Blue Moon: Down Among the Dead Men with Manchester City by Mark Hodkinson (Mainstream Publishing 1999)

 

Royle and Donachie are contrary personalities, but they share a cultural background from which much of British football is still forged. Donachie was brought up in the Gorbals district of Glasgow, one of five children living in a house without a bath where several families shared the same outside toilet. Royle lived in inner-city Liverpool, forced to sleep on a camp-bed in his parent’s bedroom because of a shortage of space. Football was their ticket to somewhere better.

Time has not lent enchantment to Donachie’s view of his home city of the ’50s and early ’60s. ‘The shipyards were closing down and it was a hard place to grow up in. There were gangs on the streets and it was a very aggressive environment. If you showed any interest in your school work you were seen as a swot,’ he says. His mother died when he was 12 and he did not get on particularly well with his lorry-driver father. ‘He was a hard Glasgow man who would never show his feelings or emotions. He didn’t really give me much encouragement, except to say I was crap! He gave me one good piece of advice though; he told me to try and find a club in England.

Does My Party Look Big In This?

Christ, look at the cornucopia of SPGB meetings on the back page of the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard? And it only goes up to M on that page!

You just know that there would have been shedload* of meetings in Prestonpans that month as well. Maybe a four part lecture series on 'Marx and the Reification of McCowans Highland Toffee: a reply to the Falkirk School'. What else were you going to do in Prestonpans on a wintry January night back in 1986?

Looking at that page from 1986 in the here and now of 2007 is the impossibilist equivalent of that scene from 'Stardust Memories'. You know the scene where Woody Allen takes time out from ripping off paying cinematic homage to Ingmar Bergman to ripping off pay cinematic homage to Fellini? The only difference is that, in comparison to any SPGB meeting I've ever attended, there appears to be a decent gender balance in the carriage Woody is sitting in . . . oh, that and they look younger and happier as well.

And who was that who was listed to speak at a Forum of the Islington Branch of the SPGB on the 13th February of that year? The Research Officer of the South Wales NUM? Whatever happened to him? Wanker.

*"shedloads of meetings": Back in '86, on the first, second and fourth Monday of the month the Prestonpans SPGB study group would meet here between 1830-2000 for their discussion meetings, but had to meet here on the third Monday in the month because the Prestonpans & Humbie Nicky Campbell Appreciation Society had already pre-booked their preferred venue.