The Three Degrees

by Paul Rees

  Writing later in his autobiography, Cyrille Regis said: ‘I was staggered. In all the years I’d known Ron, I knew he would fly close to the wind when it came to jokes but I’d never heard him use that particular word. Do I think the words were racist? Yes. Do I think Ron’s a racist? No. I can say without hesitation that Ron was brilliant with us black players.’

  This is the view that continues to prevail among Regis’s former West Brom team-mates and is also shared by Atkinson’s erstwhile TV colleague, Gerald Sindstadt, who asserts there is ‘no one less racist than Ron’. Regis fast forgave Atkinson his aberration. ‘I still see him,’ he says. ‘He’s great company, tells great stories and we have a great crack.’ Batson was slower to thaw, less accommodating of the notion that Atkinson was guilty of nothing more than belonging to an older and less enlightened generation.

  ‘I was hugely hurt by his words,’ he says. ‘I said at the time that I didn’t think he was a racist, but a lot of people didn’t believe me. I think Ron had just got carried away with his own self-importance. There was a vast amount of bravado about what he said. He thought that everybody should have a laugh at everything and anything goes. And I know he felt that he had to pay a heavy price for it. Well, that’s the consequence.

  ‘Yet I think this is the measure of the man: when my wife fell ill, the first call I got from outside of my immediate family circle was from Ron. When I think of what my wife and family went through, what Ron said in that broadcast is of no significance to me now. I said some harsh things about it back then, but I’ve got over it. We’ve got over it. There’s no way I’d ever accuse him of being anything other than a bloody idiot for using those words.’

  For his part, Atkinson is wary of revisiting this dark corner of his past. At the time, he confessed to having made ‘a stupid mistake for which I am very sorry’. Reluctantly, he allows now that ‘what I should have done back then is made a bigger stand. What I was doing was quoting somebody that I knew.’

  ‘Sorry, I haven’t heard that one before,’ responds Batson when this is relayed to him. ‘Even if that were true, you wouldn’t repeat it verbatim, would you?’

  Of course, football hasn’t rid itself entirely of racism any more than it’s been driven out of society as a whole. However, to hear racist abuse at a British football ground is now as rare as it is shocking. Batson contends that ‘naked racism’ is under control within the confines of the professional game, but cautions that there are still ‘big issues’ to confront at grassroots level in that regard. He believes it imperative that football also now addresses the paucity of both black managers and administrators working in the sport.

  ‘We’ve come a long way, but we need to move quicker now,’ he concludes. ‘People in the upper echelons of the game tend to appoint in their own image and there’s a lot of talent out there screaming for a chance. The structures of the game need to become more equitable.

  ‘I love football. When people are brought together at the major international tournaments and you rid it of all that parochialism and xenophobia, it’s great. The game has been good to me. My brother trained as an electrician and I know I’ve been lucky from hearing the things he told me about the way black kids were treated on the production line at places like Ford.’

  ‘We’re hoping football can be an example to the wider society of how you can conquer prejudice and hatred,’ says Lord Ouseley. ‘There is a new morality emerging in the game and a very impressive generation of players coming through who want to take the mantle on and move things to the next level.

  ‘But people at the top of the game also want to tell you that we’ve dealt with racism now and move on. That’s the bigger danger, believing that it’s been solved. Part of the problem is that there isn’t a history of people telling stories of what went on in the game to get that across to the next generation. It’s like Andy Cole once said when he was playing for Newcastle: “When I’m on the pitch I’m a king and when I’m on the street I’m just another black cunt.”’

  Ouseley’s fears were flamed by the manner in which both the FA and the parent clubs dealt with two notorious and more recent high profile incidents of racism in the game, and these also sparked the Kick It Out player boycott. They involved the Chelsea and then England captain John Terry and Liverpool’s Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez. Both occurred during Premier League matches in October 2011. Terry was accused of racially abusing QPR’s Anton Ferdinand, younger brother of Rio. Suarez of the same offence against the elder Ferdinand’s Manchester United team-mate, Patrice Evra.

  Terry was stripped of the England captaincy and months later found guilty of the offence by an FA panel. His punishment amounted to a £220,000 fine, around a week of his wages, and a four-game ban. Chelsea took no further action against their player. Liverpool’s handling of the Suarez case was if anything more shameful. On 20 December 2011, the FA found Suarez guilty of calling Evra ‘negro’ on at least ten occasions and with racist intent. He was fined £40,000 and banned for eight games. The following evening Liverpool’s players took to the field for a match at Wigan wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with Suarez’s smiling face as an expression of ‘total support’ for their team-mate. He was also given the unequivocal backing of his manager, Kenny Dalglish, who sought to portray his star player as the victim. A more general view was that the game’s governing body had been far too lenient in dealing with both Suarez and Terry.

  ‘People in the game have got to recognise that football is never going to get better if the clubs automatically defend a player no matter what he’s done,’ says Lord Ouseley. ‘At Kick It Out, we want football to get to a position where the clubs themselves take action if a player is found guilty of racial, sexual or homophobic abuse, just as any other employer would do.’

  The FA established a fresh set of anti-discrimination rules in the wake of the Terry and Suarez furore. Ironically, the first substantive test case of these involved a West Bromwich Albion player, the French striker Nicolas Anelka. In December 2013, Anelka celebrated scoring a goal against West Ham by performing the ‘quenelle’ – a hand gesture popularised on the continent by the controversial French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, and described by Jewish groups as a form of inverted Nazi salute. The game was being televised live in France and Anelka’s actions were condemned by the French Sports Minister, Valerie Fourneyron, as ‘disgusting’.

  Hit with an FA charge, Anelka was subsequently found guilty of using an offensive gesture, but not out of anti-Semitic intent. In his defence, Anelka claimed M’bala was a friend of his and he had made the sign in support of him. Effectively, he asked the FA’s adjudicating panel to accept that he had no prior knowledge that the ‘quenelle’ was more often used outside synagogues and Holocaust sites, or of M’bala’s numerous criminal convictions in France for promoting anti-Semitism. He was fined £80,000, ordered to attend an education programme and banned for five games. This was the minimum penalty available to the FA under its new guidelines and prompted another outburst of protest. However, the club did act on this occasion. West Brom initially suspended Anelka on full pay pending an internal inquiry and soon after cancelled his contract. In a statement the club said it could not ‘ignore the offence his actions caused, particularly to the Jewish community, nor the potential to damage the club’s reputation.’

  Racism also continues to infect the world game. In such Eastern European countries as Russia, Ukraine and Poland, black players are still routinely subjected to the sort of hate-filled barracking that largely disappeared from British stadia in the 1980s. The response to this from football’s global governing body, FIFA, and its European counterpart, UEFA, has most often been abject.

  FIFA’s president Sepp Blatter once suggested that incidents of racism between players could be resolved with a handshake. In 2013, Blatter also criticised AC Milan’s Kevin-Prince Boeteng for walking off the pitch during a supposed ‘friendly’ match in Italy when he was made the target of racist chanting. UEFA issued the Serbia
n FA with a relatively paltry £65,000 fine in October 2012 after supporters of its U21 side subjected several England players to sustained racist abuse during a European U21 Championship match in the country. Earlier that summer, at the senior Euros tournament in Ukraine and Poland, Danish striker Niklas Bendtner got an £80,000 fine from UEFA for flashing underpants with a bookmaker’s name branded on them after scoring a goal.

  Yet for all the barriers still to be broken and the resolves still to stiffen, British football’s acceptance of and tolerance towards racial differences has improved dramatically in the time since Cunningham, Regis and Batson came into the game. On 13 August 2013, the FA and Kick It Out hosted an Under-21 international match between England and Scotland at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane ground. It was held in honour of Cunningham and replicated the fixture in which he made his international debut. Regis and Garth Crooks were invited to address the England squad beforehand, and spoke about their formative experiences in football.

  ‘The guys had no concept of what we went through,’ Regis says. ‘They’re purely judged now on being a player and being black doesn’t come into it. It’s phenomenal that we’ve come that distance. Laurie, Brendon and I were the spearhead for that, the focal point. The three of us in one team, it was iconic, it was radical. We changed the face of football.’

  On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Laurie Cunningham’s death, 15 July 2014, a statue depicting him, Regis and Batson will be unveiled in West Bromwich town centre. Two miles down the road from where an election campaign was once made infamous by the slogan, ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour – vote Labour.’ And from where a pub wall had been painted with graffiti that read, ‘Cunningham is a black cunt.’

  The work of Yorkshire sculptor Graham Ibbeson, the statue stands ten-foot high, is cast in bronze and portrays the three players celebrating a goal in their heyday together at West Brom. It is a proper and lasting monument to how much and how far they moved along their sport and their country.

  ‘As a young man you don’t dream that one day there’s going to be a statue erected to you or to us,’ says Regis. ‘You dream of winning the FA Cup or playing at Wembley for England. It’s very humbling. But also, and Brendon will tell you the same thing, it really isn’t about us, it’s about what we represent. We were the crest of the wave.’

  According to Bobby Fisher, the thought of there being a statue dedicated to him would have left Cunningham ‘pissing himself with laughter. He’d have said, “What are you guys doing?” But then, he’d have wanted it to be of him with a Fedora, a cane and a double-breasted suit, not as a footballer.’

  ‘Laurie’s dying changed all of our lives,’ says Nicky Brown, ‘and none of us who knew him is able to properly describe what we feel about it. I still get a warm feeling inside when I think of him. He was a beautiful man. I loved him and admired him too, because when he touched things they turned to gold. I know that sounds sickening, but it’s true.

  ‘He had great strength of character and stood up for what counted in the face of so much adversity. He was a huge loss. I do believe he’d have kept on changing things. It might have been in the most normal of ways – a children’s home or a donkey sanctuary. But it would have made a difference.’

  Brendon Batson treasures another photograph of him, Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham together. It is the only one he has of them all and was taken one Christmas in West Bromwich. In it they are each wearing Santa Claus hoods. He got Cunningham to sign it for him before he left for Real Madrid.

  ‘I had it framed and it hangs in my home in Birmingham,’ he says. ‘Cyrille lives just a couple of miles from me now and we’re getting older together. But Laurie’s never aged. He will always be to me what he is in that picture. We were blessed to have him.’

  Acknowledgements

  This book could not have been written without the selfless help, influence and support tendered to me by a great number of good and kind souls. I am especially indebted to Cyrille Regis, Brendon Batson, Keith Cunningham and Nicky Brown for allowing me to share their time and memories and to tell their story. I would as well particularly like to thank Cyrille for making introductions along the way and for his encouragement throughout. As more than one person described him to me, he is ‘The Man’.

  I hope that Laurie Cunningham walks tall through these pages. The indelible impression that he left on me during his all too brief but glorious pomp at West Bromwich Albion started the ball rolling for this book. It will remain with me and anyone else who ever saw him grace the Hawthorns.

  I would also have been lost without the invaluable assistance of Geoff Snape at West Bromwich Albion Former Players’ Association. The Association was founded in May 2003 by Brendon Batson MBE, then Chief Executive of West Bromwich Albion, Graham Williams, captain of Albion’s 1968 FA Cup-winning team, and two of the club’s supporters, Norman Westbury and Snape. It has grown in strength over the past eleven years and membership now stands at just short of the 150 mark. It does a fine and laudable job and I would have been lost without it.

  There are other ‘man of the match’ performances to which I am indebted and very much grateful: to the great Laurie Rampling for the photographs and the keys to his remarkable library; to John ‘Simmo’ Simpson and Dave Bowler at West Bromwich Albion, Martin Swain at the Express & Star, Chris Lepkowski at the Evening Mail, Paul Campbell at the Guardian, Graham Hunter, Matt Allen and Neil Storey for counsel and contacts; Steve Jenkins at the Leyton Orient Supporters’ Club; Danny Lynch at Kick It Out; Andy Lyons at the peerless When Saturday Comes; David Goldlatt; Phil Ball; Sid Lowe; Rachel Clare at Birmingham Central Library; Alf Russell at Wolverhampton Archives & Local Studies; Gavin Schaffer and David Metcalfe-Carr at Birmingham University School of History and Cultures; Nick Bell at Hayes & Yeading FC; Jim Cadman at Celebration Statue 1979; and to Peter Law for time and generosity that extended above and beyond the call of duty.

  In the course of writing this book, I was also fortunate enough to meet and interview many other people. All of them were generous with their time and often as much with their hospitality. For throwing open the doors to me, thank you to: Ron Atkinson, Bobby Fisher, Tony Brown, Tony Godden, Ally Robertson, John Wile, Bryan Robson, Willie Johnson, Len Cantello, Derek Statham, Ally Brown, John Trewick, Peter Barnes, Gary Owen, Viv Anderson, Terry Phelan, Lawrie Sanchez, John Homer, Bob Downing, Dave Harrison, Pat Murphy, Bobby Ross, Helen Scott, Valerie Holiday, Derrick Campbell, Gerald Sinstadt, Eustace ‘Huggy’ Isaie, David Hinds, Roger Huddle, David May, Ali Campbell, Brian Travers and Lord Herman Ouseley.

  The good stuff in this book belongs to all of the above. Any mistakes or inaccuracies in the text are entirely my own responsibility.

  On the front line, I retain a deep well of gratitude for Matthew Hamilton, my agent, consigliere and friend, who planted the seed and then tended it with his usual care, expertise and attention to detail. Hats off also to ace editor Andreas Campomar for faith, direction and encouragement – no man deserves to enjoy his ‘boat rock’ more – and to all the good folks at Constable. At Andreas’s urging I read People Who Eat Darkness: the Fate of Lucie Blackman by Richard Lloyd Parry, which helped to inform the structure of this book. It is a remarkable and profound work and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

  Love and thanks to Mick Rees for taking care of business and to all the members of the Rees and Jeffrey clans. And above all, my boundless love and appreciation to Denise, Tom and Charlie, who encouraged and indulged me in the months of writing this book, and who make it all worthwhile.

  Sources

  Foremost among the many invaluable sources of reference for this book were the following:

  Books

  Samba in the Smethwick End by Dave Bowler and Jas Bains [Mainstream Publishing]

  Cyrille Regis: My Story [Andre Deutsch]

  Big Ron: A Different Ball Game [Andre Deutsch]

  Attack Attack: The Story of West Bromwich Albion 1978-79 by Dave Bowler [Britespot]

/>   100 Greats: West Bromwich Albion Football Club by Tony Matthews [Tempus]

  West Bromwich Albion: The Complete Record by Tony Matthews [Breedon Books]

  West Bromwich Albion: 100 Great Matches by Glenn Wilmore [Breedon Books]

  Black Lions: a History of Black Players in English Football by Rodney Hinds [Sports Books]

  Stoke City: 101 Golden Greats by Simon Lowe [Desert Island Books]

  Out of His Skin: The John Barnes Phenomenon by Dave Hill [WSC]

  White Storm: 101 Years of Real Madrid by Phil Ball [Mainstream]

  Crisis? What Crisis?: Britain In the 1970s by Alwyn W. Turner [Aurum]

  Estates: an Intimate History by Lynsey Hanley [Granta]

  The National Front by Martin Walker [Fontana]

  The Divisive Decade: a History of Caribbean Immigration to Birmingham in the 1950s by Peter L. Edmead [Birmingham City Council]

  A Question of Colour? by Peter Griffiths [Leslie Frewin]

  Race Community and Conflict: a Study of Sparkbrook by John Rex and Robert Moore [Oxford University Press]

  Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Post War Era by Kathleen Paul [Cornell]

  The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in ’70s Britain by the Centre for Contemporary Studies [Hutchinson]

  Wheels Out of Gear: 2-Tone, the Specials and a World in Flame by Dave Thompson [Helter Skelter]

  A History of Popular Music by Piero Scaruffi [Amazon Media Kindle edition]

  Murder at the Farm: Who Killed Carl Bridgewater? by Paul Foot [Headline Review]

  Jeremy Thorpe: a Secret Life by Lewis Chester, Magnus Linklater and David May [Fontana]