‘Race’, politics and local football – continuity and change in the life of a British African-Caribbean local football club

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of a local sports club in shaping the lives of British African-Caribbean males in one British city over a 40-year period. The paper describes how the ‘Meadebrook Cavaliers’ has transitioned from its origins as an East Midlands parks-based football team in 1970 to a successful senior-level local football club by the early 1980s, before finally achieving a further social and financial organizational complexity in its charitable status, attained in 2009. Attention is paid specifically to the social formation of this largely masculine ‘black’ sport space over time and on how, and in what ways, these developments in local sport in one club in one British city are also intimately connected to wider social, economic and political developments in the UK. In doing so, the paper demonstrates, both theoretically and empirically, how the emergence of ‘black’ local football resonates with social change around ‘race’ politics in Britain during the period 1970–2010. By the same token, this mainly black male sporting space continues to reflect and influence change in the wider political, social and sporting terrains within which the club has been located – and within the dynamic black African-Caribbean communities which constitute it.

Notes

^1.www.thefa.com/TheFA/WhatWeDo (accessed September 21, 2012).

^2.Williams, ‘Cavaliers is a Black Club’.

^3. Throughout this chapter, the terms ‘African-Caribbean’, ‘black’, ‘black-British’ and ‘blackness’ are used interchangeably.

^4.Anderson, ‘Immigrant Teams in Sweden’.

^5.Vasili, First Black Football Arthur Wharton 1865-1930.

^6.Carrington, ‘Sport, Masculinity, and Black Cultural Resistance’.

^7. See, for example, Cashmore, Black Sportsmen; Bains and Johal, Corner Flags and Corner Shops.

^8.Williams, ‘Cavaliers is a Black Club’; Burdsey, ‘Forgotten Fields?’; and Campbell, ‘Cavaliers Made Us “United”’.

^9. The names ‘Meadebrook’ and ‘Meadebrook Caviliers’ are pseudonyms, and have been used even in the endnote references to published material.

^10.Simmons, ‘Thomas Cook of Leicester’.

^11.William, UK Cities.

^12.Vidal-Hall, ‘Leicester: City of Migration’, 134.

^13.Marsh, ‘Race, Community and Anxiety’.

^14.Marett, ‘Resettlement of Ugandan Asians in Leicester’.

^15.Troyna, Public Awareness and the Media.

^16.Singh, ‘Multiculturalism in Contemporary Britain’.

^17.Cantle, Interculturalism.

^18.Machin and Mayr, ‘Antiracism in the British Government's Model Regional Newspaper’; Singh, ‘Multiculturalism in Contemporary Britain’, 40.

^19. Leicestershireccc.co.uk, ‘Leicestershire County Cricket Club – History’, http://www.leicestershireccc.co.uk/lc/Club/History (accessed April 10, 2010).

^20.Nash et al., ‘Organizational and Associational Life’, 175.

^21.Williams, ‘Cavaliers is a Black Club’, 156.

^22.Nash et al., ‘Organizational and Associational life’, 177.

^23.Williams, ‘Cavaliers is a Black Club’.

^24. Jim Agass, The Meadebrooks Project 1967/69 (City of Leicester Education Committee, 1970).

^25.Polley, Moving the Goalposts.

^26.Davies, ‘A History’ of the Youth Service Volume 1 1939-1979, 57.

^27. Ibid., 99.

^28. Jim Agass, The Meadebrooks Project 1967/69 (City of Leicester Education Committee, 1970).

^29. George (ex-Cavaliers player and second-generation African-Caribbean) interviewed by the author, October 6, 2009.

^30. Bryan (ex-Cavaliers player and second-generation African-Caribbean) interviewed by the author, December 16, 2010.

^31. Bryan, interview.

^32. Adrian (ex-Cavaliers player and second-generation African-Caribbean) interviewed by the author, December 17, 2009.

^33.Williams, ‘Cavaliers is a Black Club’; Burdsey, ‘Forgotten Fields?’.

^34.King, ‘Race and Cultural Identity’.

^35. Bryan, interview.

^36. Hugh (ex-Cavaliers player and second-generation African-Caribbean) interviewed by the author, December 3, 2009.

^37. Adrian, interview.

^38.Hiro and British, White British, 81.

^39.Collette and Laybourn, ‘Ethnicity and Racial Equality’.

^40.Rex, Ghetto and the Underclass.

^41.Collette and Laybourn, ‘Ethnicity and Racial Equality’, 247.

^42.Leicester Mercury, July 13, 1981.

^43.Glyptis, ‘Local Authority Sports Provision for the Unemployed’, 102.

^44. Sue Glyptis, Teresam Kay, and David Donkin, Sport and the Unemployed: Final Report on the Monitoring of Sport Council Schemes in Leicester, Derewentshire and Hockley Port 1981–84 Sports Council March 1986 (Leicester: Leicester Records office, 1986).

^45. Ibid.

^46. Ibid.

^47.Williams, Meadebrook Cavaliers.

^48. George, interview.

^49. Bryan, interview.

^50.Caribbean Times, May 2–8, 1986.

^51.Leicester Mercury, April 9, 1988.

^52. Derek (ex-Cavaliers player and second-generation African-Caribbean) interviewed by the author, December 16, 2010.

^53. Ibid.

^54. Geraldine Thorne, ‘Social Secretary's Report’, Meadebrook Cavaliers Annual General Meeting 1993/94 (1994).

^55.Williams, Meadebrook Cavaliers, 123.

^56. Ibid., 125.

^57. Bryan, interview.

^58.The Guardian, October 21, 2010.

^59. Hugh White, ‘Chairman's Report 2008/09’, Highifeld Cavaliers Annual General Meeting 2008/9 (2010).

^60. Ibid.

^61. The Review of the Registered Charities: Charity Status and Sport (RR11), Charity Commission (2003), para. 4.

^62. Ibid., para. 34.

^63. Emanuel Chiedozie, MBC Football Costs (2010). Unpublished club documents.

^64.Fieldwork Journal, June 9, 2010.

^65.Leicester Mercury, August 20, 2005.

^66. Ibid., June 1, 2010.

^67. Ibid. (Quotes taken from a 13-year-old white British male, a 40-year-old dual-heritage male and the Lord Mayor of Leicester, Colin Hall, respectively).

^68. For a comprehensive discussion on the changing multiculturalism discourses which shape late-modern Britain, see Cantle, Community Cohesion.

^69.Pilkington, ‘From Institutional Racism to Community Cohesion’, para.10.2. Also see Cantle, Interculturalism.

^70.Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, 219–20.

^71. The Improvement and Development Agency, Taking Forward Community Cohesion in Leicester City Council (n.d.), para. 1.3, http://www.leicester.gov.uk/cohesionfund (accessed February 2, 2011).

^72. Leicester City Council/Leicester Partnership Community Cohesion Project Team, Evidence to the Commission on Integration and Cohesion From the Community Cohesion Project Team: Representing the Leicester City Council and the Leicester Partnership (January, 2007), 6. Also see Trisha Roberts-Thompson, ed., Explaining Community Cohesion in Leicester (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 2008).

^73.Machin and Mayr, ‘Antiracism in the British Government's Model Regional Newspaper’.

^74.Department for Communities and Local Government, The Government's Response .

^75. Ibid., 54.

^76. Leicester City Council, Community Cohesion Fund: January – June 2011 Guidance and Application Form (2010).

^77. Matthew (ex-Cavaliers player and current club member), Fieldwork Journal, February 9, 2011.

^78. Hugh, Ibid.

^79. Leicester City Council, Community Cohesion Fund: January – June 2011 Guidance and Application Form (2010).

^80.Campbell, ‘Ethnicity, Community and “Local” Football’.

^81.Bradbury, ‘From Racial Exclusions to New Inclusions’.