“When it comes to thinking about politics and race, we cannot
always rely on culture as a way to remedy deeper structural questions. Having
particular players or particular footballing cultural moments as a point of
identification is immense. However, it cannot be a deliberate or a forced
thing.”
Clive Chijioke Nwonka
“The theory of race, specially created, it seems, for some
pretentious self-educated individual seeking a universal key to all the secrets
of life, appears particularly melancholy in the light of the history of ideas.
In order to create the religion of pure German blood, Hitler was obliged to
borrow at second hand the ideas of racism from a Frenchman, Count Gobineau [4],
a diplomat and a literary dilettante. Hitler found the political methodology
ready-made in Italy, where Mussolini had borrowed largely from the Marxist
theory of the class struggle. Marxism itself is the fruit of the union among
German philosophy, French history, and British economics. To investigate
retrospectively the genealogy of ideas, even those most reactionary and
muddleheaded, is to leave not a trace of racism standing.”
Leon Trotsky: What Is National Socialism? (June 1933)
Black Arsenal was published to coincide with the start of
the 2024/25 season. It is co-edited by Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Associate
Professor of Film, Culture, and Society at University College London (UCL), and
writer Matthew Harle. It is the first of its kind. The book was remarkably 10
years in the making, with a stunning amount of research undertaken.
Asked about the origins of the book, Nwonka said, “Well, it
was me thinking a lot about my own background as a person and things that had
inspired me. I had started working at the London School of Economics, and I was
thinking about the role of race in culture and the ways of thinking associated
with it. I was being introspective with myself and realising that John Barnes
was important to me in terms of being my first source of inspiration and
recognition.
Then that led to the inspiration for Black Arsenal. I was at
university, trying to make sense of what this concept meant and what other
factors might be involved. The chapter ‘Defining Black Arsenal’ is all about
the genesis of that idea. Then you start looking at history and why Black
people in London gravitate mostly towards Arsenal.
Whether you are from south London or wherever, and then you
realise there is a history that goes beyond Ian Wright, back to the 60s and
70s, to Brendon Batson, Paul Davis. It goes back to what Islington was in the
70s. It goes back to the JVC centre and the community work the club were doing
in the 80s. All these factors were already in place before Ian Wright arrived
in 1991.”
The book examines the black history of Arsenal football club
from a broadly academic standpoint. It also features contributions from former
players such as Ian Wright and Paul Davis, as well as contributions from Paul
Gilroy, Gail Lewis, and personal responses from Clive Palmer, Ezra Collective, and
writer Amy Lawrence..
The timing of the book could not be more prescient. Since
its publication in 2024, there has been a significant and distinct growth in racist
and fascist forces. Recently, as Chris Marsden writes, “Unite the Kingdom
demonstration in August this year was the largest far-right mobilisation in
British history. Estimated at between 100,000 and 150,000, participation in
London exceeded the numbers usually mobilised by anti-Muslim demagogue Tommy
Robinson and extended beyond his usual support base of football hooligans and
fascist thugs. This core periphery was boosted by the presence of workers and
their families, including from among the most deprived layers, who have
swallowed the far-right’s message blaming social distress and the collapse of
essential services on migration.
It should be noted from the start that Arsenal have not
always had a spotless anti-racism stance. Like most businesses, it has made its
fair share of mistakes regarding its stance on racism. During the refurbishment
of the old Highbury North Bank in 1992, Nwonka recalls, “I remember as a kid, the
first week of the Premier League season, there were all these half-rebuilt
stadiums because of the Taylor report [into ground safety after the
Hillsborough disaster]. Of course, no one wants to watch a building site on Sky
Sports – so the idea came up that you cover it up with these illustrations of
your imagined fanbase.” The original North Bank mural was an artist’s
impression of a sea of white faces, with red and white scarves, which had to be
replaced with a more inclusive mural.
The contributions from Paul Davis and Ian Wright are important,
as they were key figures in the development of a more integrated Arsenal team. Davis
paved the way for Ian Wright and later generations of players. Ian Wright was a
game-changing signing from Crystal Palace. Always the rebel, he appealed to
both black and white younger working-class fans. He, in turn, set the stage for
Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, and Bukayo Saka.
Despite being seen as a bit of a rebel, Wright and Arsenal,
for that matter, have not been shy in exploiting the commercial possibilities of
such a global and multi-racial fan base. Nike and now Adidas have moved quickly
in exploiting Arsenal's multicultural teams for profit; Nwonka thinks there is
a danger of such exploitation.
“With things like the Arsenal Africa shirt or the Jamaica
shirt,” he says, “they have been quite open about the fact that they recognise
that there was a consumer base that will find the resonance in something that
pays homage to Afro-Caribbean culture. However, I have been attending the
Notting Hill Carnival since I was four years old. Moreover, you would always
see Arsenal shirts there all the time, rather than those of QPR, Brentford,
Fulham, or Chelsea. However, what some brands often do is invest in what they
imagine to be Black culture, whereas Black Arsenal, I believe, begins with
Black people.”
Football has been a global game since its inception, played worldwide.
However, with the advent of satellite television from companies such as Sky, the
game has reached a far greater level of global integration.
As David Storey relates, “ Football has always had essential
linkages connecting places. Some clubs were formed by, or as a result of, British
migrants, and in some instances, this is still reflected in contemporary
football. Football has always had essential linkages connecting places. Some
clubs were formed by, or as a result of, British migrants, and in some
instances, this is still reflected in contemporary club names or colours.
Athletic Bilbao's origins and English name are attributed to English migrant
workers in the Basque Country (Ball, 2003). A similar explanation accounts for
Young Boys in Switzerland, Go Ahead Eagles in the Netherlands, and The
Strongest in Bolivia, among others (Goldblatt, 2007). The shirt colours worn by
Juventus were reputedly borrowed from Notts County (the world's oldest
professional club) shortly after the Italian club's formation (Lanfranchi club
names or colours.
Despite this early evidence of international linkages, English
football remained somewhat insular for many years (2001). Despite this early
evidence of international linkages, English football remained somewhat insular
for many years, with restrictions on the importation of foreign players. While
the migration of professional footballers is a long-standing phenomenon, and relatively
pronounced in countries such as Spain, France, and Italy, the migration of
players into or out of Britain was much less apparent (Taylor, 2006). However,
recent years have seen substantial numbers of footballers from other parts of
the world arriving in the Premier League (and into the lower tiers in the
English league system). This internationalisation has occurred alongside the
increasing commercialisation of the game.”
While I wholeheartedly recommend this book, it should be of
interest not only to Arsenal fans but also to the broader reading public. The
historical study of black footballers who played for Arsenal is a legitimate pursuit.
However, much of the content of the book is dominated not by a class attitude
towards racism, but by too many contributions, including Nwano’s, that see the
rise of racism through racially tinted glasses.
Nwonka addressed this, saying, “Of course, I have got a
small quantity of criticism from some quarters. One person, when I first posted
about the Black Arsenal idea, wrote to me to say: ‘I have been going to Arsenal
since the 1970s. I do not see race; I watch football.’ I thought to myself:
‘Well, I am not going to sit here and tell someone whether they should or should
not see. However, have you stopped and thought that maybe the reason that you do
not see race when you go to Arsenal is that Arsenal has normalised racial
difference in a way that some other clubs have not? Moreover, that may be an
important thing to recognise?”
Nwonka’s original idea for
the book was for it to be dominated by appropriate references to French
poststructuralists and the postmodernist and pseudo-revolutionary Frantz Fanon,
who was and is a darling of the Pseudo-Left groups. Fanon and
Poststructuralists were among other pioneers of the anti-Marxist Critical race
theories, which is a “body of academic writing that emerged in the US in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, which combines postmodernism and subjective
idealist philosophy with historical revisionism and racial sectarianism. Although
written in a different form, the book remains dominated by these
anti-working-class theories that prioritise race over class
