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ABSTRACT
This essay explores a series of football tours from Britain's colonies in Africa and the Caribbean to Britain between the years 1949 and 1959. It examines the different desired political and diplomatic functions of the visits from a variety of perspectives, as well as considering the importance of sporting performance and football in particular in fulfilling these functions. Utilising academic work on body cultures as well as critical race theory, it interrogates the coverage and analysis of such tours in multiple outlets of the British media, with particular reference to the different racialisations players from these territories were subject to throughout the period, as well as how racial perceptions were projected, solidified and reconstructed through play and the existing technologies of reception in Britain. Finally, it stresses the importance of localised, seemingly innocuous settings (such as the lower league football stadium) in formulating meaning and signifying identity during the period.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Kay Schiller for helping to develop my ideas and approach towards this project and for reviewing an earlier draft of this essay. Thanks to Peter Holme and Alex Jackson at the National Football Archives in Preston and to Terry Jackson at Bishop Auckland FC, Mal Flanagan at South Liverpool FC, John Adkins at Barnet FC, Dawn Aberdeen at the Cornwall FA and John Hansford at the Dorset FA, as well as Robert Engelmann from TTFootballHistory.com for their enthusiasm and willingness to provide a plethora of sources I would otherwise not have had access to. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers whose feedback helped me clarify my ideas and situate this work better within the broader scholarship.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. ‘Editorial: A Sunshine Tour’, FA News, November 1959, 117–18. N.B. The FA News was referred to as the ‘Football Association Bulletin’ until 1956 before changing titles. I will herein refer to each issue by the title and format used at publication date, but they were essentially the same publication (unlike the FA Yearbook and FA Book for Boys, two associated but different publications with different content and intended audiences).
2. J.A. Mangan, The Cultural Bond: Sport, Empire, Society (London: Psychology Press, 1992).
3. Charles Buchan, ‘This FA Tour Left a Nasty Taste’, in Charles Buchan's Football Monthly, ed. Charles Buchan and John Thompson, 61 (September 1956): 3–4.
4. Greg Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks: The 1888–89 New Zealand Native Football Team in Britain, Australia and New Zealand (Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 1993); Prashant Kidambi, ‘Sport and the Imperial Bond: The 1911 “All-India” Cricket Tour of Great Britain’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy (8): 261–85.
5. Greg Ryan, The Contest for Rugby Supremacy: Accounting for the 1905 All Blacks (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005); Karel Stokkermans and Martín Tabeira, ‘South Africa International Matches 1924’, The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF), February 25, 2011, http://www.rsssf.com/tablesz/zaf-intres24.html.
6. See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Grove Press, 1967) and Stuart Hall, ‘The spectacle of the Other’, in Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London: Grove Press, 1997).
7. John Bale and Mike Cronin, ‘Introduction: Sport and Postcolonialism’, in Sport and Postcolonialism, ed. John Bale and Mike Cronin (Oxford, 2003), 2.
8. The Nigerian team is explicitly referred to as affiliated in J.S. Macpherson, ‘Visit of Nigerian Team’, The Football Association Bulletin, 17, 1949. I owe confirmation of this affiliation thanks to correspondence with Dominik Petermann at FIFA House. Paul Dietschy, ‘Making Football Global? FIFA, Europe, and the Non-European Football World, 1912–74’, Journal of Global History 8 (2013) explores the timeline of FIFA membership and the gaining of independence from colonial regimes, and establishes that none of the nations discussed here gained FIFA membership until after the tours.
9. Matthew Taylor, ‘Global Players? Football, Migration and Globalization, c. 1930–2000’, Historical Social Research 31 (2006): 18. Phil Vasili has explored the presence and previously unrecognised role of non-British born and non-white players, such as Walter Tull and Arthur Wharton, in the British leagues in Phil Vasili, Colouring Over the White Line: The History of Black Footballers in Britain (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2000).
10. Keith Howard, ‘World News’, FA News, April, 1971, 40.
11. See Chris Bolsmann, ‘White Football in South Africa: Empire, Apartheid and Change, 1892–1977’, Soccer and Society 11, no. 1–2 (2010): 29–45; ‘British and Irish Clubs – Overseas Tours 1890–1939’, RSSSF, November 30, 2017, http://www.rsssf.com/tablesb/brit-ier-tours-prewwii.html; ‘Test Cricket Tours- England to West Indies 1929–30’, Test Cricket Tours, http://test-cricket-tours.co.uk/page_3116505.html.
12. ‘Test Cricket Tours-West Indies to England 1928’, Test Cricket Tours, http://test-cricket-tours.co.uk/page_1609752.html.
13. ‘British “FA XI” Tours’, RSSSF, January 4, 2018, http://www.rsssf.com/tablesb/britishfatours.html#1958ENG.
14. Phil Vasili, ‘Colonialism and football: the first Nigerian tour to Britain’, Race and Class 36 (1995): 55–70.
15. Ibid., 60.
16. Macpherson, ‘Visit of Nigerian Team’, 5.
17. Peter Alegi, African Soccerscapes: How A Continent Changed the World's Game (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 41
18. Ibid., 6.
19. ‘Visits to England to Study Football Organisation’, The Football Association Bulletin, 17, 1949, 11.
20. Malcolm MacLean, ‘Ambiguity within the Boundary: Re-reading CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary’, Journal of Sport History 37 (2010): 101.
21. ‘Footballers from Nigeria’, The Times, September 29, 1949, 5.
22. See Bolsmann, ‘White Football in South Africa’; Phil Vasili, ‘A History of African Footballers in Britain, Out of Africa Campaign, http://www.outofafricacampaign.com/wp-content/themes/child_theme/documents/Phil_Vasali.pdf pp. 2–3 (accessed August 30, 2018).
23. Jack Woods, ‘With Love to the Little Girl in Red’, Daily Mail, August 27, 1956, 6.
24. R.A.J., ‘Club Notes’, in South Liverpool Football Club: South Liverpool vs. Nigeria FA XI, September 28, 1949, 3. Programme courtesy of Mal Flanagan.
25. ‘Trinidad Soccer Team Home Again’, Jamaica Gleaner, October 29, 1953, 12.
26. ‘Sports Notes’, Citizen, September 9, 1949, 10.
27. ‘Barefoot Braves’, Press and Journal, September 2, 1949, 2.
28. Neil Morrison, ‘England Tour of British Caribbean 1959’, RSSSF, December 10, 2010, http://www.rsssf.com/tablese/engtour-windies59.html
29. Liz DeLoughrey, ‘Some Pitfalls of Caribbean Regionalism, Colonial Roots, and Migratory Routes’, Journal of Caribbean Literatures (2001): 44. DeLoughrey suggests that the Federation was plagued by ‘(pre)national and local concerns’ that ultimately usurped its unifying raison d’être. British Guiana held observer status in the Federation. Neither organisation included the Bahamas, Bermuda, British Honduras (modern-day Belize) or the Virgin Islands.
30. Cyril Robert James, Beyond a Boundary (London: Serpent's Tail, 1994), 251–2.
31. Brian Stoddart, ‘Caribbean Cricket: The Role of Sport in Emerging Small-Nation Politics’, International Journal 43 (1988): 627–8; Clem Seechran, Muscular Learning: Cricket and Education in the Making of the British West Indies at the End of the 19th Century (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2005).
32. ‘Selection of WI Soccer 21 Called “Comedy of Errors”’, Jamaica Gleaner, March 20, 1959, 17; ‘Denial Of Rift On Carib Soccer Side UK Tour’, Jamaica Gleaner, December 11, 1959, 14.
33. Dietschy, ‘Making Football Global?’, 294.
34. Peter J. Beck, Scoring for Britain: International Football and International Politics, 1900–1939 (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999), 262.
35. Eric James ‘Thanks from BCFA’, Jamaica Gleaner, August 16, 1959, 12.
36. ‘Caribbean Pen Pictures’, in Great Britain vs. Caribbean FA Official Programme, October 10, 1959.
37. ‘Lennox-Boyd Meets West Indies Soccer Team’, Jamaica Gleaner, September 11, 1959, 14; Roy Peskett, ‘Magic Spurs Chase New Record’, Daily Mail, September 15, 1959, 15.
38. Dubois, Soccer Empire, 42.
39. Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain (London: Routledge, 1997), 2.
40. Winston James, ‘Migration, Racism and Identity Formation: The Caribbean Experience in Britain’, Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, ed. Winston James and Clive Harris (London: Verso Books, 1993), 234.
41. Ibid., 233. James is keen to intimate that the ‘pigmentocracy’ was itself ‘nauseating and pathetic’, and does not suggest that its transplantation would have been preferable to the blanket racialisation of British life.
42. Ibid., 240.
43. Paul Ian Campbell, ‘Ethnicity, Community and “Local” Football: A Historical and Sociological Study of an African-Caribbean Football Club in the East Midlands c.1970–2010’ (PhD thesis, De Montfort University, 2012), 70.
44. The Football Association, Committee Reports Received at the Council Meeting held on 11th November 1952 (November 11, 1952) National Football Museum Archives, Preston (NFM). In fact, the Nigerian team had travelled as far north as County Durham during their visit in 1949.
45. ‘Visit of a Uganda Amateur XI’, The Football Association Bulletin, January, 1956, 301.
46. The Football Association, Committee reports Received at the Council Meeting held on 24th September 1956 (September 24, 1956) NFM.
47. ‘Football in Trinidad’, The Football Association Year Book 1954–1955 (London: The Football Association, 1955), 23.
48. Jawad, ‘Tourist Trail’, 38.
49. Chairman, Urban District Council, ‘Welcome to the Nigerians’, in Bishop Auckland vs. Nigerian FA XI, September 3, 1949, 2. C/O of Terry Jackson.
50. ‘Club Notes’, in South Liverpool vs. Nigeria, 3; ‘Bromley Left Floundering’, Daily Mail, September 26, 1949, 6.
51. Pegasus, ‘Gold Coast Shunned Bare Idea’.
52. ‘Football in Trinidad’, 23.
53. Adam Brown, Tim Crabbe, and Gavin Mellor, ‘English Professional Football and its Communities’, International Review of Modern Sociology 32 (2006): 159–79.
54. Hyder Jawad, ‘Tourist Trail’, Backpass Magazine, 22, April 2012, 38.
55. Pegasus, ‘Gold Coast Shunned Bare Idea of Defeat!’, Barnet Press, September 18, 1951. Scan C/O John Adkins; Rosaleen Smyth, The Post-War Career of the Colonial Film Unit in Africa: 1946–1955, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 12 (1992), 174–5; Nigerian Footballers in England, Produced by the Colonial Film Unit (1949) [Film].
56. ‘Calling Caribbean Highlights’, Jamaica Gleaner, September 15, 1959, 6.
57. Roger Domeneghetti, From the Back Page to the Front Room: Football's Journey Through the English Media (Huddersfield: Ockley Books, 2014).
58. Ibid., 114.
59. ‘Association Football: Barnet v. Gold Coast’, BBC Genome, September 8, 1951, http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0c64217caffe4e6c88afe9f26062ba77 ‘Sports Parade’, BBC Genome, October 10, 1953, http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/32227b7040ac4adf97fc2edabdb6f816
60. ‘Calling Caribbean Highlights’, 6.
61. ‘Football in Strange Places: Nigeria’, FA News, April 1958, 318
62. Frank Rankmore, Neil Morrison, ‘Nigeria Tour of England 1949’, RSSSF, April 6, 2011, http://www.rsssf.com/tablesn/nig-engtour49.html
63. Ibid.
64. Hawkey, Feet of the Chameleon, 6.
65. Neil Morrison, ‘Gold Coast (Ghana) Tour of the British Isles 1951’, May 2, 2013, http://www.rsssf.com/tablesg/goudkust-brittour51.html
66. Barry Courtney, ‘Trinidad Tour to Great Britain 1953’, RSSSF, August 8, 2003, http://www.rsssf.com/tablest/trin-in-uk53.html
67. ‘Club Notes’, FA Amateur XI v. Trinidad Touring Team, October 10, 1953, 2.
68. Morrison, ‘England Tour of British Caribbean 1959’.
69. Chris Bolsmann, ‘The 1899 Orange Free State football team tour of Europe: “Race”, Imperial Loyalty and Sporting Contest’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 28 (2011): 87.
70. ‘WI Soccer Tour to England Premature’.
71. Kidambi, ‘Sport and the Imperial Bond’, 281.
72. ‘A Sunshine Tour’, 117; ‘Denial of Rift’, 14.
73. ‘Football in Trinidad’, 23; Urban District Council, ‘Welcome to the Nigerians’, in Bishop Auckland vs. Nigeria, 2.
74. ‘Uganda Maintain Form’, The Times, October 1, 1956, 12.
75. ‘‘Football in Strange Places: Nigeria’, 318; Football in Trinidad’, 23.
76. This trend is also highlighted by Greg Ryan through his discussion of the codification of Rugby laws ‘entirely on British terms’ as a means of maintaining British cultural authority, see Ryan, The Contest for Rugby Supremacy, 115.
77. ‘New Football Flavours’, The Times, September 26, 1956, 4; ‘Great Britain Improve in the Second Half’, The Times, October 12, 1959, 15.
78. ‘London University Association F.C. Summer Tour of East Africa’, The Football Association Bulletin, December 1951, 33.
79. Stuart Hall, ‘The Whites of Their Eyes – Racist Ideologies and the Media’, in Gender, Race and Class in Media – A Text Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Gail Dines and Jean Humez (London: Sage, 2002), 91.
80. ‘Uganda Maintain Form’, 12.
81. Three for King against Trinidad’, Daily Mail, October 8, 1953, 9.
82. Quoted in Vasili, ‘The First Nigerian Tour to Britain’, 66; Qureshi, ‘Peoples on Parade’.
83. Kathleen Paul, ‘From Subjects to Immigrants: Black Britons and National Identity, 1948–62’, in The Right to Belong: Citizenship and National Identity in Britain, 1930–1960, ed. Richard Weight and Abigail Beach (London: I.B. Taurus, 1998), 223–48.
84. ‘Bromley Left Floundering’, 6.
85. ‘Great Britain Improve’, 15.
86. ‘Sports News’, British Pathé, September 3, 1956 [Film].
87. Richard Holt, ‘The Amateur Body and the Middle-class Man: Work, Health and Style in Victorian Britain’, Sport in History 26 (2006): 356.
88. Vasili, ‘The First Nigerian Tour to Britain’, 68; ‘Football in Trinidad’, 22.
89. ‘Conditions Trouble Uganda’, The Times, August 30, 1956, 3; ‘Thanks for Keeping Off Our Toes’, Press and Journal, September 30, 1949, 4.
90. ‘Great Britain Improve’, 15.
91. Arthur Salter, ‘And Now We Take a Barefoot Beating’, Daily Mail, September 27, 1956, 12.
92. London FA Have Easy Win’. The Times, September 28, 1956, 15.
93. ‘Olympic Football Shock’, The Times, September 27, 1956, 4.
94. ‘Barefoot Beating’, 12.
95. ‘Olympic Football Shock’, 4.
96. Ibid.
97. Domeneghetti, From the Back Page, 135–43.
98. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanicic, Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 206.
99. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York: Psychology Press, 1993), 8.
100. Dietschy, ‘Making Football Global?’, 291.
101. Hawkey, Feet of the Chameleon, 59.
102. Victor Rae, ‘Sand and Sun’, FIFA Official Bulletin, 10 (June, 1955), 2.
103. Michael Groll, ‘UEFA Football Competition as European Sites of Memory – Cups of Identity?’, in European Football and Collective Memory, ed. Wolfram Pyta and Nils Havemann (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 75.
104. ‘Boots off for the Kick-Off’, Daily Mail, August 25, 1956, 3.
105. ‘Barefoot Braves’, 2; ‘Gold Coast Shunned Bare Idea of Defeat’; ‘Barefoot Beating’, 12.
106. Nigerian Footballers in England; ‘Sports News’.
107. Nicholas Mirzoeff, Bodyscape: Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure (London: Routledge, 1995), 3.
108. Macpherson, ‘Visit of Nigerian Team’, 5; ‘Five Goals, No Boots’, 1.
109. Ibid.
110. ‘Boots off for the Kick-Off’, 3.
111. Kevin Hylton, ‘Race’ and Sport: Critical Race Theory (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 2.
112. Brett St Louis, ‘Brilliant Bodies, Fragile Minds: Race, Sport and the Mind/Body Split’, in Making Race Matter: Bodies, Space and Identity, ed. Claire Alexander and Caroline Knowles (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), 121–4.
113. ‘‘Football in Strange Places: The Congo’, F.A News, March 1956, 400.
114. Greg Ryan, The Contest for Rugby Supremacy: Accounting for the 1905 All Blacks (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005), 87.
115. John Bale, Imagined Olympians: Body Culture and Colonial Representation in Rwanda (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), XVIII
116. Pegasus, ‘Gold Coast Shunned Bare Idea’; ‘Uganda Maintain Form’, 12.
117. ‘The Management of Bristol Rovers Extends a Hearty Welcome to the Trinidad Touring XI’, in Bristol Rovers vs. Trinidad FA XI, August 31, 1953, 6–7. Programme Courtesy of John Hansford.
118. Philip Nanton, ‘Migration Dynamics: Great Britain and the Caribbean’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 22 (1999): 451–2.
119. Bob Carter, Clive Harris and Shirley Joshi, ‘The 1951–55 Conservative Government and the Racialization of Black Immigration’, in Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, ed. Winston James and Clive Harris (London: Verso Books, 1993).
120. Ibid., 399.
121. ‘Great Britain Improve’, 5; ‘Three for King’, 9; ‘Caribbean XI Well Beaten’, The Times, September 11, 1959, 5.
122. ‘Trinidad Lose First Soccer Game in the U.K.’, Jamaica Gleaner, August 27, 1953, 8. ‘Faulty Shooting Balks Carib Bid’, 12. It is not clear whether the Gleaner sent a correspondent to cover the visits or merely reproduced and altered British articles, particularly as, unlike most British publications, the paper featured reports from the majority of fixtures from both tours.
123. Les Back, Tim Crabbe and John Solomos, The Changing Face of Football: Racism, Identity and Multiculture in the English Game (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001), 143.
124. Ibid., 141.
125. Ibid., 143.
126. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 17; Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1997), 1.
127. MacLean, ‘Ambiguity within a Boundary’, 105; Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 122–8
128. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 55.
129. John Williams, ‘Rangers is a Black Club: Race, Identity and Local Football in England’, in Game without Frontiers: Football, Identity and Modernity, ed. Richard Giulianotti and John Williams (Aldershot: Arena, 1994); Campbell, ‘Ethnicity, Community and “Local” Football’, 153–83.
130. Campbell, ‘Ethnicity, Community and “Local” Football’, 107.
131. Williams, ‘Rangers is a Black Club’, 162.
132. ‘Football in Trinidad’, 23.
133. Vasili, ‘Colonialism and Football’, 68.
134. Tesi Balogun, ‘I Came 4,000 Miles to Score the Greatest Goal of My Life’, Charles Buchan's Football Monthly, April 1957, 28.
135. R.A.J. ‘Club Notes’, in South Liverpool FC vs. Macclesfield, September 2, 1950, 3; Phil Vasili, ‘The Occluded History of African Footballers in Britain’, Pitch Invasion, May 30, 2008, http://pitchinvasion.net/the-occluded-history-of-black-footballers-in-britain/
136. Vasili ‘Occluded History’; Alvin Corneal, ‘Football Genius Matthew Nunes Passes on’, The Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, March 17, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/sports/football/2010/03/16/football-genius-matthew-nunes-passes ; Alvin Corneal, ‘The Shay Seymour that I Knew’, The Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, March 4, 2015, http://www.guardian.co.tt/sport/2015-03-03/shay-seymour-i-knew
137. Phil Vasili, Colouring over the white line : the history of black footballers in Britain (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing), 2000.
138. Kwame Nkrumah, ‘New Sporting Era in West Africa’, in Selected Speeches of Kwame Nkrumah: Vol 1, ed. Samuel Obeng (Accra: Afram Publications, 1997).
139. Dietschy, ‘Making Football Global’, 295.
140. Hassan Badru Zziwa, ‘Meet Kefa, a Survivor of the “Barefoot Cranes”’, The Observer, June 1, 2014, http://www.observer.ug/sports/44-sports/32019--meet-kefa-a-survivor-of-barefooted-cranes
141. Jawad, ‘Tourist Trail’, 38–9.
142. Phil Broad, Cornwall County Football Association Centenary 1889–1989 (Callington: Penwell Limited, 1989), 29; Jack McInroy, ‘The Famed UK Tourists of Nigeria’, The Hamlet Historian, June 7, 2010, http://thehamlethistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/famed-uk-tourists-of-nigeria.html