T.S. Eliot was wrong; April isn’t the cruellest month,
January is. Just look at the fortunes of Newcastle United in the opening weeks
of 2015: inactive in the transfer window, disinclined to appoint a permanent successor
for Alan Pardew and displaying trademark indifferent form on the pitch, whereby
the only chance we deluded Geordies had to jump for joy was a wholly undeserved
point at home to Burnley on New Year’s Day. We’ll not even mention the annual
FA Cup third round surrender, or the fact that the squad was rewarded for their
abject defeat away to Leicester at the earliest opportunity with a week’s warm
weather training in Dubai, that had allegedly been booked before the draw was
made back in December. This is the banal, depressing reality of life on
Tyneside under Mike Ashley.
Let’s look on the bright side eh? While the players enjoyed
a sporting sinecure among the beautiful people in the UAE, supporters were left
to kick over the bones of a dismal 2-1 home loss to Southampton and speculate
that the future promises no better as the U21s, as we must now call the
Reserves, went down at home to Blackburn Rovers the Tuesday after. Bookending
these two games were a pair of meetings that should have been of interest to
all followers of Newcastle United who seek to do more about the state of our
club than simply whine and grumble about the owner on a variety of social media
platforms.
On Thursday 15th January, the vibrant and
inclusive independent supporters network NUFC Fans United (@NUFCFansUtd), created
out of frustration with the inert and ineffectual Newcastle United Supporters’
Trust (NUST), and NUFC fanzine The
Popular Side (@PopularSideZine) co-hosted
a meeting at the Tyneside Irish Centre on Gallowgate where the keynote speaker
was David Goldblatt, academic, football fan and author of Game of Our Lives: The Cultural Politics of
English Football, which is the first essential book I’ve read in
2015. Those who filled the upstairs concert room on a bitterly cold evening
were rewarded with an inspirational talk, whereby David delineated a draft
manifesto for footballing change, outlining the cause and effect of the rotten
core of our national game, the inability of current legislation and legislators
to actively challenge these problems and a series of suggestions, both
practical and theoretical, that could help us to reclaim football for the
people who really matter; the fans. I’m sure the details of the manifesto will
emerge soon, but suffice to say, no-one who cares about the game can fail to
respond to suggestions that ticket pricing, the match day experience,
especially as an away fan, institutional racism, chronic underfunding of the
grassroots game, the refusal of many clubs to pay all employees a living wage
and the lack of effective regulation of clubs, owners and supporters’ trusts,
need thorough examination and, in several instances, legal intervention.
As part of a fact finding tour to take the temperature among committed
activists up and down the country, David had already hosted a gathering in
London before Christmas in conjunction with Stand and, having flown up
at his own expense to Tyneside, was off to Manchester the day after to attend a
similar event, with meetings in other cities in the pipeline. The purpose was
to listen, to learn and refine the 11 point manifesto and, in advance of the
May election, to provide a coherent document that will encourage politicians to
think seriously about the national game. For more than 2 hours, debate was
maintained on a wide range of issues, with supporters not just of Newcastle,
but Middlesbrough and Hull City, who’d driven 120 miles to be there, in
attendance and able to contribute positive suggestions in an atmosphere of
mutual support and admiration. There is far more that unites us than divides us
as football fans; something we should never forget. As the meeting drew to a
close, NUFC Fans United resolved to work hard to ensure
that this appetite for structural change is channeled positively, by holding
future monthly planning meetings for the purpose of organizing an event related
to the launch of the manifesto at a game in April, with Swansea on the 25th
looking favourite.
On Wednesday 21st January, NUST held its Annual General
Meeting at The Mining Institute by Central Station. Created by the storm of
righteous supporter anger at the disgraceful treatment of Kevin Keegan in 2008,
NUST has subsequently lost its campaigning zeal and stagnated to the point of
ossification from 2010 onwards, to the extent that the wider NUFC support base,
if they even recognise its continued existence, view the Trust with either
indifference or disdain verging on contempt. There were no apologies asked for
or taken and only those who spoke to the meeting announced their names; consequently
I am unsure exactly how many members of the elected 12 member NUST board were
actually present, but certainly several were inexplicably absent. In addition
there was no representative in attendance from either the Football Supporters
Federation or Supporters Direct. If there had been, one wonders exactly how
they would have reacted to the unequivocal announcement by one the NUST Board
that “public meetings don’t work.” This statement was not a point for
discussion; it was presented as a desperately depressing fact. Frankly I find
the suggestion that a supporters’ trust would not seek to provide a platform
for all fans to attend and give their opinions quite staggering and another
reason why, as much as owners and boards of directors should be subject to
regulation as to their activities, we need the regulation of supporter
organisations. If NUST were an effective vehicle for fan interaction and
representation, there would be no need for NUFC Fans United to exist.
I do accept that supporters’ trusts are to an extent hampered and
hidebound by their constitutional regulations, but NUST’s future plans for
contact with members by inviting a select few to attend board meetings or to
hold “surgeries” seemed to me akin to the activities of a constituency Labour
Party in the 1980s; regulations, rules and procedure being more important than activism.
The irony being that during the 46 minute AGM, several NUST board members
recognised the need for campaigns about ticket pricing and the need to pay a
living wage, not to mention calling for an agreed national political strategy
in advance of the election. Unfortunately the endless round of committee
meetings with other trusts will no doubt result in the enthusiasm being
squeezed out of a project that could run in conjunction with the visionary work
of David Goldblatt that will empower fans across the whole country.
I make no bones about the fact I feel that the attempt to ride the
zeitgeist of spontaneous fan activism as espoused by David Goldblatt has far
more chance of capturing the imagination than the meticulous paper-shuffling of
supporters’ trusts. However, here is a reality check. NUFC Fans United
attracted 31 to the David Goldblatt talk-in and the NUFC Trust AGM was attended
by 23 of the 769 fully paid-up members. Meanwhile, 49,307 watched the
Southampton game and even 509 frozen human peas rattled round the St James Park
pod for the Under 21s game. That is what we are up against; the indifference,
cynicism and despair of, do the maths, 99% of supporters. The choice is clear;
we either throw our hands up in despair or we grit our teeth and redouble our
efforts to take the argument for greater fan involvement and better regulation
of the game to all supporters. That’s why I’m looking forward to the Swansea
game in late April. Don’t despair; keep fighting!
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