Over the past two weeks, more than a million people - mostly workers have opening games of the League football season. For many it has been the highspot of the year, a highspot that got more news coverage in the ruling class press than even the drought Tures or the Trico equal pay strike.
is seized upon and promoted by our rulers This year the clash between the two titans of Spanish football, Barcelona and Real Madrid, was re-arranged on Government instructions to clash detract from the May Day demonstrations.
concerned to Rather a Berov s TOrmeT NOTOlK and NorwiCH who during the 1972 miners' strike handed out free tickets to pickets in a gesture of The Chair- solidarity.
of the masses, or is it — as Clough's gesture £300,000 and suggested - part of an essentially healthy working class culture!
football clubs began with local factory teams, workers playing against each other and replace it with a for the love of the game and for the comradeship which team games can produce.
But today the clubs are run by business Public EmUnion. - STEPHEN PAGE branch of six meetings out al are there quired.
despite being recom So what was convinced you to leave the CP? are was Conthe party's programme, Road to Socialism', as viable.
watched people and financiers.
English
source of investment never mind the unemployment figNor is it only in the press that football and the powerful.
and hopefully contrast with the actions of manager Brian Clough So is football simply the modern opiate Or put it this way. Many of today's big Cuts demonstration in Darlington.
'united executive committee was rediscussion on it that finally Three months ago I resigned. I had grown to feel that I could not accept British BY GEOFF BELL & BOB PENNINGTON Although the clubs are no lucrative only a tiny minority ever show a profit • they are dominated by capitalist values. The lure of a seat on the board for local businessmer hes in the publicity, the opportuniy le build prestige in the local community, and the chance to show how they can be a success even in their "hobby'. The directors often try to turn the clubs into vehicles for their own glamour, and to be a centre of attraction for the famous, the celebrities Although it is not quite that simple When Chelsea tried to turn their ground into a centre for SWI trendies, they achieved nothing but huge debts, near bankruptcy, and relegation to the Second Jacks Division. Because football still has as its main participants and spectators the work ing class. Even most of the star players come from the working class.
For those players, football is a means of escaping from the boredom of production or the dole queue — it is the passport to a life-style of glamour, fame and excitement Yet the treatment of the players shows how the capitalist ethos thoroughly permeates professional football. The transfer system is little more than a cattle market. Players are bought and sold like any other commodity, witn an cye to bom weluse and tel interests. fotball rarely gives There are also the kids or "hooligans' -those who for a few hours each week have an opportunity to hit out and vent their frustration against the regimented schools or dole queues from which they suffer for the rest of the week. Whoever scores, whoever wins, they at least will have the opportunity to prove themselves as 'men' by attacking the opposing fans, by asserting themse ves to a wo watch as micy Dardut through the streets and dare anyone to challenge them.
Frustrations In this sense football serves the ruling class well - it diverts, it gives outlets for frustrations wiich are a onless caneerous • than actions which could challenge the basis of the frustrations. Twenty thousand becoming hysterical over football is a lot less dangerous than twenty thousand on strike or on a demonstration But if football is used as an outlet for the alienation workers feel from the rest o society, it is used for other things as well. It feeds and fuels national chauvinism. When England won the World Cup in 1966 Wembley Stadium was a sea of Union It did not matter that the team were regimented. largelv unskiful. and boring to watch. All that mattered was that they won Many working class militants will be a football matches this weekend, and there is nothing wrong with that so long as we re member what it is: a Roman gladiatorial arena for the mob; a game which has been warped by the capitalist ethos of success at any price. It remains a game played and watched by the working class, but it suffers both in itself and in its sense of proportion, because it is not in their hands or in their