Manchester United: The Biography by Jim White

This brilliantly crafted history of Manchester United contains, in reality, three stories running parallel to each other. The first and obvious story is that of the football club from its humble working class origins through to the billion pound corporate global monolith that it has become today. Even as a life long Chelsea fan, I found this history of the Red Devils compelling reading. A second less obvious, but equally compelling story, emerges concerning how football in Britain has changed its complexion over the decades from its amateur, local community status to its current status as a global corporate brand and play thing for the obscenely rich. Manchester United is now just one of half a dozen such clubs in Britain whose economic turnover is every bit as powerful as that of a medium sized multinational company.

Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, Jim White has produced a tale that reflects the changing nature of our world; socially, economically and politically. To read this passionate and detailed study of Manchester United Football Club is to understand, in microcosm, how the British nation has been forced to evolve in the face of a rapacious globalism that is drawing everything into its orbit. And, without in any way wishing to detract from the magical story of Manchester United Football Club, it is the latter two narratives that I found myself drawn to, and it is to these historical narratives that I feel I ought now to give my attention.

I should say right from the outset that this might be a fairly lengthy review given the wonderful abundance of irresistible passages that fully deserve substantive quotation. But given that this absorbing history spans some one hundred and thirty years of sport in the modern era, I should be forgiven for lack of brevity. It is my hope that, having scanned this review, readers will be tempted to get a copy of Jim White’s work even though, like me, they are not, and never will be, official Man U supporters. In fact it is precisely this point of who is a Man U supporter that White addresses at the very start.

We know that millions of people across the planet claim allegiance to MUFC but, as JW asks, What is it that all these millions of people love? Attempting to answer his own sociological question JW writes: If there are seventy-five million fans, there are probably seventy-five million reasons for being a supporter. For me it was purely an accident of geography. there is no denying that many of those millions couldn’t place Manchester on a map of the world. For them, detached from the clubs geographical and emotional roots, clearly their support is nothing to do with the articulation of local identity. For many, it is largely a matter of success. And, over the past fifteen years, as United have been pre-eminent, winning more titles and trophies than anyone else in England, success has been a constant recruiting sergeant. The fact, too, that they play in an English-language environment has enhanced United’s universal appeal ahead of, say, Juventus or Bayern Munich. P

JW has much more to say on the question of United’s massive supporter base in the introduction, and in a sign of what is to follow, that opening discussion is thoughtful, challenging and perceptive.

Then comes the start of the history proper and it is here that JW proves to be not just an proficient sports writer, but an historian in his own right, and a damn good one at that. Just consider these few lines outlining the humble origins of Manchester United and you could be forgiven in thinking that you were reading a passage from the Frederick Engels classic, Condition of the English Working Class. JW writes of the Newton Heath Football Club, the forerunner of the modern day MUFC: It was here, in this industrial Hades, in between the tracks and the chemical works, that the world’s richest football institution took its initial wheezy breath. It was here, in a spot that knew little of a world beyond its own filth-restricted borders, that a worldwide phenomenon, followed with religious devotion by millions, took its first, faltering, Bambi-esque steps. No, Bambi is the wrong image: nothing in Monsall then or now has ever been cute. This is dirty old town. P16

The dirty old town that JW refers to is, of course, the same dirty old town made famous by 1960’s folk singer, Ewan MacColl.

JW consolidates the point with this poignant description: Everywhere was the noise and grime of industrial wealth-generation, a thick blanket of noxious fug belched out from a forest of chimneys, punctuated by flames spitting from furnaces.. the club of Law, Best and Charlton, of Cantona, Beckham and Giggs, of Rooney, Tevez and Ronaldo had an inauspicious beginning, played out in a mudbath and choked in smog. P16

JW then adds an important and probably little know point concerning the religious affiliations of the early club formation: Unlike many football clubs there was no church connection in United’s start. Although the reds have frequently been identified as Manchester’s Catholic club, that was a reputation which did not emerge until the 1950’s when Matt Busby, the devout west of Scotland Catholic, tapped into a nationwide scouting network of priests and boys clubs in a relentless search for footballing talent. Besides, even in Busby’s pomp, United never operated a selective policy out on the park. Ability was what mattered the faith of football came above all else. P16/17

As for the company who established the Newton Heath Football and Cricket Club, they had a real problem. Working for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company’s Newton Heath carriage works was no picnic. As JW explains: It was dirty, dangerous and with little to entertain the working man in his brief moments of spare time, other than drink that is. In the middle of the nineteenth century the average male life expectancy in Little Ireland, the notorious part of Manchester was as low as seventeen. Booze was the principal escape from the wretchedness of industrial city life. The burghers of Manchester were so alarmed that the men whose labours had made them rich were becoming pickled in alcohol that they looked around urgently for an antidote. P18

I suspect this scenario was far from unique for the industrial workers of northern England. JW continues: In 1878 the L&YR board, in an attempt to find a solution, charged its dining room committee with organising what it termed classes of improvement. Team games had recently been codified in the public schools and were being actively promoted as a muscular alternative to the many evils thought to be afflicting Victorian society, from drinking to masturbation. So the committee proposed a sports club, and the board approved. P18

Under the impetus of muscular Christianity, and the general middle class philanthropic mood of the times, the seeds of Manchester United Football Club, and many other northern football clubs, were sown. Ironically enough, even today, our economic and political masters are still advocating sport as a way of subduing the anger and alienation of the working class rather than deal with the root causes of economic poverty and the associated social deprivation. A little spot of philanthropic charity wrapped up as the big society is, in essence, the same old sticking plaster that was attempted in the nineteenth century. Ah, but I digress.

As JW takes the story into the 20th century a key milestone in football’s moneyed history was reached, that of the first attempt at a players union. Fed up with parsimonious employers insisting on a maximum wage, they (the Man United players) formed the Professional Footballers Association and sought to affiliate with the General Federation of Trades Unions. These guys (MUFC) had just won football’s most prestigious trophy yet their chances of enjoying the financial fruits of success were minimal. P31

How times have changed! JW then sets this early manifestation of player power in a fuller historical perspective. JW elaborates: it was appropriate the body was formed in Manchester, home of the co-operative and union movement, birthplace of the chartists and the suffragettes, cradle of the Guardian, a town that always had at its beating heart radicalism and dissent. P32

What were the precise demands of this first players union? JW spells it out: The body was quick to set out an agenda: a fair distribution of football’s wealth, an end to under-the-counter payments, a recognition of the players standing within the game. Plus some security of tenure. An end, in short, to the virtual slavery that had shackled the game since it was first codified. And if it didn’t come, then the right to strike. P32

In the short term this first manifestation of player power was beaten back but one hundred years later, post Bosman ruling, the top players have huge, some might argue far too much power. Of course here, we are only really talking of the Premier League. For the lower divisions, player power is only a distant prospect and by the time we reach the divisions outside the football league we are back to working class artisans seeking forever to improve or at the very least, to maintain their status and income in the face of globalised corporate interests.

JW rounds off the early successful decades of the club with an appropriate few paragraphs on the effects of world war. JW writes: When war came in the summer of 1914, it cut a swathe through English football, killing off players by the dozen. Sportsmen were generally the first to volunteer, believing that taking on the Germans would be much like an away fixture against Burnley. Whole companies of footballers who stuck together in trenches, much like the platoons of butchers, bakers and candle-stick makers, were wiped out at the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres. . Football, the working man’s escape, the game dreamed up as an improving moral force, suddenly did not seem quite so important anymore. P35

After the ravages of First World War JW turns his attention to how, in imperceptibly small steps, the working class football club that was Manchester United was turned into an international conglomerate. JW summarises: The organisation that began as a recreational outlet for working men had developed in the latter end of the 1990’s into an international leisure conglomerate. The change happened slyly, a snowballing agglomeration of hints and clues like a flotation on the Stock Exchange in 1991 and the removal of the words Football and Club from the club crest in 1998. In less than a decade United had become an entertainment corporation, a Hollywood-style purveyor of celebrity, a production line to manufacture cash housed within the Theatre of Dreams. P38

As for United, so for all the big clubs in the new English Premier League. But the battle for the soul of English football went back many decades and in the 1930’s the Football Association was so moved to comment, the private proprietorship of clubs carried on for the purpose of speculation and profit was invidious to the interests of the game as a whole. P38

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing for United or for football generally especially in the decades between the two world wars. And JW showing once again his historical acumen recounts: The late twenties and early thirties were not a good time to be in Manchester. The city was in crisis. The Depression was having a catastrophic effect on jobs, trade was in freefall and the cotton industry that had for so long been the wellspring of Mancunian affluence was in steep decline. Consequently there was little spare cash around to devote to watching football. As crowds tumbled, United lurched into a vicious downward spiral. P47

It is hard for people of this generation to imagine a United that had fallen of hard and desperate times. Ironically, it could happen again, given the stranglehold the Glazer’s have on the club and the millions of leveraged debt they have piled onto what was once the richest club in the world. If General Motors in the US can go broke make no mistake that a football club, even one with such immaculate historical credentials, is not immune to the frailties of the global markets. But I get ahead of myself. It is to the last great depression that JW draws our focus and it makes for sober reading for any football fan let alone a hard core United supporter. JW writes: Ten years of systematic failure had completely changed the character of the club: this was an institution ripe with dissent and dismay, poorly run and consequently poorly supported. They were a joke, a music hall mainstay. In the playgrounds of Manchester the gag was: Have you heard United have signed two Chinese internationals: We Won Once and How Long Since. P54

And remember, Jim White is a life long United supporter so he can hardly be accused of wanting to tarnish United’s image. These were hard times indeed for football and for the country generally. It would take the ravages of another world war before United could embark on their second round of glory. Here of course we arrive at the Busby era and a group of young inspiring players soon to be referred to as the Busby babes. Their coming tragedy is spelled out in some detail by JW and it is not necessary to dwell on such matters here. It is sufficient to note JW&s astute reference to Dunkirk and all that it meant to the British psyche. Referring to United’s determination to keep the club going after the horror of Munich, JW writes: This is what was done in those days: they carried on. It was only eighteen years after Dunkirk. Locked into the nation’s sense of itself was the idea that in the face of extremis, you got on with things. Munich was United’s Dunkirk. P124

What is of real interest from these simpler times, and perhaps offering a salutary lesson for our own impersonal corporate era, is the relationship that the Man United players had with their local supporters. JW notes of the new generation of United stars: Most of the time, if they weren’t having a larger and lime or a game of pool, or heading off into town, to the Gaiety or the Oxford cinemas, they would spend their spare hours joining in the games of street football with the local kids. Such familiarity gave extra depth to the relationship between player and supporter: these were our boys, the locals thought – they felt they knew them, thought of them as family. P101

It was only sixty years ago but so far removed are such things from our modern experiences that we may as well be talking of the ancient Romans or Greeks. Can you imagine Ronaldo or Rooney playing kick-about with the local street kids? I think not. After the traumas of two world wars, the Great Depression in between, and for United, the immediate trauma of the Munich air crash, JW takes his readers into the nineteen sixties and much brighter times. JW writes: Like the wider world, football took to the sixties looking to the white heat of technology. Modernism was everywhere. New methodology was being applied by a vibrant younger generation of managers and coaches. P143

For United, they had rebuilt their youthful team and could boast the ‘golden trinity’ of Law, Charlton and Best. But Best had an extra role. He was in effect, the fifth Beatle with all that went along with that onerous honour. Yes it bought him riches and fame beyond his wildest boyhood imagination but it all eventually took its toll a compelling story in its own right. But in the early days it was all new and intoxicating like much else in that decade. Football in the mid-sixties had become an adjunct of show-business and Bestie and United were leading the way.

Economically, things were looking up too. JW explains: In the sixties employment was high in Manchester, the factories still churned out tons of goods, the deindustrialisation that was to hit the city so hard was a good decade away. For now, there was money to be taken in town. P154

The use that money was put to was a clear sign of things to come. £300,000 was spent on creating executive boxes as part of a brand new stand. As JW notes: It was an important moment in the making of Manchester United, the opening of that stand. No longer would this be a club belonging exclusively to Manchester’s working class. Those with a bit of cash, those with aspirations, the fancy dans, from within the city’s boundaries and from beyond, were being invited to join the party. P154

As for Manchester United, so for football in general if not immediately, then in the years to come. By the seventies and eighties things started to look very different. The youthful optimism of the sixties was now giving way to a violent backlash – on the streets and on the terraces. The changed situation is perfectly summed up by JW: The condition of United reflected the wider world. These were bleak economic times. Like United, the once vigorous British economy was in shabby decline. There were three-day weeks, a stock-market collapse, a balance of payments crisis. Inflation was rampant, uncontrolled and everywhere. P184

United were relegated and the fans turned violent. Not just United fans but fans from right across the football landscape, but the travelling United fans were particularly implicated. Reporting on one nasty clash between United and Millwall JW tries to put it into some economic context: It was an outbreak of anarchy without any identifiable political purpose, in marked contrast to the student riots of the late sixties, and it precipitated nearly two decades of hand-wringing among politicians, policemen and football officials about what could be one to eradicate hooliganism from the game. For lads working in dead-end jobs, on the production line or behind the shop counter, United (and the associated thrill of some football hooliganism) was what made the week worthwhile. P197

It all came to a bitter head at Heysel Stadium on the 29th May 1985. With 65 Juventus supporters losing their lives in a stampede caused by Liverpool fans on the rampage, and British clubs banned from Europe, things in football had to change and change they did. Enter the big corporations and a few mega entrepreneurs. Small investors were bought out by big agglomerates, anxious for a share of those profits. Thus in the very success of (United’s) merchandising revolution were sown the seeds of the destruction of public ownership. P306

From here on in, Jim White offers a vital account of the board room manoeuvrings and corporate shenanigans that have led Manchester United and many other football clubs to be nothing but playthings of distant corporate interests. This story is far from over, and I suspect things will get a lot worse before the FA is forced into some serious regulation. By then football may be beyond regulation, just like the world economy itself.

The Sky TV stranglehold of the EPL is just about to get a lot more controlling with Murdoch’s News International empire on the verge of taking complete and total control of the entire Sky operation. Murdoch tried to get control of Manchester United itself and only narrowly failed. In the end the Glazer family succeeded where Murdoch had failed, so the local interests of football were once again sacrificed to corporate greed. JW tells the story well- very well. This is compelling and compulsory reading not just for football fans but for ordinary citizens across the globe. For if you want to know where global capitalism is leading, just follow the story of Manchester United Football Club over the next few decades. And where United leads, the others will be forced to follow.

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