17 Green Fields (And Counting): Part 2

I'm just back from my annual trip to the Old Country. One of the highlights was a trip with the Shelbourne supporters' club to see their team win in Waterford. That outing will form part of next week's blog. In the meantime, here's the second part of an article that I wrote for their fanzine Red Inc, which will be available from 31st July, starting with their home game against Wexford Youths -:

In my first article, I explained my love affair with Irish football, as a Geordie part of the Irish diaspora, as a kid living in Newcastle and as a student in County Derry. In this one, I detail my travels around the League of Ireland.

Once I’d finished university, I had a year kicking around in London, before doing a postgraduate course in Leeds and then ending up back where I started in time for the 1988/1989 season. I purchased my first NUFC season ticket in the newly opened Milburn Stand, saw us win only 3 home games all season (1 on a Saturday) and finish bottom.  Grand; especially as I’d missed most of the promotion season in 83/84 when I’d first moved away. The tone was set for the campaign when Tony Cottee scored after 32 seconds of his debut as Everton tore us apart 4-0 on the opening day and didn’t get appreciably better from there on in. However, I found a great way of dealing with disappointment; instead of just drowning myself in gargle, I wrote about my angst in fanzines, such as The Mag, which published 283 issues from 1988 until 2014. I wrote for it and hundreds of other fan publications and, during the period of contraction when many fanzines went either to the wall or on-line following the digital revolution of the past decade or so, I resolutely kept the flame going. These days, like with vinyl records, there has been a renaissance in print media in England, even if it is still a niche market, with several great publications on the go, like Duck from Stoke, West Stand Bogs from Barnsley, general ones like The Football Pink and Stand, not to mention a certain NUFC publication called The Popular Side (@PopularSideZine) that I’m involved with.

One of the best things fanzines do is to bring fans of different clubs together; these days it’s done via Twitter (which is how I got chatting to Barry), but years ago, people used to send letters. In summer 1993, we got one at The Mag from a fella in County Kildare, though a native of Boyle in the County Roscommon, who told of the Irish NUFC supporters club and his support for the club going back to 1975. Now after I finished university, I went back to the north for a couple of nostalgic visits in summer 88 and 89, but with no Irish relatives left (all either emigrated or dead; sounds a bit like Spancillhill no?), I found my relationship with the old country becoming further and further distant. However, that all changed when I met John McQuaid, the fella who wrote that letter, on the day Newcastle battered Wimbledon 4-0 at Halloween 1993.

We hit it off straightaway and he stayed at our house, subsequently introducing us to other Irish Mags, such as Declan McGrath originally of Glenamaddy, but a resident of Dublin since the 80s when he came up to College. Where I lived at the time was close to St James Park and, until my son was born in 1995, we had 2 spare bedrooms; most home games we’d end up with drunken Irish Mags crashed out all over the place. However, I’d not been back to Ireland for years, so in 1996 we booked a summer cottage out in Westport, drove over and bookended our stay with a few days in Dublin at Declan’s place in Whitehall, which is when my love affair with the League of Ireland was reignited.

At the Iveagh Grounds in Crumlin, Declan and I joined half a dozen inebriated Albion Rovers fans, to watch the side from Scotland win a game on a glorious Friday evening in late July by 2-0. It wasn’t great, but it was a start, though for St James Gate, it was an ending as they resigned from the league soon after. The next day, we had to come west along the road to Mayo and thence to a couple of nights in Sligo (just missing sunderland playing against Rovers), but we were back the following Bank Holiday Monday. Declan broke the news that there was a game to see that day; with the (now ex) wife’s blessing, me and him took off to Tolka for a friendly against Tranmere Rovers. To be perfectly honest the main reason for going was to try and catch a word with former NUFC legend Liam O’Brien at full time. We didn’t manage it (I think the game was a 1-1 draw), but I encountered for the first time the bearded, dishevelled legend that is the ubiquitous Tom. I think I’ve seen him at 80% of the League of Ireland games I’ve attended. Gesticulating wildly at the almost deserted stand, he repeatedly proclaimed if dis was Kark, all dese seats’d be taken….

As well as the football, it was a great holiday in all respects and so we decided to return in 1998; money was tight with a young bairn so I couldn’t afford to fly over on a whim, so this was my next chance to see a bit of Irish football. Astonishingly, no sooner had we booked ferries than Newcastle announced a pre-season friendly against Bohs, for the day before we travelled. However, all was not lost, as they also pencilled in a game at the Carlisle Grounds for the Friday after we arrived. As this was an NUFC game, we met in the traditional Irish Mags bar The Ha’penny Bridge Inn, before taking the DART and a few more pints in The Hibernia, then seeing Newcastle stroll to a 6-0 win, though the way the team plays now, the score could be reversed. Anyway, the next day we went west again, to Bonniconlon in Mayo for a fortnight, arriving back in Dublin on Saturday afternoon. Ironically, Declan wasn’t at home; he was over in Newcastle staying at our house and watching NUFC draw 0-0 with Charlton. It seems I ended up at the better game; leafing through The Evening Herald, I noticed more coverage of English football (especially the range of teams who had supporters clubs, from Arsenal to York it seemed), but I did see something worth watching that night, which is how I ended up at Home Farm (Everton) 0 UCD 2. This and the one at Tolka had been two games I’d been able to walk to from Declan’s place in Marino. They were to be the last games I’d see on League of Ireland grounds for almost a decade and not just because Home Farm eventually departed the senior scene in the aftermath of my trip.

That Saturday had been the day of the Omagh Bombing; a terrible event that came out of nowhere and changed things forever for people. Without wishing to compare the two events, I had life changing moments in 1999; my marriage failed, I quit my job and I moved to Bratislava in Slovakia for 2 years. Irish football was not top of my list of priorities.  Returning to Newcastle in 2001, I got myself a new job, a new home and a new partner, but it was a while until I returned; summer 2007 for Declan’s wedding to be precise. There were football games of course; in the raging unreality of the Celtic Tiger, Drogheda United were to be crowned champions in the autumn, courtesy of a goal by former NUFC junior Guy Bates, but on August 1st they hosted SP Libertas in the UEFA Cup at Dalymount Park and I took this game in with Declan and John, who continue to indulge my bizarre hobby to this day. In the Conan Doyle before kick-off, RTE news announced the death of my dad’s idol Tommy Makem; I called the old fella to break him the news and he was desperately sad. Ironically, two years later to the day, my dad died. RIP Eddy; still miss you mate.

Drogs had won the game on a glorious evening, but the weather soon turned and the Saturday saw torrential downpours, but there was a game to go to. It was a trip back to Tolka to see Shamrock Rovers draw 1-1 with Derry City. Frankly, I like all League of Ireland teams, apart from the Tallaght Corinthians and being up close and personal with their fans that night, who repeatedly sang your next queen is Camilla Parker Bowles to the Derry supporters, reinforced my opinions. What truly awful people they are, despite a lifelong Irish Mag called Chris carrying the flag for Donabate Rovers. Perhaps he’s no good at geography either.

2008 was a busy year; a trip in the summer saw me take in Bohs 2 Shams 1 at Dalier (I couldn’t believe the whole stand singing Hold Me Now after Mark Rossiter scored a sublime free kick) and Longford 2 Salthill 2, courtesy of John driving us out there. I’ve a mate from home who is Newcastle’s only Salthill fan; I even got him a jersey for his 50^th in 2013, just as the club went out the league. At the end of October 08, I came back for the two FAI Cup semi-finals; St Pat’s 1 Bohs 3 on a Friday night at Richmond Park, followed by  a trip to Declan’s home turf for a night in Glenamaddy, followed by Galway 1 Derry 3. I really should get to a final one year.

With my dad dying, 2009 was a write-off, but I was back in late May 2010 to see Athlone 2 Salthill 0, on a night when the crowd was 104 (John drove us) and it showered hailstones, almost obscuring the lines. Declan, now living among the quality in Dalkey, took me to the UCD bowl to see St Pat’s win 3-1. Every spectator was given free Lynx shower gel; a quick downpour saw some of the more foolish Inchicorians attempting an al fresco wash and brush up. 2011 was an example of bad planning, with only Bray 1 Sligo 4 on the agenda, though I did manage to be privy to a conversation between Roddy Collins and Tom. It’s debatable who talked the most sense, or bollocks…

In 2012, I came over at the start of June and took in a game at Sligo; the Under 21s lost 3-1 to Italy, who included NUFC’s Davide Santon. Immediately I got home, I decided to take my son Ben over in August to see the old country; we’d arranged to fly from Newcastle to Cork, arriving on Friday tea time, giving us time to get to Turners Cross for the game against St Pat’s. Typically enough, St Pat’s were still in the Europa League qualifiers, which as you know happen almost weekly in July and August, so the game was postponed and a friendly against Blackburn Rovers pencilled in. Typically, that was moved to the Saturday night, when we’d headed up country, to watch Cork v Galway in the hurling semi-finals at Croker on the Sunday, my birthday. We lost.  On the Monday, Ben, Declan and I (John refuses to watch Shams having been employed by South Dublin Council for so long and understanding their funding) met Chris from Donabate in The Ha’penny Bridge Inn before heading to Tallaght for the game with Sligo Rovers. It was a decent 1-1 draw, but Declan saw none of it. After getting fired into the pints, he fell asleep at kick off and only woke up with about 10 minutes to go. A memorable evening, or perhaps not.

I didn’t make it over in 2013 as I had to deal with my elderly mam going into a care home and all the hassles to do with selling property, but I was back in 2014. I’d persuaded John and Declan that a trip to Wexford to see the Youths take on Shams B was what we needed to do. The lads in pink won 2-0, I got to meet Mick Wallace and share a bottle of his special red wine (no VAT obviously), while singing the praises of Clare Daly and Boyd Barrett and slagging off those chancers Joe Higgins and Paul Murphy, then we had a grand night out in some craft ale palace. I don’t think the taxi man was over enamoured by me playing the greatest hits of Pecker Dunne on my phone at 4am though. Next day, in the teeth of the worst hangover in my life, we went to Tullamore to see the GAA 4A (or was it 4B?) games; Cork beat Sligo and Galway beat Tipperary, so everyone was happy and the President was there. At full time, Declan bailed out for home, but John and I are made of sterner stuff, which is how we kept it going for the Sunday night in Dundalk, as they took Bray to pieces 4-0, when the artificial pitch was a necessity as about six inches of rain came down during the game. The highlight for me was seeing the ubiquitous Tom singing along to Three Pubs in Bohola at half time.

So; 2015. I did contemplate a trip over for June 12^th, but whether that would have been Drogheda (still not been to Hunky Dorys you see) against Derry or Cabinteely versus Athlone, became immaterial as I couldn’t get over. Thankfully, late July is booked for a trip down the country, as there’s still Cork, Cobh, Limerick and Waterford to tick off my list. I’ll keep you posted.

Principles and Scoundrels

Social media has been righteously frothing at its collective mouth over the Labour Party’s abject abandonment of its history, principles and natural constituency on Monday 20^th July with Harriet Harman’s craven capitulation to the Tories’ abhorrent Welfare Bill.  Make no mistake; this was Labour’s worst and most serious betrayal of the working class and all the weakest sections of society since Ramsey MacDonald’s formation of the National Government in 1931. 

The fact that 48 Labour MPs ignored the loathsome instruction to abstain and voted against the imminent reintroduction of childhood poverty as a de facto part of contemporary life and not some kind of specious lifestyle choice, is not something to be celebrated; it should be something we must never forgive the rest of the parliamentary party for. However, even if Kendall, Cooper or Burnham wins the leadership, such simpering cowardice is not something to despair about; over 50,000 people have joined the Labour Party since the election and we, the newly recruited, must stand alongside the activists who despair at the arrogance, selfishness and / or cowardice of elected representatives, to rescue this great party and steer it back towards principled Socialism and away from venerating the idea of government and electoral success as an end in itself. These careerist lickspittles have no place in the Labour Party as a whole, never mind the parliamentary party; activists and recruits must work together to drive them out.

No doubt when the votes were counted, Kinnock senior would have been rejoicing at his son’s abstention, though how Tony Benn would view his offspring’s dereliction of duty is a moot point. Here in the North East region, I was not surprised at the craven conformism of my own MP Nick Brown; if there was one person you’d rely on to slavishly follow Harman’s idiotic decision, it would be him.  I was surprised, nay shocked, at Ronnie Campbell’s abstention, but apparently he was already absent on parliamentary business, so an apology is granted. Many congratulations to Ian Mearns, Mary Glindon, Ian Lavery and Dave Anderson; they had the conscience, the principles and the awareness of what is morally right, to vote against that despicable bill.

Of course, there is one notable absentee from the Tyneside MPs who showed they cared; considering she represents some of the most deprived parts of this country, I am absolutely disgusted with Chi Onwurah’s abstention. Despite a mealy-mouthed unconvincing attempt to justify her conduct on her website, I simply cannot understand how her conscience allowed her to abandon her constituents in this manner. I wonder just exactly how she squares endorsing Jeremy Corbyn for leader with her inaction on July 20^th. Of course, there have been other recent incidences of Chi’s refusal to accept the consequences of her deeds and wholly mendacious press releases attempting to justify her actions. Is Chi actually the campaigning, principled constituency MP that she aspires to be, or is she an unprincipled opportunist who would make Alan Milburn look like Konni Zilliacus? I think Chi needs a period of sober reflection on the impact of her actions. Then an abject apology to all party members and constituents would go some way to distancing, though not absolving, her from this shameful, collective dereliction of principles. The disconnect between ordinary party members and the parliamentary party is becoming a yawning chasm; it is not unbridgeable, but it must be addressed immediately.

Interestingly, the very people who were most unhappy with Labour for abandoning their principles seemed to be the ones most vigorously excoriating West Brom’s James McClean for standing by his.  Having recently signed for the Baggies from Wigan, his first game for his new club was a friendly on the club’s USA tour. As seems to be the way in America, the game was prefaced by the national anthems; McClean, an Ireland international from Derry (and I use that word very consciously, not just because it is the term favoured by 90% of those dwelling on the island of Ireland), bowed his head and looked away from the flags while the two songs played. The result was a slavering cyber shitstorm of painfully uninformed comment from those who know little of the historical situation on the Foyle and understand even less.

McClean came to prominence playing for Derry City in the League of Ireland.  However, he actually played first of all for Institute, Stroke City’s second club, who were formed as The Presbyterian Working Men's Institute, before stepping up to a higher grade of football, or as he probably calls it; soccer. McClean came from a nationalist background, lived in a nationalist area and made his presence felt for a team imbued with a nationalist philosophy that was no doubt honed by the bitter sectarian experiences that saw Derry kicked out of the (Northern) Irish League in the early 70s, only gaining admittance to the southern L of I in 1985. Everything that McClean was taught in school, in his community, by those he grew up with and around, would have been totally at variance to the accepted British educational and media-driven narrative as regards the causes and consequences of The Troubles. If you think Derry City football club were hard done by, try to familiarise yourself with what the citizens of Derry had to endure for the thick end of 30 years. Now such an ideological baseline is of absolutely no consequence at all when playing in the League of Ireland, though I have heard Shamrock Rovers’ fans singing “your next queen is Camilla Parker Bowles” to Derry fans.

The question of McClean’s ideological, political and cultural beliefs only came to prominence when he moved across the water to join sunderland, though he had gained minor notoriety when he turned down the chance to represent Northern Ireland versus The Faeroes a week before his transfer. McClean said he would prefer to wait for the Republic of Ireland to select him.  Despite being born in Derry, McClean has the right, like all citizens of the six counties in the north of Ireland, to choose between British or Irish passports, nationality and (theoretically in 99.9% of cases) which country’s football team to represent. While he was signed by Steve Bruce in August 2011, it was only after the arrival of Martin O’Neill that McClean made his debut for sunderland in December that year.

For the next 11 months, things went sparklingly for McClean, even if the “Party with Marty” revolution on Wearside never actually happened. McClean won international honours and was feted by supporters of the Wearside club, until his decision on 10 November 2012, not to wear a special club shirt that included a Remembrance Day poppy motif.  The intolerant British social trend of rampant militarism and conspicuous patriotism that began with the Iraq War, whereby the veneration of servicemen acts as a decoy from any serious examination of the causes and effects of such imperialistic foreign policy, means that the ruling class through their media partners, have created a climate whereby any questioning of the accepted narrative is seen as an assault on the supposed accepted truism that soldiers are heroes. Never has the concept of false consciousness been better illustrated and, as a pacifist, I feel deeply uncomfortable with this state of affairs.

McClean was subject to death threats on social media, poison pen letters and the obloquy of his own supporters. Effectively Martin O’Neill’s departure saw McClean out on his ear, resulting in a transfer to Wigan Athletic. Of course, the wheel continues to turn and McClean’s international manager is none other than that other famous son of County Derry, who actually opted to play for Northern Ireland during his own playing career, Martin O’Neill.

The move to Wigan was not a success and after 2 largely unproductive seasons, Tony Pulis has thrown McClean a lifeline with what will undoubtedly be his last chance of a regular game in the Premier League. It appears that the presence he showed in his early days with sunderland has not been built on and, at the age of 26, his career is now at the crossroads. Certainly, it would probably be beneficial for him if he could make his headlines for his on-field displays rather than his political beliefs. In saying this, it must be recognised that McClean comes from a background that would make it highly difficult for him to be accepted if he had either worn a poppy or stood to attention for the British anthem. Roy Keane, Ireland’s assistant manager remember, states in his latest autobiography that he had no respect for Irish players he saw singing “God Save The Queen.” That’s Roy Keane of course; more rational people may have a less extreme attitude to this; or to anything really. Being serious, McClean comes from a city where the scars of The Troubles and particularly the events of Bloody Sunday have not and may never heal. To conform would be seen as collaboration, resulting in serious problems for his family. Whether it was deep rooted convictions or awareness driven by peer pressure, I am not surprised at all by McClean’s actions. As an aside, if he played for Celtic, would anyone have been surprised?

An interesting contrast with McClean would be Newcastle’s Shane Ferguson, also a native of County Derry. Born ironically on 12^th July, Ferguson is also from a nationalist background, but from the small, quiet and relatively peaceful country town of Limavady, approximately 20 miles east of Derry. His initial refusal to commit to playing for Northern Ireland, reputedly ignoring then manager Nigel Worthington’s phone calls, as a full international in 2011 is what gave McClean the opportunity to play for NI that he turned down. While The Troubles were a fact of life when Ferguson was growing up, it wasn’t a doorstep, daily reality in the way it was for McClean, who was raised in the Creggan estate. Perhaps this is why Ferguson opted to play for Northern Ireland and, quite incredibly actually, went on loan to Glasgow Rangers for the second half of last season, though he only played twice for them.

In many ways, Ferguson would have had to wrestle with his conscience to agree to that move far more than McClean would have to wear a poppy. When it comes to international allegiances, it would have been far easier for McClean to choose the Republic than it would have been for Ferguson to choose the North. Remember, those claiming McClean ought not to be making his living “in this country” are actually denying someone who could opt to be a British citizen from expressing their basic democratic right to freedom of speech, however unpalatable you find his actions.

Such nuances are a fact of life when discussing any aspect of life in Northern Ireland, or at least they used to be when I lived there. People would routinely ask each other on first meeting what school they went to, what their mother’s maiden name was and even if they had any middle names, to try and establish which tribe someone belonged to. As an outsider, I thought such questioning nonsensical and beyond parody, but living there you came to understand the particular mindset of the times. It probably wasn’t somewhere you’d want to have lived from about 1969 to 1998, though I loved it there as it helped me to recognise that all concepts of flags, anthems, borders and nationalities actually create divisions among people and, idealistic though it may be, you have to wonder what place these anachronisms have in the modern world.

That said, I’ll still be standing for and inaccurately singing Amhrán na bhFiann before the hurling quarter finals at Semple Stadium on Sunday.

The Glorious Twelfth

The second weekend in July was busy. Friday night offered the opportunity of watching Newcastle United’s first pre-season friendly away to Gateshead. £15 entry put me off that one though. The Mouth of the Tyne Festival started and the appalling Paul Heaton headlined and if the entry fee had been 15p I wouldn’t have wasted it on him. However I did go down  on the bike to check out support act I Am Kloot, who were fun, or at least as much fun as you can have standing at the top of King Eddy’s Bay steps looking at a giant screen half a mile away.  What I’d really hoped to be doing on Friday was attending a public meeting at Blakelaw Club, where Dennis Skinner was scheduled to be the keynote speaker. Sadly, Dennis was indisposed, which I hope isn’t code for a serious health problem, and had to cancel this and his proposed appearance at the Big Meeting on the Saturday.

I used to go to the Big Meeting as a kid, but hadn’t been for decades until two years ago, when I carried my union’s banner from the market place to the race course in a journey that took nigh on 3 hours; it was a privilege and an honour. Sadly, last year and this I’ve had to pass on attending the greatest annual gathering of working class culture in the north, in order to play in a pre-season friendly for Winstons, ironically against Blakelaw Club. Good game yesterday morning, and then a superb one in the afternoon as Benfield walloped Frickley Athletic 4-1. I even took in a bit of cricket at Jesmond as County Club went down by 2 wickets to Durham Academy, before Laura and I stepped out to listen to The Specials at Mouth of the Tyne. They weren’t bad, a bit safe and predictable, but we met some friends we’ve not seen in a while and had a decent drink. The subsequent late night meant I decided against getting up for the Labour leadership hustings; anyway, I’d only have been thrown out for heckling Liz Kendall (she carried the RMT banner at the Big Meeting you realise; sometimes the truth is beyond parody). Instead, Laura and I went along to the Irish Centre, on Orangeman’s Day, for a public meeting where the speaker was leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn (and to see Tipp beat the Deise in the Munster final as well).

Jeremy Corbyn was brilliant; inspirational, logical, reasoned and humble. There were 350 people in a packed room; young old, long time activists and those new to the party, who were all drawn to attend by a shared belief in social justice, equality and the reanimation of the Labour Party, based on the ideas held as normal during the post war social democratic consensus. Jeremy Corbyn is a fine man and he believes passionately in Socialism; hell, he even recited Clause 4.  I will feel energised to vote for him and would rejoice if he were elected. You see, in the wake of the election disaster, I have belatedly come to realise that the Labour Party are our only hope and that we must rescue the party to correct the terrible evils being visited upon ordinary working people, young and old, by the wicked policies of the Tories.

Consequently, one of the first things I did on the morning of May 8^th when I woke late, hungover and in despair at the prospect of 5 more years of Cameron and his cronies was to re-join the Labour Party. It would be inaccurate to say my membership had simply lapsed, as the last year I had paid my annual subs would have been 1984. Why did I leave? Well, partly it was absolute disgust with Kinnock’s point blank refusal to back the NUM during the strike; partly it was because I’d grown up and moved away from the Militant dominated Felling ward in the Gateshead East constituency that I was unfortunate enough to have been born in, but mainly it was because I read Socialist Standard and realised that the nonsensical, reformist Leninist belief in vanguardism that brainwashed, social inadequate Militant zealots endlessly parroted (when they weren’t trying to bleed people dry for the “fighting fund”) was plain wrong. If I realised this aged 19, how come others as intelligent as me have wasted their lives in blind, obsequious devotion to Peter Taaffe’s Leninist vanity project? It’s tragic to see the waste of talent poured down the drain in unblinking devotion to “the organisation” that perpetuates gross distortions of Marxist thought, while simultaneously controlling every thought, every action and even the personal lives of weak, foolish adherents.

Immediately I understood the full meaning of the declaration of principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, I realised I had found an explanation for how the world could be transformed. The SPGB vision didn’t involve autocratic, absolutist leaders requiring disciples to fund the lavish lifestyles of the vanguard’s dynastic super elite. It didn’t involve violence. It didn’t involve venerating workerism to the extent that adopting anti-sexist, anti-homophobic anti-racist attitudes was seen as evidence of being “sectarian” and “middle-class” or, worst of all, “undialectical” by “comrades” (yes, they still call themselves that, without a scintilla of irony).  Since that day in summer 1984, I have described myself as a supporter of the SPGB, rather than a member. Sadly, I’ve come to accept that my party political activity over the past 30 years has been an abject failure. Not just my activity, every single one of us who stood outside the Labour Party since the late 60s onwards. Instead of uniting in the only organisation capable of harnessing and mobilising mass working class support and activism, we’ve wasted decades on snide ad hominem abuse, internecine warfare and irrelevant recondite theorising. It is still happening; Owen Jones suffers the vilest slander from Militants, simply because he turned away from the grotesque parody of a “revolutionary party” he was born into. The fact is this, despite venal claims that “somebody has to be right,” which I still believe is the SPGB, we are no closer to changing society than we were the day my Labour Party membership expired.

Ultimately, while I know the SPGB and other companion parties in the World Socialist Movement are correct in their analysis of capitalism and the failings of the so-called revolutionary left in Britain, especially the Trot factions, my sense of reality, honed through many years of trade union activism, does not allow me to sacrifice pragmatism for impossibilist theory, however alluring. I cannot  fully accept the SPGB position, which states that Socialists need to be equally hostile to all other parties or to remain indifferent as to the need to strive for the best possible conditions for our members, as piecemeal reforms apparently do nothing other than perpetuate the wage system within capitalism. As regards the first of these positions, I’ve taken every single opportunity to cast my vote to the left of Labour over the past 30 years, believing that  impossibilism needs to be tempered with gestures of opposition, however small or even futile. This means I’ve voted variously for: SPGB, Respect, Communist, Green and once, to my utter shame and regret, for TUSC; though in defence I was voting for myself. Not one of them has won; they’ve almost invariably finished bottom of the poll and the lot of the working classes under capitalism has not been improved one iota.

Despite such voting history, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the idea that everyone in the Labour Party was inherently evil. Up here, most of our MPs, bar the repugnant Nick Brown, are pretty good. In October 2011 I went to London on union business to meet Mary Glindon in the House of Commons. As it was half term, I took Ben down with me. He’s a Socialist by breeding and instinct, so when Mary took us out onto the terrace and we met Dennis Skinner, it made Ben’s day. When we were introduced I said to Dennis he’d always been a hero of mine. He expressed thanks but also announced “we must avoid the cult of personality. Ideas are what matters.” The power with which he delivered these words mesmerised Ben, who says that was the moment his political die was cast. I’m proud to say my son became part of the Labour Party a few days after the election as well; like 50,000 others. I doubt all the other left wing parties in the country combined will have 10% of that total. To me, this is incontrovertible proof that our movement must be a synoym for the Labour Party; to be outside of it is a futile gesture destined to result in the political and social wilderness.  Socialists openly laugh at the antics of the Militant cult; it’s the brainwashed zealots who’ve wasted their lives in unquestioning devotion that I feel sympathy for.

When I first heard of TUSC, I was naively enthused by the idea of a left of Labour coalition, probably because Bob Crow had just died and I’d found his speech at the Big Meeting in 2013 utterly inspirational, as I still saw some merit in the idea of a “new” party for workers. Of course if Bob, whose union RMT had a policy of forming a new workers’ party to replace Labour, were around today, he’d be appalled by the behaviour of Militant. I’m sure he would not want any dealings with the bizarre Leninist cult under the dictatorial rule of Kim-il Taaffe who have hijacked TUSC. Militant are still in the business of being the Trot equivalent of the Moonies or Jim Jones and the People’s Temple; ruining people’s lives by destroying their ability to think or act independently. It’s tragic and terrifying and incredibly dangerous for the kinds of weak and inadequate people, who are preyed on by the Trots with mendacious promises of jam yesterday. Before I realised a Militant leopard never changes its spots, I stood as a TUSC candidate in the Dene ward for Newcastle City Council in 2014 and polled 180 votes, which was 6% of the total vote; it wasn’t an earthquake, but it was a respectable showing I thought. Contrast it with the fact TUSC got 170 (0.2%) votes in Newcastle East at the general election, when fielding the Liverpudlian Leninist’s second most unquestioning devotee.  That was not just a disappointing result; it was pathetic. It was humiliating for those who continue to pretend, or even believe (if they’ve been controlled sufficiently by the Walton Wehrmacht) that Militant are revolutionary. Or even relevant.

The general election result, with particular focus on TUSC’s farcical flatlining, made me rethink my whole political approach. Did I support the ideas and philosophy of the SPGB? Definitely yes. Could I see myself spending another 30 years outside of the Labour Party arguing the SPGB’s case considering how little had been achieved over the previous decades? Definitely no. The simple and unavoidable truth is this; even now, the Labour Party is our only realistic hope. It is our party. It is the party of the working class, the party of trade unions and trade unionists, the only party ever to have granted us concessions to make life under capitalism bearable. Universal free healthcare. A cradle to grave welfare state that protects the weak. A party that seeks to make society fair. To make citizens healthy, educated, securely housed, suitably and gainfully employed, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, class, creed or sexuality.  The Labour Party did all these things in the past and it still exists; the structure is in place to reform the party from within. If enough of us get active, we can transform the party and make it a crusading mass, Socialist party that includes all manner of left wing opinion. The terrible mistakes of the failed New Labour experiment need to be learned from. 

This country needs massive investment in social housing, education, health care and welfare benefits. It does not need Trident or to reward devious, rapacious banking criminals. The only way we can possibly hope to turn the country round again is to involve ourselves in reforming the Labour Party, wresting it back from idiots like Liz Kendall (blaming the Greek situation on the people for electing “extremists” for fuck’s sake!!) and ensuring Labour stands on a socially inclusive, socially just and broadly Socialist platform in 2020. That will be so much easier if Jeremy Corbyn is our leader. Join the Labour Party if you support him and lead the fightback for our class against the evils of society.

No Redemption

On July 1st, something astonishing happened to me. A panel of distinguished medical professionals made the announcement that, in their judgement, I should be protected under the 2010 Equality Act (replacing the 2005 Disability Discrimination Act) as I have been suffering from a medical condition so severe that it has had a profound, repeated and long term effect on my life in the past, does so in the present and, as far as can be reasonably foreseen, will continue to do so in the future. While I would never seek to define myself as disabled, this judgement means that I am, legally, a vulnerable adult, which is a status I will bear for the rest of my life in all probability.

My condition is related to my mental health. As a result of the repeated physical and sexual abuse I suffered as a child from my father and other men in my close family and his friendship group, as well as my mother and one other female, I have spent my entire life plagued by feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy, with an unshakeable belief I’d be better off dead, that have profoundly affected my interactions with both genders.  As the report says -:

Ian recognises that many men frighten him, particularly if they are confident “alpha male” individuals, as he perceives them as potentially aggressive or confrontational. He describes his feelings of fear when close to such individuals as overwhelming. His levels of anxiety remain high. In my opinion, these are connected to trauma he experienced as a child which has left him with long standing and deeply entrenched feelings of low self-esteem, poor self-confidence, lack of personal value and rage. The key to Ian’s recovery will be his capacity to unlearn ingrained responses and negative patterns of thought that he has lived with and repeated for decades and consistently and reliably replace them with positive, adult alternatives. These will take practice.

To reiterate; I do not see myself as disabled, but having endured serious bouts of mental ill health from the age of 16 onwards, I am delighted that I have medical and legal protection, to help me move forward. The realisation that I have a long-standing fear of aggressive, confrontational males explains almost everything in my life so far. I have always sought to have the last word and stand up to what I perceive is bullying, not with my fists but with words, as I see something of my father and the repeated years of vile abuse he inflicted on me. It is something I’ve never been particularly successful with.

This explanation, which I will need to explore further in the years of psychotherapy that lie ahead, occurred to me when cycling through from High Heaton to Tynemouth, as I tried to count up just how many people I have ever been engaged in some sort of ultimately meaningless on-line and real life feud with.  You’ll not be surprised to know I lost count, though the most crucial points to note about these people is that they’re either fans of Newcastle United, non-league football, or both, or they’re related to me. Generally they are working class and aggressive as well.

I’ve been here before.  I had my first episode of mental ill health in 1981, when I attempted to take my life because I could not endure any more abuse from my parents and their circle. All I ever wanted in my early life was protection, or intervention; many people in my extended family knew of the abuse (indeed several of them were enthusiastic participants in it), but not one of them sought to protect me. On being discharged from hospital, with bandaged wrists and a burning throat from reflux occasioned by the stomach pump  used to get the tablets I’d taken out of my system, my father beat me up in the Queen Elizabeth car park. Back in the house he smashed my head off the television stand and hit me in the testicles with a golf putter. Ever wondered why I’m terrified of bald men? I’ve not even mentioned the time he punched me so hard it broke the fence between our house and next door when I crashed through it.

My previous episode of mental ill health began in 1994 when I learned I was to become a father, as received wisdom held at that time that all those who were abused become abusers. Thankfully, I have broken the circle and have been a good father to my son, though I believe it took until 1999 for me to recover sufficiently to function as human being, which was when I left Newcastle, forever or so I thought at the time. What I have come to realise is that I’ve never really recovered and have always been at a constant, though fluctuating, level of mental illness; hence why the Equality Act applies to me.

Back in 1994, I wanted to die; I really did. I had just turned 30 and I found the world to be empty, meaningless and utterly without value. I hated myself and my life; had profound feelings of failure and self-loathing, repeatedly thought of death as the only escape. This was, to those on the outside, baffling and inexplicable as I had it good; newly married to a wonderful woman, soon to be a father, living in a nice house, with a good job and a wide circle of friends. However, I simply couldn’t cope; the pervasive sense of my worthlessness (ingrained by years of abuse) made me feel like I was an imposter and I wanted to escape. I wanted to stop being me. Believe me, I tried. Despite the love, support and help of those around me, not to mention medical intervention that extended as far as psychiatry and psychotherapy, all that was good about my life melted away. It took until the late spring of 1999 when I finally accepted that I didn’t need to die. I may have been worthless, evil and beneath contempt, in the eyes of both me and many people who knew me, but I deserved to live a while longer, though how and where was another question.

In the last Summer of the Millennium, marked by a total solar eclipse  on my 35^th  birthday, I had divested myself of my family, my job, my home, most of my friends and my season ticket and taken myself across the Irish Sea for a month to try and gain a sense of perspective on my next move. The inescapable conclusion I came to was that I needed to disappear and turn the lights out on my past, forever. I returned home to make a funeral pyre of all the tatty emotional wreckage of my life. Before getting away forever, or so I thought, I wrote what appeared to be a social suicide note that appeared in The Sunday Sun on September 12^th 1999. Many people would have preferred to slip silently away, but my trademark lack of control and judgement, as well as an almost pathological need to be hated by others to reflect my own self-loathing, meant I felt compelled towards making a grand, futile gesture. I did this as I wanted it to mark a complete and total break with the past and all my previous relationships and connections on Tyneside. Nobody ever started on me for writing this, but it went down rather badly with a whole raft of NUFC fans when, much to my amazement, I arrived back in Newcastle and had to face up to it.

Now, almost 16 years on, it’s out the closet again, in the shape of a series of complaints against me, some of which have merit, though others are fanciful nonsense, that resulted in me being summoned to attend a tribunal of NUST committee members to discuss these allegations. It appeared I may have been expelled from an organisation I joined voluntarily and to which I paid an annual subscription of £10. Do I have any defence for my words? No. Do I wish it had not been made public again? Obviously. Anything to say in mitigation? Not really; it was stupid and ill-judged, but when I wrote it, I knew what my motivations were for saying those things. Did I mean them? Of course not; I’m sure even then anyone who knew me could understand my bizarre motivation. The impact I’d wanted was to leave a mark in the consciousness of all those who knew me, as I prepared to depart Newcastle forever on the 6am train to Kings Cross on Saturday 18^th September 1999 (next stop Orient 0 Torquay 2). I hated myself (I’ve always had next to zero self-esteem and can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t loathe and despise myself) and wanted everyone else to hate me too. While I’m disappointed at this letter becoming public knowledge again, I would wonder who hasn’t said something foolish or ill-judged a decade and a half ago.

That sunny morning, as I kissed my son and my soon to be ex-wife goodbye on the platform, I thought I was saying farewell forever, as I didn’t imagine for one second that I was ever coming back. But I did come back and, somehow, I rebuilt my life. I had 3 peripatetic years of being vulnerably housed and vulnerably employed, living out of holdalls in towns and cities where I knew no-one and could live anonymous and ignored; London, Dublin, Bournemouth, Oxford, Slough and York, which felt like coming home almost.

Serendipitously, I returned, which was the right thing to do; the young boy who’d just started reception when I waved him goodbye was coming up 7 and had been bitten by the Newcastle United bug. He needed me in his life and I needed him in mine; I haven’t been a perfect father by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve loved him unconditionally and I’m very proud of the way he has turned out. In time, I got a new home, a new job, a new partner and reconciled myself with many members of my family as well as a section of my old friends, who’ll tell you what a nice bloke I am. I recognise, accept and regret that there’s a horrible, nasty, unpleasant Mr Hyde side to my personality that makes me reviled and hated for the horrible things I’ve said and done to a whole range of people who’ve done nothing other than disagree with me, or prevent me from having my own way, either on line or in real life.

In essence, I respond badly to anyone standing up to me; I always have to be right and I always have to have the last word. Emotionally, I am still the little boy who suffered years of abuse from my parents and other men and women in my extended family, as well as my father’s network. The only way I found to “cope,” or so I mistakenly thought, was to try and outdo the strong men I feared so much. I tried to “stand up” for myself, by dishing out abuse, in a horrible way and seemingly without any awareness or insight, much less care, for the other person’s emotions. Consequently, the wave of obloquy and approbation I was forced to endure seems part of a perfect storm where all my chickens have come home to roost, at the very time I would hope to be able to avoid any further conflict. Trouble is; I’m reaping what I sowed. During the period 2002 to 2007, I was a keyboard terrorist, inhabiting the fetid waters of messageboards in the time before Twitter came on the scene.

Why did I behave in a manner that would appal and disgust anyone who knew me? Either because I am genetically and inherently evil, or because my ability to deal with stress and conflict had not recovered from the 1994-1999 episode of mental ill-health. I found that I couldn’t rationalise or gain any sort of perspective in cyber space; I simply could not allow anyone to have the last word and would not allow what I saw as illogicality or stupidity to go unchallenged. This brought me endless hours, days, months of conflict and a massive array of grudges and feuds with people in front of keyboards elsewhere in the world. These people were not real to me; it was as if I was arguing with a machine, like some kind of weird game of verbal chess. Not for one second did I contemplate these people had opinions or feelings; all I was concerned about was me getting the last word. At the time, I felt it was a way of dealing with stress, which was crazy. Why didn’t I go for a walk or read a book? I don’t know; perhaps I was almost addicted to both the internet and to conflict. In effect, what I was actually doing to my mental health was adding to my stress levels and upsetting innocent people. I said some vile things to supporters of various teams and eventually, once I gained an insight into the very real effect it could have on people after I was attacked in The Bodega by a Newcastle United fan, in front of my son, I began to extricate myself in late February 2007, though the scars and relics of my terrible legacy of bile still exist. I have no defence about this set of activities either.

Now, I’d guess at some level I’ve always been argumentative, or disputatious about anything and everything; music, politics and books are as important to me as football and the interpretation of such topics is obviously far more contentious and personal than the events of a football match. This is presumably why I’ve always been enduringly fascinated by the sociological and political aspects of football culture, rather than the actual minutiae of how the game is played. Because I’ve spent so much of my life discussing recondite interpretations of literary texts with other effete bourgeois pseudo intellectuals, this is why I’ve always struggled to deal with ordinary, working class men. This attitude may sound simply like snobbery, but I’m convinced it has a clear psychological basis in the fact I am unconsciously standing up to my late father, who repeatedly abused me up to the age of 21.

My father was a weak man; a violent, dictatorial bully who treated me like a dog. He made it clear he owned me; I had no right to personal freedom, in a physical or mental sense. Certainly these days his conduct and that of his co-abusers would not have been tolerated in normal society. They would be in jail.  He never allowed me to have opinions of my own, he belittled every single aspect of my life and he assaulted on a weekly basis, but I forgave him because he was coerced into this behaviour by my mam, whose sexual abuse of me is simply too horrific for me to detail here, and because I had no choice but to love him. It occurred to me that there may be some dreadful relevance to the fact that the other female who sexually abused me on the instructions of my mother, organised for my parents to stay at the infamous Dolphin Square complex several times in the 1990s and early 2000s. This female also went on record, saying the following -:

1.  November 2, 2011 at 2:03 pm # 

   Sir Jimmy Savile was an early influence on me. I noted his connection to Stoke Mandeville Hospital when I was four. I didn’t realise he fundraised for the hopsital. I thought he was a doctor and was impressed by the way he held down two jobs: doctor and DJ! Sir Jim inspired me to declare “when I grow up I want to be a ballerina nurse!” I wanted to entertain as well as look after patients in hospital.

Bearing this is mind, it is no surprise that our corner of Felling was infused by Stockholm Syndrome. Relatively late in his life, my dad and I were reconciled and he was a wonderful grandfather, but the damage had been done on my psyche. My entire life has been blighted by the abuse I suffered. It seems obvious to me that the reason I seek out conflict with strong, aggressive male types, often in authority, is because I see in them something of my father and I suppose I am unconsciously expecting to suffer the same kind of abuse as I suffered for the first couple of decades of my life. Because all I knew in my childhood was hatred, intimidation and aggression; all I understand is hatred and aggression. Because I hate myself, I behave in a way that invites those I find myself in conflict with to also hate me.

My dad died the day after Bobby Robson and was buried on the day before my 45^th birthday, 10 years after my infamous letter in The Sunday Sun. The day of the funeral, I promised my mother I’d look after her and she’d never end up in care. At first, my mam did really well to look after herself, but by 2011 it became clear she was getting old and needed help. She may have been a monster of a parent; an evil, perverted, callous sociopath, but she was the only mother I was ever going to have. I didn’t forgive her (I never will), but I put it to the back of my mind and dedicated myself to helping her, in her absence of any other living relatives prepared to talk to her. 

The situation was exacerbated by her living in Swalwell and me at the coast, but not driving. I did my best, triangulating three times a week between Tynemouth, High Heaton and Swalwell, often by bicycle, but I was fighting a losing battle. Back then I really ought to have sought help for her, in terms of carers and me, in terms of support groups or social services, but I struggled along. Now I wish I hadn’t; instead of putting on a brave face in the real world and a sneering scowl on line, I should have had the self-awareness to call a halt to things and ask for help. Unfortunately, when one is mentally ill, self-awareness is in scant supply. For almost the entire period since my mother started to need a higher level of care, I feel as if I have not been in control of how I live my life. Ironically, it has taken until that same state of affairs has involved my mother before I am able to start addressing the enormity of the problems I have. Now she lives in a secure nursing home with a sea view on the border of Cullercoats and Whitley Bay. I hope she is happy there. I am sure I will never fully know if she is or not.

I am now faced with the task of saying goodbye to someone who is not dead; someone with whom I had a difficult and fractious relationship for most of my life. Someone who will never, ever apologise to me for all the terrible things she did to me, because she doesn’t (or didn’t) feel she did anything wrong. She told me that as my mother, she was entitled to use inappropriate sexual contact with me as a means of control. Grief and loss are profound emotions; ones that affect the strongest of personalities. Those of you reading this who have already been there will presumably understand what I’m talking about. It would be fair to say my relationship with my mother was made by my dad’s death. Since then, we’ve learned to love and respect each other, in a way that hadn’t been possible before, though I will never be able to reconcile the encouragement she gave to my father when he abused me and the level of sexual satisfaction she gained from observing him abusing me, or her own actions, performed for her own sexual gratification as well as my utter and absolute humiliation. The other female involved in the sexual abuse with my mother did so for reasons of my mother’s control over her, rather than her own sexual gratification. However, I am now considering, in the light of the Crown Prosecution Service's decision to revisit the case of Sir Greville Janner, whether I ought to inform the police of the sexual abuse I endured from my mother and her accomplice. My father and all of the men in his circle, or so I understand, are dead and thus beyond prosecution.

At the same time as I attempted to grasp the enormity of my mother’s departure and my own health problems, every single thing I’ve done wrong over the past however many years has been regurgitated. The motivation for this is  a moot point and in many ways irrelevant. Certainly it isn’t very pleasant to be on the receiving end, forced to face up to the consequences of my activities over the years, and it undoubtedly added to my stress levels and delayed my recovery as I lived in terror at the revelation of the next skeleton from my cupboard.

There is no point in explaining or defending my actions.  This is an end game. I offer no empty apologies and accept I have no option other than to resign from NUST, while continuing to receive medical and psychiatric help for my conditions, in the hope I can live out my remaining years as a more self-aware person. I am 50; I rebuilt my life once previously. I crave indulgence that I am not required to do so again.

Those who seek restitution in whatever form they wish may contact me via email on iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk or by phone

Best League in the World

The 2015/2016 football season begins on Saturday, July 4^th, with the first of the pre-season friendlies. Benfield are playing Broomhill Sports up in Glasgow at Maryhill’s ground, where I’ve already been. I’m not going, though the main reason preventing my attendance is Ben’s imminent departure on a month long inter rail jaunt on Sunday 5^th. As a result, not only am I unsure what game to watch next weekend but, at this stage, what sport to attend, which is the point of this blog. Remember, there’s more to football than Newcastle United and there’s more to sport than just football. As the last game I saw during 2014/2015 was on June 6^th, when I was pleased to be present near Glenrothes in Fife when Thornton Hibs clinched the McBookie North Division title with a 4-0 win over Lochee Harp in the East Region Scottish Juniors, it hasn’t exactly been the longest of close seasons. Consider this; from July 5^th 2014 to June 6^th 2015, I saw a game of football on 49 consecutive Saturdays, though to be strictly accurate two of those saw deviations from a diet of association football; July 26^th was the 4A All Ireland qualifiers in Tullamore and May 30^th was Magic Weekend at SJP. Semantics aside, it’s a pretty astonishing statistic and testament to my monomaniacal obsession with utilising Saturdays properly.

So, what have I done with these last few spare Saturdays in June? Well last year I wrote about how glad I was to have discovered the joys of watching Northumberland play Minor Counties cricket. The £30 annual membership fee is an absolute steal and I’m delighted to say I’ve seen Stuart Tiffin’s team, captained again by Jacques Du Toit with Benfield player Chris Youlden behind the timbers and 7 or 8 Durham Academy players gaining valuable experience of the long form game, reach the semi-finals of the Unicorns knock out trophy at home to Norfolk on July 26^th after crushing home wins over Lincolnshire at Swalwell and Cumberland at Jesmond. County Club is a ground I’ve written about before, but it was a new experience visiting Swalwell. My parents used to live next to where the old Swalwell Cricket Club was, but that land was sold for a couple of estates of large new builds (sample street name; The Covers) and the developers laid out replacement football and cricket clubs out along the road to Rowlands Gill. The football club I’d been to before; perennial strugglers at the foot of Alliance Division 2, but with a great set up. The turn off before that ground is the new cricket club. Scenic, sympathetic to the landscape and blessed with a top notch pavilion, it’s a great spot. Mind the day was so windy I saw a sight screen blow over.

Unfortunately, Northumberland’s fortunes in the 3 day game remain at rock bottom; Lincolnshire gained revenge at Sleaford and Cumberland did the same at South North. I attended the first and last days of the Cumberland game, suffering sunstroke on both occasions, leading me to my first ever purchase of sun block at the age of almost 51. The defeat to Cumberland was a heroic one; with Adam Craggs absent hurt, the final wicket pairing of Michael Allan and Connor Harvey repelled the Cumbrians for over 2 hours, until Harvey fell to what was scheduled as the penultimate ball of the day. Sometimes a loss, even by 131 runs, can be cruel and unjust.

However, I’ve also discovered the joys of watching club cricket, mainly in the North East Premier League, and I can state conclusively that I am falling in love with this competition in the way I fell in love with the Northern League and north east grassroots football in general well over 20 years ago now. If Harry Pearson’s wonderful book The Far Corner expressed what I’d already found out for myself about the Northern League, then it will seem as if the circle has been squared when Harry lends me Jack Chapman’s definitive book about the history of north east club cricket, Cream Teas and Nutty Slack. Who is Jack Chapman? He’s a Sunderland fan, but that’s irrelevant. He’s Blaydon Cricket Club’s stalwart member, who used to be an English teacher; he taught my pal and local cricket devotee Gary Oliver and Jack’s daughter taught my sister. I also used to be a GCSE English examiner under Jack’s guidance. It’s a small world and a great world and I’m looking to learn more about it.

The first spare Saturday was June 13^th. While there were 2 Scottish Junior finals that day, I’d been to the grounds hosting them, Pollok and Bathgate, twice each already, so I opted not to head north. I had noticed that Newcastle Thunder were at home to Gloucester All Golds and so that was a fall back plan. However, having taken a skeg at the fixtures on http://nepremierleague.play-cricket.com/ I saw that Tynemouth were hosting Gateshead Fell. Games start at 11.30 and are 65 overs a side and so I got on the bike, cycled the half a mile to the ground and nearly passed out when I discovered Graham Onions was playing for bottom of the table Gateshead Fell. As could be expected, Onions was lethal at this level, taking 4/15 from 10.5 overs as Tynemouth were dismissed for 181 in 51.5 overs. Sadly, Gateshead Fell aren’t bottom of the table without good reason and they subsided to 59 all out in 24 overs. Literally moments after the players headed off the pitch, there was a massive cloudburst which meant nearly all the other games in the area were abandoned.  If they’d held out for 2 more overs, they’d have claimed a losing draw. Ironically, as the game was over by mid-afternoon, I could have made it to Kingston Park to see Thunder wallop Gloucester 59-6. Instead me and Ginger Dave went on the pop.

We also went on the pop the following Friday, along with Laura and Gary, at the South North beer festival. Last year, Gary and I had watched Northumberland v Hertfordshire on the last day of the 2014 beer festival, when they gave the stuff away after tea to anyone who wanted it. We got well and truly hammered in 2 hours. The same thing happened to Boldon at this festival. While Ginge took Laura to see the sights of Gosforth High Street before the beer festival got underway at 7.30, Gary and I took in the South North innings in the Friday evening 20/20 competition. South North have former Australian test star Marcus North as their professional; this is a little unfair on the opposition I’d suggest. South North amassed 164/3 and their innings closed just as the doors opened.

Beer festivals are now big business; the same night my mate Bill was at the Corbridge Festival at Tynedale Rugby Club, which has about 4,000 visitors. There were probably about 200 at South North, almost all attired in Ralph Lauren polos and Gant shorts, but they’d made the right choice. South North is a fabulous place to watch cricket; superbly maintained and a fascinating blend of old and new architecture.  A great selection of beers, free entry, £5 for 3 tokens and a quid for a souvenir glass, as well as a free, high quality Indian buffet. Despite the insistence on playing snatches of music after each boundary, over and wicket, it was almost the perfect night out, unless you were a Boldon supporter. At one stage they were 14/7, so I suppose they rallied to make 43 all out. As the NEPL has two divisions and clubs were allocated to a 20/20 group from an open draw, there will always be mismatches like this. However, the spectacle wasn’t ruined and I had a bloody good sup.

The day after I had intended to get to Newcastle v Chester Le Street, but the beer at South North slowed my progress and so instead, I opted for a Northumberland Division 1 fixture between Whitley Bay and the Civil Service. Now I have an awful lot of work to do to understand the myriad divisions and leagues in our region, but I do appreciate the fact that Whitley Bay are a good few steps below the NEPL premier Division, playing in Northumberland Division 1. You can tell by the ground; West Park, just down from the football ground and ice rink on Hillheads Road may be a natural 

amphitheatre, but it is completely Spartan compared to leafy NE3 or County Club. There is no fence, no sight screens and nor are there seats, other than a few school chairs for the players, sat in front of the small pavilion, waiting to bat. Players work the scoreboard and take turns to umpire. This is social, recreational cricket; 45 overs a side and a 1.30 start. Civil Service batted first and were 160 all out after 40 overs. In steady drizzle, Whitley began their reply; there was no chance of these going off for rain. The lads, some of whom were older than me, wanted the game played to a conclusion. It may not have been a great standard (one poor fella bowled 5 successive leg side wides), but this was cricket played for the sheer love of the sport. Whitley won by 5 wickets with 10 overs to spare and I was glad to have been present.

Last Friday saw the final group games in the 20/20 competition. One game stood out for me; Felling against South North. Having escaped from Felling aged 19, I’d not seen a game on that ground since about 1974 when a combined XI made up of Newcastle and Sunderland footballers lost to the home team. I’d also not been in the bar since a few 18^th birthday parties at the start of the 80s. I took the metro over to Heworth and walked up; I got there a bit early, so I thought I’d have one in The Ship, but it’s now a supermarket. Oh well, back to the cricket. Both sides wore coloured clothing, but thankfully there was no musical accompaniment this week. There was little to write home about in the home side’s innings, as they made a less than stellar 79/9 from the full complement. South North eased home by 7 wickets with 7 overs to spare, but it was a glorious, sunny evening and the cricket club looked splendid. It was one of the few happy instances I can recall from my infrequent returns to NE10 since I escaped. Felling Cricket Club, unlike so much else in the place I grew up, is vibrant and decorous; I wish them all the luck in the world.

One of the most despicable lies told about cricket by those who know nothing of the game, is that it is a middle class sport; the fact the game not only exists, but flourishes in such solidly proletarian areas as Felling and Benwell Hill proves that cricket transcends all classes. Certainly, it’s cheaper than football as, other than the £30 I paid for my Northumberland membership, I have never been charged entry to any games. I really think they should; even £2 would help boost club coffers, when the average attendance is probably about 100, except at Whitley Bay where I was the only spectator to watch the whole game, though the odd passing dog walker stopped and took in a few overs. 

Unfortunately, the only time I haven’t seen a full game was Benwell Hill versus Newcastle. I took the 38 from High Heaton halfway along the West Road, then strolled down towards the ground on a glorious morning. Like every ground I’d been to, bar Whitley Bay, Benwell Hill was picture postcard beautiful. Newcastle batted beautifully too; Graham Clark scored an elegant 106 and Du Toit chipped in with a quick-fire 44, including 3 enormous sixes, allowing County club to declare on 276/7 after 58 overs. As I was going out for a meal for Ben’s birthday at 6.30, I couldn’t hang around to watch the full reply. I cleared off at tea, with the Hill at 25/1. When I got in the house, I checked Benwell’s twitter feed and was astonished to see they’d subsided to 60 all out. Perhaps Newcastle Cricket club were also going out for a meal?

Well, that’s my account of my delicious experiences watching North East club cricket so far. What I particularly like is that I don’t have a particular allegiance to any one team; I simply enjoy seeing the game in different locations, though I’m not intending to become a cricket ground hopper just yet. Looking ahead, I’m intending to take in Newcastle v Eppleton 20/20 quarter final next Friday and probably Tynemouth v Hetton Lyons on Saturday. Football can wait for once. 

Notes & Jottings

For this cultural bulletin, there’s a slight change of emphasis. While music is still heavily represented, with 5 albums, 1 single and 2 gigs to be discussed, it’s the printed word I’d like to concentrate on first of all, as I’ve managed to gainfully squander some of my recent ill-health imposed inactivity by getting stuck into some proper reading again.

Books:

Last year I thought Irvine Welsh’s The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins was so lame and predictable as to almost self-parodic. When I learned his latest effort, A Decent Ride, was to be a comic account of legendary Leith lothario “Juice” Terry Lawson’s priapic exploits around Edinburgh, I shuddered at the thought of a banal Caledonian Robin Askwith pot boiler. However, I am delighted to say that Welsh has returned to form with this latest novel, mainly because of the affectionate, detailed and nuanced portrait of the central character. It often feels to me that Welsh is on firmer ground when writing about his home turf than exploring his stateside home, though Ray Lennox’s American adventures in Crime is an exception that proves the rule. In A Decent Ride, Welsh doesn’t just rehash previously introduced characters, but creates new and vivid ones, such as the gormless, well-endowed Jonty McKay, who is naturally depicted as a Hearts fan.  Plot, as is often the case in Welsh’s work, is of secondary consideration to the picaresque, uproariously grotesque set pieces. Welsh has managed to create the funniest and least erotic novel about sex that I’ve read in a long time.

A considerably less enjoyable read was the final journal of William Burroughs, Last Words, which retells his final months on earth in 1997. Whether it was the methadone, his age, infirmity or simply a deliberate, stylistic choice, the barely connected passages consist of stream of consciousness reminiscences, detailed retelling of dreams and sentimental depictions of his pet cats fail to engage the reader beyond a superficial level. You turn the pages hoping for insights or arresting images; there are none. This is only of interest to Burroughs completists, as even the most serious scholar of the Beats and beyond, will struggle to glean anything of note from these frustratingly opaque doodlings.

At the end of May, Laura finally decided to have a cull of her books; 13 boxes of police procedurals headed to Tynemouth Market. Sadly, 10 unsold boxes came back, which will have to go to Barter Books or somewhere similar at some point in the future. I hope. However, doing a little bit of crate digging, as I steadily and carefully alphabetised the unwanted tomes, I came across three books that intrigued me. The first was Studies in a Dying Culture by Christopher Cauldwell, which was the nom de plume of Christopher St John Sprigg, a British Marxist who died fighting in the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

When I say Cauldwell was a Marxist, I am indulgently and mischievously using the term he erroneously misappropriated for himself. As any Socialist with even a rudimentary understanding of Marxist theory would agree, Cauldwell was actually a doe-eyed Leninist, with an unquenchable belief in the essentially anti-Marxist doctrine of the revolutionary vanguard party. Cauldwell wrote openly and engaging about British society and ideas in the mid-1930s, but his ideological panacea for all society’s ills was the seizure of power, in all possible manifestations, by that dread phrase “the advanced sections of the working class.”  It is used in relation to Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and DH Lawrence when he discusses literature and, rather more predictably perhaps, in response to Freud’s theories. Cauldwell fulminates against psychoanalysis as “a bourgeois pseudo-science,” while praising the more “robust” discipline of sociology. It isn’t just Taaffe’s trots who are scared of sex; it seems vanguardistas have been stripping with the lights out for 8 decades of more. A well-written, but naïve and misinformed read.

Graham Masterton is a bit of a one-off. Formerly the editor of Penthouse and Mayfair, he turned to novel (and sex instruction manual) writing in the mid-1970s, with an emphasis on horror. Indeed, he also co-authored a short piece of fiction with William Burroughs. However, by early 2002, Masterton was living in West Cork. After sufficient time in the Rebel County, he managed to both master the nuances of the guttural, urban north Cork estate accent and the cadences of rural speech west of the Leap. He used this newly discovered talent to full effect by turning to police procedurals. These are not a genre I often have time for, but Broken Angels, the account of Detective Superintendent Kate Maguire and her attempts to hold her disintegrating personal life together at the same time as discovering who is behind the brutal slaying of a number of priests, linked to child abuse naturally, is a great read. The fact the 3 serial killers are a castrato choir of ageing orphans, taking an eye for an eye revenge by emasculating the very holy men who took their manhood from them in their boyhood, may be completely unrealistic, but the gory details that make you cross your legs almost involuntarily are grotesquely compelling. I’m now on the lookout for the other two novels in this trilogy.

The final of the 3 rubbish pile treasures was A Madman’s Defence by August Strindberg. I’d not read anything of Strindberg’s work since I was required to plough through The Father in first year at university. Depressing and oppressively grim would be the way I’d describe that play, though I had little more appreciation of Strindberg’s sworn enemy (“the Danish bluestocking”) Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. If “Juice” Terry’s activities were seen as being potentially misogynistic by several reviewers, then goodness knows what they would have made of Strindberg’s extended tirade against women that serves as a character assassination of his first wife, Siri von Essen. While it is widely accepted that Strindberg was always slightly unhinged, this book, written after he’d abandoned his belief in Socialism under the influence of Nietzsche’s philosophy, is as clear evidence of Strindberg going completely off the radar as you could imagine. The bloke was a complete head the ball, to be frank.

Being serious, the main reason why this is evidence of Strindberg’s insanity is his oft stated belief that this book is not only based on his life, it is the absolute, factual truth of the events of his first marriage. Without any conscience, he describes how he persuaded Siri to abandon and divorce her first husband, where Strindberg was named as co-respondent in the explanation of adultery. From then on, Strindberg portrays his wife as a bisexual, alcoholic nymphomaniac, whole squanders all his money and persecutes the so-called loving husband. All of this was utterly untrue of course; Siri may have been a spoilt, social gadfly, but she was not the voracious sexual predator Strindberg describes her as. Frankly, I’d be amazed if anyone read this and took it seriously as a work of literature, though it does include some memorable phrases; Siri’s friends are described as “pestiferous oafs,” while those who denounce his work are “scrofulous criticasters peddling devious rodomontade.” This is a description of me I must accept, as I found the book a bizarre, anachronistic tirade.

If you’re one of the many people who former NME rock journalist Nick Kent fell out with, that is a phrase you’d either ascribe to him, or he to you. In Apathy for the Devil, Kent’s drug crazed rite of passage from the early 70s to late 80s, there are hundreds of emotional and drug casualties he came across, whom he either abandoned or who abandoned him. Those who survived have mainly lost contact with him, which Kent is only too pleased to confirm in uncomfortably private detail. It is a wonderful portrait of London of the time; almost like Withnail and I in its depictions of seedy bedsits, ropey pubs and the post hippy ennui. Kent puts us there at the time and expresses his love and contempt for many acts, several long forgotten or unknown in the first place. He successfully tracks his progress from wide-eyed, enthusiastic innocence, to jaded, junk-ravaged despair, without any self-pity. The only thing that gets me is, how on earth could he fall in love with Chrissie Hynde?

Music:

The election seems a long time ago. On the day of the vote, I learned I didn’t have cancer. Great news, though following the result, it may have been sensible to actually have the disease so I could get treatment while we have a health service to speak of. The night after the election, The Band of Holy Joy played The Cluny 2. I know I’ve loved this group for coming up three decades now, but they do keep getting better and better. I’ve subsequently done an interview with Johny for PUSH magazine, which will be out this week. I really don’t know what else I can say; they were brilliant this night, starting with Rosemary Smith and ending with an incendiary version of The Velvets’ What Goes On, via stunning takes of Tactless, There Was A Fall / The Fall and Crass Harry. There’s a new album out soon; buy it please.

The polar opposites of the Band of Holy Joy are Ride. While both bands were feted by the music press as the 80s turned into the 90s, Ride were able to translate this critical acclaim into massive popular appeal.  Unfortunately for me, while I adored their early trio of EPs (Ride, Play and Fall), I felt that once they’d released their debut album Nowhere, they fell between two stools; seeing them at the Mayfair in October 1990, I wrote them off as neither as anthemic as Swervedriver or as ethereal as Slowdive, both of which I loved. Despite seeing a stunning show in May 1990 at the Riverside, after the release of Play, it appeared they’d lost relevance once it was time to record an album. Rather like Chapterhouse, Ride were a bit safe and a bit predictable, certainly when compared to grunge or shoegazing, neither of which genres they successfully encompassed. Creation would release truly epochal albums the year after Nowhere, when Bandwagonesque and Loveless came out. Apparently Ride were very successful commercially, but I wouldn’t know about that.

News of Ride’s reunion sort of passed me by, until I realised I’d be in Glasgow at the end of May. On the same Friday night, Belle & Sebastian and Ride were playing the Hydro and Barrowlands respectively. As I thought the new Belle & Sebastian album stunk to high heaven, bar two tracks, I decided to see Ride, even though I was staying right next to where Belle & Sebastian were playing. A trip to Mono ensured I met up with old TFC buddies (hello Terje, Brogues and Stephen Pastel) for a few drinks and a slow walk up to Barras. There really isn’t anywhere quite like the old place for atmosphere; Glaswegians know how to enjoy themselves on a Friday night and the mood was hedonistic, despite the age of the crowd and Ride lived up to the expectations invested in them. Tellingly though, the highlights were Chelsea Girl, Drive Blind and Like A Daydream, all from the opening three EPs, though the closing Leave Them All Behind was marvellous as well. A great night and a good gig, certainly preferable to Belle & Sebastian’s current material, but I seriously doubt I’ll bother with Ride at the Academy on October 18^th. If you do go, try not to laugh at Mark Gardener’s ridiculous trilby, which fools absolutely no-one, you baldy bastard.

As regards recorded material, I’ve been gifted a couple of burned CDs recently. Ginger Dave, who loaned me the Nick Kent book, burned me Jackson C. Frank’s solitary solo album. Frank was an American folk singer who came to England in the late 60s, did some recording with Joe Boyd, had a relationship with Sandy Denny, broke up, went home, became a homeless derelict after being in a fire and died young. His actual album hasn’t particularly stood the test of time very well, other than his signature number Blues Run The Game, a singer / songwriter standard of the late 60s and early 70s folk club circuit. Interestingly, an additional 5 tracks that Frank recorded in 1975 as part of an uncompleted second album, which appeared when his debut was released on CD, are excellent and hint at an enduring talent that had developed from the stentorian hesitancy of a decade earlier.

The other CD was given me by one of the fellas from the Over 40s team; the Irish instrumental band Lunasa with the RTE Orchestra. Lunasa use Irish traditional instruments to record their own compositions, with “an authentic, timeless Celtic appeal.” Actually they sound like the Penguin Café Orchestra impersonating The Chieftains; the sort of bland, inoffensive mood music that could be used as a backing track for a BBC1 property programme. Meh.

Before we get on to recently released albums, can I just point out the two I’m most excited about are the mythical Teenage Fanclub and the imminent Trembling Bells offerings. The latter outfit were the only thing that enthused me about Record Store Day this year; the sight of door staff controlling the queues outside Reflex and counting how many were allowed in at a time, acted as conclusive proof of the corporate takeover of this formerly independent show of strength. Thankfully, queuing up was worth it what I got my hand on the latest splendid slice of hippy-drippy, proggy-folky Glaswegian glory in the shape of Halelujah; it’s a magnificent madrigal, with a video that reminded me of The Wicker Man. Roll on the end of the month and the release of the album; Sovereign Self, as well as the August 13^th date at The Cumberland Arms.

The best live performance I’ve seen in 2015 was Wire at the Radio 6 weekend at The Sage. The best album I’ve heard in 2015 is Wire’s eponymous release. Following 2013’s Change Becomes Us, which re-worked early 1980s song sketches into full songs, Wire feels at first almost strangely normal. Cryptic song titles have been replaced with more prosaic tags like In Manchester, High, Swallow and even Blogging, the moody, drily observational, and tense opener. Lyrics like "fucking by proxy…selling on eBay" show Wire simultaneously engaged and removed, which has always been their unique gift. The unease with the self, with the band as a fixed organizational point, that sense of relentless questioning and observation, continues. In Manchester, for instance, could almost sound like something from early Factory Records days, except that the lyrics have nothing to do with the place aside from the title. And it’s still a lovely singalong.

At points, you can hear Wire nodding to themselves; the brisk chug of Joust & Jostle and the even more thrilling Split Your Ends show once again how they can create a clean, stop-and-start energy. Wire could have just done a 154 album tour or the like for a lot more money and attention.  Instead Wire chose to make an album for our times, which ends with the eight and a half minute Harpooned; a slow, churning leviathan song of madness and anxiety, of someone pushed past the breaking point. The crushing weight of the music seems to suck all the air out of the room as it dissolves into wordless wailing before breaking down into a scraping grind; a brutal, ugly, pitiless sound. Thank goodness for a band that had no plan but continues, as they choose, to succeed far more than many who did.

One of the reasons Teenage Fanclub haven’t managed to release their new album yet is because Norman is always so busy with his other projects; Jonny with Euros Childs, The New Mendicants with Joe Pernice and now Yes with Jad Fair, teaming up together for the first time since 2002’s Words Of Wisdom And Hope. Predictably, the results are rather lovely. Yes ticks all the boxes you’d expect; Jad unleashing adorably wide-eyed spiels of squeaky-voiced positivity, while Norman’s sweet, hummable arrangements keep the sugar down to palatable levels. It's quietly marvellous. Norman’s on fine form here, whether dabbling in sombre piano minimalism, cutesy college rock or just straight-up guitar heroism, as he does for three thrilling minutes on the excellent Thank You. As a bonus, steering away from Half Japanese’s noise actually makes the Michigan veteran seem less manic; his proclamations hit home harder. It’s not all sweet guitar pop though; Now Is Your Time is built around banjo and piano, with a drifting country swagger. A fun album. A good album. I do wish Norman would concentrate on his day job though.

One of the reasons I was so pleased to be in Glasgow at Whit weekend, was so I wouldn’t be at SJP when Newcastle had to stare down the barrel of possible relegation against West Ham. Additionally, The Fall were playing the night before and I would do anything these days to avoid having to see them live, though I still buy all their releases. While NUFC amazingly stood up and were counted with a 2-0 win over the Irons, I’ve yet to talk to anyone who did The Fall gig, though the reviews on the snarling bear pit of a forum at www.thefall.org are uniformly positive.  The set list was, apparently, Systematic Abuse, Venice with the Girls, The Remainderer, Dedication Not Medication, First One Today, No Respects, Auto Chip 2014-2016, Weather Report, Fibre Book Troll and an encore of Snazzy. So, the only track that was pre 2015 was 2013’s The Remainderer; the rest were off the new album Sub Lingual Tablet. Glad I missed it.

I approach each new Fall album with the kind of dread I used to unwrap Christmas presents of clothing from relatives; expecting garish, unsuitable, ridiculous or just plain ugly contents meant I wouldn’t be disappointed. Frankly, this album is none of those things; it’s just what The Fall are. A tight, organised, proficient outfit making straight ahead, uncompromising modern krautrock with a veneer of electronica, topped off by a huge dollop of incomprehensible lyrics by a toothless derelict. To my ears, it’s neither good nor bad; it’s just The Fall. There are highpoints and juddering lows; Stout Man, a reworking of Cock in my Pocket by The Stooges, sounds like karaoke in a care home. However Venice with the Girls is great. The problem for me is that The Fall are just too proficient and, dare I say it, predictable these days. It’s time for Smith to sack the band and take some risks again.