hierarchy. Another example of these values coming into play was the English elite's general attitude towards

'enclosures' and 'engrossing' during the early modem period. Although Smith argues that both these actions were not detrimental to the economic well-king of the nation, it was widely believed that these actions, like the 'unjust' raising of food prices, constituted a breach in terms of social 'faimess', for it demonstrated the rapacity of landlords who attempted to take advantage of the lower orden. If social order was to be maintained, the govemments of early modem

England had to control not only the discontent of the lower orders, but also the greed of the upper classes as we11.'~ A similar sensibiiity can be said to exist in the socccr order of late Victorian and

Edwardian England with regard to the common stand against the commercidisation of soccer.

This can also be seen in the attitudes of the late-Victorian soccer authorities towards

'professionalism'. Even with its forma1 recognition in 1885, prominent administrative elements

of the game were already aware of the threat that it posed - particularly the prospect of big-town

domination. As Mason puts it:

.. .in such a situation, the larger, weaithier clubs, by paying the most money, would secure the best players and the smailer clubs, with relatively meagre financial resources. would have to do the best they could. Many would not survive in the best c~rn~an~.~'

In an age when monopoly capitalism was hardly a major concem for govemments of the day,

soccer's 'ruling' classes took the lead in ensuring that 'fair play' could be maintained to a certain

extent. This can be seen in the institution of two measures which would characterise English

soccer for the next six decades or so - the retain and transfer system, and maximum wage. The

former. worked out over the course of the late 1880s and early 1890s, was based on the notion

that a footballer's services could be secured by a club for the course of a season, afier which he could be retained or transferred. Maximum wage set a limit on how much a footballer could

earn. It came into effect in the 190 1-1902 season, with the limit set at £4 per week.

Not surprisingly, both measures were heavily criticised both by the larger clubs and especially by the players, whose fieedom of movement and eaming capacity were severely curtailed. As a result, both the retain and transfer system and maximum wage have ofien been held up as prime examples of capitalism at its most draconian. It should also be remembered, however, that given the lack of profitability in the soccer business, money was hardly the key issue at hand. If anything, League and FA officiais insisted that it was the lack of money that prompted the need to enforce these measures. With the imposition of maximum wage, the prospect of higher earnings could no longer be used as an incentive by larger clubs to lue skil1ed

players away from smaller ones. Although by Fishwick's estimate, clubs like Swindon still had

to depend on the sale of players to generate much of their revenue, maximum wage did lessen the

burden and levelled the playing field somewhat. The sarne thing could be said of the transfer

system. Without such a barrier, promising players reared by small clubs would be whisked away without any form of compensation. As the Athletic News argued in 29 May 1899, "[to] argue that a rich club shouid be able to go into the market and buy up as many men as it might like, without regard to the poor and struggling organisations, is to set up a creed which would won bring disaster among its ap~stles".~~

Ultimately, with al1 the seemingly contradictory arguments regarding the conventional attitudes and assumptions of and about the English elite, and the supposedly more cornmunity- centred role within the soccer order, one again returns to the question of underlying motives: could the Victorian and Edwardian middle class actually be dnven by a sense of social belonging? While their emotional bond and sense of pride with the local club hardly leaps out of the history books as vividly as the image of the 'clotb cap' working men flocking en masse to the soccer ground, it is important to note that the English elite did believe they could belong - and in some instances. they could prove that they did.

Swindon Town's Harold Fleming is a good case in point. According to a local newspaper, he was the son of a clergyman, and was apparently destined for the Church had it not been for il1 health. In addition, he was a religious man who never played on Christmas Day or

Good Friday, was also teetotal and had had much morz formal education than most of his

Swindon teammates. However, despite his supposedly higher social status, his soccer exploits allowed Fleming to become a local hero who represented the local cornmunity against al1 corners, and was part of a local, largely working-class soccer subculture. The high esteem by

which he is regarded is probably best exemplified by the revealing inscription on a small

statuette made by a local sculptor which stands inside the main entrance of the club: "To the

inspiring memory of Harold Fleming, the great footbailer and gentleman, who played for

Swindon Town between 1907-1924, and was capped 9 times for ~n~land".~~

Another example of the English elite's ability and desire to belong in the local soccer

comrnunity can be illustrated by the so-cdled Chapman 'revolution' in the 1930s. Prior to

'Chapmanism', team management could be divided into two areas. Team tactics, if discussed at

all. were the business of the trainer and the senior players, while the club directors were

responsible for tearn selection. As Fishwick notes, "some directors sometimes went to see

[promising young] players for themselves before deciding whether to offer one a contra~t".~~

However, Herbert Chapman's tenure with Arsenal saw the role of the trainer king expanded to

include team selection. Understandabiy. this was met with bitter opposition, but the 'revolution' soon became the nom with the likes of Wolves' Frank Buckley. Manchester United's Matt

Busby, and Liverpool's Bill Shankly following Chapman's lead. Although Chapmanism arguably signalled the begiming of the end of the directors' 'direct' control over the way the soccer team was managed, it also signalled the end to the intimacy between the two. While the primarily working-class soccer fans could indulge in the role of 'amateur strategists' or 'shadow footballers' over a pint, the more fortunate sections of the soccer comrnunity actually had the opportunity to participate. While it could be said that "a considerable quality of a tearn's affairs was determined by men ...who had no specialised knowledge of the garne",5' many directors were like thousands of others in loving football and the local team in particular, and they made the most of their advantages in time, money, co~ectio~and sometimes professional skills to become directly involved.*' Prestige could prove a potentially lucrative retum, but it should also be remembered that it was one that was accorded by the local cornrnunity at large. More importantly, it denotes a sense of 'expectation' of the part of the 'shilling supporters' of the elite's 'obligation' to fblfill the role of the 'patron'. And as Harold Fleming and Colonel Calley found out, this particular 'prestige' was not to be taken for granted.

SOCIAL ROLES: EDWARDIAN SOCCER FICTIONAL LITERATllRE

Although the more class-orientated social historians are generally cautious in presenting the elite members of the local soçcer community and their attitudes towards their roles as soccer fans in a favourable Iight, this certainly did not stop the English elite from indulging in their belief that they could and did belong. One interesting source of information and insight into the middle class and their relationship with the game is fictional literature - namely the short stories and novelettes that were produced for the juvenile market at the tum of the twentieth century.

Although very little is known about the authors who wrote them. a reasonable guess would be that they were primarily from the middle class. Moreover. one could also argue that their readers hi p was also essentiall y middle-class. For exarnple, the 'Foot bal1 Stones' series, produced by Aldine Publishing Company during the inter-war period, sold at threepence - out of range. perhaps, for the lower end of the English social order, but certainly within reach of the middle or even 'respectable' working-class families. As a document for historical analysis, it must be admitted that little has been done in the way of utilising soccer fictional literature, and while its literary merits might be questionable, a brief examination of a couple of choice samples fiom surviving texts should prove sufficient in casting a provocative light on how the English elite thought of themselves as soccer fans. Not surprisingly, much of the conventional arguments about the rniddle class are clearly evident in these stories. For exarnple, prevailing middle-class prejudices regarding the amateur- professional divide can be seen. In Jack Wylde's "The Traitor of the Tearn" (19231, the hero,

Jim Meredith, is a righteous, honourable amateur, while the principal villain, Lionel Snaith, is a professional footballer who is given to corruption and match-fixing. Sportsmanship was another quality that was constantly applauded. A tense and exciting cup-tie between the novelette's home team, Rothborough Rangen, and Wallington Spurs was met with the following resjmnse:

Nothing but a goahgood, solid goal-to declare for one side or the other could relieve the tense feeling of anxiety that the vast crowd felt. "Give us a goal, one side or the other, and we'll be happy." they said in effect. "Go on, but not a draw at any price!"s3

Conversely, partisanship was fiowned upon. Remarks such as the following description of

Rothborough's match against the feared and hated Bainley Ramblers are not uncornmon in

Edwardian soccer fictional literature:

A less partisan crowd than that supplied by the town of Bainley would have applauded the wonderfûl defensive work of their rivais; but, fiuious at the way in which their fomrards were re atedly made fools of, the crowd yelled execrations rather than legitimate praise. k

While these aspects could be considered as ciass-opinionated fantasies, it should also be pointed out that ming parallei to this were storylines which suggest a mood of deference in that the

English elite, through soccer fiction, were trying to convince the rest of the soccer community that they could fit in. Nowhere is this more evident than in Herbert G. de Hamel's "The Greater

Game" (1908), where the fallen figure of John Purviss, a public-school-educated private, attempts to earn the respect of his fellow soldiers and superiors - who al1 seem to be fiom the lower classes, given the conspicuous absence of 'haitches' in their dialogue lines - through his on-field performance during a regimental garne. In the end, he succeeds and is irnmediately transfonned as a result. No longer is he 'Mister' Puviss; instead, he has now becorne 'Good Old Purviss. While the former denotes a derogatory acknowledgement of the class barrier and the distinction between 'us' and 'them', the latter marks Purviss's acceptance. This is punctuated by the sudden news of his inheritance, afier which one of the less gracious memben of the Regimentai team expects him to leave immediately. Despite his elevation of statu,

Purviss remains for the season - thus demonstrating that his acceptance on the field is matched by his off-field commitment to honour it?

The soccer fiction of the Edwardian and inter-war period also seems to suggest that at times, the elite even took the lead when it came to off-field fan cornmitments to the club. In

"The Traitor of the Team", Rothborough Rangers faced the threat of bankruptcy when a businessman, for very shady reasons, decides to recall his loans to the club. In an attempt to stave off dissolution, the club sets up a town hall meeting in order to appeal to the local community for help. What makes this scenario particulariy interesting is the fact that the meeting was also a confrontation of sorts, as the club literally gave the locals a very public dressing down. Through the voice of John Giennister, the tearn manager, the author ais0 assigns part of the blame to the local community itself:

'The town is arnply big enough to support a first-rate professional footer team, and yet ...Rothborough has allowed its club to get into dificulty and debt which would never have occurred had it attended, in anything like sufficient nurnbers, the really first-rate matches which have taken place upon the home ground any time the last eighteen months...... the tmth is that you people of Rothborough Town have not been fair to Rothborough Club for the last year or more, and why?

Heaven alone knows!. .* Many a town possessing ow splendid eleven would be able to provide 'gates7 at every home match of over thirty thousand people."56

Even more interesting is the piea made by Joyce Compton, the daughter of a prominent local financier, an ardent Rothborough fan, and the tearn captain's fiance. During the town hall meeting, she delivers to the audience a rather stem lecture on local community responsibility:

"Never again must this be a one-man affair, for that is not good for any club...... the club does not want that sort of thing any more. It wants to be recognised and supported by the tom itself--to win its way legitirnately, fairly, squarely. And it's your fadt..., men of Rothborough, that the club has fdlen into financial dificulties at alI; and it is 'up' to you-to us-to remedy the evil; to see the dear old club we al1 love so well placed firmly on its feet again.""

Given the bnef background description, Joyce Compton might probably be considered as the

most contemptible cliché that could ever be passed off as a soccer fan. This makes the

sentiments she echoes even more startling. From the most unlikeliest of fans, one is given an

impression that rarely cornes across from the more conventional historical sources - a social and

emotional comection and understanding between the English elite and the local community.

While Holt may be right in suggesting that other social identities like school, profession, and the

state may rnatter more to the upper and middle classes by the late-nineteenth cent~ry,'~this does

not mean that they were completely removed from more traditional ideas and assumptions about

English society - at least, within the context of cornpetitive soccer.

CONCLUSION

Supportership of club soccer in England implies a traditional commitment to the 'local',

the immediate comrnunity and does not necessarily care much for larger social concepts such as

the 'nation'. At the heart of it dl is local pride more than anything else. For the average fan, this

pride is demonstrated through loyalty, suffering and sacrifice in relation to not only one's own association with one club, but dso one's own well-being.

While the latter is a predicament which the more privileged elements of English society rnay have dificulty in relating to, particularly in a financial sense, the elite also had their own part to play in their traditional role as patrons. As Patrick Joyce puts it, moralised wealth was acceptable. but taking advantage of the game, the club, and the people who supported it for financial gain were not. This was partly the reason why cornmercialism and a more business-like approach to club administration were ofien frowned upon. While the elite and the lower orders may differ on issues such as 'sportsmanship' and 'amateurism', they also fond common ground on issues such as maintaining 'fair play' in the game.and giving the 'local' the opportunity to shine in the face of larger market-forces. Nowhere is this more evident than in the FA Cup, which in a compelling way exudes an 'egalitarian' quality about it. At one level, both -master' and 'servant' could stand shoulder to shoulder in support of their local team, but at another level. even the lowliest club, in theory, had the opportunity to win the trophy to the acdaim of a nation- wide audience. This aura is further cultivated by the fact that the wimer has not necessarily been the best club in the land: between 1 889 and 1950, the -Double' was ody achieved twice. Even the 'have-nots' could indulge in the belief of the impossible, and it is a belief that finds renewal at the beginning of each new soccer season.

These are the beliefs and values that epitomise the oldfan, and these are the sarne values which the self-proclaimed rruefan of the present day claims to hold dear. The next two chapters will turn to the question of how these attitudes are reaffirmed over successive generations, and how they are understood by club supporters throughout England. One key aspect to their survival has been the role of oral tradition, namely the terrace songs and chants. NOTES

See p.3, below.

Tony Mason, Association Football and Enalish Societv. 1 863- 19 1 5, (Sussex: Harvester Press; New Jersey: Humanities Press, l98O), p. t 4.

-7Ibid p.13.

Quoted by J.A. Mangan, "Social Darwinisrn and upper-class education in late Victorian and Edwardian England", in Manliness and Morality: Middle-class rnasculinitv in Britain and America 1 800- 1940, eds., J.A. Mangan and James Walvin, (Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1987). pp. 146- 147.

Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian Enaland: Rational recreation and the contest for control. 1830- 1885, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 133.

Mason, Association Football and Enalish Society ( 1980). p.223.

See Ian R. Taylor, "Soccer Consciousness and Soccer Hooliganism," Imanes of Deviance, ed., Stanley Cohen, (Harmondsworth [England], Baltimore and Victoria [Austral ia]: Penguin Books, 197 1).

Mason, Association Football and Enalish Society ( 1 980), p. 1 53.

See chapter 1 of Nicholas Fishwick, English Football and Societv. 19 10- 1950, (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989); and Jack Williams, "Churches, Sport and Identities in the North, 1900-1939". Sport and Identitv in the North of Enpland,- eds., Jeff HiII and Jack Williams, (Keele: Keele University Press, 1 996).

Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian Ennland, p. 137.

Cited in Mason, Association Football and Enalish Societv (l980), p.225.

Quoted in Mason, Association Football and En~lishSocietv (l980), p. 176.

Mason, Association Football and English Societv (1980). p.28.

Fishwick, English Football and Society, p. 13.

Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian Enaland, p.S.

-9lbid p.138.

Williams, "Churches, Sport and ldentities in the North" ( 1996), p. 195.

Quoted in Fishwick, Ennlish Football and Societv, p.59.

Fishwick, Enalish Football and Societv, p.66.

Quoted in Mason, Association Football and Ennlish Society (1980). p.73. -9lbid p.23 1.

Cited in M.A. Speak, "Social Stratification and Participation in Sport in Mid-Victorian England with Particular Reference to Lancaster, 1 %40-70", Pleasure. Profit. Proselvtism: British culture and swrt at home and abroad, ed., J.A. Mangan, (London and New Jersey: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1 988), p.50.

Quoted in Mason, Association Football and Ennlish Soçietv (1980), p.73.

Cited in Mason, Association Football and Enalish Society (l980), p.237.

Quoted in Mason, Association Football and Enalish Society ( 1980). p. 1 75.

Quoted in Fishwick, Enalish Football and Society, pp. 136-1 37.

Fishwick, English Football and Societv, p.40.

Quoted in Mason, Association Football and Enelish Society ( f 98O), pp.47-48.

Bailey, Leisure and C lass in Victorian Enaland, p. 130.

Mason, Association Football and Ennlish Societv (l980), p.84.

Richard Hoggart. The Uses of Literacv, (London: Penguin, 1957), p.62.

-9Ibid pp.76-77.

See R. J. Holt, "Football and the Urban Way of Life in Nineteenth-Century Britain", Pleasure, Profit. Proselvtism: British culture and smrt at home and abroad, ed., .I.A. Mangan, (London and New Jersey: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1988).

See Taylor, "Soccer Consciousness and Soccer Hooliganism" ( 197 1 ).

See chapter 4 of Mason, Association Football and English Society ( 1980).

Jeff Cloves, "wonder boy", Here We Go: a metw celebration of soccer, (Blackburn: BB Books, l986), p. 1 O.

David Trembath, "When Wembley was a Dream", Verses United: the poetry of football, ed., lan Hom, (County Durham: County Durham Books, 1993), p.56.

Cited in Fishwick, Ennlish Football and Society, pp.57-58.

--ylbid p.58.

Mason, Association Football and Ennlish Societv (l980), pp.34-35. Cited in Fishwick, Enalish Football and Societv, p.42.

Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian Ennland, p. 127.

Alan G.R. Smith, The Emernence of a Nation State: The commonwealth of Enaland, 1 529- 1660, (London and New York: Longman, l984), p. 191.

Mason, Association Football and Ennlish Societv (l980), p.72.

See Tony Mason, "Our Stephen and Our Harold, The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 13, no. 1 (March 1 W6), (London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd. 1996).

Fishwick, Enalish Football and Society, pp.35-36.

--'Ibid p.36. lbid p.32.

Jack Wylde, '-The Traitor of the Team". Aldine Football Stories, (London: The Aldine Pubtishing Co. Ltd., 1923), p.60.

--yIbid p.47.

H.G. de Hamel, "The Greater Game", Twentv-Five Football Stories, (London: George Newnes Limited, 1908), p.37.

Wylde. "The Traitor of the Team", pp.3 1-32.

Holt, "Football and the Urban Way of Life in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (1 988), p.77. CHAPTER THREE LOYALTY, LOCAL IDENTITY, AND ENCLISH FOOTBALL FANDOM: AN ANALYSIS OF 'TERRACE' SONGS AND CHANTS

...the very foundations of the big grounds would be shaken and rocked by the sound of the songs. Belted out in unison, with admirable disregard for social tact or melodic quality, these songs gave ordinary supporters the opportunity to air their most passionate and absurd concems.. .. There were songs about everything and songs about nothing. Adria. Thrills, You Te no! Singing Anymore

As far as the popular imagination is concerned, soccer in England since the Second World War

has been complemented by two memorable images: the somewhat unflattering one of violence

and vandalism which continues to dog the English soccer community, and the 'wall' of sound

that reverberates around the league grounds of England every weekend. For the self-proçlaimed

rruefun, it is this wall of sound - the terrace songs and chants - which makes the English match-

day experience a unique and memorable one.' As former club and international manager

Tommy Docherty puts it, "there was a time when you would enjoy a football match just for the

crowd.. .. You might have been watching the most boring garne of al1 time. but you would get a

charge just frorn listening to the supporters chant and sing".'

Although active vocal participation from the crowd has been a part of the EngIish garne

since the beginning. the history of terrace songs in its present-day form has been comparatively recent. It is, however, a history which has its origin both in the near present as well as the more distant pst. On the one hand, its emergence in the early 1960s could be attnbuted to the coming of age of the post-war 'baby-boomers'. This ran parallel with the rise of the home-grown

'Merseybeat' in the British popular music scene, which provided the new generation with not only a distinct and unique voice. but also a new-found self-confidence to use it.

It could also argued that the terrace songs owe their existence partly to an older tradition.

As Adrian Thrills discovers, it is in the pubs before and afier matches that many of the most mernorable songs fust appear, often doing the rounds for months and even years before finally making it into football grounds. In commenting on the Merseyside scene - generally acknowledged as the birthplace of terrace singing - former 'indie' band singer Peter Hooton remarks. "There are lots of Liverpool songs that are only ever really Sung in pubs.. .. Many of the chants don't even make it into the stadiurn. But most of them that do start in the pubs".3

The 'history' of the utilisation of terrace songs in the production of football 'scholarship' over the past thirty years or so, however, has been less than inspiring. If the last Iine in the excerpt quoted above is any indication, perhaps the absence of any in-depth analysis is understandable. From afar. the songs and their contents are as tedious as they are trivial, as much of the repertoire seems to consist of nothing more than an endless array of praises and abuses, berefi of any deep insight. Whatever the real reasons are, it seems that the terrace songs, as a source of information. tend to corne across more as obstacles rather than useful soçio- historical evidence for football scholars, but to continue ignoring them would mean to continue denying a very important voice from being heard - that of a living oral tradition of English soccer culture. For one thing. the terrace songs, and the culture that spawned them, are not just isolated and removed from the world beyond the soccer ground. On the contrary. they can even be seen as part of a natural extension of an even older social tradition - the pub gathering. While quite a few of the songs could be dismissed as pure nonsense from a critically evaluative standpoint: many others are crucial pieces to a puzzle which promises to offer a unique perspective on how soccer fandom is perceived from within, for it is in Song that the values, beliefs and attitudes inherent in the serious business of cheerleading English soccer clubs are ritualised and subsequently reafirmed over successive generations through the simple act of memorising and singing in 'timely' manner. The following pages will attempt to Merdevelop some of the themes discussed in chapter two with regard to the truefan and his perception of what supportership entails.

Particular attention will be given to the notions of loyalty and locality - how are these articulated within the context of the terrace songs? To what extent do class sensibilities influence the way in which these attitudes are expressed in song? The functional significance of the terrace songs themselves as part of the soccer communities in England will also be examined. particularly in relation to songs of the 'ruder' variety. How do the 'fight' songs fit in within the larger experience of soccer fandom?

LOYALTY: THE CLUB AND ITS SUPPORTERS

In the case of soccer fandom in England, the terrace songs essentially ded with the business of supporting one's soccer club, and as far as the self-proclaimed truefan is concemed, supportership is reducible to one operative word: loyalty. This is immediately apparent fiom songs like 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. the terrace anthem of Liverpool Football Club:

As you walk through the storm, hold your head up high, And don't be afraid of the dark, At the end of the stonn is a golden sky, And the sweet silver Song of the lark.

Walk on through the wind, walk on through the min, Though your dreams be tossed and blown. Walk on, walk on. with hope in your hearts. And you'il never waik alone, You'll never walk alone.*

'You'll Never Walk Alone' evokes the image of a joumey through adversity, with the faliering protagonist being urged on by the sympathetic narrator to 'walk on, with hope in your hearts'.

During the course of a match, the scenacio as described by the lyrics literally bursts into life. By singing the song, it is the fans who assume their role of the narrator, who then proceeds to deliver his message en masse to the protagonists of the day - the players of the club that he supports.

What makes this message particularly intriguing is that the image of the 'journey through adversity' is not an uncornmon one among other terrace anthems. For instance, Birmingham

City's 'The End of the Road' eedy echoes the sentiments of 'You'll Never Waik Alone':

Ev'ry road thro' life is a long, long road fill'd with joys and sorrows too, As you journey on how your heart will yeam for the things most dear to you. With wealth and love 'tis so but onward we must go -

With a big stout heart to a long steep hill, we may get there with a smile, With a good kind thought and an end in view, we may cut short many a mile. So let courage ev'ry day be your guiding star alway -

Keep right on to the end of the road, keep right on to the end. Tho' the way be long, let your heart be strong, keep right on round the bend. Tho' you're tired and weary stili journey on, till you come to your happy abode, Where ail you love and you're dreaming of will be there at the end of the road!

Given the fact that both 'You'll Never Walk Alone' and 'The End of the Road' were originally written as songs of comfort within the context of tragedy and grief, the similarities between the two should not be ail that siuprising. What is interesting is why the fans of Liverpool and

Birmingham City chose this particular theme to highlight their own plight as soccer supporters.

However. at its lowest common denominator, the comection is made clear: the essentiat messages in 'You'll Never Walk Alone' and 'The End of the Road' are effectively reducible to simple catch-phrases like 'walk on' and 'keep right on'. and it is these catch-phrases which become the cornerstones of both songs as terrace anthems. What may have originally started out as an age-old maxim that 'life must go on' is transformed bp the fans into a loyalty cry for the club and its players to persevere in the face of its own struggle to 'surviveg the rigours of cornpetitive league soccer.

The insistence on perseverance, however, is not just applicable to team performances.

From the final refiain in 'You'll Never Walk Alone', it is also evident that the notion of loyalty also extends to soccer supporters in tenns of the relationship between themselves and the clubs

they support. This relationship is another popular theme in terrace songs, though this often

comes across rather bluntly, as the following number fiorn Manchester United fans suggests:

We'll never die, we'll never die, we'll never die, we'll never die, We'll keep the red flag flying high, 'cos Man United will never die.

Division One can kiss my arse; we're in Division Two at 1st; We don't mind and we don't care; we'll keep the red flag flying there.

*.. So when you're down and feeling blue because we're in Division Two; Don't you fret and don't you cry; we'll keep the red flag flying high. 7

On a more subtle note, though no less compelling, is the inter-war favourïte Tm Forever

Blowing Bubbles'. which has served as the terrace anthem of the West Ham United faithhl since

the 1920s:

1' m dreaming dreams, 1' m scheming schemes, I'm building castles high, They're bom anew. their days are few, just like a sweet butterfly. And as the daylight is dawning, they corne again in the moming.

When shadows creep when I'rn asleep, to lands of hope 1 stray, Then at daybreak when 1 awake, my bluebird flutters away, Happiness, you seem so near me; Happiness, corne forth and cheer me.

I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbfes in the air, They fly so high, nearly reach the sky, then like my drearns, they fade and die. Fortune's always hiding, I've looked everywhere, I'rn forever blowing bubbles. pretty bubbles in the air.*

Despite the difference in language between the two songs, both are essentially speaking of the

same thing when it comes to defining the relationship between club and supporter. In the former, the highly descriptive narrative not only pinpoints the date when the Song was introduced, but also the adversity which Manchester United fans faced in their 'journey' - an embarrassing drop to the Second Division for the 1974-1975 season. Tm Forever Blowing Bubbles' takes this narrative further, for while 'You'll Never Walk Alone' vaguely promises a golden sky and a singing lark, and 'The Red Flag' the less ambiguous hope of promotion, West Ham fans are treated to a rather gloomy forecast of fùtility in their cornparison of supportership with 'forever blowing pretty bubbies that fade and die'.

Yet underlying the dreary outlook - as well as the somewhat whimsical and bizarre choice in music - is an ennobling message of the never-ending dream and hope of happiness, for

'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' conveys the notion of fan loyalty that is iinwaverïng, regardless of whether success is assured. The point is driven home by Noiwich City 'soccerata' Kevin

Baldwin on the subject of having more than one 'favourite' club. Although his tongue was firmly held against his cheek, there is nevertheless a certain earnestness in his comments:

...switching allegiance is not the done thing. Those who do change are viewed in the same way as politicians who leave one party and join another: while in theory they ought to be congratulated for having the courage to acknowledge the error of their ways, in practice they are regarded as fickle opportunists who are not to be tnisted.. .. This is such an act of infidelity that it should surely have been covered by Moses' tablets of ~tone.~

LOYALTY: A DISCUSSION ON FATALISM

The 'moral' insistence on unwavering loyal ty also suggests a rather interesting premise regarding the songs, and that is the frequency of 'fatalism' as a theme. As mentioned earlier, both Liverpool's 'You'll Never Walk Alone' and Birmingham's 'The End of the Road' are about having to cope with death and the cruel hands that fate often deals out by simply getting on widi life. The same cm even be said of Tm Forever Blowing Bubbles'. Written just afier the conclusion of World War One, it was an immensely popular Song in its time when it was adopted by West Ham fans. Given the ovenvhelming sense of uncertainty and disillusionment which followed in the aftermath of the human tragedy that was the First World War, it is not altogether unreasonable to speculate that club supportership could be understood as some sort of 'escapist' substitute, by which some semblance of hope, certainty and self-esteem could be restored.

The same rationale can more or less be pursued with regard to 'Blue Moon', a Rodgers and Hart composition which became the terrace anthem of Manchester City nearly sixty years after it was first recorded:

Blue moon, you saw me standing alone, Without a dream in my heart. without a love of my own. Blue moon, you knew what 1 was there for. You heard me saying a prayer for somebody 1 really could care for.

And then there suddenly appeared before me, The only one my arrrts will ever hold, 1 heard somebody whisper, 'Please adore me', And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold.

Blue moon. now t'm no longer alone, Without a dream in rny heart. without a love of my own."

In this particular song, a 'fairy tale' plot is adopted, whereby the blue moon grants the Ionesorne protagonist his most cherished wish, but what is remarkable about 'Blue Moon' is how the role of the soccer team is cast within the context of a terrace song. As is the case with Tm Forever

Blowing Bubbles', 'Blue Moon' sees the club as some sort of mystical force that comforts. and at times even provide moments of happiness and fiilfilment. At another level however, it could be argued that such an imagery is somewhat reminiscent of historian Gareth Stedman Jones' argument about the remaking of the English working class in the years between 1870 and 1900:

Working people ceased to believe that they could shape society in their own image. Capitalism had becorne an immovable horizon. Demands produced by the movements of the pre-1850 period - republicanism, secularism, popular self- education, CO-operation, land reform, intemationalism etc. - now shom of the conviction which had given them point, eventually expired from sheer inanition, or else. in a diluted form, were appropriated by the lefi flank of Gladstonian liberalism. The main impetus of working-class activity now lay elsewhere. It was concentrated into trade unions, CO-ops, friendly societies, al1 indicating a de facto recognition of the existing social order as the inevitable framework of action.. .. It was a culture of consolation.' ' In this sense. the English working class's preoçcupation with soccer couid also be considered as

part of this culture of consolation. However, it should also be remembered that while the words

rernain the same, the meaning they convey is transfonned, courtesy of the soccer crowd inside

the ground spontaneously bellowing them out in unison. The words no longer convey a sense of

fatalism and resignation; on the contrary, there is defiance in the voices of the fans. In this

context. these terrace songs are no longer really about an individual pleading for strength, but a

mass of people providing communal strength, not only to the clubs they support. but aIso to each

other. At the soccer ground. TmForever Blowing Bubbles' is no longer about fatalism, but agency, for it is through Song that the fans are able to assume the rote of that mystical force that could will the club to victory and ensure that the tearn and their fellow supporters will never walk alone in the face of adversity. In that sense, the terrace songs cm be likened to what

Patrick Joyce describes as a "literature of aspiration":

.. .though it involved ideas of how things oughr fo he we should not fail to see the capacity it had to underpin change in what was. Even if aspiration could not always be realised it informed thought and action. Utopias were of real effect in the wor~d.'~

While conventional Marxist theory may point out the 'illusory' nature of this agency, it could be argued that the sense of empowerment of the English working class is ver). real indeed as part of the 'living' fantasy of the soccer community: as patrons and as the principal cheerleaders, they beiieve they could makc a difference.

LOYALTY: FANDOM AND THE ENGLISH SOCIAL ELITE

The reintroduction of the 'class' dimension, however, does raise another series of questions: what about the values and beliefs of the non-working-class groups? Do the terrace songs convey anything about the attitudes of the English social elite towards soccer? Do they perceive soccer loyalties any differently?

So fa., the discussion on terrace songs has been carried out under the loose assumption that they are pretty much part of the culture and tradition of the English working class. As mentioned earlier, most of these songs could be seen as an extension of the pub gathering, but with 'On the Ball. City', the curious observer is treated with a rare glimpse of what elite attitudes may be Iike. Ostensibly wrïtten for an amateur outfit of schoolteachers dunng the 1890s. the

Song was later adopted by one of the directon for the newly formed Nonvich City in 1902:

ln the days to call, which we have left behind our boyhood's glorious garne. And our youthfùl vigour has declined with its mirth and its lonesome end; You will think of the time, the happy time, its mernories fond recall #en in the bloom of our youthfùl prime we've kept upon the ball.

Let al1 tonight then dnnk with me to the football game we Love. And wish it may successful be as other garnes of old, And in one grand united toast join player, game and Song, And fondly pledge your pride and toast success to the City club.

Kick it off, throw it in, have a little scrimrnage, Keep it low, a splendid rush, bravo, win or die; On the bal1 City, never mind the danger, Steady on, now's your chance. Ooh. we've scored.I3

The two verses of the Song paint the picture of a gathering of ex-players reminiscing about the good old days, and it is through the players that the notion of loyalty is conveyed. In particular, the 'toast' to the success of the City club punctuates the fact that the bond between the soccer club and its members is not only in the here and now, but one that transcends time. Moreover, the 'collegiate' feel which pervades throughout the entire Song futther provides the sense that club loyalty is also both profoundly intimate and heartfelt. For the outsider, listening to -On the

Ball, City' being Sung by the Norwich faithful could be likened to stumbling across a ritual that exudes a sense of exclusivity, which only the participants could truly undentand and appreciate. Finally, and perhaps most interesting of dl, is the surprisingly blunt nature of the rousing chorus. While this alone may account for its popularity among Norwich fans, what is intnguing is that the notion of sportsmanship, which was such a crucial theme in the formation of a collective -class' attitude towards the playing and watching of matches during the early years, does not seem to be a factor at all. If anythng, expressions such as 'win or die' and 'never mind the danger' can hardly be descnbed as 'sportsmanlike'. The working-class crowd may have even concurred with the privileged orders with regard to their awkward sense of bravado on the field of play. which was to be in hiIl tragic display over the no-man's lands of France and

Belgium.

To reiterate, it seems that in the terrace anthems examined in this chapter so far, the message of loyalty cornes first and foremost. At one level, the songs are a constant reminder about cornmitment and perseverance for the club and its players, but it is also evident through club supportership that the songs are also about personal perseverance of the individual fan to stick by his club through thick and thin. Despite the propensity of a number of terrace songs to evoke images of fatalism, futility and fragility, the simple act of the crowd expressing their support of their respective tearns in Song allows the fans to take charge of the narrative and actively attenipt to redefine fatalism in their favour: Liverpool FC knows it will never walk alone; Birmingham City is always guided to keep right on to the end of the road; West Ham is secure in the knowledge that their fans are forever blowing bubbles; and Manchester City will always be the 'blue moon' for their following. Furthemore, with 'On the Ball, City', one also gets the impression that elite attitudes towards soccer clubs may not differ al1 that markedly from the working-class crowd. The intimacy felt between club and supporter, as well as the fans' desire for success, are equally compelling for hem, and to an extent, their sentiments could be shared in Song.

LOCALITY: A CELEBRATION OF AN IDEAL

With this image of 'cross-class' camaraderie being conjured within the context of club loyalty. one is tempted to conclude that the league soçcer club, as an English institution, does represent something more than just a sports team. But is this really the case? Do the terrace songs convey this in any way?

The previous chapter has attempted to establish that, as far as the English 'oldfan' was concerned, the club was seen as representative of the local community at large. The reality, however, has been very different. For one thing, the increased exposure of the game at the national level via the mass media has contributed to the broadening of not only its mainstream appeal, but also the fan base, especially for the high-profile clubs. Baldwin. for his part, puts a much lighter spin on how one chooses one's team, since the reasons could range from friends and family right down to the name of the club or even the colour of its home jerseys.'"

Despite the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of how the English soccer club is perceived by its patrons, there is still the prevailing belief that the club represents the local community.

Liverpool and Everton are still referred to as 'Scousers', just as Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and

Chelsea are 'Cockneys'. and that Birmingham City and West Bromwich Albion are 'Bnimmies'.

Conversely, anyone who could be perceived as king an outsider is generally singled out for reproach, if not ridicule. Even Nick Hornby, noted 'soccerata' from Maidenhead and devoted

Arsenal fan, was hurnbled when it was pointed out that, as geography goes, he should have been supporting his real 'home' team of ~eading'' On a more 'collective' note, Manchester City fans ofien delight in highlighting the popular 'truth' that most Manchester United fans have never even been to Old Trafford, let aione attended one of their games in person, with the refrain of:

-'Ohhhhh, Man City - the only football team to come from an chester!"'^

When it cornes to expressions of civic pride, the club continues to be a focal point as far as the local community is concerned. In his examination of the FA Cup final and its significance to northem communities. Jeff Hill finds that the publicity, prestige and exposure that goes with a soccer club making it to Wembley in May are often seized upon by the Lod elite as an opportunity to not only demonstrate local pride, but also showcase the locality which the club represents and the unity of its people.17It should also be noted, however, that soccer supporters are also part of the process of constructing and maintaining this identity. and in a number of instances. local identification is heartily celebrated in Song. A classic example would be the

'Geordies' of the Northeast. who serenade their home side Newcastle United with 'Blaydon

Races', the unofficial anthem of Tyneside. In its hl1 dialect glory, the Song goes:

Aw went te Blaydon Races, -twas on the neenth O' Joon, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty Two, on a summer's afternoon. Aw teuk the bus fiae Balmbra's. anz she was heavy laden. Away we went aiang Collingwood Street, thats on the road to Blaydon.

Oh me Lads, ye shud a' seen us gannin', Passing the folks upon the road, just as they were stannin', Thor wes lots O' lads and lasses there, al1 wi' smilin'faces. Gamin' alang the Scotswood Road te' see the Blaydon Races.

We went past Armstrong's factory and up te the 'Robin Adair', Just gannin' doon te' the railway bridge, the bus wheel flew off there. The lasses lost their crinolines off, an' the veiis that hidc their faces, An' Aw got two black eyes and a broken nose in gan te Blaydon Races.

When we gat the wheel put on away we went agyen, But them that had got their noses broke they cam' back ower hyem. Some went te the dispensary an' some te' Doctor Gibb's, An' some sought oot the Inforrnary to mend their broken ribs. Noo when we gat te Paradise thor wes bonny game begun, Thor wes fower and twenty on the bus, man hoo they danced and Sung. They called on me to sing a sang, aw Sung them 'Paddy Fagan', Aw danced a jig and swung me twig the day aw went te Blaydon.

We flew across the Chine Bridge, reet into Blaydon tom, The bellman he was callin' there - the cal1 him Jackie Broon, Aw saw him talkin' te corne cheps, an them he wes persuadin' Te' gan an' see Geordie Ridley's concert in the Mechanic's Hall at Blaydon.

The rain it poor'd doon ad the day an' myed the groond quite muddy. Co@ Johnny had a white hat on, they were shootin' 'îvhe stole the cuddy?" There wes spice staals an' monkey shows an' aad wives sellin' ciders, an' a chep wiv a hapenny roondabout, shootin "now me boys", for riders.'*

From the lyrics. it is clear that 'Blaydon Races' has nothing whatsoever to do with soccer. It was

initially a promotional nurnber by music-hall perfomer Geordie Ridley for a concert to be held

at Blaydon in 1862, but by the 1920s, the Song had aiready become an established standard at St

James' Park. More intriguing however, is the fact that this had been preceded by the

abandonment of the horse races themselves in 1916. Although one can only speculate on

motives, it is worthwhile to note the way in which Newcastle fans approprîated the Song. If

'Blaydon Races' denotes the assertion of local identity by way of an annual pilgrimage to a

sporting event, it is the fans who redefined - and in so doing re-established - this identity when the original context was eliminated. With the races gone, it was the Saturday sojourn at the

soccer ground which filled the void and provided a new context by which 'Blaydon Races' could remain a living oral testament to 'Geordie' pride.

To an extent, the same could be said of the 'Scousers' of Liverpool FC. Despite a massive international following. local identity is continually reaffirmed by the singing of another terrace anthem -a bastardised version of 'Poor Scouser Tommy':

Let me tell you the story of a poor boy who was sent far away fiom his home, To fight for his King and his country and also for the old folks back home. They put him in a higher division, sent him off to a far foreign land, Where the flies swartn amund in their thousands, and there's nothing to see but the sand. The battle it started next moming under the Arabian Sun, So remember that poor Scouser, Tommy, who was shot by an old Nazi gwi. As he lay on the battlefield dying with the blood gushing out of his head, As hr lay on the battlefield dying, these are the last words he said:

Oh 1 am a Liverpudlian, from the Spion Kop; 1 like to sing, I like to shout, 1 go there quite a lot; 1 support a team that play in red, a team that you ail know; A team that we cal1 Liverpool, to glory we will go. .. - .. 19

The irony of competing -identities' is demonstrated to perfection here. The Song begins with the

image of a northem lad who tinds himself on the international stage, as a British soldier fiphting for the Allied cause in Worid War Two. At the very end, however. the grandiose message of peace and freedom for al1 is dropped in favour of a more down-to-earth one: a simple statement of local identity and local pride through the support of the hometown soccer team.

At times, the continued importance of local pride is even expressed at the expense of the

-nation'. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 'anti-United' chants which have graced

England matches during the late 1990s' such as the infarnous 'stand up if you hate Man U' chorus. Apparently, the sentiment is mutual, according to United soccer 'tunesrnith' Pete Boyle,

"When Manchester United play in Europe now. the fans dongtsing 'are you watching Liverpool' or 'are you watching Newcastle' anyrnore. They sing 'are you watching England' in response to the England fans singing anti-United songs at ~emble~".'~

Thus it can be argued that although the way in which soccer fandom is expressed in

England differs considerably from its original parochial -ideal', the terrace songs and chants provide a means by which the importance of locality in the construction of the identity of the soccer community could be reaffirmed. The outsider is made to understand this through Song: if he wishes to be accepted into a particular 'community', he is expected to embrace the identity and the values of its people. In an ever-changing England that continues to redefine itself and its place in the pst-war world, one could even argue that the very intensity of club rivalries is

essentially a reaffirrnation of the existence of a 'little England' which still demands the

importance and significance of local belonging and local identity.

LOYALTY: THREATS, TAUNTS AND TABOOS

A corollary to this argument is the problem of terraze songs such as

I'm forever throwing bottles. pretty bottles in the air; They fly so high. they reach the sky; then like West Ham, they fade and die; Tottenham's always ruming. Chelsea's mingtoo; We're the Stretford Enders, mingafier you.. .2 1

If local identity is still an important component in establishing the truefan, is it possible to extend this notion further by implying that club rivalries in English soccer are a reflection of actual local or even regional ones? While it is certainly tempting to describe the above excerpt as some sort of subterranean perspective on the north-south divide, Gary Armstrong provides an unwelcome splash of cold water by concluding that there is nothing in the terrace songs by way of larger cross-class attitudes such as nationalism, regionalisrn and socio-political antagonism. Armstrong further argues that the strong language wtiich seems to be part of terrace songs in the presrnt day are nothing more than deliberate and calculated exaggerations. aimed at provoking a rea~tion.~~

But if the verbal violence in terrace songs can be described as a work of creative fiction by the fans, then why does the rhetoric remain as an accepted part of the repertoire?

At this point, it is useful to outline the way in which the songs are used to express fan support. Once again, a cursory glance at the vast catalogue clearly suggests that vocal support is as much about cheering the home tearn as it is about jeering the opposition. In a 1985 survey involving 965 supporters from ten league clubs in Britain, 52.5 percent of the respondents agreed that *mickey-taking' was an acceptable part of the match-day e~~erience.~~This could range from simple 'barracking' of rival players to celebrating the misfortune of one's rivals, such as relegation, as this offering fiom Manchester United indicates:

Last garne of the season, just tumed half past four; City playing Luton, heading for a draw. Pleat sent on his substitute to see what he could do; He put the bal1 in City's net and in Division TWO!"

At times. the subject of misfortune can be derived fiom non-football-related issues as well. For instance. Liverpool's dire economic situation in pst-war Britain has often been a 'gold mine' of material for rival fans, who gleefùlly sing out mean-spirited nurnbers such as:

In your Liverpool slums, You look in the dustbin for something to eat, You find a dead rat and you think it's a treat, In your Liverpool slums... 25

For the wide range of subject matter, the terrace songs do have one thing in common. As

Armstrong points out the songs are designed to provoke a reaction in one way or another. These could be positive ones. such as raising one's spirits or elevating team play. but this could also mean trying to upset one's rivals by disrupting their on-field performance. Judging by the overall content of terrace songs over the past three decades or so. it is also clear that the underlying motive for provoking a reaction has extended beyond the actual match itself. While

Armstrong does well to remind us that these may be exaggerations. songs like

Kick 'em all, kick 'ern all, corne on you Reds kick 'em all; If you see any blue shit, then hcking well boot it; And corne on you Reds kick -em a11!*~

Tip-toe through the Kippax, with your pick-axe and your sawn-off shotgun; Tip-ioe through the Kippax with me?' are certainly designed, at the very lem, to make the rival fans' own matchday experience a highly uncomfortable one. At this point, one returns again to the two questions which have dnven the hooligan debate over the past thirty years or so: why fanaticism, and why soccer?

As far as the xope of the terrace song is concerned, the following number fiom

Manchester United's rather impressive collection of abuses directed towarâs their local nvals

Manchester City perhaps best highlight the reason why this 'fanaticism' seems so cornmonplace.

Abbreviated. the sentiments expressed are as follows:

If 1 die in the Kippax Street, there'll be ten blue bastards at my feet. Use your head and use your feet, ten blue bastards at my feet. ifmy bones do not men4 then carry me back to the Strerjord End When we go down to Maine Road, the City fans shit their load. Walking down the Grafton Street, there'll be ten blue bastards at my feet. Burn. destroy. wreck and kill. United fans fucking will. On my grave it will Say. ten blue bastards went the same way. When 1 die and go to hell, me and the Devil will get on well. if1 die in the Strerford End. I'II defend my faith right to the end."

For al1 the images of violence, destruction, hatred and even a brief theological discussion, the lines in italics provide the underlying message for the entire song: in the end, the verbal violence is underscored by the fans' undying loyalty to the club. For its part, the act of singing becomes a means by which one's loyalty can be proven through ridicule and intimidation of the other, and if one is able to provoke intended emotional responses like fear and anger, the songs will have served their purpose. The fans have proven their loyalty by ridicuiing their rivals' ability to support their tearn in any demonstrative way.

From this, one can also argue that in their attempt to demonstrate Ioyalty by taunting the opposition, social 'taboos' have tended to faIl by the wayside. It is also in this context that one is able to provide some semblance of an explanation for the singing of songs such as those which use the Munich air disaster of 1958 as subject-matter with which to ridicule and provoke

Manchester United fans." Despite the fact that the oral history of the terrace songs and chants are littered with such references, it is an area ofien avoided by mainstream 'authorities' on the

subject. Although many would argue that the 'Munich' songs fly in the face of common decency

in the worst possible way, they are by definition no different than other examples of broken

'taboos': tragedy. like sexuality, violence and even racism, becomes a convenient point of

provocation.

One might even Say that the medium of participation itself -- in this case, the terrace Song

-- to an extent accentuates the antagonistic aspect of fan rivdry. Although the sentiments present

in sorne of the terrace songs may even sound disturbing at times, the experience of expressing

them is alleviated by the way in which this experience occurs. For instance, it is one thing to

shout out, 'If you see a City fan. you put him in his grave'; it is another to have it Sung out to the

tune of Lerner and Loewe's *Wandrinl In a sense, far fiom just king a vehicle by which

fan opinion and emotions could be expressed, one could argue that the musical element is

somehow a contributing factor in blurring the bounds of polite conversation and making the

breaking of *taboos' less distastefiil. In terms of uniqueness, one would be hard-pressed to corne

across another contemporary example where one could serenade death threats without feeling out of place. What makes this acceptable is that through the terrace Song, the 'hard' message is

rïtualised to such an extent that it could be embraced by the more 'mainstrearn' fans. One could even argue that the very notion of marrying verbal violence with melody could be constmed as self-amusement, even genuine humour. It is the humour of the terrace songs which enables soccer loyalty to be expressed not only in fanatical terms. it dso makes the notion of fanaticism itself a Iess disturbing one. CONCLUSION

The analysis of the terrace songs confirrn a number of key assumptions regarding the

English soccer rruefan, such as the importance of loyalty and locality. In the case of the former, the songs convey the supporters' insistence on tearn perseverance, but at the same time, they also encapsulate the 'moralt demand that the fans do the same with regard to supporting their respective clubs. It is also through singing that the prevailing belief of the club as an extension of the local community could be upheld as a 'populist' ideai, shared by both the ding elite and the working masses. Although the notion of locality itself within the soccer community has become increasingly eroded, the rivalries that are played out every weekend throughout England continue to draw upon old maxims as a basis for defining supportership.

The analysis of the terrace songs also reveals their significance in and of themselves. On one level. the songs provide the soccer crowd with a sense of empowennent. While it might not quite be the -participatory democracy' that Ian Taylor has in mind,)' the terrace Song is ernpowering in the sense that loyalty and support homes something very tangible: the Song is borne out of a natural impulse to participate in the soccer narrative, yet it is also organised. And as the singes of the song, the supporters also become a tangible force - a multitude coming together as one - and not just a random cacophony of voices,

On a less cheery note, however, the terrace Song is also empowering in that it allows the notion of ioyalty to be taken to extremes, both in terms of how support is verbaily expressed, and how it is perceived within the soccer community. Mile the 'hooligan' ritual of running after rival fans may seem despicable to the outsider, within the context of the terrace song, it could be celebrated as a noble gesture of true supportership. One may even describe it as 'romantic' in that the role of the terrace Song is very much like that cf the medieval ballad, whose tales of victory and defeat, of right and wrong, are handed down over the generations by word of mouth.

In a very real sense, the terrace Song is both the oral history and the oral historian of the soccer comrnunity, and as the 'historïan', the power it wields in redefining one's perception of 'loyalty' is compelling and should no< be underestimated. While some of the contents may seem out of place in the real world, they make perfect sense in the scercommunity. In the eyes of the

English fruefi the seemingly grotesque imagery of 'If 1 die in the Kippax Street' and the poignancy of -Forever and Ever' are one and the same thing:

we've ail sworn allegiance, to fight till we die, to stand by United, and the Red flag we fly, there'll be no surrender, we'll fight to the last, to defeat al1 before us, as we did in the past.

For we're Stretford Enders, with United we grew, To the famous Red Devils. we're loyal and true, To part-time supporters, we'll never descend, We'll never forsake you, we'll be here to the end.. .3 2

This process of articulation and dissemination of the values, beliefs and attitudes of the English soccer comrnunity is not just limited to oral tradition like the terrace songs and chants. As the next chapter will anempt to show. the sarne can be said of the 'literary' tradition of the soccer fan with regard to two key sources: the club 'fanzine' and the local 'football' special. At the present time, the terrn 'tenace' may seem antiquated. following the recommendation of the 1990 Taylor Report to transforrn league club grounds in Britain to all-seater stadia. Throughout this paper. however, the term 'terrace songs' will be used in reference to songs and chants which have kenused by soccer fans.

Adrian Thrills, You're not Sineina Anvmore!: A riotous celebration of football chants and the culture that svawned hem, (London: Ebury Press, 1 W8), pp. 1 56- 1 57.

-9lbid p. 55

One such example from the 1970s is the unintelligible chant of: "Oggy-oggy-oggy, oi-oi-oi!" Despite the rack ofany comprehensible meaning, this particular number apparently still has staying power: at the time of writing, the 'oggy' chant can still be heard at semi-professional matches in Vancouver, Canada.

'You'll Never Walk Alone' was originally conceived as a musical number in Carousel (1945)' written by Richard Rodgers ( 1902- 1979) and Oxar Hammerstein II ( 1 895- 1960). In 1963, it became a hit single for local Merseyside band 'Geny and the Pacemakers', whose version of the Song was played over the tannoy at Anfield. Legend has it that 'You'll Never Walk Aiorte' took hold when it was dropped from the playiist, upon which the home fans responded by singing the song out loud.

William Dillon and Sir Harry Lauder, 'The End of the Road'. from A Celebration of Sir Harw Lauder: 'laird of the music hall', at http://www.sirhanylauder.corn/lyricslendroad.html(Accessed 12 January 2000). More commonly referred to as 'Keep right on' by Birmingham fans, 'The End ofthe Road' was mmoured to have ken written in memory of Lauder's only son, who was killed in action during the First World War. 1 am especially grateful to 'Edie' for making the full lyrics to this song available on the World Wide Web.

'The Red Flag', from wv-m-u-f-c.co.uk at http://www.m-u-f-c.co.uk/songs/classic/flag.htm (Accessed 12 January 2000). 1 am especially grateful to 'Vas' for making the words to 'the Red Flag' and other Manchester United terrace songs and chants available on the World Wide Web.

Jaan Kenbrovin and John William Kellette, 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' ( 19 19)' fiom MIDI Music Sing-Along Sonnbook ( 1999) at Iittp://~vw~~.bol.not/overseer3/hbbles.litmI(Accessed 12 January 2000). 1 am especially grateful to Jill Bondurant for making the full lyrics and background information available on the WorId Wide Web.

Kevin Baldwin, This Su~wrtinnLife: How to be a real football fan, revised edition, (London: Headline, 1997), pp. 10-1 1.

Written in 1934 by Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (1 895-1 943)' 'Blue Moon' initially started out as a melody that went through a round of 'musical chairs' of its own with a couple of films before its initial release as a commercial song. 1 am especially grateful to Rob Merrills for making the lyrics to this song available in Dicks Out 2: You're not sinaina anv more?, (London: Red Card Publishing, 1997)' p. 1 76.

Gareth Stedman Jones, "Working-class culture and working-class politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the remaking of a working class," Lannuaaes ofClass: Studies in Enelish Workina Class Historv, 1 832- 1982, (Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne and Sydney: Cambridge University Press, l983), p.237.

1 2. Patrick Joyce, Visions of the Peo~le:Industrial Ennland and the question of class, 1848- 19 14, (Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne and Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 298.

13. Merrills, Dicks Out 2, pp. 76-77.

14. Baldwin, This Suoporting Life, pp. 3-1 3.

1 S. N ick Hornby. Fever Pitch, (London: Indigo, 1 Wî), p. 50.

16. Merrills, Dicks Out 2, p. 178.

17. See Jeff Hill, "Rite of spring: Cup Finals and community in the North of England, Sport and ldentitv in the North of Enaland, eds., Jeff Hill and Jack Williams, (Keele: Keele University Press, 1996).

1 8. Geordie Ridley, "Blaydon Races" (c. 1862), from History of Yorkshire and Northeast Enaland at Ii~p://ounvorld.compuscrve.comPho~iiepages/no~east~eri~land~liisto~~agc./Tyneside.htm (Accessed 12 January 2000). I am especially grateful to David Simpson for making the full lyrics and background information to this Song available on the World Wide Web.

19. Merrills, Dicks Out 2, p. 173.

20. Adrian Thrills, You're not Sinqinn Anvmore!: a riotous celebration of football chants and the culture that s~awnedhem, (London: Ebury Press, 1998), p.55.

2 1. 'I'm forever throwing bottles', from \s~v>v.iii-u-f-c.co.uk at Iittp://www.ni-u-il c-CO.uMsongs/classic/bottles.litm (Accessed 1 2 Januq 2000).

22. Gary Armstrong, Football Hooliaans: Knowina the Score, (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998), pp. 132- 133.

23. Most of the findings of this survey cm be found in chapters 2 and 3 of David Canter, Miriam Comber and David L. Uzzell, Football in its Place: an environmental ps~cholo~;vof football arounds, (London and New York: Routledge, 1989). Note that the average figure given for the question on 'mickey- taking' is skewered somewhat by the response from Sunderland supporters, whereby only a staggering 14 percent approved.

24. 'David Pleat (City in Division Two)', from wuw.m-u-f-c.co.uk at http://www.m-u-f- c.co.uk/songslclassic/pleat.htm (Accessed 12 January 2000).

25:In your Liverpool slums', from \c.~~~~.ni-u-f-~.co.u)iat http://www.m-u-f- c.co.uk/songs/modeni/slums.htm (Accessed 12 January 2000).

26. 'Kick 'em all', from \\ww.m-11-f-c.co.uk at http://www.m-u-f-c.co.uWsongs/classic/kick.htm (Accessed 12 January 2000).

27.'Tip-toe through the Kippax', from www-m-u-f-c.co.uk at http://www.m-u-f- c.co.uWsongslclassic/tiptoe.htm (Accessed 12 January 2000). 28.'If I die in the Kippax Street', from =\.ni-u-f-c.co.uk at http://www.m-u-f- c.co.uWsongs/classic/kippax.htm (Accessed 12 Janmuy 2000).

29. The Munich Air Disaster of 6 February 1958 claimed the lives of eight Manchester United players. Since then, the event has become the cornerstone ofthe club's history.

30. '1 was born in the Stretford End', from www.111-u-f-c.co.uk at http://www.m-u-f- c.co.uWsongs/classic/bom.htm (Accessed 12 January 2000).

3 1. See lan R. Taylor, "Soccer Consciousness and Soccer Hooliganism." Images of Deviance, ed., Stanley Cohen, (Harmondsworth [England], Baltimore and Victoria [Australia]: Penguin Books, 1971).

3 2. 'Forever and Ever', fiom w~\w.m-u- f-c.co.uk at http://www.m-u-f-c.co.uk/songs/classic/f (Accessed 12 January 2000). CWPTER FOUR TALKINC FOOTBALL: AN ANALYSIS OF THE FOOTBALL SPECIAL AND THE FANZINE PHENOMENON IN MANCHESTER, 1945-1999

In a culture that owes much to oral custom and tradition. the football 'special' and the football 'fanzine' provide the scholar with a surptisingly vast amount of written records.

Chronologically speaking, one could even argue that both the 'special' and the 'fanzine' essentially represent the entire spectrum of soccer supporters in England. On the one hand, the former has a history that extends almost as far back as the history of association football in

England itseif. Initiated primarily by locd newspapers, the specials were produced and sold on match-days as soon as the teams had finished playing, as reporters had to rush their stones to the printing press. The football specials are also invaluable in tenns of the extent to which they reveal the fans' own passion for the game; through the 'ietters' section, they provided their generally .older' readership with the opportunity to 'talk football' to a wider audience.'

The fanzine. on the other hand, is a relatively new phenornenon, with a relatively younger readership. According to When Saturday Cornes editor Andy Lyons- "the average reader is probably someone in their 20's maybe ex-student, or quite likely to be a student, and the

GuardiadIndependent reader.. .".' Inspired by the 'do-it-yourself punk ethos of the 1970s: it first appeared in the mid-1980s and before long became an institution in its own right. Like the football special, the fanzine demonstrates the sheer enthusiasm for active participation which

English soccer supporters seem to have when it cornes to expressing their -passion'. Perhaps sven more so, it extends the ord tradition of 'talking football' to include fan control over the production, presentation and publication of ideas and opinions.

Yet like the terrace songs and chants, the value of the specials and the fanzines as vital sources of information and insight into the English soccer cornrnunity has yet to be fülly tapped by academic scholars. Despite its limited scope, this chapter will attempt to redress this 78 imbalance by way of an analysis of both the football specials and fanzines in relation to

traditional notions of soccer supportership in England. It will also explore the continued

importance of locality and loyalty in how fandom is understood in the pst-war period - and how

these conflict with more recent notions of fandom, as exemplified by the newfan revolution.

Finally, this chapter will examine the role and significance of the football special and the fanzine

not just as histoncal documents, but as active 'players' in history - namely in the construction of

the image of fandom in the public realm. In this latter section, the so-called 'hooligan debate' -

which has ken raging for the past thirty years -- will be used as a general case study?

FAN LETTERS: LOYALTY AND THE 'POPULIST' STRUGGLE

As in the terrace songs and chants, notions of loyalty and locaiity feature prominently in the 'Ietters' section of the fanzines and the specials. But while the songs tend to be more

'celebratory' in nature. the importance of loyalty and locality in the fanzines and specials generally cornes across as petty squabbles and seemingly redundant complaints. At the same time however, the letters also reveal the fans' own overall sense of self-awareness as patrons of the club they support, and the values of the soccer community to which they belong.

Perhaps most intriguing of al1 is the strangely 'populist' tone in a number of these letters.

This is clearly in evidence whenever money is an issue, which it often is. As alluded to in chapter two, the problem of generating revenue has always been the major concem in the management of soccer clubs in England fiom the very beginning. Despite this familiar plight, the fans rarely hesitate in voicing their displeasure whenever the solutions come at their expense, the most common of these king the raising of ticket prices for important matches. It was an issue in Nicholas Fishwick's examination of Engtish soccer during the inter-war period, when

Swindon fans protested against the club's decision to double the price of admission for an FA 79 Cup tie in 1924.~It is still an issue for fans nearly seventy years later, as the following excerpt

frorn a Manchester United supporter indicates:

.. .Genuine supporters will not be able to afford to attend and the wrong type of fan will be attracted to Old Trafford such as rich businessmen on a social event. This exploitation of fans must stop.6

Even the cold, hard reality of utilising transfer fees as a major source of income for small clubs is a bitter pill to swallow for long-suffering fans. For Bury, this particular issue seems to be a common theme over the years. As one fan explains in February 1968, "...the Bury club have betrayed their loyal fans by discovering, then selling, their star matenal. The cheque book is like a carrot to a donkey. Every such deal has lowered the morale of the fans who followed them -2.'Thirty years later, the sarne son of cornplaint is levelled against present-day management. with the same theme of betrayal at its heart:

Stan Tement and Sam Ellis put the finishing touches to a machine which, to the surprise of the tocais, staggered into the air and flew.. .al1 the way to the first division. Unfortunately it wasn't long before the unusual sight of the Bury outfit flapping dong in such exalted Company attracted the attention of predators - especially as Mr [Terry] Robinson [Bury FC chairman] had by this tirne slapped a large "For Sale" sign on the side. Mr Robinson knows the reason for the loss of support.. .. 8

The letters from the Manchester Evening News ' footbait special. the Pink, also seem to convey the fans' own deep sense of suspicion over money matters. At times, their comments even betray a certain naivety regarding the complexity of managing a soccer club as a business organisation. What is clear, however, is their unfailing realisation of the simple equation which started it ail: it is the 'shilling' supporter who pays the gate money out of his loyalty to the local club. In this regard, the issue over money could be considered a 'flash-point' in that it ofien reveals the extent to which the class dynamic influences social relations within the English soccer community. Occasionally, the fans even evoke the imagery of 'class' in their letters in 80 order to illustrate what they consider to be a perceived injustice. For instance, in the 10 April

1999 issue of the Pink, one Jack Wilson of Irlarn writes:

.. .My late father's treat every now and then was to take my mother, two brothers and myself to watch United fiom the stands. He was a hard-working, working- class person but he managed to afford it. What a chance would a man with a wife and three sons, or even one son, have of doing that today unless he was very highly paid. Even then how ofien?. .. . 9

What is important to note about this excerpt is how the notion of 'class' is king used.

Evidently, the respondent is hlly aware of the class dimension within the soccer community, but his decision to highlight this is not an invitation to engage in a stnctly Marxist discourse of any kind. Rather. 'class' is understood and used more as a 'reminder' to soccer's social elite of their loydty to the 'community' - to 'do the right thing'. Although such a prospect rarely, if ever, occurs to the overall satisfaction of al1 fans in general, the motive behind letters such as these is clear. This is probably best surnmarised by an anonymous United fan who finished his critique of the club's rather aggressive 'entrepreneurial' approach by suggesting that "...p erhaps someone should sit down and read Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol to the powers that be at

Old Trafford. Even Scrooge leamed that money isn't e~erythin~-'.-'~

For the most part, it is soccer's ruling elite - namely. the club's chairman and the board of directors - who find themselves at the receiving end of fan criticisms, but occasionaliy they do not play the role of the villains. With the increase in transfer fees and player salaries over the past forty years or so, the fans find themselves sympathising with the chairman, rather than their on-field heroes. Even as far back as 1974, former Manchester City chairman Peter Swales's statement about the obsolete nature of 'testimonial' matches as a means of generating a

'retirement' fund for players was received favourably by the majority of respondents. In one particular instance, one can even see the class argument king redirected against the players instead: 1 support Peter Swales's view. Why should a footballer at the end of his career (no doubt a most enjoyable career) receive a golden handshake? A lot of money is made both inside and outside of the game for the likes of Billy Bremer, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, etc, then to receive a sum around £30,000 not bad, eh! A working man can only eam that arnount in a lifetirne.. .. I I

The same sentiments are still evident over twenty years later. It couid even be argued that the

concerns raised are even more profound, given the changes which have taken place in the

English game during the 1990s. As a Manchester United fan from Didsbury puts it, "What on

earth is happening to most footballen of today expecting f30,000 and f40,000 a week. 1 hope

United stick to their policies and not let any man think he is bigger or can't be replaced by the

cIub. The more they get, the more they want. No wonder some people can't afford to take their

family to a match"."

These exarnples also present a rather interesting 'twist' in terms of how 'populism' is articulated. If the accounts above are to be taken into consideration, then it could be argued that the notion of division within the soccer community - of 'us' and 'them' - is not rigid, but 'fluid'.

More importantly, the very fluidity of the 'populist stniggle' indicates not the irreconcilable contradictions of class conflict, but rather the possibility of conciliation and unity. This becomes especially evident in examples whereby the importance of 'loyalty' is re-concepiualised within the context of constructive criticism. Although complaining is the general nile in the 'letters7 section, even fans tire and grow weary of the pettiness of some of the criticisrns made by some of their fellow club supporters. This is often the case with larger clubs, whose fans tend to have not only higher aspirations. but also a greater impatience for success and intolerance for failure. For

Manchester United supporters like J.K. Palmer, it is on this point that one could draw the the line between genuine supporters and the 'spoiled, bitchy' ones:

... When United play well and are winning the supporters are indeed marvelous, but stand on the terraces (Stretford End excepted) when things are not going well and listen to the "support". I? takes the form of jeers, whistles and personal abuse; just when the team needs encouragement to play tiuough a bad atch our heroes make it al1 a sight worse by king ultra-critical or totally silent. ...P3

What makes this fetter particularly intriguing is that it highlights a 'social divide' that is not

'horizontal' - between the elite and the masses - but vertical, between fans of a single club. The

underlying key issue at hand, however, remains the same: loyalty to the soccer community. In

this instance, however. even the complaints could be perceived as king less than stellar

exarnples of fan support. More importantly, the very flexibility in the way the 'populist stniggle'

is understood allows for the importance of loyalty to be stressed not just in terms of ensuring

unity and goodwill between the elite and the average fans, but also in terrns of unity between the

fans themselves.

FAN LETTERS: LOCALITY

The fluidity in how 'loyalty. is defined and expressed by fans in the Pink letters over the

last fi@ years can be contrasted to the rigid, continued emphasis on the importance of 'locality' as part of the traditional identity of the English soccer community. Once again, Manchester

United fans find themselves at the receiving end of the taunts, as the team is ofien viewed as the very antithesis of what a 'local' club should be. ?bis is clearly seen in the almost habitual preoccupation of rival fanzines with making fun of United's supposed status as a 'non-local' club. As Ged O'Brien of City's King of the Kippa observes, ". ..Subtract those 'away' fans from Old Trafford and 1 always imagine it would leave you with tess members than the Saddam

Hussain Glee Club. You know it makes sense.... '9. 14

At times. even United fans seem to struggle in trying to retain their 'integrity' in relation to having to remain 'local'. This is exemplified by a letter submitted to Manchester United fanzine Red issue by a 'Southem Red'. At tirnes, his own justification of himself as a truefan cornes across almost as a despairing plea for acceptance: ...Man. United fans are fans wherever they are and just because we're "Southern twats" doesn't mean we love ouf team any less than our "fellow supporters" in Manchester. Maybe. instead of taking the piss out of our accent and of where we corne from, maybe they could think of the thousands more miles, hundreds more pounds and thousands of miles more we spend each year travelling fiom our Southern SIurns to support the team we love as much as them.. .. 15 To an extent. this definition has become increasingly more applicable with regard to some of the other 'larger' English clubs like Liverpool and Arsenal, whose stature in the game has attracted a greater degree of cosmopolitanism in ternis of how the identity of the soccer comrnunity is consinicted. In spite of this, however, parochiai attitudes towards footbail-supporthg continue to assert themselves. oAen at the expense of supposedly greater and more compelling identities such as 'class' and even 'nation'. This is encapsulated by a Pink letter printed towards the end of

Manchester United's successful 1998-99 season:

Last week we had United fans bemoaning the effect of the Hungary game [against England] on their team's chances with comments like '1 don't give a damn about England, al1 1 care about is United'. This week we get Sir Bobby Charlton's plea: "If you are English 1 de@ you not to feel proud at what United have achieved in Europe." Cal1 me cynical but this sounds typical of United - have your cake and eat it! ... 16

Two points are in evidence here. On the one hand, the letter seems to confirm former Football

League secretary Alan Hardaker's opinion that ". ..if there was a referendum on the 'club v. country? issue, League football would get the popular vote"." On a similar vein, the Ietter also criticises Charlton's audacity to associate United's Ewopean success with English pride. In effect, his comments constituted a 'breach' of a 'sensibility' which extends at least as far back as the pre-World-War-One years, when Swindon's Harold Fleming was enjoying international duty.

If the following 1909 excerpt from the Swindon Advertiser on his England call-up is anything to go by. it must be said that, even in an age when jingoism and imperialism was hurtling towards bursting point. the English soccer community's own concept of the 'nation' was one which places 'locality' above ail else: .. . Fleming has done more than serve his club; he has brought honour to the town of Swindon by reason of the fact that his prowess in the field favourably attracted the attention of the FA in London.. .18

The high-minded aloofhess of Charlton's plea for 'nation-wide' support could be fiutfier juxtaposed to the continued importance that is attached to the FA Cup in terms of local pride.

Once again, while it could be argued that the significance of locality may have diminished when

it cornes to the larger, cosmopolitan clubs, the significance is still there for smaller clubs. In

January 1968. non-league Macclesfield Town's third-round meeting with First Division Fulham

was worthy of a mayoral send-off and a minor headline on the front page of the Manchester

Evening News and ~hronicfe.'~The same could be said some thirty years later, when non-

league Stevenage Borough's fourth-round tie with Premiership giants Newcastle United gained wort d-wide coverage.

In the end, perhaps the underlying reason why 'locality' continues to play a key part in the construction of the identity of the English soccer comrnunity is because the very notion itself is understood in relation to 'club loyalty'. This continued importance is best illustrated by comments made by Macclesfield chairrnan Alan Cash in a Pink article in early 1999 on the tearn's stniggles in the Second Division, both on and off the pitch:

The town will decide by its support on the level that Macclesfield is able to provide - perhaps it has decided already .... Our average now is around 3500 but that is due to the fact we've had better visiting attendances .... But we budgeted on 4500 last summer which means our income is around £9000 a garne down. We've settled with about 2500 regular fans of our own and that does raise the question of whether the town wants a second division club or if the town can afford a second division club.. .. 20

What makes this especially important is not just Cash's mention of the relationship between locality and ioyalty. From afar, Cash's speech is eerily simila. to the one made by the fictional

Joyce Compton in a football novelette written nearly eighty years earlier.21 If anything, it clearly demonstrates that the soccer 'elite' are equally aware as the fans are of the importance of locality 85 and loyalty in the discourse on soccer cornmunity 'identity'. For clubs Iike Manchester United, their widespread appeal allows for them to acquire support beyond the confines of the 'local'.

For smdler clubs like Macclesfield, however, the continuing link between club loyalty and local pide remains the key difference in their survival in the unforgiving world of cornpetitive English league soccer.

HYSTERIA, HOOLIGANISM AND THE M?NCIIESTER EVENNG NEWS

So far, the analysis of the fanzines and football specials in this chapter has ken that of a search through a repository of ideas and comrnents on how fans thought of themselves and about the immediate world around them. But like the terrace songs and chants. the local newspaper and the fanzines are significant not only as raw material for socio-histoncal evidence, but also as

'living' participants in the way the notion of soccer supponership is constantly king refined and redefined. Nowhere is this more evident than in the issue of soccer hooliganism, which sincc the late 1960s has grabbed the lion's share of the academic, and indeed the public, spotlight on contemporary English popular culture.

Invariably, a discussion of soccer hooliganism also implies a need to address a key question. Recent scholarship from those in the post-modernist camp have brought to attention the issue of the mass media's power to capture the 'hyperreality' of the spread of the 'English disease', rather than the actual 'reality' of a media-induced hysteria.22 If this is to be taken into account, then serious doubts can be raised with regard to the reliability of documented evidence from local newspapers Iike the Manchester Evening News. But was there a hysteria? Was there a 'taning' effect on fans through the papers?

From a distance, one wouid have to concur with these charges. What began as a

'rumbling' in the papers in 1968 became a 'roar' by 1974. By the 1980s, it had literally become 86 a 'rage' in more ways than one, a point which Bill Buford illustrates in his account of

Manchester United's visit to Turin in 1984:

...[ the television and newspaper men] were only a couple of feet away from the masked, missile-throwing Juventus fans. They could see that the English supporters were king felled .... Not only were they not stopping the masked. missile-throwing Juventus fans, but they were also not photographing them. It was images of the English they wanted .... Italians behaving like hooligans? Unheard of. English behaving like Englisk? Thol was intere~tin~!~

Even afier the lifting of the UEFA's ban on English clubs from European cornpetition in 1990,

Red Issue found grounds for cornplaint against what it believed to be the lamentable attitude of

English reporters for continuing to emphasise the bad over the good:

... whilst even the French press are able to recognise that maybe English football fans are no longer interested in the sort of behaviour which disgraced many of our visits abroad in the eighties, papers such as the Times, Independent and even the Manchester Evening News are guilty of printing the kind of bullshit stories that appeared in the nrn up to the visit to Poland. ... The Evening News managed to dedicate half a page to the story that trouble might happen and only two column inches to the fact that nothing did."

A closer inspection of the same newspaper however, reveals a conclusion that is not as clear-cut as the one reached by Red lssue. In the case of the Manchester Evening News at least, it seems that its soccer correspondents adopted a rather aloof attitude to the hooligan issue from a very early period. This can be seen during one of the most mernorable episodes in the history of both

Manchester clubs - the ApriI 27 1974 derby match at Old Trafford. which ended in a 1 -O victory for City and a large-scale pitch invasion. Given the fact that this incident would ultimately thrust

United and its massive following under the disapproving glare of both the FA and the

Government, the official response from chairman Louis Edwards could be considered incredulous:

[The Old Trafford invasion wasl nothing like a riot.. .. 1 am sure that none of the youngsters who ran on to the field had any idea of hurting or attacking anyone. In fact, 1 am sure they only came on because they thought the final whistle had gone.. .. It was a matter of excitable youngsten rather than malicious thugs.25 87 In a general sense, the 'hooligan minority' argument was employed by the soccer people at the

Evening News - a position that was maintained right down to the mid-1980s. For example,

during the 1983- 1984 season, a couple of respondents wrote in to descnbe their own personal

encounters with the 'hooligans' and condemn their behaviour and actions, yet on each occasion,

the Pink's mail correspondent Terry Gomy replied with a bief and somewhat 'tired' statement:

*they7renot al1 bad. Most are law abiding, genuine fans'.26

Perhaps even more startling is that fiom the Evening News, one could also see that, in the

case of United during the 1970s and 1980s' underlying the comments and opinions was a belief

in the existence of a nation-wide hysteria over the behaviour of the United fans themselves. In

responding to the latest govemment attempt to crack down on hooliganisrn. flamboyant manager

Tommy Docherty in December 1974 exasperatingly hinted at the 'scapegoating' of United

supporters:

We welcome anything that will improve the situation as long as the rules are the same for everyone. Unfortunately, it seems that it is always Manchester United who are picked out. What about the match between Newcastle and Nottingham Forest when there was far more serious trouble than has ever concemed Manchester United? Nobody mentions that.. .. 2 7

This sentiment also cornes across loud and clear in the Evening News editorial from the Monday following the 1974 Old Trafford derby, but what is even more intriguing is the editor's cornparison of media treatment between Manchester United and Liverpool:

There is a very real danger that the reaction to Saturday's activities at Old TrafTord will be no less irresponsible than the incidents themselves.. .. Those commentators who live on the verge of hystena and who write about the [Spion] Kop [Liverpool's 'home' terrace end] as though it were a choir of angels and about the Stretford End as though it were an army of hooligans are already cal hg for punishments for United which scarcely fa11 short of mass public exec~tion.'~

This almost populist, even parochial, attitude is magnified even further in the days following the

Heyse1 disaster in May 1985. Amidst reports of shock and disbelief over the carnage is an 88 Evening News editorial which cornes across more like a statement of vindication for United fans instead:

The rnyth that Liverpool football club is supported solely by wisecracking, good- natured men and women who couldn't hurt a fiy has finally been blown sky high.. .. The fact of the matter is that football followers from Merseyside (not al 1 of them Liverpool fans), have for years included an evil element who regard the Stanley knife just as much a part of their equipment as a club scarf. They have got away with it for years because Liverpool happens to breed some ver-popular cornedians and because Liverpool FC in particular, has had a succession of managers.. .who represent the acceptable face of big-time soc~er.'~

Hence, while it could be argued that the English media's treatment of soccer hwliganism in the

1970s and 1980s was shrouded by a mood of hysteria, one could also argue that, at least in the case of the Manchester Evening News, there was also a 'paradox' in terms of how the issue was presented. To an extent. what transpired was a 'hysteria within a hysteria'; as the major headlines scream out the breakdown of civil society in Britain, the sports correspondents on the back pages and the Pink seem to put up 'token' resistance in defending the integrity of the law- abiding truefart against the 'hooligan' minority. However, this 'resistance' was effectively destroyed by the horrors of the Heyse1 disaster. What followed was as much the onset of mass hysteria as it was an overwheiming sense of guilt and the need for the truefan to somehow atone for the sins of their hooligan counterparts. As Manchester City correspondent and former player

Paul Hince puts it, "Now we are universally detested. ..and justifiably so. You and 1 are animals who deserve to be treated as such .... Do you want to cany on being tarred by that sickening brush? I don't. And 1 am convinced the vast majority of true soccer fans in this country feel the sarne way ....=y .30

HOOLIGANISM, HILLSBOROUGH AND THE FANZINES

Not everyone shared Hince's sense of sharne; nor were they wiIling to allow themselves to be subjected to unjust mistreatment from the hooligan 'hunters' and 'smellers'. In the fanzine, 89 these fans found a new forum for expressing their grievances. Perhaps it is this point which has arguably been the fundamental difference between the fanzine and the football special. While newspapers like the Manchester Evening News did provide a forum for soccer fans through its letters section, they also served as the mouthpiece for the elite of both the soccer community and the wider community at large. As a result, the voices of the fans are often too marginalised to be of any significance. Richard Haynes aiso adds that, partly due to their own position as soccer journalists. news reporters cannot fiord to be too criticai of the clubs they ~over.~'

In the fanzines, however, the same marginalised voices are unified, not only because of the closer affinity between their editors and contributors and their 'readership', but also between editors of other club fanzines themselves. In the wake of the Heyse1 disaster, the first fanzines were also unified by an 'ideological' conviction to right a perceived wrong. As Adrian

Goldberg, editor of OfffheBull, put it in early 1986:

We won't be treated like idiots any more. We being "ordinary" supporters of mainIy ordinary clubs. who are sick of being portrayed as morons in the press. tired of king patronised by television's lifeless coverage of a great sport, and most of al1 angry at king manipulated by tyrannicai directors and administrators who, in their eagerness to "modernise" our game, show al1 the rationality of headless chickens .... For the me football fan, this really is the time for action.. .. 32

Duhg the mid-to-late-1980s. the enthusiasm and potential of the fanzines is best illustrated in their ultimately successful campaign against the Thatcher administration's 'ID card scheme', which aimed at introducing a compulsory membership plan for anyone who attended soccer matches. In addition, the fanzines also claim credit for improving the overall perception of club supporters. As Haynes explains:

Football for so long came to signiQ not a game of beauty and ski11 but a troublesome blackspot of 'society' that the majority of 'decent' people had to reluctantly put up with. The work of fanzines, the FSA (Football Supporters Association) and other independent fan organisations act to build up oppositional discourses in the football world and the processes of mass media re- representation. .. .fanzines invariably defend the integrity and good nature of fans against the deviant discourses posited by the media the police, the government and fiequently the football clubs themse~ves.'~

Probably the most impressive example of this has been the role of the fanzine medium in more

arnbitious campaigns like LUFARF (Leeds United Fans Against Racisrn and Fascism), which aims at eradicating the vile atmosphere at Elland Road, and its reputation as an active breeding ground for extremist right-wing activities. In its attempt to counter, LUFARF's strategy includes the publication of Marching Together, which hopes to spread a positive message from below by

using the common language that fans know best: humour. As 'Paul', a LUFARF activist puts i&

"If you see people walking away fiom you and laughing then you know you are winning - we've

undone the racism by humour, by making people think and not by ramming it down their throats"." Perhaps more importantly, examples such as LUFARF clearly demonstrate the capacity of fanzines in contributing to the positive reconstruction of the image of English soccer fandom in face of a mainstream media which still persists in highlighting violence and damaging the reputation of fms by way of irresponsible reporting.

An analysis of the changing perceptions of soccer fandom in England would be incomplete without a discussion of the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. Even Haynes admits that wl~ilethe Governrnent's decision to back down on the issue of rnembership schemes was due in no small measure to the campaigning by 'ordinary' football fans. the prime catalyst for the

Government's U-tum were the deaths at ~illsborou~h.~~On the issue of defining soccer fandom,

Hillsborough is also important in one other respect - it provided a tragic 'populist' myth for the soccer communities throughout Britain.

While it could be argued that the notion of -usTand 'them' within these communities tends to be rather fluid and malleable, the dividing line between the two becarne painfully clear- cut after Hillsborough. On one side were the 'victims', the English soccer supporters who had to endure decades of unjust mistreatment. On the other side were the 'villains'. the elite of English 9 1 society. whose neglect and apathy has now become tragically apparent for dl to see.

Furthemore, Hillsborough also added to the language and vocabulary through which the

'poputist struggle' within the soccer community is articulated and understood, to the extent that even the word -Hillsborough' itself has become a catch-phrase for the victimisation of fans at the hands of police brutality and gross crowd mismanagement. It certainly provided headline- hunters with a plot that was more sympathetic to the plight of the fans, as demonstrated by the

Manchesret- Evening News the day after United's away tie in Milan in March 1999:

Italian police have ken accused of almost causing a Hillsborough-style disaster when thousands of Manchester United fans were crushed outside Inter Milan's San Siro stadiwn 1st night. Up to 3,000 Reds were forced to try to squeeze through just two tiny turnstiles - but the Carabinieri would only allow a handfûl through at a time.. .. Police used batons to keep desperate fans at bay - with some suffering head cuts in the crush, one elderly asthma sufferer needing an ambulance and at least one tearful child stuck in the frightening melee. "This was how Hillsborough started," screamed one fan as he waved his match ticket at police on the other side of the perimeter fente? The significance of Hillsborough as a myth however, beggars one key question. As tragedies go,

Hillsborough was not the only soccer disaster ever to occur in Britain. In fact, it had been preceded by fatalities at Burnden Park (Bolton, 1946), Ibrox (Glasgow, 1971), and Bradford

(1 985). the latter taking place just days before Heysel. What made Hillsborough stand out above the rest? While one can only speculate on possible reasons why this is the case, a plausible suggestion might be the efforts of the soccer supporters themselves, who through new rnediums of communication and information like the fanzines were now able to perpetuate the 'populist' myth with greater intensity and endurance. If the notion of justice for 'us' against ?hem' could be lost in the myriad of peny squabbles and aimless banter in the football specials, it certainly was not afier Hillsborough. This is partly borne out of the fanzines' own struggle to survive under the shadows of uncooperative clubs and a suspicious police force. In a sense, the fanzines are also involved in a populist struggle of their own. As Elecfric Blue editor Noel Bayley puts it, even the selling of fanzines in and around the ground on matchdays was enough to warrant an ejection, or in the case of Brighton & Hove Albion fdneGd's Eye, a libel suit fiom the club director:

Wasn't there some crazy notion of the police king a bit more flexible after Hillsborough? Maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong but as far as I'm aware there is no law against bringing fanzines into Maine Road or any other ground. After all, the other fanzines were there but as usual I'd got the one copper in a million whose mission in Iife is to rid the world of gangsters, mobsters, cowboys -n' Injuns and worse, fanzine se~lers!~'

The impact of the populist myth is crucial not ody in the process of redefining the social battles within the soccer communities throughout England between the 'people' and the 'power bloc', but also in the redefinition of what constitutes the 'people' - a point which comes across in how the hooligan debate has been defined in the 1990s. With a more sympathetic language and vocabulary, the 'hard' fans now had a respectable voice, and through independent fan mediums like the fanzines and even autobiographical publications, they were allowed the opportunity to use it. In doing so. they redefined the concept of the truefun. No longer was it a question of outsiders hell-bent on trouble, but genuine supporters who were unnecessady wronged -- be it by soccer authorities, rival fans or the police. Just as the terrace songs and chants provided a means by which the 'irrational' could be explained, the more 'open' nature of the fanzines, combined with a new populist fervour, allowed for the hard fans to not only defend their actions but re-present it in a more favourable light. For instance, a 1999 Red Issue article on the eventual removal of Old TrafTord's forecourt ended up becoming a nostalgie piece on the good old days of 'rumingo battles at the landmark:

Ask the majority of visiting supporters who've had the misfortune to walk across the sloping concrete no mans land down the years and they would no doubt paint a different scenario. A visitors nightmare and a place to fear.. .. During the past 12 months alone, West Ham, Newcastle and not forgetting our dear fnends fiom Anfield have al1 been the subject of forecourt hospitality. Little wonder they didn't want to come out after the cup tie. Over the years there have undoubtedly ken many more. As the curtain comes down on the famous old concrete siope we'll al1 have our individual recollections but one thing's for certain. The forecourt will be gone but not f~r~otten.'~

In a sense, the fanzine medium also allowed for the so-called 'hooligan' to be included in the

overall definition of the rruefan. While this could be mnsidered a step foward in terms of

dialogue and communication between supporters, the delicacy in the matter was clearly

demonstrated by infighting arnong the fanzines themselves over what constituted responsible

dissemination and exchange of information and There is no doubt, however, as to the

significance of the local newspaper and the fdnesin how fandom is perceived fiom within and

without. On the hooligan issue, one can clearly see where the two mediums differ in terms of

direction and influence, but there is no confusion over who the real enemy is in the 1990s - the

nerrrfan.

ENTER THE NE WFAN

For the self-proclaimed truefan. the newfan is essentially reducible to the following

comparisons. He is a 'day tripper' and a passive consumer of the match-day narrative, as opposed to the committed season-ticket holder who is prepared to actively support the club. As

such, the newfan is oflen depicted as someone who fails to fùlly appreciate the need to maintain tradition. Instead, he is presented as being representative of the changes within the soccer cornrnunity which are antithetical to the very notion of true supportership.

Although the most ciramatic changes have occurred in the 1st ten years or so, it could be argued that the newfan 'revolution' is not really a new one at all. As early as 1971, Ian Taylor identifies what he considers to be the subordination of the predominantly working-class player and supporter to the bourgeois culture by way of the iprofessionalization' of the English game.40

Although he has since been criticised for the rather tenuous link between the process of professionalization and the emergence of soccer hooliganism in the 1960s, Taylor's arguments 94 are nevertheiess valid in terms of the transformation of English soccer as a social institution. As

Fishwick notes, the history of the English game had long been characterised by the need to broaden its appeal in order to justie the credibility of the working-class game in the eyes of the uninitiated elite of British society. In the 1930s' the search for respectability even included the championship Arsenal team appearing in a motion picture of its very o~n.~'

The 'genesis' of the newfan revolution can also be seen in the gradua1 erosion of the institutions of 'fair play' in English soccer. Tuni-of-the-century innovations such as the

'transfer-and retain' system and maximum wage had allowed for some semblance of a 'level' playing field between league clubs. However, this was undermined by the assertion of 'player power' in the 1960s. The threat of a strike forced the issue on maximum wage, which was abolished in 1961, while a landmark court ruling involving Newcastle United player George

Eastham deemed the 'retain' system illegal in 1963. In terms of labour relations, these events represented a victory for working-class players over the high-handed authoritarianism of their employers, but for the multitude of supporters, it also rneant the introduction of a new 'other'.

Once the epitome of local pride and the working-class lad who 'made good', the player has now become one of 'them'. as wages and transfer fees become an ever-increasing factor working against the 'interests' of the club and its fans. With business and finances becoming more dominant factors than ever before, advertising boards began to be a regular sight inside the grounds by the 1960s; by the early 1980s, the shirt sponsors have become as familiar a visual identification of the team as the club's crest and colours.

For Hillsborough 'activist' Phi1 Scraton, it is this increasing emphasis on commercialism which led to the overall neglect by the soccer elite in 0thareas of the game, such as safety?* In light of this, the recommendations made in the 1990 Taylor Report following the Hillsborough disaster have often ken presented as a blueprint of sorts for improving the state of English 95 soccer. The more sceptical among soccer supporters, however, while duly noting the safety issue

which the Report addresses, saw it in a different light. Specifically. the most vociferous critics

feared that the Taylor Report laid the foundation for the systematic elimination of the fmefan and

the abandonment of the very values which had govemed the English game for well over a century. From the majority of w-ritten responses in documented sources like the Pink and the

fanzines, it is evident that the fans are well aware of what is at stake. Once again, the imagery of the populist struggle is often resorted to as a means of highlighting this threat.

Without question. the most significant of the Taylor recommendations has been the cal1 for the transformation of league grounds throughout England into ail-seater stadi~ms.'~While some argue that they are an inevitable necessity in terms of crowd safety in order to pull

"Britain's football grounds out of the Victonan era and into the ~ineties",~other die-hard fans like Rob Merrills are convinced of the elite conspiracy king directed against the 'average' soccer supporter:

With the authorities loftily claiming that this was al1 for the good of the spectaton in the Iight of Bradford, Heyse1 and Hillsborough, it took a while for their genuine, hidden agenda to become clear. It was al1 down to simple economics - pile seats on to the terraces, reduce the capacities, but charge those that were still able to get in more than enough to compensate for the smaller attendances. Demand for the reduced number of spaces was sure to be high, as the same number of people would still want to attend matches - and here the real beauty of the scheme came in to its own - having created a shortfall in the number of available places under the pretence of looking afier supporters' interests, you could charge those same supporters vastIy inflated prices clairning that it was merely a case of supply and demand - b~illiant!'~

At the sarne time, the all-seater solution has also been singled out as the major factor in the apparent disappearance of the 'socçer atmosphere'. This is largely attributed to the elimination of

'standing' on the terraces and the adverse effect it has had on singing and chanting. As former

Liverpool great Kevin Keegan puts it, "The fans want to sing. And, unless you are Val

Doonican, you can't do that sitting do~n".~~For supporters like Tom Walker, this could also be 96 explained by the 'fact' that the higher prices of the seats have attracted a crowd of a different sort

to soccer matches - the 'wrong' sort. who are often castigated by their apparent reluctance or

refusal to sing. In the following excerpt, the class dimension is again evoked:

.. .watching football has become very expensive and has therefore ken gentrified. It is inevitable that the be-suited middle class will. -."admire rather than flinging themselves into wholeheartedly rooting for the team 99. 47

This betrayal fiom 'above' &y the soccer elite is also highlighted in the creation of the Premier

League in 1992, whereby the Football League First Division was reorganised under the auspices

of the Football Association. The idea of a 'super league' however, was greeted with a great

amount of dread. As one Michael Ryan of Kearsley puts it in a Pink letter in Apri l 1 99 1, ". .. will

the man in the Street who stands on the popular side week after week, hail, rain or snow, be

priced out of the game? Will the game become one for middle and upper classes only? 1 hope

not. What about clubs in the lower divisions? 1 think they will go part-time or fold upW.'*

Ryan's rese~ationsabout the widening gap between 'nch and poor' seem hlly justified.

As club coach and former Manchester United favourite Lou Macari explains, "Most clubs are in

deep financial trouble and while the people in places like Oldham and Rochdaie think their clubs

are trudging along okay, they won't be able to go and buy a player. If people knew what 1 know

about the game. at this moment in time, from the First Division onwards it is quite frightening.

We are trying to introduce Super Leagues and push Manchester United and Arsenal in front of

everybody else but 1 know from travelling around the grounds, many clubs are in deep trouble.

Somebody rnust do something or we won't have First, Second and Third ~ivision".~~

Interestingiy enough, the same concerns which were raised with regard to the Premiership were

raised again when rurnours abound in 1998 that the top European clubs were considering joining a breakaway European 'super league'. At least one respondent saw the irony of the situation:

Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United are contemplating a breakaway fiom the Premier League, a move which is surely governed by greed. The Premier League was the FA'S idea and it was supposed to be good for the game but it has only made the nch clubs richer and the poor clubs poorer.. .. It is strange now that the FA should seek to stop this breakaway. Having already started a process which may be good for the rich clubs but as for the game as a whole, both league and non league, it has obviously been a bad move. Every club which goes to the wall is another nail in the cofin of our national game.50

The recurring theme of the growing distance between rich and poor falls neatly into the belief that the notion of 'moralised wealth' - to borrow a term fiom Patrick Joyce - is gaduaily king eroded from within the English soccer cornmunity. But what makes the above comrnents particularly telling is the extent to which they revd the importance of 'fair play' and 'goodwill' in the overall running of cornpetitive league soccer in England over the years. For the more concerned fans, however, 'goodwill' was seen to be jeopardised not only by soccer's ruiing elite but also by the emancipated footballer. His negotiating power, which had expanded in the early

1960s, was fùrther extended by the 1994 Bosman ruling to what many fans consider to be increasingly intolerable le~els.~'With the player now granted the freedom of movement in search of better employment opportunities, the ruling allows for greater cornpetition for his services, which in turn implies greater clout for the 'large' clubs. The key difference now, however. is that the footballer - once the local working-class hero - has now become party to the

'betrayal'. as notions such as loyalty and locality are overshadowed by the new reality of the unscrupulous mercenary who sells his services to the highest bidder. With the Bosman ruling, one is tempted to conclude that the alienation of the player fiom the truefan is effectively complete. The following Pink letter fiom August 1999 provides a telling contemporary snapshot of the two sides that have grown worlds apart:

What the hell is wrong with football players al1 of a sudden? Why do they assume they are more important than the club that pays their wages? The sorry list of shamed "stars" started with Van Hooijdonk but has since grown to include the surly French boy Anelka and the over-rated Floyd Hasselbaink. But it is not only the foreign imports who have gone OTT, as our own Roy Keane cannot decide whether to accept the best contract ever offered by MUFC. And young "li felong season ticket-holding Evertonian" Francis Jeffers has rocked the boat at Everton by demanding more money or a move. 1s it just me or is the whole English game going mad?" Given the fiequency of cornplaints fiom the Pink letters on the theme of 'betrayal' over the

years, one could argue that the recent challenges to the traditional identity and integrity of the

soccer community are no different fiom criticisms that have ken previously raised. It must be

said, however, that while issues such as raising pnces can be attributed to the individual

decisions of wayward chairmen who have gone astray, changes such as the implementation of

all-seaters throughout England, the establishment of the Premiership and the Bosman ruling have

ken far-reaching institutional ones that signifi a 'collective' shifi in attitudes and sensibilities on the part of soccer's upper classes. Even scarier for the concerned truefan is the fact that these changes were made possible with the emergence of a new 'player' in the soccer business: the television broadcasting industry.

Television's involvement with English soccer is not a new development, but for much of the post-war penod, coverage had generally remained at a peripheral level. As Fishwick points out. this was partly due to the Football League's own overall distrust of broadcasting and the threat it posed to attendances and gate revenueses3 With the reorganisation of the Premier

League under the FA in 1 992, as well as the satellite charnel Sky TV's hitherto unheard of £300 million bid for the exclusive rights to show Premiership matches, there has never been more rnoney in the clubs' coffers than at present. Evidently, the TV revenue was a very much- welcomed shot in the arm for a game which always seemed beset by financial problems.

For the concemed puefan, however, this newly-found wealth was not 'moralised' wealth; rather, it represented the establishment of a new business 'sensibility' within the soccer community - one which threatened to replace the traditionai values which had brought the classes together. Above all, this was a sensibility that came fiom outside the soccer community; thus it was a sensibility whose rationale was not governed by soccer 'interests'. For the 99 concemed newfan, the operative word here is 'greed', and with TV money now dnving this sensibility with mind-boggling astronomical figures, the dilemma over the issue of 'moralised wealth' becomes manifold.

This is best highlighted by the two take-over bids for Manchester United involving the two most powerful men in the media industry of their time - Robert Maxwell and Rupert

Murdoch. In the first instance, Maxwell's 1984 take-over proposition was more of a feeler, and although nothing came of it in the end, the rumours of a sale was enough to send shockwaves throughout the Pink pages. In the letters, Maxwell - who was also chairman of Oxford United at the time - was portrayed as someone who did not have the best interests of soccer and its fans at

...He obviously has no interest in his club but only his bank account. Attempting to merge with Reading, doubling the admission prices when Oxford played United and charging Everton supporters f6 to stand up on an uncovered terrace. No thank you Mr Maxwell, we don't want your sort at Old TrafTord,. ..54

The sarne concems can also be seen some fifteen years later in the BSkyB TV's attempt to reassure United fans in the wake of its f623 million take-over bid. As Stuart Mathieson of the

Pink reports on 12 September:

Sky TV chief executive Mark Booth swiftly moved in to quel1 the scare stories wlien the two companies were finally able to speak out: Skyarenot goingto move theground. Sky are not going to pick the team. Sky are not going to change the name. Sky are not going to start hiking ticket prices or going to change the club. Sky are not going to axe successful boss Alex Ferguson.. .. 55

Although these points may appear somewhat far-fetched, they nevertheless indicate the fears that concerned fans have about the presence of a 'non-soccer' element in their midst. However, not everyone who wrote in was opposed to these developments. In the following Pink letter from

1984, the respondent seems quite alert to the supposedly 'antiquated' attitudes of the naysayen over the Maxwell affair: Why al1 the hullabdoo over Maxwell's attempted take-over of Manchester United? ... The days of Corinthians and Casuals, when football was just a sport are now over. For years now it has been So and So Ltd v So and So Ltd .... Maxwell's "dough would have enabled the club to ennch Old Trafford, the fans king the gainers.. .56 Interestingly enough, the same argument was employed by United chairman Martin Edwards

some fifieen years later in relation to the BSkyB bid. Following the decision by the Monopolies

and Mergers Commission to block the take-over, he laments, "...It isn't a bottomless pit ....

There were no figures mentioned about how much money Sky would pump in. However, we

believed within reason that they would have supported the board with what they wanted to do.

Obviously nobody is going to write you a blank cheque but the resources would have ken better."57

Arguments such as those presented by Edwards may well be accurate assessments of where top-flight soccer in England needs to be in order to survive, but the fact that they remain in the minority - at least. within the context of the Pink letters - clearly indicates just how much emphasis is still placed on traditional notions of the soccer cornmunity. Even for srnailer clubs, notions like loyalty and locality die hard, even in the face of new 'economic' realities. It probably makes good business sense to pool one's resources and merge Oldham Athletic,

Rochdale and Bury into a single competitive club, but the very cheek to even suggest it cost former Oldham chairman Ian Stott his position.58

CONCLUSION

Perhaps what one is really looking at in the football specials and the fanzines is a conservative reaction by a conservative culture against what it perceives to be a threat against the status quo. Through 'forums' such as the speciai and the fanzine, one is also afforded a glimpse of 'populism' in action. especially in terms of how the people of this culture react in defence of IO I it. As historical players, one could argue that both are an integral part of how the soccer fans throughout England deal with the ongoing challenges to hold their respective 'communities' together. For the concemed, these challenges often boil down to the division between 'us' and

'them', as well as the need to constantly bridge that division. White one is certainly justified in arguing that the fanzines have been more influentid in their ability to mobilise fan support for effective affirmative action, one shouId not forget that, for the greater part of the twentieth century. it was the football special that essentiaily fùlfilled that role. Letters of complaint and criticism could hardly be described as political, but they are nevertheless clear exarnples of proactive effort by the fans to restore the delicate balance of harmony and unity between the

'upper' and 'iower' classes which have characterised the English soccer communities for well over a century.

In that respect. both the fanzine and the football speciai, like the terrace songs and chants, cm be likened to what Joyce describes as the 'literature of aspiration'. In addition, the soccer supporters' 'literature of aspiration' not only reveals their hopes, but also their resilience and resourcefulness in the face of adversity. This is clearly demonstrated by the truefans' ongoing crusade to rid themselves of the 'hooligan' label. Through the fanzine, they successfully carved out a means by which they could speak out in defence of themselves against a hostile 'other'.

With the 'newfun revolution', however, the English soccer community faces a far more sinister threat, for it represents a concerted effort to sweep aside the traditional status quo which the rrtrefu~ has a vested interest in maintaining, and to repIace it with a new one that is constnicted from without and led by those whose values, kliefs and attitudes do not correspond with their own. At times, the trucfun tries to console himself with the knowledge that "one day when these people find another 'toy' to latch on to they will desert football, unlike the real fans. ..."59 On the other hand, if the symbolism of Manchester United PLC's decision to remove 1 02 the words 'Football Club' fiom its crest is to be taken seriously, the truefan probably has every right to fear his own place in the soccer community, as the English game moves into the next millennium and beyond. 1 O3 NOTES

Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 6 February 1999, (Manchester: Manchester Evening News Ltd, 1 999), p.29. 1f a Pink questionnaire held in Decemkr 1998 is anything to go by, its readersh ip could be described as king predominantly male (96 percent), with the majority belonging to the 35-59 age range, and have read the paper for more than twenty years.

Quoted in Richard Haynes, The Fmtbal1 Imagination: the rise of football fanzine culture, (Aldershot: Arena, 1995), 9.73.

See chapter 3 of Haynes. The Football Imagination (1995).

From a methodological standpoint, the prirnary documents for this chapter are derived from pst- World-War-Two sources that pertain primarily with the soccer scene in and around the city of Manchester. Information on the local football special is exclusively obtained from a publication called the Pink, as well as its 'parent' paper, the Manchester Evening News. Much of the references used in this chapter on fanzines are those from the two main Manchester clubs, City and United.

Cited in Nicholas Fishwick, Ennlish Football and Society. 1910-1950. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989), p.53.

Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 1 1 May 199 1, p. 23.

Manchester Evening- News & Chronicle, 7 February 1968, (Manchester: North News Ltd., 1968), p. 14.

Manchester Evenina News: the Pink, 12 December 1998, p.29.

Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 10 April 1999, p.29.

10. Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 17 March 1984, p.7.

1 1. Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 7 December 1974, p.9.

12. Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 30 lanuary 1999, p.29.

13. Manchester Eveninn News: the Pink, 4 February 1984, p.7.

14. Kinr of the Ki~pax,issue 17, (c. 1990-1 99 1 ), p. 16.

1 5. Red Issue, volume 3, issue 7, (c. IWO- 199 1 ).

16. Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 8 May 1999, p.29.

17. Quoted in Stephen Wagg, "The Missionary Position: football in the societies of Britain and Ireland", Givina the Game Away: football. politics. and culture on five continents, ed., Stephen Wagg, (London: Leicester University Press, 1999, p.3.

18. Quoted in Tony Mason, "'Our Stephen and Our Harold': Edwardian Footballers as Local Heroes", The International Journal of the Histow of S-port, volume 13, March 1996, no. 1, (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1996), p.78. 19. Manchester Evening News & Chronicle, 26 January 1968, p. 1.

20. Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 30 January 1999, p. 1 1.

2 1. See Chapter Two, p.49.

22. The works of Steve Redhead, such as Post-Fandom and the Millennial Blues: the Transformation of Soccer Culture, (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), are an insightful look into the post- modernist examination of soccer culture.

23. Bill Buford, Amon2 the Thugs, (New York: Vintage Books, 1990, 1993), pp.75-76.

24. Red Issue, volume 3, issue 10, (c.1990- 199 1 ).

25. Manchester Evening News, 29 April 1974, p20.

26. Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 14 January 1984, p.7; 25 February 1984, p.6.

27. Manchester Eveninn News, 1 7 Decernber 1974, p. 1.

28- Manchester Eveninn News, 29 April 1974, p.8.

29. Manchester Evening News, 3 1 May 1985, p.6.

30. Manchester Evening News, 30 May 1985, p.7.

3 1 - Haynes, The Football Imagination ( 1995). pp25-26.

33- Quoted in Haynes, The Football Imagination (1995), p.50.

33- Richard Haynes, "Marching on Together", The Passion and the Fashion: football fandom in the New Europe, ed-, Steve Redhead, (Aldershot: Avebury, 1993), p.26.

34. Quoted in Brian Holland et al, "Sport and racism in Yorkshire: a case study", Smrt and Identip in the North of England, eds., Jeff Hill and Jack Williams, (Keele: Keele Universiw Press, 1996).p. 178.

35. Haynes, The Football imagination (2 995), p.89.

36. Tans caught in Milan crush", from Manchester Online, (1999) at h ttp://www.manchesteronI ine.co.uk/editorials/news/000001 .hm1 (Accessed 1 8 March 1 999).

37. Electric Blue, issue 9, (c.1990-1991).

38. 'Dave H', "Building in Bosworth Field", from Red lssue (in association with Soccer Fanzine) (c.1999) at http:l/www.soccer-fanzine.co.uk/manunit~l (Accessed 29 March 1999).

39. Haynes, The Football lmagination (1995), pp. 74-76. This issue can be seen in the dispute between When Sutwday Cornes and Red issue during the 1990- 199 1 season, when the latter was accused of using provocative language with regard to rival clubs. 40. See lan R. Taylor, "Soccer Consciousness and Soccer Hooliganism," Images of Deviance, ed., Stanley Cohen, (Harmondsworth [England], Baltimore and Victoria [Australia] : Penguin Books, 1971).

4 1. Cited in Fishwick, Enalish- Football and Societv, p. 1 1 1.

42. See chapter one of Phif Scraton, Hillsborouph: the truth, (Edinburgh: Mainstrearn Publishing Projects, 1999).

43. According to the Final Report, Lord Justice Taylor called for the gradua1 replacement of terraces with seated areas in ail league grounds in England by the end of the century. Since then, the 'all-seater' recommendations have been revised, whereby clubs currently residing in the Football League Second and Third Division are allowed to have 'standing' room, provided they meet al1 safety requirements by the year 2000.

44. Adrian Thrills, You're not Sinaina Anvmore!: a riotous celebration of football chants and the culture that s~awnedhem, (London: Ebury Press, 1 W8), p. 1 57.

45. Rob Merrills, Dicks Out 2: vou're not sinnina any more?, (London: Red Card Publishing, 1997), p.ix.

46. Thrills, You're not Sinaina Anvmore!, pp. 157- 158.

47. Manchester Evenina News: the Pink, 16 January 1999, 9-29.

48. Manchester Evening News: the Pink, 13 April 199 1, p.27.

49. Manchester Evenina News: the Pink, 3 Oçtober 1998, p. 15.

50. Manchester Evenina News: the Pink, 15 August 1998, p.29.

5 1. Arguably the most memorable decision ever reached by the EU courts, the 1994 Bosman niling meant that within the context of the EU member States, a footballer was entitled to a 'free transfer' to any club of his choice once his playing contract with his current club had expired. What made this decision even more sign ificant was UEFA's decision to apply this ruling to al1 of its members.

52. Manchester Eveninp News: the Pink, 14 August 1999, p.29. The names mentioned in this letter are of players who were involved in contract 'disputes' with their respective clubs.

53. Fishwick, You're not Sinaina Anvmore!, p. Il 1.

54. Manchester Eveninn News: the Pink, 1 I February 1984, p.6.

55. Manchester Eveninp, News: the Pink, 12 September 1998, p.8.

56. Manchester Even ing News: the Pink, 1 8 Februq 1 984, p.7.

57. Manchester Evenina News: the Pink, 17 April 1999, p. 1.

58. Manchester Eveninn News: the Pink, 1 5 May 1999, p.25.

59. Manchester Evenina News: the Pink, 3 April 1999, p.25. EPILOCUE

It would be convenient to highlight Manchester United's phenomenal success both on and off the pitch in the 1990s as a harbinger of things to corne as English soccer clubs enter the twenty-fist century. Indeed, it could even be argued that United has been a leading force in expanding the English game beyond the confines of the local. Much has already been made of its supposed status as a 'non-local' club, although it is only in the 1990s that this 'label' has ken utiiised to the fullest extent. The most impressive example of this has clearly ken Manchester

United PLC's ability to flex its merchandising m. As the Manchester Evening News Pink reports in 18 July 1998, the club's merchandising revenue even exceeded ticket sales for the previous financial year - £ 34.2 million to £30.1 million in 1997.' On top of it al1 is of course

BSkyB's f623 million takeover bid in September 1998 - a sobering reflection on how far United has evolved as a soccer outfit, considering that it was only a decade earlier that chairman Martin

Edwards was prepared to sel1 the club for £10 million.

On the flip side, however, the BSkyB bid could also be seen as the centre-piece for what has gone wrong with the English game in the 1990s. For the self-proclaimed truefan, changes such as the 'all-seater' solution, the Bosman ruling, and the increased prominence of the broadcast media - among others - represent the gradua1 erosion of the values, beliefs and attitudes that the English soccer comrnunity has chenshed. These values are essentially reducible to one underlying theme: 'Ioyalty' to the 'local'. It is a theme which could be traced in antiquity, when closes were built and Shrove Tuesday matches were held not only against the wishes of a disapproving centre. but also with the quiet blessing - and at times, the not-so-quiet participation - of the local elite. It is a theme that could be found both in fiction -- through the desperate plea for club support from a character in a novelette written in the early 1920s - and in fact -- through the desperate plea for club support fiom the chairman of Macclesfield Town in the late 1990s. It is a theme that could be serenaded in Song, as the Liverpool fans do with 'Poor

Scouser Tommy', or it could be written out in a letter by a concerned supporter who wishes to

give his or her two-cent's worth in a fanzine or a football special.

On this basis, it is not difficult to see why many saw United's unprecedented decision to

participate in the inaugural World Club Championship in Brazil at the expense of the 1999-2000

FA Cup - arguably the most potent symbol of English soccer's celebration of the fruefan - as a

betrayal of al1 that the English soccer community stands for. As one Pink letter puts it,

"...United have sold their loyal fans dom the river with only the thought of more profit above

the considerations of the fans, but then, what should we expect from a Chairman who has twice

been a hair's breadth from selling his shares in the club for a vast profit".2 It is also within this

context that one can begin to understand the plea of the Rochdale fan in the prologue to 'save

football as we know it'.) In this case, -football9represents not only the myth of a *linleEngland'

in relation to the larger world beyond, but also the myth of social concord and egalitarianism

which that 'little England' supposedly encompasses. In the new hi&-profile, corporate environment of top-flight soccer, both myths are effectively srnashed, as lower-end clubs stmggle to cope with the new fiscal demands of the 'newfan revolution'. Some, like Aldeahot

Town and Maidstone United in the early 1990s, have crumbled under the pressure and were

forced into dissolution, while others like AFC Bournemouth, Brighton & Hove Albion and

Chester City were only denied a similar fate in the eleventh hour.

On a more positive note, the last three clubs mentioned have also provided examples of

'resistance', whereby ordinary supporters have sought to prevent the tide of 'revolution' from destroying their respective cornrnunities. In the case of Bournemouth and Chester in particular, impromptu fighting fhds were established in order to keep the clubs afl~at.~Even more impressive was the venture into local politics by Chadton Athletic supporters in their ultimately successful attempt to bring the club back to its 'home' comrnunity after it was moved away as part of a ground-sharing s~heme.~Ironically enough, it could be argued that 'fan power' has never been more profoundly evident during the 'troubled' 1990s than at any other time previously. To a great extent, this can be attributed to a greater sense of socio-political

'awareness' among supporters through the dissemination and articulation of ideas and opinions in new independent mediums like the fanzines. Yet at the sarne tirne. the exarnples of

'resistance' described above are not much different from Nicholas Fishwick's description of the efforts made by Swindon Town fans to keep league soccer alive dunng the dark days of the

~e~ression.~In that respect, the present-day examples of 'fan power' continue to illustrate the importance of traditional notions of fan support in the survival of the English game at the grass- roots level. as concepts such as 'loyalty', 'locality', 'goodwill' and social 'accord' are still very much a part of the 'solution'.

The same could probably be said of the successful campaign to block BSkyB's takeover bid of Manchester United by fan-organized groups like IMUSA (Independent Manchester United

Supporters' Association) and SUAM (Shareholders United Against Murdoch). While the grind of surviving the daily rigours of Third Division soccer seems a world away from the dizzying heights which clubs like United now occupy, some similarities can be drawn between the

'shilling supporter's' appeal to the cornmon responsibility of the comrnunity to keep the cash- strapped local club going, and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission's decision to block the

BSkyB bid. Along with the conventional rationale of the economic iIls of establishing a monopoly, the MMC also included in its summary report the following argument:

... We have based our public interest conclusions mainly on the effects of the merger on competition among broadcasters. However, we also think that the merger would adversely affect football in two ways. First, it would reinforce the existing trend towards greater inequality of wealth between clubs. thus weakening the smaller ones. Second, it would give BSkyB additional influence over Premier League decisions relating to the organization of football, leading to some decisions which did not reflect the long-term interests of football. On both counts the rnerger may be expected to have the adverse effect of darnaging the quality of English football.. .. 7

While 'quality' could be defined in any number of ways, the preceding lines suggest that the underlying concem here is the need to maintain a sense of 'fair play' in the long-term interests of

'football' - the same sense of 'fair-play' which had characterised the game since antiquity. In that sense, the MMC's answer is not unlike the Rochdale fan's pfea, and may even give the latter some cause for optimism. While the transformation of the English game may be irreversible, perhaps the direction of fandom lies in how much the rrue/an can exist within the newfan, and vice versa. In closing, a Pink letter's analogy of a tree to describe Manchester United provides a poignant summary of the past. the present, and the future of soccer in England:

When they planted the seed in Newton Heath the flat-cap contingent could not have visualised the tree that would grow and grow until it became a giant in Europe. And it's still growing. Now it's branching out to encompass the world. But in the shadow of its branches, lesser cornpetitions are king neglected ...... the cost of maintaining the growth of the giant is soaring dong with its spreading global fame. There is no stopping the process. The sky is not the limit. But will the tree continue to flourish or will it eventually become too big for its ground roots? The men in the flat caps would be shaking their heads in wonderment. But they would also be holding their heads high with pride and happy to see the fruits of their labours. Mind you, they probably would be amazed to see how much it costs to watch the continued growth and not a little concerned that the new "groundsmen" would continue to nurture the phenornenon and keep it growing in English soil.'

To use the same analogy, perhaps the hture of that 'tree' - and indeed, al1 other 'trees' like it throughout the English landscape - may depend on whether the Bat-capped contingent of the late-Victorian age will be able to pass on their gardening tips to the 'new' groundsmen of post- industrial Britain. NOTES

1 . Manchester Evenina News: the Pink, 1 8 July 1998, (Manchester: Manchester Evening News Ltd., 1998), p.2.

2. Manchester Eveninn News: the Pink, 1 7 July 1999, p.23.

3. See Introduction, p. 1.

4. For more online information on the issue of insolvency in soccer industry, see R.M.A. Pany's webpage, Football Clubs in financial diflficulties at http://www.Ie.ac.uWlaw/mapI/footy.htmI (Accessed 12 January 2000).

5. Richard Haynes, The Football Imagination: the rise of football fanzine culture, (Aideshot: Arena, 1995), pp.92-93.

6. Nicholas Fishwick, English Football and Societv. 1 9 10- 1950, (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1 989), pp.42-44.

7. The Competition Commission (fonnerly the Monopolies and Mergers Commission), British Skv Broadcastinn gr ou^ PLC and Manchester United PLC: A Remrt on the Promsed Merger ( 1999) at Iittp://ww w .mnic.gov.u k/bskyb.litrn (Accessed 1 O June 1999).

8. Manchester Evenina News: the Pink, 3 July 1999, p.22. Armstrong, Gary. Football Hooligans: Knowine the Score. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998.

Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian Enaland: Rational recreation and the contest for control. 1830- 1885. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.

Baldwin, Kevin. This Supwrting- Life: How to be a real football fan, revised edition. London: Headline, 1 997.

Buford, Bill. Amona the Thugs. New York: Vintage Books, 1990, 1993.

Burke. Peter. Popular Culture in Early- Modem Europe. London: Temple Smith, 1978.

Ganter, David, Miriam Cornber and David L. Uzzell. Football in its Place: an environmental psvcholoav of football grounds. London and New York: Routledge, 1989.

Cloves, Jeff. "wonder boy", Here We Go: a -mtrv celebration of soccer. Blackburn: BB Books, 1986.

Dekker, Thomas. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. Volume 2. Ed,, Fredson Bowers. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1955.

Dymond, David. '-A Lost Social Institution: The Camping Close", Rural History, vol. 1, no. 2. Cambridge and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Fishwick, Nicholas. English Football and Society, 1910-1950. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989.

Hamel, H. G. de. "The Greater Game", Twentv-Five Football Stories. London: George Newnes Limited, 1908.

Hausted, Peter. The Rival1 Friends: A Comoedie. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd; New York: Da Capo Press, 1973, c. 1632,

I-iaynes, Richard. The Football Imagination: the rise of football fanzine culture. Aldershot: Arena, 1995.

Haynes, Richard. "Marching on Together", The Passion and the Fashion: football fandom in the New Europe. Ed., Steve Redhead. Aldershot: Avebwy, 1993.

Heywood, Thomas. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, Volume 2. New York: Russell & Russe 1l Inc, 1964, c. 1874.

Hill, Jeff. "Rite of spring: Cup Finals and community in the North of England", Smrt and Identitv in the North of Enaland.- Eds., Jeff Hill and Jack Williams. Keele: Keele University Press, 1996. Holland, Brian et al. "Sport and racism in Yorkshire: a case study", Sport and Identity in the North of Eneland. Eds., Jeff Hill and Jack Williams. Keele: Keele University Press, 1996.

Holt, R. J. "Football and the Urban Way of Life in Nineteenth-Century Britain", Pleasure, Profit Proselytism: British culture and sport at home and abroad. Ed., J.A. Mangan. London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1988.

Hone, William, The Every-Dav Book, vol. 1, f Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1967).

Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy London: Penguin, 1957.

Hornby, Nick. Fever Pitch. London: Indigo, 1992.

Jones, Gareth Stedman. "Working-class culture and working-class politics in London, 1870- 1900: Notes on the remaking of a working class," Lanauazes of Class: Studies in Enerlish Working Class Historv. 1832-1982. Cambridge, London, New York. New Rochelle, Me1 borne and Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Joyce, Patrick. Visions of the Peo~le:industrial Eneland and the Ouestion of Class, 1848-1914. Cambridge. New York. Port Chester, Melbourne and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. 1991.

Magoun, Francis Peabody, Jr. Historv of Football: From the Beginnings- to 1871. Bochum- Langendreer: Verlag Heinrich Poppinghaus 0.H.-G., 1938.

Malcolmson, Robert W. Po~ularRecreations in Enelish Society. 1700-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Mangan, J.A. "Social Datwinism and upper-class education in late Victorian and Edwardian England", Manliness and Moralitv: Middle-class masculinitv in Britain and America. 1800-1940. Eds., J.A. Mangan and James Walvin. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987.

Mason, Tony. Association Football and Enalish Society. 1863- 19 15. Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1980.

Mason. Tony. "Our Stephen and Our Harold", The International Journal of the History of S-port, vol. 1 3, no. 1 (March 1996). London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd, 1996.

Memlls, Rob. Dicks Out 2: You're not singing anv more?. London: Red Card Publishing, 1997.

Redhead, Steve. Post-Fandom and the Miliemial Blues: the Transformation of Soccer Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Scraton, Phil. Hillsborouah: the truth. Edinburgh: Mainstrearn Publishing Projects, 1999.

Sharpe. J.A. Earlv Modem Enaland: A Social History, 1550-1760. London: Edward Arnold, 1987. Smith, Alan G.R. The Emergence of a Nation State: The commonwealth of Enaland. 1529- 1660. London and New York: Longman, 1984.

Speak, M.A. "Social Stratification and Participation in Sport in Mid-Victonan England with Particular Reference to Lancaster, 1840-70", Pleasure. Profit. Proselvtisrn: British culture and swrt at home and abroad. Ed., J.A. Mangan. London and New Jersey: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1988.

Taylor, [an R. "Soccer Consciousness and Soccer Hooliganism," Imaees of Deviance. Ed., Stanley Cohen. Harmondsworth [England], Baltimore and Victoria [Australia]: Penguin Books, 1971.

Thrills, Adrian- You're not Sin~innAnmore!: a riotous celebration of football chants and the culture that spawned them. London: Ebury Press, 1998.

Trembath, David. "When Wembley was a Dream", Verses United: the mtrv of football. Ed., Ian Hom. County Durham: County Durham Books, 1993-

Wagg, Stephen. "The Missionary Position: football in the societies of Britain and Ireland, Givina the Garne Awav: football, politics, and culture on five continents. Ed., Stephen Wagg. London: Leicester University Press, 1995.

Williams, Jack. "Churches, Sport and Identities in the North. 1900-1939", Smrt and Identity in the North of England. Eds., Jeff Hill and Jack Williams. Keele: Keele University Press, 1996.

Wrightson, Keith. "The Politics of the Parish in Early Modem England", The Exwrience of Authoritv in Earlv Modem Eneland. Eds., Paul Grifiths, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle. New York: St Martin's Press, 1996.

Wylde, Jack. "The Traitor of the Team", Aldine Football Stories. London: The Aldine Publishing Co. Ltd., 1923.

PRIMARY SOURCES: FANZINES AND FOOTBALL SPECIALS

1 wish to thank the staff at the Manchester Central Library and the British (Newspaper) Library for their help in my research on local newspapers and the football specials during the pst-war period: the Manchester Evening News; the Manchester Evening News and Chronicle ;and the Manchester Evening News: the Pink

As for the information on club fanzines, again 1 wish to thank the staff at the Manchester Central Library, as well as Mr Mark Wylie of Manchester United Archives for their help in my research on the following sources: Electric Blue; King of the Kippa; and Red Issue. ELECTRONIC SOURCES

Cornpetition Commission, the (fonnerly the Monopolies and Mergen Commission). British Skv Broadcastina gr ou^ PLC and Manchester United PLC: A Remrt on the Prormsed Meraer ( 1 999). http://\\x\\ .rnmc.gov.uk/bskyb.htm (10 June 1999).

"David Pleat (City in Division Two)", fiom wwv.ni-u-f-c.co.uk. http://www.m-u-f-c.co.uklsongs/classic/pleat.htrn ( 12 January 2000).

Dillon, William and Sir Harry Lauder. "The End of the Road, from A Celebration of Sir Ham, Lauder: 'laird of the music hall'. http://ww.sirh~1auder.com/Iyrics/~ndroad.html ( 12 January 2000).

"Fans caught in Milan cmsh". from Manchester Online, (1 999). http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/editonal 1 .html (18 March 1999).

"Forever and Ever". from tvwv.m-u-f-c.co.uk. http://www.m-u-f-c.co.uk/songdcIassic/forever.htrr~ (1 2 January 2000).

H, Dave. "Building in Bosworth Field", fiom Red Issue (in association with Soccer Fanzine) (c. 1 999) http://www.soccer- fanzine-CO.uklmanunite-4. html (29 March 1999).

''1 was born in the Stretford End, fiom ww.in-u-f-c.co.uk. http://www.rn-u-f-c-CO.uk/songs/classic/bom. htrn (1 2 January 2000).

"If 1 die in the Kippax Street", from -4r.m-u-f-c.co.uk. http://www.m-u-f-c.co.uk~songs/classic/kippax.htm ( 12 January 2000).

"1' m Forever ï-hrowing Bottles", from wwwrn-u-f-c.co .uk. littp://~v~~~v.m-u-f-c.co.uk/songs/classic~ot~les.htm (12 January 2000).

"In ourLiverpool slums", fiom wwm-LI-f-c.co.uk. http://w~w.n~-u-f-c.co.~~k/songs/modern/slitms.htm ( 12 January 2000)- Kenbrovin, Jaan and John William Kellette. "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" (1 919), from MIDI Music Sina-Along Songbook. (1 999) http://\nwv. bol .net/oversecrS/bubbks.html (1 2 January 2000).

"Kick 'em dl", fiom www.m-u-f-c.co.uk. http://fi-ww.m-u-f-c.co,uWsongs/classic/kick.htm (12 January 2000).

"Mirror. Mirror on the Wall", Red Issue (in association with Soccer Fanzine), c. 1999. http://~~~~~v.soccer-fanzine.co.uk/manunitt.d/current/sto~html (29 ~March1999).

Pany, R.M.A. Football Clubs in financial difficulties. (1 999) http://www.le.ac.uk~law/map11 footy.htm1 (1 2 January 2000).

Ridley, Geordie. "Blaydon Races" (c.1862), fiom History of Yorkshire and Northeast Ennland. http:!/ourworld.compuserve.com/homepa~yneside. htm ( 12 January 2000).

"The Red Flag", from www.m-u-f-c.co.uk. http://\~wv.m-u-f-c.co.uk/songs/classic~flag.htm (1 2 January 2000).

"Tip-toe through the Kippax". fiom www.m-LI-f-c.co.uk. http://www.m-u-f-c.co.uk/songs/classic/tiptoe.htrn ( 1 2 January 2000).

1 wish to thank the following for making the sources listed above available online: -Vas' from uww.ni-u-f-c.co.uk; David Simpson from Historv of Yorkshire and Northeast Enrrland (http://o~orld.conipusert.e.comniomepages/north_east~england~hisioryqage/); Ji11 Bondurant fiom The MIDI Music sin^-alona Songbook, (http://~v~wi.bol .net/ovcrsscr5/ midisongbook. html); 'Edie' fiom A Celebration of Sir Harrv Lauder (h~p://\~-\vw.sirharrylauder.com);Manchester Online (http://www.manchesteronline. CO-uk); Soccer Fanzine (http://w~w.soccer-fanzine.co.uk);Dr Rebecca Parry from the University of Leicester (http://www.le.ac.uk/law/mapl); and the Cornpetition Commission (hnp://www.mmc.gov.uk).