Passive Voices

The new issue of the ever brilliant The Football Pink is available from   https://footballpink.net/2018/02/02/pre-order-issue-19-of-the-football-pink/  and you really ought to buy it, not just for my piece below about the failure of Newcastle United fans to step up to the mark when it comes to the vexed question of fan ownership. No doubt the supposed anguish at the failed bid by Amanda Staveley has been replaced by passive quiescence to the established order on the back of 3 points against Manchester United.

Ever since Mike Ashley made the announcement at the tail end of summer 2016 that he was keen to sell Newcastle United, both the media and the club’s support in general have been focused almost exclusively on trumpeting uncritical encomia about the consortium led by Amanda Staveley, which was repeatedly described as “the only show in town.” Being honest I don’t know huge amounts about Staveley, other than she’s a fabulously wealthy, unapologetic, far right Tory (is there any other kind?), who dropped out of her degree after ending up in a secure hospital with severe stress. Consequently, I don’t like her politics, but I do sympathise with her earlier mental health travails. I’m also very uncomfortable with any efforts on social media, however ham-fistedly humorous their intent, to objectify her as a kind of foxy Croesus, sex symbol, as that demeans her gender.

However, as a Newcastle United fan, the most relevant thing for me about her is the role she occupies as the public face of the obscure, possibly secretive, Middle Eastern syndicate that apparently sought and failed to buy the club from Mike Ashley. I may be naïve in this, but I would hope to know the finer points of each integral element of the collective cash rich oligarchs intending to purchase my club, before any deal was complete, so I could decide whether I am happy to give them my moral support and blessing. Strangely, this appeared to be an opinion far out of step with other Magpie supporters, many of whom grew giddy at either the thought of another freebie pint and selfie with Chris Mort, or the chance to give Manchester City a run for their money next season.

Let’s be honest about this; the decade and a bit of Ashley’s ownership of NUFC, when taken as a whole, has been nothing short of a disaster. We are no nearer challenging for honours than we were the day Glenn Roeder offered his resignation in May 2007. While there have been momentary, almost illusory vignettes of joy along the way: the genuine collective effort of Chris Hughton’s bunch of lads, the unexpected swagger from Pards’ 4-3-3 set up in the season we finished 5^th and the surreal joy found on those occasions when the team really clicks, and we remember it’s Rafa Benitez managing them, all too often it’s been a litany of embarrassment and incompetence on and off the pitch: Sports Direct Arena, the Keegan court case, Shefki Kuqi replacing Andy Carroll, Pards headbutting Mayler, Carver’s press conferences, drip fed bullshit via Sky Sports, Llambias streaking, Kinnear bladdered on Talk Sport, transfer inaction and the constant sense that the club is being run as a cash cow for Ashley, like a down at heel market stall knocking out snide gear for the gullible and brainless.

Bearing in mind everything I’ve just said, I can understand exactly why so many Newcastle supporters will accept any takeover, regardless of who is behind it, as a preferable state of affairs to Ashley’s continued presence on Tyneside. I accept it is not just the servile sheep in the Sports Direct anoraks or the social media superfans who incessantly shout down, deride and abuse anyone who dares voice anything other than unblinking, unthinking loyalty to Benitez first of all, and now Staveley, who feel like this, but enormous numbers of ordinary, normal, proper fans, grown sick to the back teeth of seeing their club made a laughing stock and used as a punchbag by shady, shiftless shithouses. I am fully aware that in a capitalist world, dirty money is universal and clean is scarce, though I do not expect that a person as well-regarded as Staveley, would seek to surround herself with fellow travellers that are the likes of Somalian pirates, Russian Mafiosi, South American drug lords or construction company executives making literal and metaphorical killings on the back of the World Cup in Qatar. Obviously, the nature of international trade links means that if one were to unravel the minutiae of every major world business deal, there would be many unpleasant skeletons in the cupboard; realistically and pragmatically, that is the kind of ethical compromise one is forced to make. Is that essentially any different to calling out Ashley over his shameful employment practices at his Shirebrook warehouse? I’m not so ideologically pure as to demand 100% ethical investments from those trying to buy the club, but there are certain standards of decency and probity that must be adhered to. Agreed?

At this juncture though, we must pause to sadly note that during the labyrinthine, glacially-paced takeover discussions, any recognition of the concept of fan ownership was now seen as about as relevant an item on the current agenda as proportional representation is to the Brexit Omnishambles. There isn’t a journalist, fan or interested party who has shown any awareness of, much less any inclination towards vouching for an expression of fan ownership in Newcastle United going forward. That’s not just a shame or a pity; it’s a disgrace and a betrayal of the founding principles of Newcastle United’s Supporters Trust, who first coalesced in the wake of Kevin Keegan’s forced departure in September 2008, which was little over a year into Ashley’s disastrous ownership.

Both NUST, whose relevance and profile flatlined sometime around mid-2010, and the loose amalgam that is NUFC Fans United who stepped into the void created by NUST’s abeyance, have said from the very outset they wanted, nay demanded, an element of fan ownership in the club and fan representation on the board. Or at least they used to say that. Sadly, you’d have to look pretty closely at the small print on their websites for any mention of fan ownership or representation in documents and postings made since takeover talk began around October time. Sure, Fans United, and to a lesser extent NUST, do wonderful work with the NUFC Foodbank, as well as supporting the other praiseworthy initiatives by mirror-image supporter groups regarding flag displays in both the Gallowgate and Leazes at home games, but for the good of the club, wouldn’t it be preferable for them to advance an agenda that urges and possibly enables the average fan to be more of an active participant than a passive volunteer? However, the unfortunate and unavoidable truth that history tells us about Newcastle United and fan ownership, is that the support’s attitude to the owners, when real power is within reach, has never been characterised by decisive action, but by the adoption of a mien that can be at best described as obsequious and at worst servile.

Three times in their history, Newcastle United have been the subject of actual or potential share issues. Following the establishment of the club, after Newcastle East End took over the lease on St. James’ Park on 9^th December 1892, Newcastle United was set up as a private limited company on 6^th September 1895. The original share capital raised was the nominal amount of £1,000, with individual share certificates sold at the princely sum of £1 each. The club traded on this basis for much of the 20th century, dominated by the ownership of the McKeag, Westwood and Seymour dynasties, whereby one or other scion of those storied families would, in due course, accede to the titular stewardship of what Gordon McKeag referred to as “the family silver,” with little or any credible opposition to the status quo. Hearing the Leazes sing “Westwood is a pirate” or noting the Seymour’s got AIDS graffito on Boot Boy Alley betwixt the Gallowgate and East Stand was about as far as it got in terms of organised protest back in the day, until unreconstructed venture capitalist John Hall, freshly minted with barrowloads of unearned new money from building the Metro Centre, formed The Magpie Group with the ultimate intention of taking control from L’Ancien Regime on Barrack Road, with a vague promise to “give the club back to the fans.”  To do this, in fact to do anything, he needed to get his hands on enough of the old-style shares to earn a place at the directors’ table.

Now, if the British government could manage to lose hundreds of classified documents about the Northern Irish peace process, the Exchange Rate Mechanism and a paedophile ring involving many Tory MPs during the past 30 years, it’s fairly likely that a football club that had been kicking their ball around on a public park off Walker Road ten years previously, wouldn’t have compiled and maintained detailed or even vaguely accurate records pertaining to club ownership. Hall and his pals, including unfunny comedians Bobby Pattinson and Spike Rawlins, went around buying up shares from aged spinsters in Jesmond and Gosforth whose well-off mercantile fathers had been small investors in those late Victorian days. The fundamental problem for the would-be takeover bid members was not all the share certificates could be located. For every original certificate found gathering dust in a Lever arch file in the bottom drawer of a period dresser on Holly Avenue or Rothwell Road, another half a dozen were probably in locked deposit boxes under the watchful care of solicitors unaware as to the precious nature of the contents with which they had been entrusted.

To solve a seeming impasse, in an almost revolutionary gesture of ambition, McKeag and the rest of the NUFC board launched plans for a potential share issue in November 1990, to raise funds for the club. A semi-glossy brochure was prepared and mailed to all season ticket holders (approximately 5,000 in those days), fans who’d even bought a pencil sharpener in the club shop, and all potential business investors in the north. Included in the pack was a postcard to be returned by all those who expressed an interest in investing. I sent mine back, of course, but not many others did. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, the project failed to get off the ground in a hideously embarrassing fashion; so low was the level of potential interest that the board pulled the plug on the whole scheme, reflecting not only the low stock of the club in those days, but the reluctance of fans to do anything tangible to move the club forwards. It has cost something like £100k for the whole failed project; the kind of money Newcastle United were spending on players in 1990/1991.

While Newcastle United had suffered the indignity of failing to meet the reserve price and being withdrawn from auction, the fans had simply failed to step up to the mark. Sitting on the concrete steps of the Gallowgate chanting “Sack the Board” or muttering into their pints while boycotting the game was a far easier option than activism or organisation for the overwhelming majority. Being honest though, the late 1980s and early 90s were pretty lousy times on Tyneside; Waddle, Beardsley and Gascoigne were all sold to fund the building of the Milburn Stand, while the team nosedived to relegation in 1989, lost a play-off to Sunderland in 1990, had an average crowd of 16k in 1991 and were 2 games from demotion to Division 3 in 1992 until the Kevin Keegan cavalry rode into town to save the day. In a kind of Faustian football pact, Keegan’s arrival was only made possible when John Hall, who bought 72.9% of the club for £3 million in 1991 from the utterly discredited McKeag family. What happened in the next half a decade is the stuff of dreams and nightmares; half a decade of near perfection on the pitch, underscored by a bitter remembrance of heroic, if not tragic, failure and an unbreakable bond of unity off the pitch that fissured fatally when Keegan left in January 1997.

Capitalists, by nature and by definition, are not philanthropists. Their loyalty is always to the profit motive and their personal pocket, so after the sporting adventure of the Premier League saw the stakes getting even higher than one family could sustain, John Hall decided to float Newcastle United on the stock exchange as a public limited company. The machinations behind the scenes in preparation for this move sickened Keegan and he quit in early 1997, tired of less than subtle interference in the day to day running of the team and a whispering campaign allegedly orchestrated by Mark Corbidge, a man hired by Hall to facilitate the floatation. Stunned fans still sought to get behind the new manager Kenny Dalglish and pledged money for shares in a flotation that was vastly oversubscribed in the early spring of 1997. In my case, these were the only shares I had ever sought to own; I bought them not out of avaricious desire, but to reinforce that indefinable sense of belonging one has to one’s club.

This was not an equal sale; indeed, some investors were considerably more equal than others. Although less than half the shares were sold to the Hall family, the majority holding went to his business partner Freddy Shepherd. Any notion of a democratically constituted, fan owned club was blown out the water by the final figures, which revealed that the Hall and Shepherd axis owned more than 76% of all shares, effectively blocking any moves by shareholders to significantly influence the club’s direction. Certain motions came up for debate at each AGM, but in spite of such appallingly indiscreet scandals as the Toongate sting in early 1998, Shepherd and Hall’s dauphin, his eldest son Douglas, were effectively fireproof.  It was akin to the Trade Union block vote that controlled the Labour Party conference in the 1970s and early 80s; there was debate and dissent in the room, but when the votes were weighed in, nothing ever changed.

Having made his pile, John Hall stepped down as NUFC chairman and was replaced by Shepherd, with the Hall family still represented on the board by John's son “my boy” Douglas. In December 1998, after buying a 6.3% stake in the club for £10 million, the media group NTL considered a full takeover of the club, though this was later dropped after issues raised in April 1999 by the Competition Commission, which had been brought in due to government concerns about football clubs being owned by media companies. Rather ironic considering how Mike Ashley’s only mode of communication is through infrequent, soft-touch interviews on Sky Sports…

For the next few seasons the club struggled on, with Douglas Hall the sometimes absent and always silent eminence grise of Newcastle’s board and Freddy Shepherd the anguished public face of the club, giving a public performance that often resembled a synthesis of Peter Finch’s role as Howard Beale in Network combined with Al Pacino’s portrayal of Tony Montana in Scarface. Regardless of managerial appointments, from the good in Sir Bobby Robson, the bad in Graeme Souness and the banal in Glen Roeder, the backstage story was always one of a race for profits and a struggle to balance the books. Misjudgements that bordered on incompetence left the club on the brink of a Leeds United style financial meltdown. Thus, it was no surprise to football financial analysts when, in the summer of 2007, Mike Ashley purchased the combined stakes of both Douglas and John Hall, through the paper company St James Holdings, with a view to buy the rest, by making a written offer to all shareholders. Resistance was futile, and Ashley owned 95% of the club by 11^th July 2007, forcing the remaining shareholders to sell their shares. I got back the exact amount of money I’d invested 10 years previous; and since that point there has been no kind of fan ownership or representation on the board of Newcastle United.

Whether Amanda Staveley and her consortium or Mike Ashley and his shower end up with the reins of power at St. James’ Park, is immaterial as it seems the support have no desire to be anything more than willing serfs, paying handsomely to be entertained by those they continue to make even richer with each passing week. That’s a very, very depressing thought, but what is worse, it’s demonstrably the truth.