One of the very lucky things about my life has been that as a Baggies – West Bromwich Albion FC – supporter I witnessed Cyrille Regis plus Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson come into our team in the late 1970s.
Yet Cyrille’s shockingly sudden death on Sunday 14th January 2018 aged 59 will genuinely be felt well beyond his Midlands football fan base.
Nicknamed ‘The Three Degrees’ after a popular black female singing group of the day, these players created so many magic moments that lots of other clubs’ supporters appreciated them too.
Look for example at the Baggies’ 1979 3-5 win at Old Trafford as video evidence.
Cyrille and Laurie were cavalier attackers playing with the power, grace and freedoms of the world’s greatest players.
Laurie was sold to Real Madrid in 1979. Cyrille stayed put. His strike against Norwich at home was Match Of The Day’s goal of the 1981-2 season and epitomised his joyful, direct style of play.
Brendon by contrast confounded one aspect of dominant racist footballing prejudice at the time that black players could not fulfil the comparatively restrained and cerebral role of full-back.
Yet the impact of Cyrille’s success went far beyond football. He was a beacon of excellence and achievement at a time when racist politics were also very popular, especially in this part of the UK.
In the summer of 1976 I worked in the soft drinks warehouse of the famous Mitchells and Butlers brewery in Cape Hill, Smethwick on the western borders of Birmingham. Most employees were Baggies supporters.
The foreman was a National Front member who openly displayed copies of their Spearhead magazine on his desk. Most of the labourers and delivery drivers were too, apart from my uncle Dave who’d got me the job.
At times, i ‘d be next to a guy on one side moaning about how crap the union was and his mate on my other side talking how he hated the black guys working down the yard, was nasty but classic fascist sentiment.
I was threatened with my life when some of the guys found out that I had been covering over their “If They’re Black, Send Them Back” stickers with “They’re Welcome Here” ones. I was not actually attacked because my uncle was a black-belt judo instructor.
But remember that Smethwick was once Oswald Mosley’s parliamentary constituency in the 1930s, and was the place where a Tory candidate Peter Griffiths had ousted Labour’s Patrick Gordon Walker as MP in 1964, exploiting the slogan “if you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour”.
So there was no strong local reason why Cyrille and Co. would thrive at The Hawthorns. Full credit goes to the club management – especially 1950s Baggies idol and England centre-forward Ronnie Allen – for scouting Cyrille and Laurie, and then new manager Ron Atkinson for bringing in Brendon.
Few black players were breaking through into top-flight football then. Outright prejudice prevented clubs like Chelsea, Leeds or Newcastle from taking on talented black schoolboys or signing them from elsewhere.
Those that did make it through in the 1970s like West Ham’s Bermudan striker Clyde Best were regularly showered with bananas when they took the field.
But Cyrille helped turn that around by force of his skill and personality. He managed to get 5 England caps though deserved more.
But my favourite evidence of their impact was at Highbury on Boxing Day 1978. For some reason I cannot recall I ended up in an Arsenal section of the ground on my own and helpless to confront the racist abuse around me directed at The Three Degrees.
But though they didn’t score in our 2-1 victory by the end the racist cowards were mouthing insults at “you Midlands bastards”, dropping the racist element in favour of a pathetic, regionalist alternative. That kind of challenge from the pitch to racism on the terraces was crucial.
Not that this was a conclusive moment. Anti-racist activist Leroy Rosenior has spoken of how his family never went to see him play again after his QPR debut in 1985 where home supporters sitting next to them spat racist shit throughout the match at him.
But Cyrille; The Specials, The Beat and UB40 in local music; Lenny Henry in TV and stand-up; Rock Against Racism in music nationally; the Anti-Nazi League in politics nationally all shaped me and millions like me as proud anti-racists to this day.
Thanks Cyrille. Loved you.