Peter Foley was born in Edinburgh on 28th June 1944, the son of a white mother and a black Ghanaian father. He was one of the very few black players in League football in the 1960s and was the first black player at Workington and Chesterfield (when both were still Football League clubs), as well as Scunthorpe. He will feature in in Football’s Black Pioneers as Scunthorpe’s first black player.
Peter suffered his first football-related racist abuse while playing for Workington at Queen’s Park Rangers’ Loftus Road ground on 5th April 1965. The crowd was only 4,642 but Peter recalls that during the warm up he could hear chants of “Zulu, Zulu, Zulu.” He quickly realised those chants were aimed at him as the only black player on the pitch.
Aged just 20, the impact on Peter was traumatic. When he saw that the first fixture for the following season was a return to London and an away game with Millwall he was so concerned about the abuse he might have to suffer, particularly given the reputation of the Millwall crowd, that he feigned injury so he would not have to travel to the capital.
This was a seminal moment in Peter’s life. He realised he had let himself and his team down and allowed the racists to win. He never feigned injury again and he vowed he would never again hide from racism but would fight it wherever he came across it. That he did so is amply demonstrated by his MBE, awarded in 2003, for his anti-racism work both through his Trade Union and the Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football campaign.
There is much more to Peter’s story, including his unexpected discovery of a brother he didn’t know he had. You can read it in Football’s Black Pioneers which will be published on 31st August 2020 and can be pre-ordered here: https://www.conkereditions.co.uk/2020/06/05/footballs-black-pioneers-pub-date-moved-forward-to-august-available-now-for-preorder/