The Three Degrees

by Paul Rees

  As a rule, ethnic workers – who were invariably doing blue-collar manual jobs – got paid less than their white counterparts and were often as not being denied union recognition. Parliament itself was then exclusively white, and of the Metropolitan Police’s 22,000-strong force, there were just seventy officers from an ethnic background. An extreme far-right political party, the National Front, had also emerged as an electoral power and advocated the forced repatriation of immigrants. In May 1976, the NF fielded 176 candidates in local elections across the UK.

  The summer of ’76 brought a stifling heatwave to Britain; also, the touring West Indian cricket team came to play a five-match Test series against England. Prior to the series starting, the English cricket captain, Tony Greig, a South African by birth, had said his team intended to make their opponents ‘grovel’. Greig was made to eat his words. The dazzling West Indies side, which included a fearsome four-man fast-bowling attack and a dashing batsman, Viv Richards, crushed England 3-0.

  There was no escaping the symbolic nature of this victory. Next to the thrilling and colourful West Indians, the English team appeared dull and staid, the stuffed-shirt remnants of an era turning to dust. The touring cricketers had struck a resounding blow for black pride in Britain. And at a time when black faces were barely seen on the country’s football terraces, thousands of jubilant West Indian supporters had turned out to see each of the test matches.

  That summer also witnessed the founding of a new youth-led movement in the UK, Rock Against Racism. This was established in opposition to the National Front in the battle for hearts and minds on Britain’s streets. It was the brainchild of two men – Roger Huddle, a designer at the Socialist Worker newspaper, and a photographer and activist, Red Saunders. The pair of them had begun promoting a series of pub gigs in London under the RAR banner. These shows had British reggae groups such as Aswad and Misty in Roots playing alongside some of the emerging punk rock bands such as the Buzzcocks, the Ruts and Generation X.

  ‘Both Red and I thought you could fight the cultural battle through music,’ says Huddle. ‘Right from the start, we were going to have black and white united on the stage, no matter what. In our minds, there was hard racism and soft racism. The National Front discussed racism and used tactics. They were political thinkers and hard core. The people on the estates that voted for them did so because they felt completely powerless and blamed their neighbours.’

  Rock Against Racism was given added impetus by a drunken speech the rock guitarist Eric Clapton had given at a concert in Birmingham on 5 August, during which he’d suggested that all of Britain’s ‘foreigners’ should be sent home. Like England’s cricketers when contrasted with the West Indians, next to the upcoming punk and reggae acts, Clapton appeared representative of British rock’s old guard. He was made to seem embarrassing, out of touch and time.

  Later that month, Laurie Cunningham began a new football season with Orient, though he was destined not to finish it with them. He had started to enjoy his success at the club. He was now getting clothes made for him by a Jewish tailor in the East End and had bought his first car, a vintage Volvo that he’d picked up for £250 and customised with leopard-print seats.

  On the pitch, he continued to be the team’s heartbeat and he was attracting scouts and coaches from First Division clubs. Orient’s near neighbours, West Ham United, were first to consider buying him, but they didn’t have the money. In the end, it was a team that he’d starred against the previous season that took the plunge: newly promoted West Bromwich Albion.

  Cunningham made the last of his seventy-five appearances for Orient in a 2-0 defeat to the club he’d debuted against, Oldham, at Brisbane Road on 5 March 1977. Two days later, Orient accepted an offer of £110,000 for him from West Brom, and on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, Laurie Cunningham left home.

  Chapter Two: Black Country

  West Bromwich Albion’s home ground, the Hawthorns, is sited at a point equidistant between the town of Smethwick in the West Midlands and Handsworth in Birmingham. Smethwick and the clutch of other towns that lie within a two-mile radius to the north-west of the Birmingham conurbation were transformed into one of the centres of coal, iron and steel production in Britain during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. At that time of sweeping change the region was christened the Black Country on account of the thick, acrid smoke that poured out from its thousands of factory chimneys.

  By the 1950s the Black Country’s coal deposits were almost exhausted, but it continued to be a base for heavy industry and manufacture. During the post-war boom years, the prospect of work brought more migrants to Birmingham and the West Midlands than to any other area of the UK outside of London. A substantial Asian population developed in Smethwick. In Handsworth and another of Birmingham’s inner-city districts, Balsall Heath, large Afro-Caribbean communities grew up. This influx soon stirred resentments and hostilities in a region that was predominantly working class and suffering from a general shortage of council housing, and later of jobs.

  As early as 1962, race riots were reported in the Black Country town of Dudley. That summer, crowds of white men and youths rampaged along North Street in the town centre, which was largely populated by Afro-Caribbean and Asian families. One of the bitterest battles in the General Election of 1964 was fought in Smethwick. The Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths, bucked the national trend in unseating the incumbent Labour MP and Foreign Secretary-designate, Patrick Gordon Walker. Griffiths ran an anti-immigration campaign, claiming his rival was soft on the issue. In the lead-up to the poll, posters began to appear around the town stating, ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour – vote Labour.’ Griffiths later maintained that these were not of his doing. The incoming Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, nevertheless suggested in a speech to the House of Commons that Griffiths should ‘serve his time here as a parliamentary leper’.

  Among Griffiths’s first acts was an incitement to the white residents of Marshall Street, one the town’s most populous addresses, to urge the local council to buy up its remaining houses to stop immigrants from moving into them. Such was the furore this created that Malcolm X, the black American civil rights leader, was prompted to visit to Smethwick. He arrived in the town on 12 February 1965, just nine days before he was assassinated in New York City.

  Griffiths declined an invitation to meet and debate the issue with the visiting American. When asked why he had come to the town by an accompanying BBC news reporter, Malcolm X said: ‘Because I am disturbed by reports that coloured people in Smethwick are being treated badly. I have heard that they are being treated as the Jews under Hitler.’

  Perhaps most notorious of all was the infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech given by another West Midlands MP, the Conservative firebrand Enoch Powell, to a group of party members in Birmingham on 20 April 1968. Powell told an approving audience of his fear that ‘in this country in fifteen or twenty years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.’ He went on to paint an apocalyptic vision of the future, quoting from the ancient Roman poet Virgil’s epic, the Aeneid: ‘As I look ahead I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the “River Tiber foaming with much blood”.’

  A poll in the local Birmingham Post newspaper the next day suggested that 80 per cent of local people agreed with Powell’s sentiments. However, these were not tolerable in the mainstream political arena and Powell was sacked from his post as Shadow Defence Secretary by the Tory leader, Edward Heath. He would conduct the rest of his career from the margins.

  The month after Powell gave his speech, West Bromwich Albion defeated Everton 1-0 in the FA Cup final at Wembley. It was the fifth time the club had won the trophy in its history and was its last major honour to date. Founded as West Bromwich Strollers in 1878 by a group of local factory workers, ten years later the club became one of the dozen founding members of the English Football League. The Albion, as they were known from 1880, finished in sixth place in that first
fledgling season and since then have been crowned champions of the League on just the one occasion – for the 1919–20 campaign that immediately followed the Great War.

  Albion moved to the Hawthorns in 1900. The club’s official nickname, the Throstles, also originated at this time. It was a local term for the Song Thrush, a bird that was commonly found nesting in the Hawthorn bushes that gave the ground its name. Yet among their supporters the Albion would most often be referred to as the Baggies. This dates from 1905 and is attributed to the fact that on match days at that time, a pair of gatekeepers would gather up the takings in large cloth bags and be escorted with them to an office under the main stand. Their appearance gave rise to a chant from the terraces, ‘Here come the bag men!’, and this evolved into, ‘Here come the baggies!’

  The afterglow from the club’s ’68 triumph was soon dimmed and they were relegated to the Second Division in 1973 under the dour management of Don Howe, a former Albion player who’d been coach when Arsenal won a League and FA Cup double just two years before. Howe was dismissed in 1975 and replaced by a player-manager, Johnny Giles. An Irishman, Giles had joined Matt Busby’s Manchester United straight from school in Dublin. He made his first-team debut as an eighteen-year-old in the aftermath of the Munich air crash of 1958 that had decimated the club’s playing staff. Yet Giles was best known as the midfield fulcrum of Don Revie’s fiercely competitive Leeds United side of the late sixties and early seventies. His last game for Leeds before joining Albion had been their 2-0 European Cup final defeat to the German champions, Bayern Munich.

  Giles’s Albion tenure had started slowly, with just a single win coming from his first ten games in charge. However, he’d gradually imposed himself on the club, introducing a methodical style of possession football and securing promotion back to the First Division on the final day of the 1975–76 season. His promotion-winning side was made up of a core group of seasoned professionals that had been brought to the club by his immediate predecessor and also by the man Don Howe had succeeded, Alan Ashman. To this, Giles had added a sprinkling of promising youngsters from Albion’s youth team.

  Of the younger team members, the most notable were an eighteen-year-old local lad, full-back Derek Statham, and twenty-year-old Bryan Robson. An all-action midfielder, Robson would go on to captain England. The more experienced group included a couple of dogged centre-halves, John Wile and Alistair Robertson, and the midfield pairing of Len Cantello and Tony Brown. The latter of these had been at the club since 1963 and was nicknamed ‘Bomber’ on account of his charging runs into opposition penalty areas. Then there was a fleet-footed Glaswegian named Willie Johnston. A skilful winger, Johnston was also a genuine maverick. He put his shocking disciplinary record down to the fact that he believed in getting his retaliation in first against opposition defenders. Johnston had also been cautioned for such infractions as kicking a referee up the backside and taking a swig from a can of beer during a game. In one particularly memorable exchange with a supporter, Johnston negotiated the sale of a greenhouse.

  ‘I’d let it be known that I was looking to buy one and a young lad sitting in a corner of the ground, right on the track-side, began shouting out to me that he had one to sell,’ recalls Johnston. ‘I started talking to him about a price while the game was going on and in between taking corner kicks. It took me a couple of weeks, but I eventually bargained him down from £80 to £45.’

  Back in the First Division that season, the team had more than held its own under Giles and were looking at a top-ten finish. At the point of signing Laurie Cunningham, West Brom were in the middle of a five-match winning run, having seen off local rivals Birmingham City and Derby County, and won at Arsenal in their three most recent games. A stickler for discipline, Giles had developed an excellent team spirit and was universally adored by his players.

  ‘He was a hard man, but fair too,’ says Alistair Robertson. ‘He used to say, “I’ll tell you once, I’ll tell you twice, but don’t let me have to tell you a third time.” If there was a third occasion, you wouldn’t be in the team, simple as that. We were all given a specific job to do. He’d say to John Wile and me, “If you two were good passers of the ball, you’d be midfielders. But you’re not, are you? You win tackles and headers, and when you’ve got the ball, give it to me because I’m able to do something with it.”’

  ‘John knew the game inside out and his man-management skills were second to none,’ adds Len Cantello. ‘Earlier that season we’d got beaten 7-0 at Ipswich and he’d stopped the bus on the way home and got the beers in.’

  Laurie Cunningham had been recommended to Giles by Ronnie Allen, Albion’s chief scout. Allen had been a striker for club in the 1950s and was still then West Brom’s record goal scorer. The week of his arrival, Giles pitched Cunningham straight into the first team. He made his debut in a 2-0 win at Tottenham on 12 March 1977 and in doing so became the first black player to represent the club. In its report on the match, the Birmingham Post declared: ‘Cunningham played the sort of dream game that suggests Johnny Giles has got himself a bargain.’

  Four days later, Cunningham made his first appearance at the Hawthorns in a midweek fixture against Ipswich Town. Albion won the return match against their early season conquerors that night 4-0, with Bryan Robson scoring a hat-trick and Cunningham netting his first goal for the club. By the end of the game, Albion’s supporters had begun to chant his name, instantly won over by his dancing feet.

  However, there were few other bright sparks to savour at that time for people in the Black Country. The economic woes afflicting Britain as a whole were hitting the area hard, and the outlook for its blue collar workforce – then the foundation of any football club’s fan base – seemed especially bleak and unforgiving. Soaring inflation led to a series of bitter industrial disputes, as management attempted to keep down wage rises and unions called mass walk-outs in protest. It was a vicious circle that accounted for ten-million working days being lost to strike action that year. A significant number of these came at the British Leyland car plant in Longbridge, Birmingham, where union leaders had adopted an especially militant stance.

  The state of English football was no less grim. The national team, World Cup winners in 1966, had failed to even qualify for the finals of the tournament in 1974, an inglorious feat that was to be repeated four years later. This decline had permeated all levels of the game. The country’s archaic pre-war stadia had fallen into disrepair, and pitches that were arid and bone-hard in the summer months became quagmires through the winter. A new social disease, football hooliganism, had begun to manifest itself on the terraces, with violent clashes between opposing fans becoming a regular aspect of the match-day experience. Things were no more edifying on the pitch, with the introduction into the game of the offside trap prompting a shift towards a joyless brand of defensive football.

  Against this kind of backdrop, a player such as Cunningham, whose talents seemed as untamed as they were unpredictable, was bound to be conspicuous. Yet the ease with which he appeared to slip into the West Brom team and begin to bend it to his will also kept hidden the fact that Cunningham was struggling to settle into his new surroundings. Just as he’d done at Orient, he often seemed to his team-mates in the dressing room like an outsider looking in, and his introverted nature was initially taken for aloofness or arrogance.

  ‘Laurie was a funny character,’ says Tony Brown. ‘I found him hard to get to know and I think other people in the team felt the same. He was very quiet. Even in the dressing room, where lads are always cracking jokes and pulling your leg, he’d keep out of things. On some mornings, he’d come into training and wouldn’t say a word all day. But then, out on the pitch he’d be completely different, expressing himself with the ball and doing tricks.’

  Cultural differences between Cunningham and the others were also soon evident. One morning after training, his colleagues watched agog as he stood before them in the dressing room, applying a moisturising cream to his face and body. H
is white team-mates had not witnessed another man doing anything of the kind before. Their own post-training regimen extended to nothing more outlandish than going off to a local café for a pot of tea and a fry-up, the smokers in the side all huddled together around one table, non-smokers at another. It further marked Cunningham out as being someone different among them.

  ‘He had to moisturise otherwise his skin would dry and blister,’ says Nicky Brown, who had moved from London to the Midlands with Cunningham. ‘But at that time, if you did something like that and looked after your hair, then you must be gay. I think the other players were very much afraid of that kind of thing, although Laurie couldn’t have cared less what they said about him.

  ‘There was a bit of passive racism towards him at first. It was nothing nasty, but there’d be comments made about him not forgetting to have his bananas before a game or his having ‘nappy hair’. Laurie was a very evenly distributed man, shall we say, but once they’d seen him in the bath, there were remarks like, “Well, you don’t live up to that rumour, do you?” People at the club would also ask Laurie and me if we had lots of sex, as if that were the only reason a white woman could possibly be with a black man.’

  Cunningham shared these initial feelings of isolation and alienation not just with the handful of other black footballers then playing for British clubs, but in general with black people across the country. At the Hawthorns, the West Brom players ran out for home games to an instrumental track titled ‘The Liquidator’, which had been a Top 10 hit in the UK for the Jamaican reggae producer Harry Zephaniah Johnson and his All-Stars band back in 1969. Yet this was in no way reflective of there being a multicultural mix among supporters on the terraces. Albion’s gates that season averaged around 25,000, of which the vast majority were white, and such statistics were repeated at football grounds throughout the League.