Pitch Black (14 page)

DAVE BENNETT WAS
out for revenge. The experience the last time was going to stand him in good stead and he was determined to prepare and prepare well. They were underdogs, but a cup final was a cup final – anything can happen – and a few of the lads who’d denied him a winner’s medal last time out were still in the Spurs side. They wouldn’t deny him a medal this time if he had anything to do with it.

Bennett was elected to the Coventry City Hall of Fame in 2005, one of only thirty former players to be recognised with such an honour. He played over 170 games for the Sky Blues, but if there’s one game that most contributed to that Hall of Fame election over all others, it would be the one that he played on a sunny May afternoon, when Coventry won their only major honour to date. The 1987 FA Cup
final was one of the best in living memory. Underdogs Coventry City had three black players in their side: Dave Bennett, who had played in the 1981 final for Manchester City, ironically against Spurs; Cyrille Regis, playing in his first and only cup final; and journeyman midfielder Lloyd McGrath, all of whom were to play roles in the key moments of the game. Tottenham had taken an early lead after only two minutes, when Allen headed in a cross from Waddle. Spurs were ahead for only six minutes before a deep cross from the left was flicked on. In the Tottenham goal, Clemence hesitated, and Bennett nipped in, took the ball past Clemence and from a tight angle turned the ball into the net to equalise for the Sky Blues. At 1–1, Regis had a goal disallowed for a seemingly innocuous infringement and just before half-time Spurs went ahead thanks to an own goal by Coventry captain – and former schoolboy opponent of Calvin Plummer – Brian Kilcline. Just past the hour, Bennett provided a peach of a cross for Keith Houchen to head a stunning equaliser, and in extra time a cross from the right by Lloyd McGrath was deflected by Spurs captain Mabbutt over his own keeper. Coventry had won, and Bennett became the first black player to be named Man of the Match in an FA Cup final. That win, coupled with his fine form, earned Cyrille Regis the last of his five England caps a few months later, in October of 1987, when he came on as substitute in an 8–0 win for England against Turkey.

Bennett’s historic contribution to the 1987 final, along with the appearance of Regis, McGrath and Spurs’ Chris Hughton, signalled the start of a new trend that would figure consistently in all subsequent finals. The first all-Merseyside cup final in 1986 had resulted in a 3–1 victory for Liverpool. It would be the last FA Cup final not to feature a black
player. The same year brought a similar development in political representation.

By the time of the disturbances in 1985, the issue of political representation of black people as elected officials at local and national level was firmly on the agenda. Black communities had overwhelmingly given their political support to the Labour Party and, across the country, small numbers of black men and women had been elected to public office at local council level. Combatting the issue of the under-representation of black people as MPs, in order to turn this support for Labour into black political representation, was not a priority amongst the majority of overwhelmingly working-class minority ethnic communities and had been promoted by only a small group of councillors and other activists. The general election of 1987 resulted in the Conservatives winning a third consecutive term of office. However, Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Keith Vaz were elected as Labour MPs, so becoming the first minority ethnic MPs to win parliamentary seats since before the First World War. Their election raised the visibility of people of colour within mainstream institutions and cemented the emergence of a still small but burgeoning black middle class. Representation was also increasing in those areas where working-class people were organised into trade unions. In 1991, Bill Morris became the first black leader of a trade union when he was elected as General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, the country’s largest. His historic election signalled the significant distance the TGWU and the black community had travelled since Tilbury dockers and union members had gone on strike in support of Powell in the days after his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in April 1968.

While Dave Bennett and his teammates were celebrating their historic achievement with the traditional winners’ lap of honour, their smiles and celebrations briefly deflected attention from the fact that the game in England was in crisis. The 1980s represented the English game’s nadir: crowd safety issues, illustrated by disasters at Bradford, Heysel and Hillsborough; hooliganism; increasing ticket prices; ticket allocations; and racist chanting and abuse were all blighting the game. By 1985, the Conservative government had responded by supporting UEFA’s ban on English clubs in European competition, thus denying Coventry the opportunity to participate in the following season’s UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup competition, and had revealed plans to introduce ID cards for football fans.

In the wake of the Heysel disaster in 1985, the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) was launched to provide a voice for supporters and to campaign for the interests of ordinary fans. They provided opposition to the government’s ID card scheme, demanded supporters be treated with dignity and respect, and really came of age in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster, when they stood up for and articulated the concerns of victims, as
The Sun
and other media outlets sought to blame fans for the disaster. When the challenge from the FSA to the official National Federation of Football Supporters’ Clubs (NFFSC) came, it caught the Federation off guard. The development of independent supporters’ groups proved to be the catalyst for a desire for a greater voice for fans to articulate their issues and concerns, and what emerged from this was the development of fanzines.

In tandem with the earliest development of football clubs, there had been the parallel development of organised supporters’ groups. These groups played a key role in the early establishment of clubs, particularly in raising funds in order to finance key developments and infrastructural changes. These included: land purchase for grounds; building of stands; purchase of players; payment of players’ wages, particularly during the off-season; stewarding; toilet facilities; turnstiles; bars; refreshments; and a host of other necessities to ensure the smooth running and day-to-day operation of the club. When football clubs were banned from organising their own lotteries by FA regulations, supporters’ groups obliged by organising their own schemes to bolster clubs’ income. Some of these schemes were so successful they were able to pay for quite significant developments. For example, Southend United supporters’ clubs had, by 1953, raised enough money to purchase a new ground. Other supporters’ groups raised money for floodlights and club premises and provided subsidies for the unemployed and old-age pensioners. The extent to which organised supporters’ groups raised revenue to contribute to the material running and well-being of football clubs would, in many cases, have warranted an invitation to join the board of directors, had they been contributed by individuals or a consortium. However, with very few exceptions, no such privilege was extended to representatives of fan groups for their efforts, even when their contribution had been extensive.

By the late 1960s and early ’70s, the role of supporters’ groups in raising money diminished as clubs became more professional in raising revenue. The appointment of commercial directors and other, similar, roles coincided with the development of football as a TV spectacle. Therefore,
outside of the amateur game, the role of official supporters’ clubs was gradually reduced to that of organising social activities and arranging travel to away games.

As a vehicle for voicing the concerns of ordinary fans, supporters’ clubs and the NFFSC, to which they subscribed, were meaningless. Any attempts to raise issues of concern to fans were quickly suppressed in favour of maintaining good relations with the clubs and football authorities. Legitimate issues such as ticket prices and facilities for fans were, by and large, dismissed by clubs and the FA alike. Each year the Federation would remain virtually silent as the issue of allocation of cup final tickets would be raised by ordinary fans, only to be summarily dismissed with the same disdain as in the previous year. By the 1980s, the Federation that represented supporters’ clubs was almost exclusively made up of grey-suited, middle-aged, middle-class men, mirroring the FA structures themselves, both at county and national level, and was a self-serving clique, officially sanctioned by the FA and Football League, with little relevance to the needs of ordinary fans. Its cosy relationship with football’s hierarchy was summed up by its motto, ‘To help and not to hinder’; its philosophy was illustrated by the fact that the Federation had never provided any opposition to the installation of perimeter fences at football grounds and had done little to oppose racist behaviour amongst fans.

The participants from the FSA were by a long way a younger and more radical breed of football fans, and alongside the FSA came the development of football fanzines. They were keen to provide a voice that went largely unheard amongst supporters and were opposed to two prevailing notions of supporters that existed within the game at this time. Firstly, they were opposed to the official
supporters’ clubs that were characterised by those within the NFFSC. These were often closely monitored, sanctioned and controlled by the board of directors themselves and were usually conservative in outlook and membership. From the outset, the new fanzines sought to provide an anti-establishment voice, which often turned out to be highly critical of the board of directors, highly critical of poor team performance, and irreverent towards players and management staff, and which provided entertaining, witty and often caustic observations about the current state of the club and its main rivals.

Although each fanzine highlighted different issues depending on what was going on at their respective clubs, they also covered topics such as ticket prices, lack of investment, away travel arrangements, policing and stewarding, fashion and music. They also provided fans with a distinct, authentic terrace perspective and, while some were opposed to football violence, others adopted a somewhat indifferent view of hooligan behaviour.

Whatever their perspective, however, the second prevailing notion of football fans that fanzines sought to challenge was the idea that fans were all racist, neo-Nazi hooligans. The fanzine movement sought to distance itself from racism, provided a forum to discuss the impact of racist abuse and behaviour, and tried to put pressure on clubs to take action against it.

Every black footballer of this era recognised Elland Road, the home of Leeds United, as a singularly distasteful place to have a game of football. As well as the racist abuse inside the ground that greeted black players, by 1987, the area around the ground was littered with far-right groups openly selling racist and fascist material.

This was the point at which a group of fans, sick of the poisonous atmosphere at the ground, came together under the auspices of Leeds Trades Council and formed Leeds United Against Racism and Fascism (LUARAF) specifically to combat racism and the activities of the far right. When police were told that the group was to peacefully leaflet the ground with anti-racist material, they were hostile. Shamefully, through press statements, the police let it be known that they feared political violence and portrayed the antiracists as troublemakers. Far-right groups had been allowed to harass and intimidate black supporters and players with impunity for well over a decade and now, when anti-racists tried to organise against the neo-Nazis, the police opposed their actions. The leafleting campaign outside the ground was encouraging: tentative at first, but once it was clear LUARAF weren’t outsiders, the support grew. They initially produced anti-racist leaflets and stickers, but this soon became a fanzine entitled
Marching Altogether
, which had anti-racism as its founding principle and which regularly lampooned, castigated and otherwise ridiculed the behaviour of racists and the far right. Despite LUARAF informing them of its actions, the club claimed not to know who had produced the anti-racist material and threatened to sue the campaigners for unauthorised use of the club badge on their leaflets. Far-right groups had appropriated the club logo for years and placed it on all manner of racist literature and had never been threatened with legal action.

Club officials were eventually persuaded to meet LUARAF, but only after considerable pressure from the council, who owned the ground, having bailed the club out some years before when it had amassed a mountain of debt. The club denied there were any problems and demanded proof.
LUARAF, in conjunction with the local trades council and Anti-Fascist Action, produced it in bucketloads. In March 1988, they published their report ‘Terror on the Terraces’.

The evidence contained in the report was gleaned entirely from previous media reports, so no new evidence was uncovered and all of it had been readily available to the club had they sought it. It included findings from the Popplewell Inquiry into rioting at the Birmingham City
v
. Leeds match in May 1985, where a teenage boy had died. The report had identified racist behaviour and fascist organisations as key elements of the disturbances, including large groups of Leeds hooligans parading in Nazi armbands. The evidence also included details of racist attacks, the use of match days as opportunities for the far right to meet and organise, and details of an undercover investigation by the
Yorkshire Evening Post
into Leeds National Front, whereby journalists had made contact with the group at Elland Road. There were also details of racist chanting, sales of fascist material, and fascist recruitment on match days. If the challenge by the club’s directors to find evidence was designed to deflect criticism from their lack of action, it backfired spectacularly.