Organisational Chaos

How many football teams do you actively support? Just the one, or is your affection shared, equally or proportionately, between two or more clubs? Depending on your perspective, it’s either dead easy or very difficult to answer that question accurately, especially if you’ve abandoned participatory support for a particular outfit on the grounds of morality or principle. I’ve no way of quantifying this numerically, but I’m certain most card-carrying, match going FC United of Manchester followers morphed into such a being, having previously called time on actively supporting Manchester United for reasons of conscience or philosophy. Similarly, my beloved Newcastle Benfield turned from being the non-league club I followed into the centre of my sporting world when I decided I could no longer justify any capital expenditure on Mike Ashley’s Newcastle United. I’d first watched Benfield in 2003 when they were elected to the Northern League, but my decision to choose them over Newcastle United dates from 2008. FCUM, as you all know, came into being in 2005.

OK, here’s an easier question for you; how many football teams do you follow? I’m defining a follower as a considerably more passive entity than a supporter or fan; possibly only a short distance from the sorts who merely keep an eye on their teams’ results or perhaps catch highlights on the telly, when they don’t get beat that is. Using that yardstick, I’m able to draft a personal list that includes: NUFC, Hibs (my Scottish team since 1972), Bohemian (my Irish side), Athletic Club (everyone needs a Basque side for reasons of ideological credence) and FC Petrzalka (the pride of Bratislava and the side I watched when resident in the Slovak capital for a couple of years around the millennium). Obviously, my levels of interest and commitment fluctuate according to personal circumstance and the fortunes of the clubs involved, but I don’t see any contradiction inherent in following several sides, to a greater or lesser degree.

Another question; while paying heed to Heraclitus and his maxim, stolen by Marxists, that everything is constantly changing, do you broadly adhere to largely the same set of ideological beliefs you held when you first became politically aware? If Yes, does this mean you vote for, belong to and/or are a member of a specific political party or grouping? If No, what changed and what caused you to change? Personally, I still have the same, unshakeable faith in the veracity of the founding declaration of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and other companion parties in the World Socialist Movement that I instinctively held from first encountering the SPGB in 1983. The document can be accessed here https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/our-object-and-declaration-principles In short, it’s the impossibilist position, but I believe in it. However, a sense of pragmatism that I developed over three decades as a union activist means I’m realistic enough to see the value of short term material gains for the working classes. Hence, in 2015, I joined the Labour Party, as I don’t see any other viable organisation that has the mass appeal and membership necessary to improve the living conditions of ordinary people, despite Corbyn’s idiotic failure to ditch Brexit. Don’t get me started on the crass, deceitful folly that is the supposed Left Exit position. Such foolhardy ideological posturing is akin to joining UKIP while still wearing dungarees. So, what’s all this got to do with football and FCUM in particular? Andy Walker mainly, but also, in passing, Andy Walsh.

Growing up on Tyneside in the early 70s, the things that kept our dysfunctional, extended immigrant Irish working class family together were the usual social touchstones of football, pubs, politics and religion. We equally loved and hated Newcastle United and the Labour Party simultaneously, while taking refuge in pints and piety according to circumstance. The enforced retirement of Joe Harvey in 1975 and sale of Malcolm MacDonald in 1976 almost finished my dad and uncles with NUFC for good. The same was true of the Labour Party, on account of Sunny Jim Callaghan and devious Dennis Healey’s inability to stand up for workers around the same time. The Thatcher Years were as hard for us as for every other ordinary family in the land, as grinding poverty, intergenerational unemployment and the death of all hope made people’s lives a misery.

As Guy Fawkes so presciently remarked; desperate times require desperate measures. In the same way that the lies and innuendo spread by the fascist scum associated with Farage and Yaxley-Lennon have been seized upon and given credence by the easily-manipulated, ignorant and uninformed in society, because their fear and confusion can be channelled towards hate-fuelled racism and Islamophobia, the late 70s and early 80s saw many embracing the simple solutions to complex questions provided by those at the margins of politics. In the modern era, we have seen the rise of a litany of fascist demagogues, such as Griffin, Frandsen and Yaxley-Lennon, who have proved to be more enduring than the ephemeral organisations they lead; the BNP, EDL and FLA have all imploded, while Britain First and whatever hate speech vehicle Ann Marie Waters is hiding behind are moribund at best. Back then, the extreme right couldn’t find their arse with both hands. Moneyed Nazi sympathisers like John Tyndall and Colin Jordan simply couldn’t keep a leash on their skinhead shock troops. Consequently, socially progressive movements such as the Anti-Nazi League drove the National Front from the streets, unfortunately while electorally the Tories ran the country like a squalid Police State.

One significant difference back then was the popularity of left of Labour political organisations. As a lifelong Marxist with a pronounced distaste for self-mythologising proponents of the theory of vanguardism, I had little time for Trotskyist cults like Tony Cliff’s Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or Gerry Healey and the Redgrave acting dynasty’s Workers Revolutionary Party. I had even less time for Ted Grant’s devotees who practised entrism into the Labour Party, by the semantic sleight of hand whereby they referred to themselves not as a party, but a “tendency;” the Militant Tendency. The organisation whose methods have fatally undermined FCUM to the extent the club may never recover.

Formed in Liverpool in 1964, Militant regarded themselves as a revolutionary organisation that operated within the Labour Party. Rigidly hierarchical and a cross between a religious cult and a military operation in their disciplined adherence to policies handed down by an unelected central committee, they followed the doctrine of Democratic Centralism, whereby once decisions had been made, generally by chief theoretician Grant or his shady assistant Peter Taaffe, there could be absolutely no debate as to the correctness of what the tendency advocated. Followers were required to be unquestioning obedient. All independent political thought was forbidden. Members of Militant referred to the tendency as The Organisation (I kid you not) and used a special vocabulary. Ordinary members were Comrades. Professional organisers were Full Timers who generally worked at The Centre in London. Potential recruits were Contacts. Other lefties whose programme varied one scintilla from The Organisation’s were Sectarians. Anyone who tried to argue their case about politics was Undialectical. All monies raised went to The Fighting Fund, apparently. Those with jobs were Workers. Those under 30 were The Youth. Anyone who dared suggest that racism and sexism were bad things and that Comrades ought not to make jokes about such subjects were Reformists. Worst of all, if you asked about gay rights, you were Bourgeois, as apparently sexuality was related to class orientation. The Organisation’s catechism was summed up in a document, helpfully printed on one side of A4, called What We Stand For. It was a shopping list intended to transform society. The Communist Manifesto reimagined for those who found Dr Seuss’s ABC too intellectually taxing.

While many good, honest, hard working people tried to co-operate with Militant, their Ourselves Alone approach to political isolationism often meant that while the leaders and Full Timers were charismatic in their own way, most of the foot soldiers were weak, socially inadequate and emotionally vulnerable people, who loved the sense of belonging and a common purpose that membership provided. Certainly, that’s why my cousin John signed up in early 1980, abandoning his education and any thoughts of a career, to become a revolutionary. After two decades of abject anonymity, he had finally become someone important. In his eyes at any rate. John changed from sort of non-entity who would have failed a personality test, to fanatically embracing the role of the most loyal and obedient of all converts, ferociously guarding the structural secrets he learned.  By 1982 he’d moved firstly to London to work as a full-timer and then, come 1984, he was in Liverpool as Militant’s glove puppet Horsebox Hatton became the public face of an entirely incompetent, wrongheaded attempt to take on the Tories, which resulted in even worse unemployment, social deprivation and near destitution on Merseyside, as Militant simply would not face the facts their approach was doomed to fail.

If you’re interested in the history of Militant, I’d suggest you seek out Michael Crick’s book about them, rather than Peter Taaffe’s hagiographic hokum, Liverpool; The City That Dared to Fight. One time my cousin confided the latter pile of hackneyed drivel would be his book of choice on Desert Island Discs. You see, in Militant world, it was an article of faith that all Comrades must unquestioningly venerate Liverpool, as a city, as an identity and, above all, as an ideological concept. “That’s why I support the Reds,” a chunky young Teessider told me at a New Year’s Eve party as the 80s met the 90s. “Anyway, Boro are shite,” he concluded.

This fella’s name? Andy Walker. A recently ordained Full Timer, who was living in Glasgow with our John. They were bunking down in the spare bedroom of legendary Militant hero, convicted perjurer and inveterate sex addict Tommy Sheridan, in the hope of fomenting civil war on Clydeside after the introduction of the hated Poll Tax. To an extent, Militant almost got this right, despite handing over names of rioters who belonged to the SWP and WRP to the Metropolitan Police, after the Trafalgar Square disturbances that marked the Poll Tax arriving in England.  This was one demo I didn’t make as Newcastle were at home to Brighton same day. Won 2-0. Mick Quinn and Mark McGhee.

Militant were box office Trots. Membership was at an all-time high, which no doubt why somewhere around this time, Peter Taaffe lost the run of himself. Perhaps overemphasising the volatility of the UK political scene following the fall of Thatcher, he changed horses in mid-stream and called for Militant to embrace an “open turn.” In short, grown fat on power and drunk on ambition, he outmanoeuvred Ted Grant who was callously purged in a manner so brutal Stalin would have wept, abandoning The Organisation’s 30-year policy of entrism and calling for Militant to become an independent political entity. As I’ve said, I was no supporter of theirs, but I recognised the one advantage they had over the lunatic fringe from the SWP and the WRP was the legitimacy of Labour Party membership. Giving it up seemed crazy.

It was. Within a year membership fell to the lowest level since the early 70s and almost all Full Timers lost their jobs. Our John did a Teaching English as a Foreign Language course, then took a job in Vitoria-Gasteiz, home of FC Alaves in the Basque Country, where he’s married, brought up a family and settled seemingly for good. For years his sense of bitter betrayal by Militant chewed him up inside; he couldn’t forgive them, even when he ran into Fat Andy from Boro at the 2000 UEFA Cup Final when Liverpool beat Alaves 5-4.

About a year before then, I’d been asked to appear on one of those dreary, hand-wringing, TV panel discussions about the future of football, on account of being a writer for the NUFC fanzine, The Mag. Recorded at Granada at 6pm on a Thursday, it wrapped early evening, allowing several of us to head out for a few beers as ITV were picking up the tab for travel and a hotel. Probably the most famous person in Peveril of the Peak that night was Nick Cochrane, or Andy MacDonald if you’re a fan of events in Weatherfield. However, the most engaging presence was that of IMUSA head honcho Andy Walsh; the bloke was a natural orator and had the whole room hanging off his every word. Without even mentioning politics, you could tell he’d been a Militant Full Timer. The only one who didn’t unquestioningly worship Liverpool I suppose.

Andy’s demeanour also showed just what you can do with your life if you’ve been made redundant by a Leninist revolutionary sect. Once you’ve had that vital experience of organising and controlling groups of angry, suggestible young people, running IMUSA comes as second nature. Similarly, this explains why the quasi-independent, well-meaning but dull talking shop, the Football Supporters Federation (FSF) has as its Chief Executive Kevin Miles, former chair of INUSA, presenter of 606 on Radio 5 and one-time Militant Full Timer. Interestingly “Air” Miles, so called because of his love of jet travel to international football tourneys, has as his dauphin a certain Michael Brunskill, whose mother Elaine and step father Norman are north east regional organisers for Militant, or SPEW (Socialist Party of England and Wales) as they are now known.

That evening in 1999 was the one occasion I met Andy Walsh, though he made a great impression on me. From 2005, I followed his involvement in FCUM with interest. While, at a distance, it seemed as if the whole project was going well, the first warning sign for me was the grotesque television news footage of Walsh showing Damian Hinds around Broadhurst Park; a former Militant kowtowing to a Tory minister. You couldn’t make it up. Obviously, his credibility was shot to shit for that rash act, meaning his time in the role was up after that incident and now he’s long gone from FCUM; I do wonder if he’s any relation to the Andy Walsh who is the FSF’s current National Game Development Officer. Answers on a post card.

If my attitude to Walsh is less negative than most FCUM fans, then don’t worry as my feelings about Walker are considerably more intense. This glory-hunting bar stool and sofa Liverpool fan, who’d never been to Merseyside before his mid-20s at the earliest, obviously became a hate figure for FCUM fans once he accepted the role of Walsh’s snooper and nark in chief. I have no direct experience of Walker’s scheming antics, but the bare-faced cheek he’s employed to rewrite his life, so as to claim a lifetime of supporting his home town club and airbrush the truth, is typical of Militant old boys. If Peter Taaffe can suddenly decide after 30 years that the Labour Party is not where The Organisation should make their home, then decide again in late 2016 that Militant should rejoin (he didn’t get through the selection process), without addressing the impact or legacy of such an ideological volte face, then Andy Walker can easily pretend he watched televised highlights of David Hodgson, Craig Johnston and Graeme Souness in the red of Boro not Liverpool, even if he knows it’s a lie. Spending time in the rarefied atmosphere of the upper echelons on Militant somehow enables you to peddle barefaced untruths without batting an eyelid. Never apologise. Never explain.

The tactics of denigration, subterfuge, obfuscation and deceit that came so naturally to Walsh and Walker were learned as soon as they signed up to The Organisation. Even if they moved on from The Organisation, the skills they accumulated were hard wired for life. They may not have changed the world, but they changed FCUM decisively, though not for the better. Whatever the future holds for FCUM, the club is better off ploughing its own furrow without the dread hand of failed Trotskyists on the tiller, especially one who doesn’t know whether to pretend to be upset at Boro losing in the play-offs or to fess up that Karius the Klown broke his heart.