The 10 Football Matches That Changed The World ... and the One That Didn't by Jim Murphy (Biteback Publishing 2014)

England’s victory over Germany in extra time didn’t win Wilson the 1966 election. But their extra-time defeat four years later to the same opponents is felt by many on the Labour side to have pushed the party towards its next defeat. As the 1970 teams kicked off in the Mexico quarter-final, Labour was 9 per cent ahead in the opinion polls. The reigning champions went into a 2-0 lead in a game played just five days before Britain chose its government. But Germany fought back to win 3-2 after extra time. England were out. So, later that week, was Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Former Labour minister and one of the party’s sharpest ever thinkers Tony Crosland blamed the defeat on ‘a mix of party complacency and the disgruntled Match of the Day millions’.

Complacency undoubtedly played its part. Politics seemed to take the Wolstenholme approach to the 1970 general election. The opinion polls, the pundits and the parties thought Labour were cruising to victory. But unfortunately for Harold Wilson, he didn’t have a Geoff Hurst in his team to put it beyond doubt.

So what went so badly wrong so late in Wilson’s campaign? This is the story of how a hat-trick of goalkeeping howlers in the Mexican sunshine 5,500 miles away from Downing Street, helped cause one of the biggest upsets in Britain’s electoral history. It’s the story of the unexpected humiliation of England’s football team and the part their defeat played in the humbling of Britain’s Prime Minister. After one of the research interviews, this chapter took an unexpected turn. It now includes the story of football and a second Prime Minister. During my discussions with Tony Blair, he told me the incredible true story of how football smoothed his path to Downing Street; but more of that later.

. . .

I don’t have much time to puzzle over it before Tony creaks his neck round his office door. He welcomes me with one of his broad gap-in-his-tooth smiles. As we sit down to talk, I ask him about a mix of football and politics. He stares off into the middle distance and thinks back more than thirty years. On 11 May 1983, five friends who were all Labour Party members gathered around a television in the north-east of England, to watch Aberdeen in their first ever European final. The team from Scotland’s North East were taking on the mighty Real Madrid. Those few hours in that living room helped change the UK pretty dramatically; and still do to this day. Alex Ferguson had guided the Scottish Cup holders and League runners-up into the final of the now defunct European Cup Winners Cup. As Aberdeen and their 14,000 fans celebrated in Sweden, something even more dramatic was beginning in the world of politics. That victory propelled the now Sir Alex onto the footballing world stage; it also helped launch the career of a little known 31-year-old lawyer and would-be politician by the name of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.

‘That was the night I first went to Sedgefield for the Labour Party nomination,’ the now sixty-year-old former PM tells me. Sensibly, most readers won’t have any insights into Labour’s processes for picking an election candidate. More often than not, you need a strong group of local people talking to others and speaking up for you, if you’re to have any chance of being selected. It’s a tactic that seems to have evaded the young Blair. There’s no polite way of saying it. He had become one of the party’s most accomplished serial losers when it came to the business of Labour selections.

I tried for about twelve seats before Sedgefield all over the north-east. I lost out in many places because of my attitude on the Militant Tendency. Pre-1983, a lot of people didn’t want them expelled. In those days in Sedgefield there was a majority of Labour Party people who were in favour of expelling Militant from the Labour Party.

Tony picks up the story of what happened on that 11 May evening, when he set out to recruit influential Sedgefield Labour members to his cause.

I met the critical people that night. I knocked on the door in Front Street South, which was the house that belonged to John Burton, who later became my election agent. And as he opened the door the Aberdeen match had literally just begun. I needed to see him but he basically said, ‘Sit down and shut up.’ Which I quickly realised was very important, because if I’d blabbered away throughout the game then it was obvious I wouldn’t have been suitable.

Blair had arrived too late to see Aberdeen’s Eric Black put his side into a fifth-minute lead from a corner. But he was able to join in the general sense of annoyance that they conceded their lead so quickly, just seven minutes later to a Juanito penalty.

The match went into extra time before Aberdeen’s John Hewitt, a substitute for Black, the injured scorer of the first goal, netted the winner. It meant a late night for the five Sunderland fans and their Newcastle-supporting visitor. Despite having a crowded mind, Blair remembers it pretty clearly: ‘It was a stellar achievement for Aberdeen even at the time, but today it would be impossible. I had a beer and made sure that most of the conversation was about football. We got on to politics after the game.’ When the youthful Blair had walked into Burton’s home, they had most of the ninety minutes plus extra time ahead of them. By contrast, Blair was really up against the electoral clock. ‘The election was on 9 June. The selection of the Labour candidate didn’t start until 18 April. I was chosen right at the last.’ With the official deadline for candidates to be selected being 23 May, Blair was right up against the wire and he knew it.

I was the last candidate of any of the parties, anywhere in the country to be selected. It had been a new seat created by the boundary changes. It was a packed thing with lots of candidates and I squeezed through. The reason I got through was partly because of that night watching the Aberdeen game.

It seems clear what would have happened if that night he hadn’t hit it off with Burton and the others over a drink discussing football. There’s no way he would have become the MP for Sedgefield. More than that, this was the final candidate selection open to him. Without the support of his newly discovered footballing friends, he wouldn’t have become an MP at all in the 1983 election.

The Ghost by Robert Harris (Simon & Schuster 2007)

I opened the envelope and took out the photocopies of Lang’s membership card and the articles about the London elections. I slid them across to her. She crossed her legs at the ankles, leaned forward to read, and I found myself staring into the surprisingly deep and shadowy valley of her cleavage.

“Well, there’s no arguing with that,” she said, putting the membership card to one side. “That’s his signature, all right.” She tapped the report on the canvassers in 1977. “And I recognize some of these faces. I must have been off that night, or campaigning with a different group. Otherwise I would have been in the picture with him.” She looked up. “What else have you got there?”

There didn’t seem much point in hiding anything, so I passed over the whole package. She inspected the name and address, and then the postmark, and then glanced across at me. “What was Mike up to, then?”

She opened the neck of the envelope and held it apart with her thumb and forefinger, and peered inside cautiously, as if there might be something in the padded interior that could bite her. Then she upended it and tipped the contents out over the table. I watched her intently, as she sorted through the photographs and programs, studied her pale, clever face for any clue as to why this might have been so important to McAra. I saw the hard lines soften as she picked out a photograph of Lang in his striped blazer on a dappled riverbank.

“Oh, look at him,” she said. “Isn’t he pretty?” She held it up next to her cheek.

“Irresistible,” I said.

She inspected the picture more closely. “My God, look at them. Look at his hair. It was another world, wasn’t it? I mean, what was happening while this was being taken? Vietnam. The cold war. The first miners’ strike in Britain since 1926. The military coup in Chile. And what do they do? They get a bottle of champagne and they go punting!”

“I’ll drink to that.”

Decline & Fall: Diaries 2005-2010 by Chris Mullin (Profile Books 2010)

Tuesday, 24 January 2006

To my first meeting of the Standards and Privileges Committee, ably chaired by that most civilised of Tories, George Young. Then for a cup of tea with Hilary Benn, to report on Liberia. On the way out of the Tea Room I ran into Tristan Garel-Jones, who said, with only the slightest twinkle in his eye, ‘We’re grateful to you lot for all you’ve done during the last ten years. You’ve given us a good conservative prime minister, but now the ruling classes are back so you can fuck off.’ (page 72)

Monday, 13 March 2006

Morale very low. Colin Burgon, once a teacher, believes the Education Bill will widen rather than narrow the attainment gap. He also complained about the lifestyle of some of the New Labour elite – Mandelson, Blunkett, Jowell and her husband, and the increasingly shameless correlation between big donations and peerages. ‘We’re all contaminated,’ he said to Ed Miliband, Helen Goodman and myself as we sat in the Members’ Lobby awaiting the outcome of the division.

No one spoke. ‘I can tell by your silence that you all think I’m loopy,’ said Colin gloomily, walking away. But we didn’t actually. ‘The reason for my silence was that I agree,’ said Ed Miliband after Colin had gone. He added, ‘The trouble is that we are all held hostage by what he decides.’ (pages 79-80)

Tuesday, 2 May 2006

Coffee with an old friend who has spent a year working for Lord Levy, fundraiser extraordinaire. ‘I became aware of a Labour Party I didn’t know existed,’ he says. ‘A cluster of mega-rich, unideological, Blair-worshippers who are lunched and dined in grand hotels, granted favoured access and whose opinions are listened to with rapt attention. They have much more influence than the other Labour Party.’

And what about our little ‘loans for peerages’ difficulty? He had overheard one or two conversations and Levy always went out of his way to make clear that there was no promise of an honour, adding slyly, ‘but I will just make two points: (1) a donation does not rule out an honour and (2) contributions to good causes can lead to honours. If you wish, I can send you details of one or two good causes that might qualify.’ (pages 89-90)

Wednesday, 8 October 2008

Later, in the Tea Room, a brief exchange with Alistair, in good shape despite only three hours’ sleep last night. ‘Congratulations on delivering the 1983 manifesto,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and with Tory support.’ (page 232)

Monday, 26 January 2009

Jack Jones and Michael Foot, both aged 95, came to this evening’s meeting of the parliamentary party. It was moving to see the two old boys, both big figures in their day. Jack positively glowing, but not entirely with it. Michael a poor old ruin, wild, skeletal, no longer in control of his movements. It seemed almost cruel to expose him. Superlatives flowed. There were several standing ovations. People clicked away with their mobile phone cameras, knowing this is probably the last glimpse we shall see of either of them. To the New Labour generation, of course, they are ancient history, ghostly reminders of a past long ago repudiated, but everyone entered into the spirit of the occasion. Neil Kinnock, as ever too loud and too long, did the introductions. Gordon Brown made a simple, effective little speech. Then, with Gordon clutching his right arm, Michael spoke. Strong and clear. Only a few sentences, but enough to show that his mind is still alive inside that ruined body. Dear old Jack just smiled benignly. (pages 257-258)

Saturday, 13 March 2010

Glasgow

Breakfast with Tariq Ali. Charming, thoughtful, softly spoken, his Trotskyite past long behind him. He fears Obama may turn out to be a one-term president; that, re Afghanistan, defeat is inevitable and that the only way out is to talk to Russia, Iran and Pakistan and then withdraw with as much dignity as we can muster, taking Karzai with us. We discussed whether John Smith would have got us embroiled in Iraq – one of the great ‘what ifs’ of recent history. Tariq thought not. ‘He was a genuine social democrat, with an irreducible core of decency.’

Tariq recalled a heated exchange with Michael Foot, at Oxford in 1965, when everyone was up in arms about Wilson’s refusal to condemn the Americans for what they were up to in Vietnam. ‘Someone shouted, “Bring him down.” I have never forgotten Michael’s reply. “What you don’t realise is that Harold Wilson is the most left-wing prime minister we will ever have.” He was right.’ (pages 366-367)

March 2010 Socialist Standard

March 2010 Socialist Standard

Editorial

X-Factor

Regular Columns

Pathfinders Brave New Epsilons

Cooking the Books 1 Empty hope

Cooking the Books 2 Living without money

Material World CARE: International

Greasy Pole "...Less Equal Than Others...”

Pieces Together Peace Prize?; Debt Ridden Britain; The Gap Widens; "Caring" Capitalism

50 Years Ago Intermingling

Main Articles

Tony Blair and the Chilcot inquiry Does it matter whether the Iraq War was legal or illegal?

Tilting at windmills with a banjo Pete Seeger is now in his 90th year. His songs have always been better than his politics.

What is Real Democracy and How Do We Get It? In a month or so the people of Britain will be asked once again to decide which representatives of the ruling class will rule over them for the next four or five years.

Capitalism breeds inequality A recent report shows that the reformist actions of the Labour government have not been able to reverse the inequalities that capitalism generates.

Ire of the Irate Itinerant Cartoon Strip

Letters, Book Reviews, Meetings & Obituary

Letters to the Editors: Inflation and Quantitative Easing

Book Reviews: Trotsky: a biography by Robert Service; Money by Eric Lonergan; People First Economics edited by David Ransom & Vanessa Baird

Socialist Party Meetings: Clapham, Manchester & Norwich:

Obituary: Cyril Evans

Voice From The Back

Capitalism is worldwide; A Grateful Nation; Class Division; Mother of the Free

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The Genial Thug

Quote of the day:

“Blair’s great skill was personal charisma - what used to be called bullshit. Merde de beouf. Whereas with Brown, there’s been nothing of that whatsoever. He’s got a very good brain - better than Blair’s - and a very good sense of direction, which I think Blair didn’t really have. Blair, in the end, was rather like Wilson: bullshit and nothing else, whereas Brown has a very solid understanding of what he’s up to.” [Denis Healey interviewed in last Saturday's Guardian.]

Hat tip to Neil at the Drink Sots.