“The socialism I believe in is not really politics. It
is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be
truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other,
everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the
end of the day.”
It has been quite a month of moving on for Liverpool
Football Club. After the cathartic findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s
report and the announcement of a full investigation into the cover-up and smear
campaign of South Yorkshire Police, last week, more than a decade after ground
redevelopment (or relocation) was first seriously discussed, and two years to
the day after FSG’s arrival, the club have been given permission to expand
Anfield.
Provisional outlines are for around 15,000 seats to be added
to the main and the Anfield Road stands, all of which is of course conditional
upon the agreement of adequate compensation for the neighbours whose houses
stand to be demolished. And this is where things potentially get difficult – a
crumbling block as a stumbling block.
Ian Ayre stated last Monday at the town hall: “It is not Liverpool that is acquiring the properties, it is the
city council and Your Housing Group [a social housing developer]. We have
passed the ball really. If we get through this next stage then it becomes the
role of the planners and whether our planning application will be accepted”.
Pass and move – forward, but not to Stanley
Park.
Despite the club had already lost £59m in the 2010-11
financial year on plans for the new stadium project, it is still actually a
surprise to learn – or to be told – that the project will not be wholly or
partly financed by Liverpool, since it has been green-lit by Liverpool City
Council as part of the regeneration of Anfield district. However, it seems that
not everyone is yet sold on the idea of leaving their homes and others are
dissatisfied with the terms being offered by the City Council.
Monday’s Sky News carried an interview with the Chair of
Anfield’s Rockfield Triangle Residents’ Association, Patrick Duggan, who said
the club had acted in a manner that was “unkind”.
Is this the classic story of a corporate behemoth – although
in this case a much-loved one – steamrolling over the wishes of its near-powerless
neighbours? On the other hand, is it right that the will of a single resident –
and those of a conspiratorial bent have suggested there could be Evertonians on
Lothair Road – could derail a project that could potentially reinvigorate a great institution and much of the area?
Duggan claims that there has been a deliberate policy of
running the neighbourhood down – a duty of dereliction? – essentially making it
unliveable (it wouldn’t take much of a stretch to imagine city councillors,
after glasses had been clinked and flesh has been pressed, colluding in some
skulduggery, would it).
Anyway, Liverpool FC own ten properties and have relocated
residents to different areas of the city, leaving those ten units unoccupied
and boarded up. Arena Housing has done similarly to nine properties (three are owned by the council, four owner-occupied, four rented, five uncertain). With
abandoned property has come anti-social behaviour: first ex-con tenants re-housed
there by the council, then street gangs looking for territory and the everyman
dope-and-vodka oblivion-seeking of the underclass. After that came the
plunderers: scrap metal, copper piping, anything. Not only did this drive out
residents, it also depreciated the value of the property, making it cheaper for
Liverpool (or whoever) to buy – and presumably
the football club would have to buy the land from any third party – and yet, at
the same time, perhaps making the residents less inclined to sell.
Noises from council and club are that they’re “optimistic for
a positive solution”, whatever that means. No doubt emotional pressure will be
brought to bear; guilt trips may be mobilized: “you’re holding the club to
ransom”. Compulsory Purchase Orders have been mentioned. Are these the same
fans who bat not an eyelid at the news that Joe Cole and Alberto Aquilani’s
combined weekly salary was around the £180k mark? I will be quick to say here
that there is not a single set of supporters in the land who will prioritise
class solidarity with fellow fans of rival clubs over the particular, parochial
interests of their own club, who will not acquiesce in the mind-boggling absurdity
of these wages, leading to the one-eyed turning a blind eye (well, a look of awe
and disgust) to it all.
Of course, presuming the Lothair residents are not being
recalcitrant out of any ulterior motive, not overly sentimental, not holding
out for unrealistic prices (mayor, Joe Anderson says 800 new homes are to be
built as part of the regeneration project), the residents can do their bit for
the football club (and for this part of the city). Assuming they receive a fair price, naturally, and there’s the rub…
Regardless of how high-handed the mayor gets in rushing
through the purchases, perhaps the players can also do their bit to expedite the
materialisation of acceptable compensation. They could each donate a week’s
salary. It’s a devastatingly straightforward idea, one that ought to hold some
sort of resonance for a club, the edifice of whose modern rebirth was cemented
together by a hefty dollop of Shanklyist socialism (heaven only knows what he’d have made of the salaries they’re
paid these days) and who ought to feel deeply uncomfortable about the
allegations from Duggan that they have been left to walk alone. “We believe
that the people, even now, are being exploited,” he said. “They’re being dealt
with in a very underhand manner and are being offered peanuts for their houses
after years and years of uncertainty”.
Footballers often talk about “wanting to become legends”.
One assumes that, as they take their first footsteps in the
professional game – before they get sucked up and up to Felix Baumgarten
country, where the exorbitant rewards create de facto microeconomies, the player now a whale with its pilot fish – those childhood dreams of glory must still be at the forefront
of their thoughts.
Then – imperceptibly and yet implacably, one supposes – come the
distractions (not all players necessarily succumbing, too): the tenpercenters
start their whispering; the self-taught factotums (and their own overwrought scrotums) appear like foxes-in-the-box pouncing on a parried save; maybe the player’s ego
gets tangled up in pay-indexed pecking-order concerns. Innocence is lost. Detached from real world
numbers, caught up in salary blingo, alienated from the lives of the fanbase,
these Citizen Kanes’ demands for an extra £20k per week, the venality
of the modern player, has been captured by the synecdoche, ‘Cashley’.
Footballers also talk about “giving something back to the
community”.
Beyond the odd famous last-ditch tackle or legendary goal, this can be the players’ way of truly “giving
something back” – not just paying lip service to this notion when forced to
wander along to a school or a hospital to fill out their afternoon. What is
£100k out of the annual salary of Gerrard, Suárez, Reina, Joe Cole, Carragher…?
There may be some resistance. We know Gareth Southgate
managed to summon the indignation (maybe faux,
maybe vrai) to avoid signing up to the
Nurses’ Hardship Fund five years ago, to give up his honest day’s pay for his
honest day’s work, but could the Liverpool players – even those with a
naturally weaker connection to the club – really
raise the chutzpah to say “Sorry, I cannot afford to give up one week’s lucre
for the sake of ensuring our neighbours are re-housed fairly and that the club
can move forward”?
Liverpool’s annual salary
bill for 2010-11 was £129m. This works out at £2,480,769 per week. With FFP
around the corner, it’s perhaps significant that wages to turnover has
increased from 54% just three years ago to the present figure of 70%. With 35 houses in the street, this would mean each household received
£70,879 (the ones long since moved on could also receive money, in theory, albeit adjusted for inflation). Of
course, some calculations would be made to ensure that ‘ordinary’ members of the
staff at Liverpool FC didn’t have to forego a week’s earnings. Just the players
and coaching staff.
In the wake of the extraordinary PR debacle around
their recently appointed Director of Communications, Jen Chang, and the blogger
and fictitious Twitter persona Duncan Jenkins, this might be a chance to post
some good news through a neighbouring street’s eight remaining letterboxes.
