In a previous blog to we looked at protest and protest culture on a national level in football fanzines; anti-racism, anti-Thatcher, the appalling state of grounds, police behaviour, anti ID cards, anti-discrimination and much more.

Fanzines also focussed on local issues, specific to their region or club or just something that annoyed the contributors and this blog will explore that. It might be something simple or small, it might be an evergreen topic like transfer policy or team selection, but fanzines mentioned all the bits that fans were thinking about that didn’t appear in the programme.

In the week that Prunella Scales passed away we’ll dedicate this blog to her and her most famous portrayal, the brilliant character Sybil Fawlty, a proprietor you had to approach with a certain measure of calm.

Crisis? What crisis?

Let’s start with a simple and enduring form of protest, the always sane, reasoned and rational one in fanzines about their club’s activity in the transfer market.

Brentford’s Voice of the Beehive issue 15 in January 1993 sees the Bees in the 2^nd tier, the newly named division 1 for the first time in 39 years but an injury crisis became so bad that the fanzine felt compelled to produce a cover suggesting a line up to help.

The editorial of issue 14 had been outspoken about the lack of transfer market activity and in true fanzine fashion immediately regretted it as the club signed Shane Westley for £100,000 from Wolves and striker Joe Allon from Chelsea for a club record £275,000 straight after its publication. This “timing error” lead to them to publishing in issue 15 a rather great “write your own editorial” idea that many fans/fanzines could/should have used over the years.

None of this helped, the Bees were relegated and poor Joe Allon drifted around the Port Vale, Lincoln and Hartlepools of this world before having to retire due to a patella fracture. He did punch Southend manager Barry Fry in the face at one point so it wasn’t a totally unsuccessful career (FYI this fanzine also carries an article with Marcus Gayle’s top ten gerbil tips, so THAT is going to be in a blog sometime soon.)

Another great but also essentially pointless article about transfer policies appears in Bristol City’s One Team In Bristol issue 158 from January 2010. Amongst the regular Rover baiting there is a serious piece on Gary Johnson’s transfer record. Well, when I say serious, I mean totally and utterly subjective which, to be fair, the author admits. However, in what must be a fanzine first, he goes on to suggest that the chairman keeps his cheque book in his pocket during the transfer window!

Shareholder rights?

Just as much as Margaret Thatcher was famously “Not for turning” club owners were often no better in their attitudes.

Coventry City fanzine The Westender reported on a shareholder meeting at the club, ‘Shareholders Speak Out‘ saw a correspondent attend the Club AGM. The final paragraph of this article is worth reading for the description of the Club’s trophy room alone. The Malayan Brewers Association were approached for a comment on this article, but they’re now called The Confederation of Malaysian Brewers Berhad (CMBB) and comprise only 2 parties, Heineken Malaysia and Carlsberg Malaysia so actually I didn’t bother.

Chairman John Poynton decided to wrap the whole thing up in 13 minutes and closed the meeting before ‘Any Other Business’. When challenged he simply declared that the meeting had been formally closed as any other business was not mentioned on the agenda! He was reportedly clearly piqued at the meeting taking a full two minutes longer than the previous year.[1] The fanzine continued protesting at the various progressively worse people Coventry conspired to find themselves in the hands of for decades to come.

Get orf my land

Chelsea Independent was born in 1987 and was the work of 12 fans who formed the Chelsea Independent Supporters Association including Mike Ticher of WSC fame. They began as fans organised opposition to an incredibly controversial plan from businessman David Bulstrode.

Bulstrode was a property developer who had come to own the grounds of Chelsea, Fulham and QPR. He wanted to raze Loftus Road and Craven Cottage to build apartments moving everyone to Stamford Bridge. Worse still QPR and Fulham were to be merged and Bulstrode’s bastard lovechild, Fulham Park Rangers, would ground share with Chelsea.

It seems incredible to consider that this could have happened to Chelsea today but they weren’t the same club in the 80s. As the Chelsea Independent (CI) fanzine launched, Chelsea were playing in the 2^nd division and had endured a series of disinterested owners. The former editor declared “It was a time when Chelsea were s**t. But, standing in the Shed eating our condemned meat pies and supping watered down Bovril, we still loved ‘em. Especially wee Pat Nevin and Kerry ‘on the head, son’ Dixon”

The threat from Bulstrode quickly faded in the face of vehement fan opposition but CI continued to highlight what was going on at the club for years to come. Cuddly Ken’s dodgy loyalty scheme, away ticket allocations, ticket prices amongst many other Batesesque ruses. The ever-accommodating Ken described the Independent as a “photocopied pamphlet”[2] but they sold upwards of 4,000 copes per edition and was a bargain at 20p. An article called Paranoia in issue 4 reveals that despite having paid to sponsor John Coady’s kit the club refused to include the fanzine’s phone number on the sponsors page as they were “a direct competitor to Chelsea Football Club”.

Strangely enough, towards the end of its run CI was criticised by some fans as too pro-Bates but too anti-Bates by others. In another great little vignette of what fanzines were like in terms of organisation the Chelsea Independent website reports that the first issue of the fanzine had to be sold exclusively at pubs, clubs and other outlets as a printing gremlin meant it wasn’t ready for an obvious deadline, the last game of the season.[3] Editor Peter Collins summed up what the fanzine meant saying “there is so much diversity of view – it has taken the fanzine movement to give this great bubbling mass of anger and humour an outlet and an edge”[4].

I’m Sorry, what?

There were other reasons for protest, it might be something simple like a historian wanting to correct something for example.

Rangers’ fanzine The Rangers Historian[5] started in 1987 but it wasn’t full of jokes, grating editorials, criticism or cartoons, it was full of history and stats. I’ve mentioned ‘fanzine adjacent’ fanzines before and a blog about some of them will appear soon, they might not be the traditional mix of jokes, rants, local ads and stats but they are independently produced and very passionate and dedicated to their topic, they are fanzines. The Rangers Historian was very much that and more importantly, creator Robert McElroy didn’t accept the authorised history of Rangers.

The club had celebrated its centenary in 1973 with, amongst other celebrations, a friendly vs Arsenal for which a crowd of 60,000 turned up. Thankfully they only paid a shilling entrance fee (Though the programme was 2 shillings!)

McElroy wasn’t happy though and tirelessly researched, campaigned and eventually proved that Rangers were in fact founded in March 1872. Rangers were able to celebrate their 150^th anniversary in a timelier fashion in 2022. The fanzine was an important record of the people and games that made the club what it was.

Lend us your (Orient)ear

What about today? Unfortunately, fanzines still have to remind certain elements of the crowd that their behaviour is unacceptable. Fortunately, there are still enough great people producing fanzines around to keep up the good work.

Congratulations to the Leyton Orient classic, Leyton Orientear (one of the all-time classic names as well!) on reaching an incredible landmark of 300 issues in October. Along with all the usual great mix of articles they provided a set of manager Top Trumps and more importantly a great report on setting up HerO’s, another minority supporters group for the club, this time a women’s supporters group. Female fit merch, women’s views about safety in the ground, female only surveys are all to be explored with the club to develop a “truly female friendly supporter experience”, a brilliant initiative. Chapeau.

Perhaps the biggest challenge though will be persuading people that the misogynistic song “East London is Wonderful” is absolutely not a suitable refrain in this day and age. A complaint surfaced in 2014 about this with the usual keyboard warriors shouting that protest down[6]. Here’s hoping the fanzine and HerO’s succeed this time, it’s great to see a fanzine carrying on the tradition of local, focussed protest.

The Final Whistle

Protest came in all shapes and sizes and for all reasons. Almost universally anything like this was just brushed off by clubs in the 80s and 90s, even the obvious lessons of Hillsborough, Bradford and Heysel were ignored so why bother with anything else. Thankfully this ignorant, counterproductive attitude led to more anger and protest at all sorts of issues.

How fruitful protest has been a matter for another day, there have been notable successes of course but the ability to protest against mega corps thousands of miles away nowadays is, well let’s just say rather limited.

Protest did however spill over in curious and very creative ways and as I’ve said in other blogs HAS successfully and still influenced the media and fandom we experience, and we should be eternally grateful that it happened and continues.

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[1] https://cadhain.wordpress.com/2020/07/10/the-westender-a-football-fanzine/

[2] https://www.chelsea-independent.co.uk/photocopied-pamphlet/

[3] https://www.chelsea-independent.co.uk/what-was-the-chelsea-independent/

[4] El Tel was a Space Alien. 1989.

[5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/rangers-matchprogrammes/albums/72157662700526235/

[6] https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2014/08/it-s-not-you-leyton-orient-why-sexist-song-means-i-m-walking-away-my-football-club