We were shocked and saddened to hear of Benjamin Zephaniah’s death at the age of just 65. We have long been admirers of his poetry and his activism but he had many strings to his bow and others may remember him as Jeremiah ‘Jimmy’ Jesus from Peaky Blinders. We remember him particularly for his support of Football’s Black Pioneers and we were thrilled and honoured when he attended our launch event.
Later, it was our pleasure to help in a small way with the documentary he presented ‘Standing Firm – Football’s Windrush Story’. It is a mark of his generosity of spirit that our book was mentioned in the credits, he didn’t have to do that and many wouldn’t have done so. The documentary was excellent and is well worth watching, sadly it is now behind a pay wall but keep your eyes open, hopefully there will be a repeat:
There are now many footballers of Caribbean heritage playing in the English Football League but of course it was not always that way. Hull City for example did not field a single black player until 1986 but when they did so that pioneering first black player was Ray Daniel the son of St Lucian parents who spent much of his childhood on the island.
Ray features in Football’s Black Pioneers – the Stories of the First Black Players to Represent the 92 League Clubs. Bill Hern talked to Ray about his memories and feelings for the island of his parents’ birth.
His parents Joseph and Cecily Daniel nee President were born in St Lucia and came to London in 1960 seeking a better future for themselves. Finding the cost of living in London too high they moved 35 miles north to Luton where they settled. Ray was born there on 10th December 1964.
Joseph and Cecily felt that Ray and his brother would fare better if they were brought up with Cecily’s parents in St Lucia so Ray was sent there and spent much of his childhood with his grandparents, returning to England in 1972.
Ray recalled fond memories of his time on the island, “it was safe, free and uncomplicated” and “just how a child should be brought up. We looked after each other as a community.”
Educated at Belvidere School, Ray enjoyed his schooldays and recalls the excitement of going to the dock when ocean liners arrived. All in all it was an idyllic childhood but after seven years on the island, Ray’s parents decided it was time for him to return to England. Any disappointment he felt about leaving his grandparents and the freedom and sunshine of St Lucia were overcome by his excitement at seeing his parents after so long apart.
Ray settled quickly in Luton and immersed himself in his new environment. One of his most significant discoveries was football and he soon found that he excelled at the game. In St Lucia he had played cricket, so football was a new activity to him.
He shone for a local boys club to the extent that Luton Town signed him as a full-time professional when he was 18 years old.
Luton were in the top Division (what is now the Premier League) when Ray was selected as substitute in a crucial game at home to fellow relegation strugglers Sunderland. He got onto the pitch as a replacement for Wayne Turner but the match was a disaster for Luton who lost by three goals to one.
Ray made his full debut in Luton’s penultimate game of the season on 9th May 1983. It could not have been a tougher baptism, against second-placed Manchester United in front of 34, 213 people at Old Trafford. Luton lost 3-0 but won their remaining game to secure their First Division status.
The following season saw Ray spending time on loan with Third Division Gillingham before returning to Luton where he performed well but could never hold down a regular place in the team and in June 1986 he joined Hull City then in the Second Division (now known as the Championship).
Thus it was that on 23rd August 1986 Hull City, 82 years after it was formed, fielded a black player for the first time. Ray had a very happy debut as the ‘Tigers’ beat West Bromwich Albion 2-0.
Hull City vs West Bromwich Albion, match day programme, 23rd August 1986
Ray played 61 times for Hull before joining Cardiff City where his manager Len Ashurst described him as a “model professional.” In November 1990 Ray joined Portsmouth where he had perhaps his greatest success, an appearance in the FA Cup semi-final against the mighty Liverpool in front of over 40,000 fans at Villa Park, Birmingham. So near yet so far, Portsmouth held Liverpool to a goalless draw only to lose the tie on penalties.
Ray’s last game in the Football league was for Walsall in January 1997. In a career spanning 15 seasons Ray played 334 games and scored 13 goals. No St Lucian has come anywhere near this sort of record either before or since and Ray can lay claim to being St Lucia’s most successful ever footballer.
Had football been the world-wide game that it is nowadays there is no doubt that Ray would have been selected for the land of his parents’ birth. When asked if he would have liked to have played for St Lucia he unhesitatingly replied, “without a doubt.” He said he would even overcome his fear of flying in order to wear the St Lucian shirt.
Given the length of his career Ray would almost certainly have made a record number of appearances for St Lucia and would have also knocked in a few goals.
Ray has only been back to St Lucia once since 1974 and that was a sad occasion because his father died before he could get there. He has very few remaining relatives in St Lucia and found the island very different from the place he remembered but that might be because he saw it through the eyes of a man rather than a carefree child who enjoyed the safety and freedom of an idyllic childhood.
When asked how it felt to be the first St Lucian to make an impact in English football Ray admitted modestly that he had not realised he holds a special place in black British football history as the first black player for Hull but it makes him very proud to have put St Lucia on the football map.
The beers are in, the sofa has a ‘reserved’ sign on it – all geared up for the Euros Final tonight.
We will enjoy watching a diverse team that represents the many strands that go to make up England today:
Like many of this country’s most cherished institutions, this is an England team built on migrant labour. Harry Kane, who scored the clinching second goal against Germany and added two more against Ukraine, was born to an Irish father who moved to London from Galway. Bukayo Saka’s parents are Nigerian. Raheem Sterling was born in Jamaica. Ben Chilwell’s father emigrated to Britain from New Zealand. In total, 13 of England’s 26-man squad could have chosen to represent another nation.
The New Statesman
You can read more about some of the footballer’s stories here:
It seems strange to think that it was only 1978 when Viv Anderson became England’s first black full international. We have added the programme from his England debut game to our site:
Colin’s article opened with the story of Jack Leslie of Plymouth Argyle which we have featured on this site before. As a Barnsley fan Colin, understandably, also wrote about Steve Mokone, Barnsley’s first black player. If there were to be an award for the least pleasant of our Pioneers then Mokone would surely be a front runner!
“Also here … is Steve Mokone, the self-proclaimed Pele of South Africa who arrived at Barnsley in 1961, played one game, and caused so much (unspecified) disruption the club terminated his contract within five days. He later served 12 years in a US prison for assault. A character, as they say.”
Colin continues “Bill Hern and David Gleave, authors of Football’s Black Pioneers, say they set out four years ago to write a dip-in-dip-out tome that would appeal to sports fans. Yet the result is only ostensibly about the (not always) beautiful game. Rather, what emerges over 92 wildly different mini-biographies, is a far wider social history about the black British experience over the last 130 years, touching on everything from slavery to Windrush and black lives mattering. Here, writ large in often agonising detail, is racism, prejudice, isolation and the loneliness of going where others have not yet been.”
“‘We started writing a book about football,’ says Gleave today. ‘But as we progressed, we found we were uncovering more and more stories that made us realise, actually, these lives offered a real sense of a wider black British history; they touch on so many issues that members of the black community – whatever their job or position – have faced down the years.'”
But, Colin adds “Yet this is by no means a bleak read. The lives here are shot through with triumph, defiance against stacked odds and genuine, real-life heroism. There are moments of levity here too. In a chapter on Willie Clarke – who, on Christmas Day 1901, became the first black player to score a league goal while playing for Aston Villa – it is noted that his marriage to a white girl was disapproved of by her father. Ada Higginbottom’s dad was not, it is hinted, overly-concerned about Clarke’s Guyanese heritage but was none too keen on his daughter marrying a footballer.”
Colin also probed our reasons for writing the book: “Gleave is 68, white and a retired civil servant by trade. But in 1981 – the year of the Brixton riots – he married Roxanne, a Guyanese teacher, with who he has three mixed-race children, all now grown-up. ‘As a couple, we knew from first-hand experience there was very little black history taught in school so we decided very early that we would have to teach this part of their heritage,’ he says today. ‘We were always keen to stress that having this mixed heritage gives you not just one culture to draw on, but two. It is far more interesting and exciting.’”
Colin continued “Thus, began a three-decade journey into black history which has seen him produce books and online packs about everything from slave campaigner Olaudah Equiano to composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Then, four years ago, as he and Hern concluded an educational project on black soldiers who fought in World War One, the latter suggested the idea that would become this new book.
Hern is 64, also white and a retired civil servant. His passion for history had led him to focusing on black issues, he says, ‘because it is an area that is so rich but so often overlooked.'”
Colin explored how we set about the research for the book “That work included speaking to clubs (‘mainly useless’), sifting through old newspapers and programmes, chatting with local historians and going through more birth, death and marriage certificates than either man can count.
Online fan forums proved hugely useful – although not always. ‘On several occasions we had people saying to us something like, ‘Oh yes, we had an Egyptian prince play for us in the Twenties and he always played in bare foot. There are various stories of that sort doing the rounds, although sorry to say we never found any Egyptian princes.’
They interviewed about 20 of the pioneers, with Hern – a Sunderland fan now living in Yorkshire – speaking to Viv Anderson and Chris Kamara. The latter – today a semi-legendary pundit – had no idea he had been a trailblazer with Swindon, despite it being splashed all over the local newspaper at the time. ‘I also interviewed Yeovil Town’s,’ says Gleave, ruefully. ‘Then they dropped out of the football league so we couldn’t include it.'”
Chris Kamara
“If the book has a central message … it may be that work still needs to be done on tackling prejudice – in football and beyond. It points out that there remains, even in 2020, few black managers in the game.”
Quoting author Gleave again Colin wrote: “‘I think it’s quite easy for white liberal people to say things are getting better but actually, I think if you’re involved with the black community, it’s fairly obvious that things aren’t altogether better,’ he says. ‘My wife and I were abused on the street only a year ago for no reason so these things are still happening. Are things getting better? I don’t know, maybe. But what I am sure of is it’s easy to exaggerate how much better they are, and that is not a trap we should fall into. There is still a huge amount of work to be done.’”
* Football’s Black Pioneers is published by Conker Editions.
William Gibb Clarke, first black player to score in the English Football League
Bill Hern continued his virtual journey around the radio stations of Yorkshire when he spoke about ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ on Radio Leeds.
Understandably the interview focused on the clubs likely to be of particular interest to the audience: Leeds; Huddersfield and the two Bradford clubs. Although the catchment area may sound relatively small, Bill was able to draw South Africa, Jamaica and Sierra Leone into the discussion. Football in England really does owe an enormous amount to players who were born overseas. Scotland, Wales and Ireland all got a mention too.
You can listen to the interview here:
‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ will be published in less than two weeks, on 31st August.
During the four years it took to research ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ we have met and spoken to many wonderful people, players themselves and family members. Few have been more supportive than Alicia and Yvonne, the daughters of Albert Johanneson. Although Albert wasn’t the first black player at Leeds United it would have been impossible to write the book without referring to him. He was one of those pioneers who played during the most difficult years and was on the receiving end of the most vile racist abuse. His experiences undoubtedly contributed to his sad early death.
In spite of all the evidence to the contrary there are still some people who seem to believe that racism doesn’t exist in our society today. It would be nice if that were true but the experience of people from minority communities as they go about their everyday lives suggests otherwise.
Neither Dion Dublin or Micah Richards will feature in our forthcoming book ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ but their experience shows that being in the public eye does not protect you from the small minority of bigots who continue to believe that abusing someone because of their skin colour is acceptable: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/53121327
Chris Kamara, who does feature in our book, has also spoken out recently about his own experiences of racism. We truly hope that the stories in our book, stories that celebrate the contribution of pioneering black footballers, can help foster understanding and greater tolerance today.
