Beginning to See the Light; ‘Engerrrland, Engerrrland..’

 

‘Or maybe, maybe it’s our nowhere towns

Our nothing places and our cellophane sounds

Maybe it’s our looseness..’

 

With the 2021 European (football) Championships due to kick-off tomorrow, we begin by looking back to those sunny halcyon days of Euro ’96, when, yet again, our dreams were squashed. 

 

For England football fans of a certain age, Euro 96 was a golden time, yes it was another false dawn, but that summer was special. It wasn’t England reaching the last-4, it was a culmination of style, hope, politics, culture, commerce, sunshine, under the auspices of international football. Twenty-five years on, might it just happen again?

For anyone that can’t remember is began with a song; Three Lions, which entered the charts at No.1 on 26^th of May, 2-weeks before the tournament began. Whilst it is a classic, an anthem, its nostalgic (‘Three Lions on a shirt/Jules Rimet still gleaming/Thirty years of hurt/Never stopped me dreaming’) and sung in hope (‘It’s coming home/It’s coming/Football’s coming home’). As football songs go, apart from New Order’s ‘World in Motion’ for Italia ’90, it’s up there.

Whilst the song became linked with the national flag, it wasn’t the union flag with its jingoistic connotations, it was the St George’s flag. ‘What I notice most when I see footage of Wembley at Euro 96 is the flags and the joy,’ Baddiel says today. ‘And then I am assailed by a depressing sense that those two things wouldn’t go together in the same way now.

This was a specific moment; a particular window. The flags were being waved along with the singing of Three Lions and it created a very unusual thing – a non-aggressive, non-triumphalist patriotism. If you waved a St George flag to Three Lions, it didn’t feel like you were waving a symbol of nationalism and racism. It was a soft, sad type of pride being expressed, not a vanquishing, overcoming one.’

 

‘a very unusual thing – a non-aggressive, non-triumphalist patriotism’

 

The difference today is that we, England, is a country divided, struggling with our polarised beliefs of Brexit, migration, and wokeness. ‘Every action seems to operate as a node somewhere in the culture wars,’ Baddiel says. ‘Too many people would simply see waving the flag as associated with a triumphant English nationalism that has resurfaced, and has had large political consequences, since 1996.’

The expression ‘culture wars’ was unknown in 1996, but culture was at the heart of everything, it was ‘cool Britannia’. The era was the time of Oasis and Blur (I found bit the be trite and banal, therefore I have picked a lyrics from another band) even they used the flag, with Noel Gallagher playing a Union Jack guitar at Manchester City’s Maine Road. A year later Geri Halliwell almost wore a Union Jack minidress at the Brit Awards. ‘Two decades later cultural commentators such as Jon Savage and John Harris asked whether Britpop had contributed to Brexit.’

British art became a movement its own right, championed by advertising guru Charles Saatchi. ‘Sensation’, the exhibition of works by the Young British Artists, crowned him as a visionary collector and the likes of Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst as serious artists.

This was a good time for football after the disaster strewn, hooligan led 1980s, when the PM, ‘Margaret Thatcher believed the sport was a stain on her beloved nation; that it represented the very worst of British – feckless working-class youths who just wanted to fight.’

This was the era of New Labour; as Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former communications director said, ‘By ‘96 when that tournament was going on we were well ahead in the polls,’. ‘People were expecting us to win, so the political mood was all about New Labour and Tony.’

He continued saying. ‘For the Labour party conference that year the top line I designed for Tony’s speech was ‘Labour’s coming home’. That was the headline in a lot of papers the next day – Labour’s coming home. It was a straight lift. So even though England hadn’t won the tournament it was still playing into that mood that had been created.’

Today the dominant mood is of fatigued cynicism.  The game has sold its soul for money, and C-19 has, as with everything else, disrupted proceedings and highlighted how even the top clubs spend beyond their mean chasing success. Plans for a Super League were defeated by fan power, but this is both temporary and cosmetic. It will return because the economics make it inevitable, and the richest clubs continue to dominate, not just in England but overseas too.

 

Today the dominant mood is of fatigued cynicism

 

Most importantly there is a now spirit of resistance from the players. Today’s footballers are empowered by huge social media followings and have become a force for change. Players such as Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling experienced poverty, racism, and punitive austerity cuts as youngsters, and they’re not prepared to see the next generation suffer in the same way they did.

Part of this player-power is the Black Lives Matter (‘BLM’) ritual of ‘taking a knee.’ Whilst the players may have recognised the importance of this symbolism it seems the fans haven’t as it was again booed before England’s game on Sunday.

Like all protests there are people who have issues with ‘taking a knee.’ Some may view it as unnecessary or believe that discrimination is overplayed. Perhaps people struggle with 20-somethings earning £200,000+ per week preaching about inequality.

Despite this, the public dissent over an anti-racism gesture does us down as nation. Let’s not forget that many of these players experience regular racial abuse. Hiding behind the pretence of ‘keeping politics out’, or that creeping ‘Marxism’ is a threat to your way of life in Britain is cowardly and disingenuous.’

Football is only a sport, if there are racists in the crowd, it is because there are racists and racism prevalent in this country. We seem to have reached a point with the BLM debate in Britain where a section of white establishment Britain is saying: ‘That’s it. We have heard your plight and George Floyd was terrible and yes, perhaps you do need a few more jobs and we can do that, but you keep going on about it and you are making us feel responsible and uncomfortable: we have heard you, but we have heard enough.’

Six months ago, a poll by Opinium found that 55% of adults polled believed BLM had increased racial tension. Johnson and the right-wing media grasped these symptoms of fear and compassion fatigue and played on them. The manoeuvre has underpinned their culture attacks and continues to guide their thinking on contentious issues such as free speech and contested statues.

Whilst the PM, Boris Johnson wants the ‘whole country’ to get behind the England team, he has refused to condemn those who booed players taking a knee. No doubt his refusal was in-light of the slew of Conservative MPs and right-wing commentators stirring up further controversy, fan groups called on those who jeered before two recent friendlies to stop. England play their opening Group D fixture against Croatia on Sunday.

Asked about the booing before England’s match against Romania at the Riverside on Sunday, the prime minister’s official spokesman seemed to offer support to both sides of an increasingly heated argument.

The prime minister ‘fully respects the right of those who choose to peacefully protest and make their feelings known’, the spokesman said, adding: ‘On taking the knee, specifically, the prime minister is more focused on action rather than gestures. We have taken action with things like the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities and that’s what he’s focused on delivering.’

All Johnson cares about is the political reality of the situation, where there are boos, there are votes. After all, it was him that referred to blacks as ‘piccaninnies’ and ‘watermelon smiles’.

The Football Association is reported to be trying to prevent the booing by working with the England Supporters Travel Club on establishing new barriers to entry at England matches for fans found to be involved in antisocial or discriminatory behaviour.

By comparison, there was a quite different call for unity from the Times which, in a leader on Saturday said England should stop taking the knee, arguing it had ‘exhausted its purpose and is now more divisive than it is helpful’. They were followed by the red wall MP Brendan Clarke-Smith, who called it ‘habitual tokenism’ and ‘a divisive and confrontational matter’ before comparing England’s actions to those of the team that gave the Nazi salute before a match in Berlin in 1936. Let’s hope Brendan is under the ‘ red wall’ when it collapses.

 

‘in some ways’ we’ve had something in football that we’re not confident we’ve got outside of these footballing summers’

 

‘Focusing the debate about how we do anti-racism over time is probably the best way forward now,’ said Sunder Katwala of British Future, an independent think tank that works on issues of identity and race. ‘If you want to put a reasonable challenge to the so-called criticism of these gestures, it would be to ask [critics] to be clear on how they would challenge the racism that is still there.’

He continued, saying; ‘The England team of 2018 represented the young diverse England of the cities but also the England of leave voting towns in Yorkshire. The England team is one thing we have in common across England, and in some ways’ we’ve had something in football that we’re not confident we’ve got outside of these footballing summers’.

This dissent, war on culture, and nascent racism only serves to highlight our conservative nature. Any changes within public attitudes and behaviour are slow, often they go unnoticed.

The first annual British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey was published in 1983; since then, the Tories have been in government for C. 2/3’s of the time. From John Major’s ‘the old values’ to the Johnson government’s current ‘war on woke’, they have promoted traditional social norms and attacked perceived threats to them,

Despite this, the latest BSA report, shows that public attitudes to many kinds of personal behaviour ‘have steadily loosened since the 1980s’, with ‘an increasing sense of ‘live and let live’ when it comes to our views on other people’s relationships and lifestyles’. Urbanisation, immigration, a more diverse popular culture, the growth of liberal universities, the decline of some religions and the dwindling of what the BSA describes as the ‘socially conservative’ generations born in the first half of the 20th century, have gradually undermined the hopes of Tory traditionalists.

The Tories have not suffered electorally from this as they have been able to exploit political weakness in many movements for social change. This can be partly explained by the fact that many movements begin small, and small numbers of voters usually have little influence in national elections. This enables the Tories to paint them as ‘alien minorities’, which with our often alarmist and judgmental press, and with elderly people representing a disproportionately powerful section of the electorate, this reactionary tactic has proven to be effective.

Whilst we have new names for progressive politics such as ‘Culture Wars’ or ‘War on Woke’, there is little new in the underlying issues. Gay rights were as much as an issue in the 1980s as they are today. Gay rights go back to the 60s, yet by the 80s, other than the hated Greater London Council, only C. 10% of Britons approved of same-sex relationships. Today a recent YouGov poll shows that 10% thought ‘being woke’ was ‘a good thing’.

In the run-up to the 1987 general election, the Conservatives and right-wing newspapers concocted endless scare stories about gay and lesbian activism and its ‘loony left’ Labour allies. These frightened, unenlightened policies worked, in a leaked internal memo about the campaign in London, the Labour strategist Patricia Hewitt wrote: ‘It is obvious from our own polling, as well as from the doorstep, that … [being called] the ‘loony Labour left’ is now taking its toll; the gays and lesbian issue is costing us dear amongst the pensioners.’ At the election the Conservatives won another large majority. They did especially well in London, beating Labour by 15 percentage points.

As the old reactionaries pass-on we begin to see an acceptance of what they found so ‘disturbing’, and from the late 80s there was a progressive acceptance of same sex relationships, today public approval of this is C.70%.

 

a throw-back, in many ways it typifies the blokey, lads’ magazine, terrace anthems of the mid-90s ‘cool Britannia.’

 

Attitudes to race, colour, gender, sexuality as you work down through the younger generations their acceptance of this proportionately increases. They have been bought up amongst gay people, foreigners of many countries, and woman that work, for them it is the norm therefore they have no need to discriminate.

This is, of course, a generalisation, as was written, ‘accepting wokeness means accepting that all of society can no longer be arranged primarily for the benefit of straight white men. And straight white men are the Conservatives’ largest group of supporters. Johnson’s government is a throw-back, in many ways it typifies the blokey, lads’ magazine, terrace anthems of the mid-90s ‘cool Britannia.’

Its foundations are based on Brexit’s party ideas and voters, whilst, as a country we may be becoming more liberal, the electoral system and the preponderance of older regressive voters allows the Tories to triumph in the polls, as is the case with other right-wing populists across the world.

Change comes about slowly, peoples’ attitudes rarely change, instead they die out, literally. With each new generation there is a greater acceptance of supposed ‘differences’, which cease to different and become the ‘new’ normal. Until then…………

 

‘Now is the time

Let everyone see

You never give up

that’s how it should be’

 

As football fans from England, Wales and Scotland wait with nervous anticipation to see precisely how and when their disappointment will be delivered, Philip delivers a reflective piece that begins by juxtaposing the flag waving optimism that symbolised Euro 96 with the much darker connotations around Euro 2020 competition. The fact that it is taking place a year late speaks volumes of the impact Covid-19 has had on all our lives, but the heated debate around players taking the knee in support of BLM speaks of different times.

Maybe the passage of time has allowed us to create a rose-tinted recollection of what seemed to be an endlessly sunny competition, but certainly much of the optimism that existed 25 years ago has evaporated.

Maybe a healthy dose of Britpop/Cool Britannia is just what we need to take away the pain of the pandemic, but also the stench of some very grubby politics; if Boris and his rag-tag bunch were to consider reprising D:ream’s anthem to political optimism, they would probably add ‘for us’ to its title.

With just so much division along the lines of race, age and wealth, Philip rather gloomily says that deeply entrenched views cannot be changed, rather the hope is that society improves when those that hold regressive views pass on.

In the meantime, and ahead of COP26, Boris decided to demonstrate just how committed he is to tackling climate change by flying down to the G7 bun fight in Cornwall on a whacking great Airbus; pigs is equal.

With the relaxation of lockdown on 21st June now in doubt certain sectors of the economy are facing an existential crisis; what a boost there would be if it really were to come home.

Unfortunately Philip also believes that the beautiful game has aged badly since we hosted the tournament all those years ago; with cash demonstrably being the key to success, he believes that it is inevitable that a version of the proposed European Super League will come to fruition.

That could leave many beyond the red wall, or other parts of the union with little to cheer – but for anything up to the next month fans in England, Wales and Scotland will dare to dream.

Two track, just for fun – a lesser known band from way back when (largely because he has no truck with the Blur vs Oasis (‘Beatles tribute band’) debate – Suede with ‘Trash’ and New Order (of course) with ‘World in Motion’. Enjoy.    

 

 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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