In Defence of Violence
the politics of the Ewood
riots
Most Clarets will have had December
17th marked down in their diaries for months now. No doubt the local newspapers will make
the most of the forthcoming East Lancashire derby and I suspect that part of the build-up
will, somewhere along the line, allude to the last time the teams met, on Easter Monday,
April 2, 1983. For the record, the Clarets lost 2-1 in a scrappy encounter, but the
occasion is remembered for the events on the away terrace.
Anyone who has been inadvertently caught in the
middle of a violent situation, football-related or otherwise, will know that it can be a
terrifying ordeal, and this article doesn't seek to underestimate or trivialise this.
However, not all acts of violence are equivalent, and in the same way that a war may be
described as just, some acts of violence can be defended as rational and warranted. The
riot at Ewood Park on Easter Monday 1983 was not, as most corporate publications will have
you believe, an act of mindless violence. It was many things: it was intensely political,
driven on a number of levels by discursive needs, and it was fuelled by collective rage
and frustration. But it was not mindless. It was, in fact, a series of events that
represented a mutual narrative against undemocratic power, and in so doing demonstrated a
firm grasp on reality. To illustrate: a bit of fantasy.
In his book The Napoleon of Notting Hill,
G.K. Chesterton describes a future London in which an elected, non-hereditary King,
Auberon Quinn, a man of cynical humour, decides in jest to revive the mediaeval pomps and
prides of municipal patriotism. He decrees that Notting Hill, West Kensington,
Hammersmith, Battersea, Pimlico and all the other recognised neighbourhoods each be given
its own town charter, city walls, coat of arms, motto and city guards in resplendent
armour, together with odd privileges and immemorial rights, invented on the spur of the
moment.
This he does, and a good time is had by all as
each municipality celebrates its new status with riotous street parties and colourful
banquets. Unforeseen by Quinn was that anyone would take his wheeze seriously. However, a
man emerges who is the exact opposite of Quinn: an enthusiast utterly devoid of a sense of
humour. Adam Wayne, as provost of Notting Hill, is the lone citizen to take the King's
joke seriously and he leads Notting Hill to war with the other boroughs of London to
protect a small street that is to be demolished for commercial purposes. Pimlico,
Kensington and the rest attack Notting Hill and hundreds are killed and wounded in the
battles that follow.
In time, Notting Hill and her ideals of local
patriotism and beauty in civic life become the inspiration of the other boroughs, and in
doing so regenerate the city. But when Notting Hill eventually falls in a sea of blood,
Quinn confesses to Wayne that the whole episode - so full of human tragedy - had been the
outcome of a joke. To Quinn, life itself was a joke not to be taken seriously. To Wayne,
life was an epic.
The novel ends with an uneasy union between the
joker and the devotee, the latter declaring that both of their dispositions lie within the
common man:
The equal and eternal human being sees no
real antagonism between laughter and respect. When dark and dreary days come, you and I
are necessary, the pure fanatic, the pure satirist. But in healthy people there is no war
between us. We are but the two lobes of the brain of a ploughman. Laughter and love are
everywhere. The mother laughs continually at the child, the lover laughs continually at
the lover, the wife at the husband, the friend at the friend. We have been too long
separated; let us go out together. You have a halberd and I a sword, let us start our
wanderings over the world. For we are its two essentials.
Therefore, if the two essential ingredients of
life are a sense of humour and a sense of gravitas, what creates the healthy human society
is a balance of the two and the sense to know when each is appropriate. But there are
times - dark and dreary days - when a pure measure of one or the other is
necessary. Take it from someone who was there - Easter Monday 1983 was a day both dark and
dreary that fully deserved the wholesome fanaticism that broke out in the Darwen End of
Ewood Park. It was a violent and humourless declaration of devotion to a football club
slowly dying.
A kick up the
eighties
In the 1979-80 season, Burnley had been
relegated to the Third Division (today's Second Division) for the first time, and the
situation had looked disastrous. The squad was, in football terms, elderly. Home
attendances were established well below the 10,000 mark, and debts were escalating at a
dangerous rate. Letters on the pages of the Burnley Express pointed accusing fingers at
the Board and foretold of the day when Burnley's very existence would be in peril. But
that was to come a few years later.
Although the Burnley Football Club of 1980 was
indeed in something of a state, the club held one last card. Miraculously, the greying,
arthritic youth system had produced one last golden litter of Claret cubs. In late 1981,
as Bob Lord lay on his deathbed, these youngsters came together and took the Third
Division by storm. Containing future stars like Trevor Steven, Brian Laws, Mike Phelan and
Vince Overson, together with wise defensive owls like Martin Dobson and Alan Stevenson,
this team put together a 20 match unbeaten run and won four of their last five games to
clinch the Third Division Championship.
Despite all the mismanagement, hubris and
selling-to-survive, the Clarets were back in the Second Division for the 1982-83 season
with a new Chairman and another set of promising youngsters. Had Burnley got away with it?
A storming start provided grounds for cautious optimism, but what followed - one of the
most eventful seasons in the contemporary history of the club - demonstrated how misguided
this optimism was to be. The promising opening to the season soon gave way to a desperate
struggle for league points. From September 11 to the end of 1982, Burnley collected just
eight league points from eighteen games and were defeated fourteen times, a record that
left them emphatically bottom of the table.
In a paradox almost too dazzling to countenance,
the Clarets, in the midst of one of the worst runs of league form in their history,
discovered an appetite for Cup football. Respective runs in the League Cup and the FA Cup
were ended only at the semi-final and quarter-final stages, and both campaigns witnessed
some stirring performances. The replacement of manager Brian Miller with Frank Casper on
January 19th also saw League form improve for a few weeks. Four consecutive home wins
under Casper briefly raised hopes that survival was still possible. But by mid-March
Burnley were out of both knockout competitions and their Cup commitments left them facing
a backlog of league fixtures from the daunting perspective of bottom place.
Defeats against Cambridge and Wolves built up
the pressure on players and fans alike as Burnley took on mid-table Blackburn Rovers at
Ewood Park on Easter Monday. Although the Clarets desperately needed to win, just the
avoidance of defeat would have been an acceptable outcome, something upon which to build.
The first half was depressing in its familiarity
as Blackburn went two goals ahead in the face of another poor display by the Clarets. Fans
aware of the importance of the game feared the worst. It was at half time, with Blackburn
cruising and in complete control, that the first unrest occurred. The police decided to
make a stand against a small and frivolous act of foolery - a lone wellington boot was
being tossed randomly around the away end. Granted there might have been one poor soul
hopping about, but since when have the police been concerned about protecting the right to
matching footwear?
A few policemen waded in to try and grab some of
those they had seen throwing the boot around, but this merely started off isolated
scuffles. The police retreated empty-handed, and this should have been the end of the
matter. However, fans making their way to the snack bar reported a rapid build up of
police and dogs in the area between the Darwen End and the main stand. No one was prepared
for what happened next.
With no warning, the police let their canine
friends loose on the Darwen End, and followed with truncheons drawn. Fans returning to the
terraces from the snack bar emerged into a scene of chaos, surrounded by snapping,
snarling dogs and policemen cracking heads indiscriminately. I've no wish to romanticise a
certain section of the Clarets' support in those days. They were tough, hard lads who
liked nothing better than a public brawl, but few of the many innocents caught in the
middle of this crass act of police violence could find it in themselves to condemn those
Burnley fans who fought back.
This was how the roof was utilised. Faced with
an uncompromising constabulary, some of those hundreds of fans cornered in the Darwen End
began to rip and kick pieces of plastic and asbestos from the rotten timber frame of the
enclosure. At first these crude missiles were directed at their aggressors standing on the
other side of the no-man's land that had now appeared on the terrace.
By this time the second half was due to start,
but the players remained in the dressing room. This was a significant moment. Up to that
point, the throwing of missiles had been a straightforward statement against the police
and their arrogant aggression. But now the actions of the fans had come to confront
another factor - the resumption of play - and this deepened the symbolism of the disorder.
It wasn't just about police tactics now; the disorder had encroached upon the wider issue
of the team itself and its performance on the pitch.
Frank Casper made his way to the police box from
which the PA system was controlled and let forth a stream of hollow rhetoric. 'We don't
want you, we never want to see you at Turf Moor again. Those arrested are a shame to the
club' was the tenor of his outburst. The response was immediate as yet more asbestos came
down from the roof. This time it was thrown on the pitch in utter contempt of one of the
men who had presided over the decline of the team they spent a large chunk of their
disposable incomes following. The message was clear: our club is dying and you are
responsible. Don't you dare tell us we can't support our team.
Significantly, no cheers of righteous
indignation greeted the cries of the manager. The Burnley fans in the main stand - seated
in the section closest to the away terrace - had seen everything, and their mood, although
tinged with irritation at the delay, was one of reserved sadness. They knew what it was
they were witnessing: another away defeat, another nail in the coffin, and the visible
decay of the very social fabric of the club. The hasty and misguided nature of Casper's
words was illustrated in the following weeks as the police conceded that they could not
bring charges against any of the 32 fans that had been arrested. Many of these 32 had been
assaulted and grabbed as they had emerged from the tea hut.
Vince Overson, a Longside hero and the last of
the class of '82 to leave the club, came out onto the pitch and appealed for calm, as did
Norman Jones, one of the Darwen End instigators who had somehow made his way round the
pitch to the entrance of the tunnel. Eventually the boiling anger subsided to a simmer and
the players emerged for the second half. Without looking likely to salvage something from
the game, the Clarets responded to their predicament. Derek Scott made a timely arrival at
the end of a hopeful Kevin Young cross and poked the ball past Gennoe. But Burnley simply
did not have the nous or the spirit to conjure an equaliser.
This 2-1 reversal turned out to be the third of
five consecutive defeats that left the Clarets with an unrealistic task of winning five of
their last seven games to stay up. It was to their credit that they were relegated only
after losing their last game against Crystal Palace, but the desperately poor performance
served up by the Clarets in that do-or-die game at Selhurst Park underlined how corroded
the Turf Moor underbelly had become.
The Easter Monday clash with Blackburn went down
in official annals as a dark moment in the history of the club and its fine supporters. I
would like to proffer a different conclusion. Quite simply, the Ewood riots represented
the moment when Burnley fans lost any remaining sense of humorous cynicism at the plight
of their club. With a Board that allowed no input from the fans whatsoever, only two
options were left: Voice or Exit. The latter option was eventually taken by all but a
couple of thousand Clarets. The former option was exercised regularly in newspapers and on
the terraces, but to no avail. The club was deaf to the voice of its supporters. Martin
Luther King once made a famous observation about public disorder. "Riots," said
a King infuriated by ignorant condemnation of radical black activism, "riots are the
language of the unheard."
P
hil Whalley
November 2000
