(An article submitted to the Football Supporters Federation magazine about a proposed feature on acceptable boundaries for chanting at football matches. The guide length was 400 words; I slightly exceeded that)
By profession I’m a lecturer in Further Education, so under the terms of my contract I am forced to head back to College on the day immediately after the Summer Bank Holiday. On Tuesday 28th August 2007, my return to work coincided with the last time I would ever buy “The Guardian,” a newspaper I’d read avidly and defended vigorously since my stridently left-wing views had codified during my mid teenage years, which fell on the cusp of the 70s and 80s. Sunday August 26th 2007 was also an important date for me, as it would be the last time I attended an away league game supporting Newcastle United. On that date, we Magpies, unaware as yet just how unimaginably catastrophic the Ashley administration would be, nor being fully immersed in the hateful anti football of the Allardyce interregnum after an acceptable start to the season, travelled 40 miles down the A19 to face Middlesbrough. The game ended in a surprisingly entertaining 2-2 draw, but the real story that emerged in the days ahead was to be found off the pitch, in the shape of deplorable chants by certain sections of the Newcastle support and the despicably opportunistic response to this by “The Guardian” and sections of the Boro support, both of whom seemed to glorify in the chance to have a go at Newcastle United to satisfy their own sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting agenda.
I’ll be honest; I don’t like Middlesbrough. However, that has nothing to do with regional rivalry as I’ve no concept of Newcastle v Boro being a derby game; our derby is against the Mackems, theirs is against Leeds (this season) or Hartlepool (next season). I dislike Boro partly because of arriving at Thornaby on the rattler in February 83 as a nervous 18 year old and being told by the local top plod “we can not guarantee your safety once you leave this train,” in advance of the most frightening 4 hours of my life, and partly because of Boro’s post 1995 reinvention as the epitome of wacky Sky TV fans in replica shirts, giant foam hands, curly wigs and face paint.
Games between Newcastle and Boro, despite their enthusiastic adoption of a Ronald MacDonald style couture, have been played in an ever more poisonous atmosphere during the time I’ve been watching them. To be fair the ultraviolent ambience hasn’t been helped by Newcastle fans’ insistence on constantly singing about Dr Marietta Higgs and the 1987 Cleveland Child Sex Abuse scandal. These chants may have been topical once, but they have never been funny nor acceptable; however, the mindset of fans desperate to get a reaction from the opposition means that apparently no subject can be ruled as being beyond the bounds of taste or social acceptability, regardless of legal niceties.
Consequently, Boro sought to trump such insults and raise the bar in terms of offensive ripostes during the October 2003 game at the Riverside, which took place after the ultimately unfounded “roasting” allegations against several Newcastle players, including Jenas, Bramble and Dyer,. This game saw the three mentioned booed mercilessly and constantly referred to as “rapists,” as were other black Newcastle players who had not been subject to any accusations, including Olivier Bernard and Shola Ameobi, who scored the winner. In the aftermath of that game, I had a long, frank conversation with Boro fanzine editor Rob Nichols and we both agreed that an atmosphere like that actually impaired our enjoyment of the game. It just wasn’t on; loads of idiots on both sides trying to outdo each other in terms of nastiness. However, it wasn’t the Nuremberg Rally; football matches seldom are cauldrons of hate speak.
Here is perhaps not the place for a Gramscian analysis of social hegemony and how it relates to the implied and presumed power roles among football fans and their place within the Capitalist social matrix. Suffice to say such a complex deconstruction of the motivations and effects of attendance and conduct at football matches is the stuff of a PhD thesis. Broadly, my instincts are that football crowds nowadays are more representative of the entire spectrum of society than they were when I first started watching Newcastle in 1973. Obviously it is undeniably a good thing that football is a more inclusive spectator sport, though it does mean there may be a mismatch between what is seen as acceptable conduct to those who perhaps unknowingly march under the banner of workerist traditionalists, many of whom remember the 1970s as a time for trading punches and throwing petrol bombs with opposition football fans, and the more politically correct whose ideology has been inspired by those who had more dealings with Red Lion Square than the Red Army and spent the decade reading Socialist Challenge and Spare Rib, perhaps identifying enemies not by the colour of their football favours but by their political hues. Nowhere was the results of this mismatch more pronounced than in the fallout from the August 2007 game at the Riverside.
The opposition centre forwards that day, who both found the net, were Mark Viduka, who’d arrived at St. James Park on a free transfer from Middlesbrough a month previously and the Egyptian former Spurs man, Mido. From the very start, Viduka was “a fat Aussie bastard” in the eyes of the Boro faithful, while Mido was “a paedo,“ according to a proportion of the away support. My recollections of the game were that in the first half, Charles N’Zogbia gave Newcastle the lead, before Mido equalised. His response to the goal was a frenzied in your face celebration in front of Newcastle fans, among whom he’d few friends following some theatrical diving during his time at White Hart Lane the season before. Mido was yellow carded for his celebrations and the away support upped the ante considerably, both in terms of noise and in terms of abuse. Possibly a quarter of the away support began to chant “shoe, shoe, shoe bomber” at Mido, because of his apparent resemblance, though it’s lost on me, to Richard Reid, described by Wikipedia as “a self-admitted member of al-Qaeda who pled guilty in 2002 in U.S. federal court to eight criminal counts of terrorism stemming from his attempt to destroy a commercial aircraft in-flight by detonating explosives hidden in his shoes…. Reid was born a British citizen in Bromley, South London, to Leslie Hughes, who was of white English descent, and Colvin Robin Reid, whose father was a Jamaican immigrant of African descent. “
The chanting at Mido was intense but sporadic; I didn’t join in, nor did I’d estimate at least half of the away following, though pro Newcastle songs were more popular. I didn’t join in because I thought the chant was stupid, offensive and unnecessary, though I did utter several loud “leave it out for fuck‘s sake“ at those in front of me (I was near the back of the away section) who were chanting it. I’ve no problem with telling racists to shut up at the game, or even having a quiet or less than quiet word with clowns who think they can get an easy laugh by making such comments, whether they believe what they are saying or not; in fact, in all sections of my life, whether I’m at work, in the pub, doing my shopping or walking down the street, I’ll stick my oar in when I hear an offensive remark. I think all anti racists have the same responsibility. Incidentally, not one person has ever stuck one on me for challenging their attitudes.
Like much of the chanting at a football game, the “shoe bomber” references did not continue throughout the whole match. When Viduka put Newcastle ahead, the home fans again reminded us he was “a fat Aussie bastard” and when former Sunderland man Julio Arca tied things up at 2-2, he was informed that he was a “dirty Mackem bastard,” though the Argentinian had no references made to his nationality nor to the Malvinas War, which no doubt amazed and devastated the staff at “The Guardian.”
Post match I phoned Rob Nichols for a chat about what we both agreed had been as a canny game and he informed me he’d heard none of the chanting directed at Mido, on account of the fact his seat in the north stand is at the opposite end of the stadium. This may seem a minor point, but in the context of the media shitstorm that was about to explode, it’s important it is made.
The next day, August Bank Holiday Monday, I’d taken in North Shields v Horden in the Northern League Division 2 and was helping my son to choose a new pair of football boots for his up and coming season from the Nike discount store in Royal Quays Retail Outlet near Shields, when an unrecognised number started ringing on my mobile. To my surprise it was the North East stringer for “The Guardian” and former Sunderland AFC official magazine writer Louise Taylor, who wanted to ask “a few questions“ about the previous day‘s game. Having written for Newcastle fanzines from 1989 I had been used to calls like this every so often, so I readily agreed as I’ve always been of the belief that the opinions of ordinary fans hold as much validity as jaundiced, cynical hacks. Frankly, I’ve regretted many decisions in my life, but this is one of my biggest errors; how naïve was I to believe that “The Guardian,” champion of all the socialist and democratic principles I hold dear, would represent my views accurately!
In Tuesday’s paper, Louise Taylor put her name to an article that had taken my words and quoted them out of context and without explanation to suggest that I was perfectly happy for Newcastle fans to abuse Mido in the way he had been. Obviously this was not the case and I was very unhappy as being represented in this fashion. Equally astonishingly, Rob Nichols who had unequivocally told me he had not heard any chanting on the Sunday, had managed to reposition himself by 180 degrees the next day and was enthusiastically condemning the Newcastle support. As far as I’m aware the interview I gave was not taped, which is a real shame as I would love to have been able to brandish a transcript to all the cyber hardmen bloggers and polyversity Media Studies and Sociology drop outs on message boards, who judged me so harshly about things I’d not even thought never mind said.
I had stated quite categorically during the interview that I was against racism and that the chants had been racist in nature, but that surely everyone was opposed to racism and would condemn such chants. In addition as a Marxist, I was vehemently opposed to the social conditions that created racist attitudes and encouraged institutional racism and individual racist attitudes, especially considering the fact that those chanting racist abuse were not necessarily racists per se but people who believed it was acceptable to say just about anything at a football ground to wind up opposition players and supporters (see examples above). Those chanting at Mido were not Fascists whose heads needed acquainting with the pavement, but ordinary football fans who needed educating about what should be acceptable conduct. I realise that sounds patronising, but I don’t mean it to be.
I felt that the impact of the chants, apparently unheard by at least one end of the ground, had not ruined the game, but had created an “unsavoury” atmosphere. In addition, I also questioned why Newcastle fans would suddenly develop Islamophobic attitudes for that particular game, when Emre had been playing for Newcastle for 2 seasons without enduring any abuse at all; for some reason this was seen as the most savage indictment of my opinions and, almost 4 years on, I still struggle to understand why.
Having felt like I had been hung out to dry by Louise Taylor, I made a complaint to the readers’ editor of “The Guardian,” receiving a phone call of apology by Louise Taylor the next day (Wednesday), whereby she assured me the following Tuesday’s paper would put things right. In the event, it simply clarified that I didn’t write for “The Mag,” but for “players inc” fanzine, suggesting she felt her article, which I will speak out against until my dying breath, had integrity. In a sense it had when compared to Marina Hyde’s football blog that appeared on the Thursday.
Entitled “Hypocrisy needs a kick it out campaign,” Hyde, a person who has willingly had a relationship with Piers Morgan, took Taylor’s words at face value and used them as a springboard for a savage attack on what she took as my beliefs. Check out what she said for yourself at http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2007/aug/29/hypocrisyneedsakickitout ; I still struggle to read the whole thing without alternately wanting to burst in to tears or punch the monitor until it or my fist breaks. Here’s an example of her hatchet job on me -:
“Speaking to this newspaper, one Ian Cusack of the fanzine Players Inc described the chants as "unsavoury". "But I don't think they were racist," he went on. "Newcastle have Muslim players. Emre is a Muslim . . . The chants should be placed in the context of local rivalry."
It takes a special sort of idiotic blindness, really, to downgrade racism to something that can be excused on account of geography, and it would be nice to think that Mr Cusack might dedicate the next issue of his magazine to expanding on this point, perhaps extrapolating his argument to notable episodes in civil rights history. In the meantime, there is only his we've-got-a-Muslim-too defence, which some might find redolent of the attempt by The Office's Chris Finch to bat away those tired charges of misogyny. "How can I hate women?" is his triumphant staple. "My mum's one."
My only defence is that I did not say the things she claims I did and that I do not hold attitudes she assumes I must have, and that her colleague, either out of mischief or incompetence, was responsible for pinning such sentiments on me. I’ve never bought “The Guardian” since and I never will again.
The effect of the Mido story and my part in it was to see the chin-strokers in John Lennon specs who occupy the likes of When Saturday Comes’ message board and who see attending football games as akin to appearing on EDL marches, taking time out from monotonously whining about MK Dons to applaud Taylor and Hyde for their work in exposing Newcastle’s fan base as a cabal of racist thugs. In a sense, this level of response was predictable, as it was rooted in the special kind of class and regional prejudice that the effete petit bourgeois gauleiters in cyberspace and the media specialise in.
Far more depressing was the reaction of Boro fans. Ignoring their racist abuse of Newcastle players back in 2003, they climbed abroad this bandwagon as a way of trying apply a scattergun and broad brush approach to criticising Newcastle fans. The amount of witless fools who opportunistically sought to claim chants relating to the 1987 Cleveland Child Sex Abuse scandal were “racist” was enough to make me give up on football completely.
I didn’t, but this was the last time I attended an away league game, the last time I bought “The Guardian” and it will definitely be the last time I speak to national media.
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And here's what I wrote at the time; this article appeared in the Percy Main v Stocksfield programme on 29th September 2007.
Who’s Sorry Now?
It’s not often I say this, but I was in the wrong the other week. This is not a misprint; I made a mistake, an error of judgement if you like, and I’m sorry. I’m not exactly sure who I should be apologising to; me, other Newcastle fans, Mido, Middlesbrough FC, their supporters and especially the editorial team of their fanzine Fly Me to the Moon, or Louise Taylor and Marina Hyde from The Guardian. Hang on: definitely not Louise Taylor and Marina Hyde from The Guardian, or the mendacious message board cyber toughs from Stockton and South Bank.
I’m against racism, in all of its manifestations, who isn’t? But I’m also against the root causes of racism; the prevalent social attitude of intolerance, manipulated by a state apparatus and a media that seek to stigmatise Asylum Seekers, refugees and the indigenous Muslim population, is the cause of racism in our society. Football fans are not de facto racists, regardless of team they support. Any racism that individuals display is as a direct result of the attitudes of the ruling class that seek to divide any form of working class unity. It certainly is not helpful for anyone with a social conscience or a sense of natural justice and moral outrage to seek to stigmatise any set of football fans. The fight against racism, like the fight against Capitalism, is one that we should all be UNITED in. Columnists from The Guardian and on-line Boro bad lads, please read, digest and respect this paragraph.
At a rough guess, I’ve watched Newcastle play at Ayresome Park and the Riverside approximately twenty times in the past nigh-on twenty five years. The first time I went to Boro was in March 1983; 1-1, with Keegan scoring for us. In those days, football fans were seen as a kind of enemy within, without the Kremlin-sponsored ideology. To be frank, attending an away game was a dangerous thing to do in many instances and Boro was always one of the worst trips; in fact the last time I’d been to Boro, apart from this season, back in 2003, I felt physically sick with fear during the post match journey to the car. The atmosphere was ugly, evil, fetid. Back in 1983, as a naïve 18 year old, I thought it would be quickest and safest to make my way down on the train from Heworth with two similarly neophytic mates. That idea was swept out of my head as soon as the rattler pulled in. The three of us were shoehorned on to an already sardine-can stuffed two carriages. It seemed as if we were the only ones who weren’t sociopaths; that feeling of blind panic when you know you’re completely out of your depth had engulfed me before we’d even got to Pelaw.
The Police got on at Stockton, with the Inspector telling us, "As you have decided to travel independently of approved means, we can not guarantee your safety today."
It was terrifying; it was amazing we got home alive. Walking, head down, in silence from the station the two miles to Ayresome Park and back again, the air punctuated by wailing silences and indistinct, garbled, angry shouts, the fear that we’d be ambushed at each corner is the most raw feeling of terror I’ve known in my life. Perhaps because the three of us looked like refugees from a Postcard Records photoshoot, there was little chance of us dying at the feet of the Frontline. Today, in contrast, it was like a trip to Alton Towers.
Some of my very favourite people in the world are Boro fans; two of them, Rob and Andy, I met up with that day. However, they aren't the bad lads and they aren't the Riverside Stadium face paint, curly wig, replica shirt and foam hand generation. They no doubt cringe at Roary the Lion and "Chelsea Dagger" after the goals, as much as I cringed at the anti Mido chants. The fact is the contempt I feel for the Boro nouveau has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with my nostalgia for a time when football was less showbiz and more earthy. I’ve never regarded Middlesbrough as a derby game; that honour is reserved for the Mackems and the Mackems only.
That said, this game is always a highly charged affairs; Boro are always aggressive off the pitch. In October 1992 before a League Cup tie, their hooligans attacked the Three Bulls Heads in Percy Street Newcastle. I was inside at the time and have to say it was pretty terrifying, watching the windows of a pub being caved in with rocks. For that and many other reasons, each visit there is one taken with a degree of trepidation. Of course, the constant chanting by Newcastle fans with reference to the Cleveland Child Abuse Inquiry of 1987 doesn’t help things.
Of course, Middlesbrough fans are not innocent in this; in October 2003, there was relentless booing of Titus Bramble, Keiron Dyer and Jermaine Jenas. Now, for many reasons, Newcastle fans would wish to boo those three, but for completely different reasons than the spurious grounds, as later demonstrated legally, that caused Boro fans to boo that day. I’m not seeking to imply that the jeers directed at those three, nor at Shola Ameobi, who scored the only goal that day, or Olivier Bernard, who got away with a handball in the box, were in any way racially motivated. Perhaps Boro fans and agenda-pursuing office girls from the Fourth Estate may wish to reflect on this point.
On August 26th, the abuse from Newcastle fans was initially focussed on the poor attendance (they’re here, they’re there, they’re every fucking where, empty seats!), but things soon degenerated with the insertion of the word paedophiles in place of empty seats. Unpleasant? Yes. Unsavoury? Yes Unnecessary? Defintely? Funny? Depends on your point of view.
Where things became particularly intolerable was when the focus of the chanting switched to Mido, Boro’s new Egyptian centre forward. A portly, arrogant underachiever, he’d skulked in Spurs’ reserves since scoring against us when we’d won 3-2 at White Hart Lane in January. His performance on the pitch ordinarily would not have been something to worry me, but they way he got fired up when the abusive chants were directed at him proved them to be, in effect, a ridiculous own goal. It was clearly stupid, stereotypical and unnecessary to call him a terrorist and a paedophile, but there wasn’t a person in that crowd who believed there to be a grain of truth in those chants.
Of course, that isn’t the point. In hindsight I believe that those chants were racist, in effect if not intent, as well as offensive and inflammatory, although Mido has to be the one who had the final call about whether it was racist, not Louise Taylor and certainly not a hypocritical Boro fan who has no interest in confronting racism, but is sick of the big bad bullies from Tyneside taking over his club’s Meccano ground and humiliating his side on and off the pitch with endless songs about Dr. Marietta Higgs.
However, what can one person do about it? I’ve not been in a Newcastle crowd that engaged in mass racist chanting for over two decades. Certainly any racism I’ve heard in the past 15 or so years has been isolated individual idiots, all of whom I’ve either told to shut it or reported to stewards. I’ve never come to blows with anyone about it, nor do I think I’ve changed anyone’s opinions, but I’ve stopped it being said. What else can you do?
Certainly in a culture whereby prejudice towards Islam is ingrained by law, foreign policy and institutional frameworks, there is no wonder that fear and suspicion of Muslims is a serious problem. Perhaps if Blair hadn’t decided to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq the atmosphere wouldn’t be so intolerant, but there you have it. I didn’t join in these chants because, at the time, I thought they were simply unpleasant attempts at wind-ups. On reflection, I’m wrong. It was racist and I wish it hadn’t happened.
Apart from that issue, I have to say was that it was one hell of a good game; I don't like our 4-3-3 narrow formation, but I see its purpose. We were well on top for the first 20, until N'Zogbia put us ahead with a screamer, second best after Mido equalised until the hour, then in control at the end. Viduka showed strength in scoring and Arca should have been closed down when equalising. Owen ought to have won it for us in the last minute as well.
Post match it was a totally relaxed stroll to the car. There was no edge to it; I wasn’t intimidated and Gary and I happily chatted the whole way back, not trying to hide our accents. From what I heard not one Boro fan was talking about the chanting of our lot, much less being in high dudgeon about it. In fact, when we met up with Andy for a brief chat in Doctor Brown’s car park, the subject wasn’t even discussed. We had a short chat, and then bade our farewell; I was home for the second half of Man Utd v Spurs. Disappointed we didn't win, but at least we didn't lose.
On the Bank Holiday Monday following the Boro v Newcastle game, I took in North Shields at home to Horden. The game was terrible. They always are at Ralph Gardener Park. Horden won 1-0 and it could have been six. Post match, I to the Royal Quays to buy some new trainers and, standing in the check out queue at the Nike shop, I received a call.
To my absolute astonishment, it was Louise Taylor, a football writer on The Guardian, which has been my paper of choice since becoming an avowed loony lefty at the age of 12. She, of course, wanted to discuss the Mido chants the day before, asking me to condemn Newcastle fans. I didn’t, though I would do now if anyone asked me for reasons I’ve stated above. Over the course of 15 minutes I tried to explain why Newcastle fans were not racist as an entity, but would have individual racists within them. The complexities of my points appeared to be lost either by her or in the sub-editing phase, as my words appeared as the final paragraph in her article. My opinions, which followed those of my mate Rob Nicholls, the Boro fanzine editor, who had said to me in a phone call on the Bank Holiday Monday night that he hadn’t actually heard the chants as he sits in the other end of the ground, were summed up as follows -:
"The Mido chants were very unsavoury but I don't think they were racist, Newcastle have Muslim players, Emre is a Muslim. They were just a way of winding the opposition up but they didn't work as Mido scored. The chants should be placed in the context of local rivalry."
Those words seem petty, small-minded and ill judged. They also didn’t reflect what I had to say, but then again, I didn’t write the article. Even worse, the next day, a football blog on the paper’s website by gossip columnist Marina Hyde, a former confidant of Piers Morgan, had this to say -:
“It takes a special sort of idiotic blindness, really, to downgrade racism to something that can be excused on account of geography, and it would be nice to think that Mr Cusack might dedicate the next issue of his magazine to expanding on this point, perhaps extrapolating his argument to notable episodes in civil rights history.
In the meantime, there is only his we've-got-a-Muslim-too defence, which some might find redolent of the attempt by The Office's Chris Finch to bat away those tired charges of misogyny. How can I hate women? is his triumphant staple. My mum's one.”
As an aside, they also described me as a writer for The Mag, a publication I hadn’t deigned to write for in over 3 years. Happily The Guardian printed a retraction of this error and Louise Taylor had the decency to phone back twice and profusely apologise. I emailed Marina Hyde, but as yet she hasn’t got back to me; presumably she’s too busy with other important projects, such as reviewing reality TV shows or however she chooses to use her Oxford University degree.
I’m not particularly bothered that this whole episode allowed drooling inadequates from either bank of the Tees to go in to overdrive on message boards printing specious fallacies about me and my family; I just wish I’d thought the whole issue through. The chants aimed at Mido were wrong, racist and unpleasant. I sincerely hope they don’t happen again.
However, I offer no apologies to those who pursued an agenda that was anti-working class, anti-Newcastle or anti-football. My particular contempt is reserved for those football fans that used the Mido situation to pursue petty jealousies and attempt to settle scores. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
