Prize-winning novelist Caryl Phillips interviews Anthony Clavane about ‘Promised Land’ at Old Broadcasting House, Leeds, 21-10-10

Caryl Phillips:

When I first met Anthony it was clear to me that he had a profound and encyclopaedic knowledge of Leeds writers: Keith Waterhouse, Alan Bennett, David Storey etc. We talked about Jewish migration to Leeds, which has a strange, symbiotic relationship to Caribbean migration. Certainly, in my case, many of the buildings and the streets that I walked as a youngster in the city in the sixties were the very same streets that the Jewish community had settled in, in Chapeltown, in an earlier era.
In essence, there seemed to be a triple narrative to Anthony’s conversation way back when, which crops up in his book, which has these three very strong narrative strands. One is about Leeds United; another strand is about Leeds and its writers – the way writers have emerged from this relatively small city in the West Riding of Yorkshire. And a third strand is about the Jewish community.

So the first question I wanted to ask is where did the book begin? Was there one of these narrative strands you felt a particular association with – and then the other two seemed to come into the picture? What was the genesis of the book?

Anthony Clavane:

Genesis is a good word. In essence, it came from my love of the Old Testament. The book is called Promised land. I am a Jewish atheist, which I realise is an oxymoron. As I have moved away from Leeds and the Jewish community and away from, to a certain extent, the football team – in that I don’t watch them very often – I wanted to celebrate what I considered to be a golden age in the history of Leeds, the north and British society. From 1960 to 2010 we have had fifty years of – and I think the spending cuts just announced have underlined this – a golden age; socially, culturally, economically, politcally and in terms of football. And also it was a golden age, I feel, in which an ethnic minority – like the Jews – could integrate into a northern city. Not in an unproblematic way; no-one can pretend that there wasn’t anti-semitism, racism, but I did feel that the story of Leeds, and Leeds United, had a secret history, which was how an immigrant community had been involved in Leeds United, and before them Leeds Rhinos, in the sporting identity of the city.

When I was a youngster I was steeped in Old Testament folklore. My favourite story was, and remains, the story of the exodus. Every passover, even though I’m an atheist, I still sit round the table with my family. I know Hebrew, I can read and speak the language, so I actually take the service. I love retelling the story – the book we read from, Hagadah, means ‘telling the story’ – and I want to tell the story of how a tribe, a people, escaped from their insular, parochial, provincial and, to certain extent enslaved, background, and tried to get into the promised land. To me, that’s the story of Leeds, the story of the communities who came to Leeds, whether the Irish and Jewish in the 19th century or the Afro-Caribbean and Asian in the twentieth century.

CP:

There is a line in your book, quite early on, when you say: “When my children were very young, they thought being Jewish and being Leeds were the same thing.” You’ve just spoken quite eloquently about this relationship and the hidden history of Leeds United you allude to very convincingly in your book which is deeply related to Jewish migration. I wondered why that was not the case for the black community in the city? Why has the Jewish community forged links with the club but why the migrants who came after them haven’t. I remember talking to Rio Ferdinand when he was here, when he was the club’s captain. His relationship as a captain to the Leeds black community was difficult; they didn’t understand why, when he went to get his haircut in Chapeltown, he was playing for that team. Historically there has been a division.

AC:

There are two points to make here. The first point is: this is not an unproblematic integration for the Jews. This is a problematic integration. I was reminded of that just walking from North Street to here (Old Broadcasting House) tonight, past part of what used to be a slum area of Leeds; the Jewish ghetto, the Leylands, in the early twentieth century. My father was actually born in The Leylands. That was where the Jews, who had escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe, came into Leeds and called it the promised land, a new Jerusalem. They referred to it as a kind of paradise. They became quickly disillusioned, of course, as every immigrant group has been. Over 150 years, integration has taken place. It has been, by and large, a positive, successful integration. But at the beginning there was anti-semitism. There are many examples. But in response to anti-semitism, the community looked first to rugby league and then to football as a way of belonging, of integrating. I studied, historically, what had happened. I went back to Tony Collins’ fantastic article on the Leeds Parish Church rugby team. It was a flagship of muscular Christianity. The Jewish community became passionately involved in it. It was closed down because of its rough play – attacking referees, a violent crowd (echoes with Leeds United) – but also because it attracted the Jewish working-class community; a community that was neither muscular nor Christian. That community was still working class for the next two generations. My generation was the first to break away from the ghetto. We did it through football, not rugby league. Elland Road was my first experience of mixing with non-Jewish people.

If you are black it’s different. It is more noticeable. But I still felt the lack of comfort of being there. When we celebrated a goal, it was a moment of transcendence. It didn’t matter who you were standing next to. You would embrace them. You yourself have called it a ‘moment of transcendence’. A wonderful phrase. All the differences you have – black and white, Jewish and non-Jewish, different classes – were transcended by that ecstatic moment of Leeds United scoring a goal. But, as you also tellingly pointed out, some of the fans you celebrated with would still make monkey noises when they saw a black player. I never experienced that.

The second point is that Albert Johanneson was hero-worshipped by Leeds fans. He lived near me in Moortown. I write about Albert in the book. A book needs to be written about the tragedy of Albert. One of the greatest players I’ve ever seen. He scored an amazing goal against Newcastle. Hemmed in by three players, he escaped them and scored – a metaphor really. But contrast his experience with Lucas Radebe’s, who also came to Leeds from South Africa, and also became a hero. By the time of Lucas, 30 years after Albert, we had moved, supposedly, into a new era of post-industrial, post-modern, cosmopolitan, multicultural Leeds. He was at the Millennium Square when it was opened by Nelson Mandela. It felt to me that Leeds was moving away from its racist image, its image of a cold, unforgiving town, and I felt this was a breakthrough.

The racism you suffered in the 70s and 80s wouldn’t begin to compare with the anti-semitism I occasionally encountered. So did you feel in the 1990s and noughties, Elland Road was again the place for you to be? Because, as I write in ‘Promised Land’, you yourself boycotted the club back in the 1980s.

CP:

So did you. All I will say is two words: Bowyer and Woodgate. They should never have played for Leeds again. I don’t think things changed that much. But let’s move on. I’m interested in the research. Let me read something else from your book: “My paternal great-grandfather, Phillip Clavanski, arrived in the city in the first year of the twentieth century. He was one of two million Jews who fled the Russian Empire following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. He came over in 1900 – his wife Maria following him a year later – sharing his boat with cattle which needed constant mucking-out. On his arrival at Leeds station, he was taken on a handcart to the Jewish ghetto. His ‘driver’ was a kind Irish boxer called Jimmy Gilmour who, when drunk, was known to fight lamp-posts with his bare fists. As they approached the ghetto, Jimmy – who spoke a bit of Yiddish – called out ‘Mir zanen do’, which means ‘We are here’. Phillip said that those were the three best words he’d ever heard.”

There are these terrific moments of imaginative evocation of your past in this book which led me to wonder about the research. You’ve recreated something that you obviously didn’t see. You’ve done it very evocatively. Who did you speak to? Did you go to Leeds Library? I know you’ve imagined these were the first words. How did you create this Leeds that spans over a century?

AC:

The first thing I did was talk to my parents and their generation, who are in their late 70s and early 80s. I thought, and still think, that when that generation passes away, how will we know about these things? I fear that my generation will not know, and that my children will not know. Interestingly they’ve never talked about it before. Every time I found out about Chapeltown or Cantors fish and chip shop or The New Synagogue, now a dance school, I asked them questions. But they wouldn’t talk about it.

But one of my great-uncles was a rabbi. He went into the reform movement, and he was ostracised for this by the orthodox movement, so he went on the road. And he took me as a child to all these synagogues in Chapeltown, like Louis Street and Reginald Terrace and the New Synagogue. They were small congregations of very elderly people. I used to sing to them. Uncle Sam taught me about everything – Jewish history in Leeds as well as Jewish mysticism and the Torah – and his stories formed a very powerful part of my folk memory. I used to reimagine what it was like. But I also went to another great-uncle – Louis – the community’s unofficial historian. His contemporaries didn’t want to talk about the pogroms, the Leylands, the Chapeltown era. Let’s not talk about the past. 1960 was Year Zero. But Louis wrote a play called They Came To Leeds. It seemed a funny title to me back then, a preposterous notion that Leeds would be this kind of magnet for immigration. But it was. And the play was partly set in the Jewish cemeteries, above Elland Road, and the funeral processions that would be attacked, would be pelted with stones by non-Jewish mobs. Another story was about Jimmy Gilmour, an Irish Catholic boxer, a legend; there were touts who would try to exploit the immigrants at the railway statation. Louis said the one man they all looked out for was ‘Jimmy The Jew’; this was the greatest compliment they could give him. He learned Yiddish and befriended the Jewish community. He didn’t rip them off. He took them on his handcart to the ghetto, from Leeds Station, past the Parish Church, the market, to the Leylands. To their fellow villagers. They were eternally grateful to Jimmy Gilmour.

And these stories I’d find out from my grandparents’ generation. But my parents generation were not interested, had no sense of their history. I resented this. I thought they were losing their heritage. Chapeltown is a fantastic site of memory. They are my parents and grandparents’ memories. But I would walk the streets of Chapeltown and try to recreate in my own mind what happened there. It’s great that Cantors fish and chip shop is still there. That was the Jewish fish and chip shop, the best in Leeds, better – I would argue – than either Bryans or Harry Ramsdens. Although I accept this might be the most controversial point of the evening.

CP:

Why were they reluctant to talk about these things? And you got if from their grandparents?

AC:

In a way it seems obvious. They were reinventing themselves. They wanted to stop being the old Yiddish ghettoised Jews. They wanted to be the new Jews, British Jews, Leeds Jews; making our way in, being an integral part of, Leeds. We are Leeds. Singing this at Elland Road was – is – a very powerful thing for me. It’s an attempt not to be defined wholly in terms of our ethnicity, our outsiderness, our Otherness. I am Leeds, you are Leeds, he is Leeds, we are Leeds. That explains the passionate attachment of that generation to Leeds United. The generation that produced Manny Cussins, Leslie Silver, Arnold Ziff – they felt they were belonging to the city; but also they were erasing the past, and that’s a sadness. My generation has to rescue, to restore the past, or at least talk about it. If we don’t it will be gone forever and no-one will know what really happened. Which is my biggest fear. I also wanted to deconstruct myths, for example the steterotype of rich Jews. The Jewish working-class community had a struggle, a fight for acceptance, and they won the fight. And that’s what I’m most proud about. But, ironically, that’s the thing they don’t talk about.

CP:

It comes through very strongly and movingly in your book, and the way you stitch it in to the history of Leeds is very touching. Let’s move on to the second panel of the triptych that is your book. You describe Keith Waterhouse, John Braine and David Storey as a “crack force of writers” who emerged from the West Riding in the sixties. I wondered what it was you thought they were writing about thematically, what it was they had to say that was different from a Sillitoe, Osborne, Wesker? They were the forward line, the crack force, but what made them different from all the other angry young men?

AC:

In a way they are all lumped together – the angry young men and the kitchen sink writers. Nearly all of them came from the north. What is the difference? Why is Leeds different? In one way it stands for the north. The north invaded London in the sixties. The north re-energised Britain in the sixties: the Beatles, David Hockney, Harold Wilson, a Huddersfield grammar schoolboy. The north as an entity is problematic. But the West Riding of Yorkshire, particularly Leeds, has Storey, Harrison, Bennett, Wain. Their narratives, or tropes, were different. For one thing, they were more doom-laden. And, I would argue, more parochial. Or more resigned to the region’s parochialism.

CP:

What was it in the air?

AC:

It’s the same question as why did rugby league have more of a grip on West Yorkshire than football. Rugby league embodies, to me, a kind of parochialism – the kind that Revie’s Leeds were trying to escape; trying to transcend the confines of your narrow provincial backwater and become a national, European, international, global force – that’s what football offered. That’s why Revie changed the club’s strip to Real Madrid’s all white. For Revie read Waterhouse and Billy Fisher; the story of Leeds is embodied by Billy not getting on the train; choking. The Beatles showed Liverpool as a world conquerer, Best’s Man United – they conquered the world. The cold, unforgiving, gritty, brutal north – as explored by The Damned United – or David Storey’s This Sporting Life, is very west Yorkshire. Frank Machin, Billy Fisher – these are anti-heroes who are doomed to failure; this sense of feeling doomed, that we’re The Damned United, is very Leeds.

CP:

So these writers had a thematic coherence around choking?

AC:

Yes. Billy Fisher goes to Leeds Station and doesn’t catch the train. Why not? Julie Christie’s on it, why wouldn’t you? She embodied the liberation of the swinging sixties.

CP:

That era was about mobility, literally and metaphorically. So you’d say these writers represented a kind of knee-jerk inability to cross that threshold?

AC:

Yes

CP:

This book has a terrific triple-narrative thrust going on, but there is a moment halfway through the book when it seems to come together wonderfully. Let me read from a later section: “As I approached my fiftieth year, I began to have a recurring dream. Keith Waterhouse, Alan Bennett, Tony Harrison and David Storey were all sitting in the Jazz Age bar of the Queen’s Hotel, which is built into Leeds station. They were all in their late-forties, wearing yarmulkes and tuxedos and appeared to be guests at my bar mitzvah. As they talked to Don Revie, trying to distract his attention away from some mysterious event that was about to happen, my dad walked in smoking a cigar. In some versions of the dream, Louis Armstrong and my great-auntie Millie strolled in, arm in arm. The dream always ended the same way. The
oak double doors swung open and Variety Club host Marshall Bellow, who used to sit behind my mum’s family in shul, suddenly appeared. He was quickly
followed by Eamonn Andrews. And, just as Andrews was about to say ‘Tonight, Don Revie, this is your life’ – I woke up.”

This suggests to me a tremendous confusion. What on earth is going on? You have your writers, you have Don Revie, you have your barmitzvah, all in one paragraph swirling around. It’s a terrific narrative moment in the book. It pulls everything together. It’s feverish, it’s confused.

AC:

I saw Don Revie on ‘This Is Your Life’ in 1974. Leeds had just won the League title. 1974 is such a crucial year. Two elections, the miners strike…it was a big turning point. I remember watching ‘This Is Your Life’ and thinking ‘it’s Don Revie, in the Queen’s Hotel, where my dad used to work’ and Marshall Bellow, who I see in shul every week, he’s there. It felt that everything was connected. I’d see Revie at barmitzvahs and weddings. He’s not Jewish. Today, you can’t imagine anyone living near Ferguson, say. Could you imagine that across the road where I lived was Don Revie in his semi-detached house? That was extraordinary to me. Saturday was the Rebbe in the morning, Revie in the afternoon. 1974 was the great moment, we were about to be on top of the world. And then – in typical Leeds style – it all went wrong. Revie went to England, Clough came in…

CP:

So it was a key period for you. You begin one chapter with this sentence: “Leeds is a schizophrenic city…” Which I didn’t really understand until I got to the dream sequence. Explain what you mean by that.

AC:

Every time I come back to Leeds I see the Town Hall. When Leeds became an industrial city, it had this monument to ambition, the tower. As was Elland Road. But go beyond the shiny civic centre and you’ll see the forgotten people of Leeds, the dispossesed of northern Britain. I’m not singling Leeds out as being unique. It’s a similar story in Manchester, Liverpool and so on. It’s schizophrenic because we sing ‘We are the champions of Europe’ and the next minute we sing ‘We’re not famous any more’. From the greatest team in football to ‘we’re shit and we know we are’. The building of the town hall, a lot of people opposed it , called it Brodrick’s folly. Lumiere was supposed to be a symbol to the high ambition of Leeds – now there’s a hole in the ground. That is symbolic of the thwarted ambition of Leeds.

CP:

Speaking of thwarted ambition, let’s look at Leeds United. I don’t know if I found this both irritating and refreshing, but the sense that Leeds United fans think they are jinxed – you argue it’s something we have to disabuse ourselves of quickly if we are to move on.

AC:

Well, it’s not very scientific is it?

CP:

It’s not very scientific, but there is something comforting about thinking the world is against you, about being able to say we were robbed in Paris, robbed in the Cup Winners Cup Final, when the ref was cleearly bought by Milan…

AC:

And West Brom

CP:

Yes, Ray Tinkler. There’s something really comforting in going back 35 years and tracing the litany of crimes that have been perpretrated against Leeds United. But you seem to be suggesting we need to get rid of that. We need to clear our heads of this notion that we are perennial victims.

AC:

That’s because I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. There is no conspiracy against Leeds. Full stop. Of course not. Why should there be?

CP:

In about two hours, after a few drinks, you are going to be talking about the conspiracy against Leeds…One of the first things this man said to me was: ‘I’m going to say two words to you: Ray Tinkler…’ That bastard, 1971 wasn’t it?

AC:

So you think there is a plot?

CP:

No, as I say I found it refreshing. But at the back of your mind I don’t believe it’s totally been flushed out.

AC:

No, that’s true. When I’m in Leeds and I’m drinking with Leeds fans I start to believe the conspiracy theory. And as soon as I leave Leeds and I get on the train, like Billy Fisher should have done – and join Julie Christie in London – my view becomes more rational. Christie’s Liz represented that moving away from superstition and, conspiracy theories, of a comforting sense that they’re all out to get us, they all hate us and we don’t care – which is ultimately damaging to Leeds’ sense of itself as a powerful, cosmopolitan, outward-looking city. You can’t be those things if you actually seriously believe that those southern bastards are out to get us, that there is a world conspiracy against Leeds. There isn’t. Every successful football time has that narrative running through its history. They are just as paranoid. But it was exarcebated by Don Revie, genius that he was – his superstition, his fatalism was very damaging. He even went as far as trying to remove a gypsy curse from Leeds, he brought her in to Elland Road, and she went to all four corners of the ground and urinated. And of course she lifted the curse! And Leeds started to win things! None of us believe that happened, though, do we?

This amazing manager, who has been shamefully airbrushed from history…he had his foibles. His sense of fatalism was damaging. That no matter what you do, how hard you work, how much talent you have, how much you put into something, ultimately They – Fate, the gods, Ray Tinkler – will stop you from realising your ambition.

CP:

And you see this narrative clearly in the themes of the writers, in the overarching development of the city. We are about to find out, in the next few years, very quickly in this city, which relies so heavily on public sector employment, whether or not that upward climb of Leeds is going to be maintained.

You say very eloquently in the book, that if you left Leeds ten or 15 years ago or 20 years ago and come back, that it just looks different, apart from anything else. Navigating your way around is different, but the emotional relationship with Leeds has also changed somewhat I think, too. I just want to say, not as his agent, nor as a Julie Christie stand-in, but as his friend, I want to say I think this is a really wonderful book. I know it’s for sale right there, but anyone interested in the history of Leeds, interested in the history of Leeds as a migrant city, in Leeds United, in the narrative of sport, this is a terrific book, and I’m very happy to have had the chance to speak to you for an hour about it.

Any questions?

Question:

This schizophrenia. Isn’t it a class thing? You have Harvey Nicks, but also East End Park, where girls are selling themselves…is the writers’ doomy feeling connected with what went wrong with Leeds comedians. Where are the great Leeds comedians, the great music from Leeds from the 1960s?

AC:

If you went to Elland Road the other night you’d see the Leeds comedians! Your second point is very good. It is interesting that Liverpool and Manchester have great traditions of literature and music. I can name you, instantly, ten Manchester bands I love. Where is the Leeds Stone Roses, Joy Division, Fall, Morrissey? Why haven’t we got the same profile in popular culture as those cities have? I do think it is related to the football. It’s no coincidence that Liverpool and Manchester, over the 50 years we’re talking about, had mainly successful periods. Why have they never had the lows that Leeds United had? You can count our popular cultural icons on the fingers of one hand.

Q:

The traditional answer is a Lancashire-Yorkshire thing. We have gruff, bigoted men. The rise of Yorkshire in the present government for example.

AC:

So what is it about Yorkshire that should produce a Geoff Boycott or an Eric Pickles? Are we saying this is an inevitable product of Yorkshire-ness? It’s not a very scientific observation. I think we should deconstruct this myth. There have been comedians from Leeds. Like Barry Cryer, but not as high profile. The writers from Leeds have never been given the credit they deserve. The Merseybeat Poets are a movement. As is the Madchester Sound. Do people see Caryl Phillips, Alan Bennett, Keith Waterhouse as Leeds writers? As a Leeds movement? No. So it’s not that there aren’t great writers, musicians, footballers – it’s a sense of identity, of self-image, but also of how we are perceived as well as how we perceive ourselves. We don’t promote ourselves with the same swagger that Manchester or Liverpool promote themselves. Swagger, of course, isn’t something Boycott is lacking. But just to focus on the Boycott-Trueman axis is wrong. Bennett is a typical Yorkshireman, but he’s hardly fitting that stereotype of bigoted. For every Boycott, there’s a Bennett.

Q:

I’m quite attracted to your doom-laden, parochialism thesis. The black guys I know who are keen on soccer are Leeds United fans. CLR James wrote about cricket expressing a physical force against white teams – and that’s my friends play soccer. During the 70s and 80s and adored Leeds United. But they are also parochial; some are talented musicians but they don’t project themselves very much. Then there is Alan Bennett, who stays in the north and sees himself as a northerner. His writing is full of gloom. There is something oddly withdrawn and fatalistic about Leeds, which is one of the reasons I like it.

AC:

Yes, you’ve turned my criticism on its head. To be self-critical, I’m probably criticising Leeds out of frustration that we haven’t got the profile nationally and internationally that we deserve. Having lived down south for 20 to 30 years, that’s the image people have of Leeds. In Dominic Sandbrook’s new history of the 70s, he describes Leeds as a cold, unforgiving town. Just repeat that enough times…

CP:

Dickens said that about Leeds in the nineteenth century; it’s an old, deeply-inscribed narrative. It’s extremely difficult to uproot and turn over. Leeds City Council tried very hard in the living memory of everybody here. But it is a profoundly deep narrative, this notion of an unforgiving, gloomy place.

Q:

There’s a paradox about Leeds. In the early 60s, Leeds Art School was seen as the most revolutionary art school in the country. We produced great poets: Jon Silkin, Jeff Nuttall. I did a study of the Brick Man and compared it to the Angel Of The North. The Brick Man failed and the Angel succeeded. Leeds could have had it’s own Angel Of The North years before…

AC:

My case rests.

Q:

…there were very interesting, complex reasons why it failed. They were endemic in the Leeds cultural hierarchy, although it’s beginning to change – a lack of risk-taking. The council doesn’t want the Evening Post telling them they’re wasting money on culture. Self-made industrialists: don’t want any of that kind of nonsense. It’s frustrating because there are a lot of exciting things going on in Leeds.

AC:

The Brick Man was opposed by the EP, they had a campaign against it, and the Conservatives on the council. That couldn’t symbolise more, like the Lumiere…it could have been a symbol of our ambition.

Q:

Is there a problem in using a football team as a metaphor for the development of the city? Even the most popular ones only represent a fraction of the city. You attempt to build a narrative around the development of the football team. Every other football team has this narrative. They all fail, all have that bitterness. There is an alternative sporting tradition, which is the rugby one. You write very well, and very movingly, about Albert Johanneson. But there are also black Leeds rugby players like Ces Thompson, who wrote ‘Born On The Wrong Side.’ He became a manager. And Roy Francis. Apart from Paul Ince’s little sojourn at Blackburn, there are no black football managers. Look at the city in the round, you can look at a broader tradition than just one team, or one sport.

CP:

I think ‘Born On The Wrong Side’ would support what a lot of Anthony is saying. He was a very successful and articulate black representative of sport in this city, he’s clear about the problems and difficulties. Some of the same issues…

AC:

You are quite right to point these things out…but let’s get to the nub of the matter; the three strands that Caz has mentioned – Leeds writers, Leeds United and the Jewish community – all had a desire to put themselves on the map. I am a sportswriter and I go around the world and people have heard of Leeds United. Sadly, because Leeds Rhinos are a great team and have a great history, no-one will have heard of them. Yes, you’re broader perspective would be a better biography of the city, but it’s about how Leeds is perceived by the rest of the country and the rest of the world. They perceive Keith Waterhouse and the other writers, Leeds United and, through Marks, Burton, Cussins or Ziff say, they perceive the Jewish community. My argument is that Leeds’ sense of itself is determined by how others see it. I’m afraid others don’t have much of a view about Leeds Rhinos, or the black players involved – but they know about Albert because he was the first black player to play in an FA Cup Final. And about Manny Cussins, having seen The Damned United. And Billy Liar and Alan Bennett, who is a national institution. We all have a personal myth. What other people think about you is more important than waht actually happens to you. What other people think – Dirty Leeds or the Damned United – is something we can dismiss as a southern conspiracy. But because rugby league is not known to the rest of the country, the rest of Europe, the rest of the world in the same way that Leeds United are, I would rather focus on Leeds United, because that image is refracted back into the perception Leeds people have of themselves. For example, Eddie Waring. Rugby league purists turned on him for being a sell-out, but he was a pioneer who wanted rugby league to break away from its parochialism and become a national sport. He succeeded, at what price? That’s the kind of schizophrenic tension that goes on within Leeds.

Q:

It’s the same with the Polish community. The grandchildren are drifting away and not seeing that as a focus of the community; a new group coming from Poland, but none of them have said anything about Leeds United, Leeds rugby, Yorkshire CCC. They have not entered into their psyches.

AC:

It’s a generational thing. The first generation of Jews had no interest in sport – it was about survival; the second generation wanted to belong. Sport allowed them to get involved in the city.

CP:

It’s not just about wishing to participate, its about the willingness of institutions to allow them to do so. There’s nothing to be said about Yorkshire CCC in terms of openness. It’s parochial, inward-looking, and unpleasant; there was no possibility of that pioneer generation of West Indians participating. Leeds Rugby League has been more open. Leeds United have been lazy and complacent as far as migrant communities in this city are concerned. Ridsdale attempted to do something with his community initiative; it was really Emma Stanford doing all the work. They still have a long way to go. It cuts both ways. Generationally people become more involved in the city and wish to be involved in something beyond trying to get kids educated, a roof over their heads, get a job. Sport comes way after that. But then look at how open those institutions are?

Q:

I read your book and really enjoyed it. Especially about your dad working in a Jewish cemetery. And you talk about the death of the Jewish community and how it is disappearing. Is this a good thing, a sign of acceptance? Or a bad thing?

AC:

This is the most difficult question of the night. There’s no doubt numerically it’s in decline. I feel guilty about that. I left the community. I was accused of romanticising the past as only an exile can. This is such a difficult question. It’s like the writers who leave Leeds. Every one of them, including Caz, has written about Leeds when they’ve left Leeds. We need to move away to reflect on what happened. But in the process of moving away do we not contribute to the decmise of the thing we are celebrating, or at least reflecting on?

The Jewish dilemna isn’t that different from almost any other immigrant group. Irish-Catholic, Afro-Caribbean, Asian. The second and third generations fulfill their parents fantasies of upward mobility, but do you then pay a price by losing your identity? I think the answer is yes. Which is very sad.

CP:

But only if you have a narrow, essentialist notion of identity. I think you’ve been very hard on yourself. Don’t be guilty, What are you, Woody Allen\/ Give it up. You’ve given back. Your book is a tremendous tribute to Leeds, to the Jewish community…

AC:

But will there be a Jewish community after the next generation?

CP:

That’s not your problem.

Q:

I supported Leeds United in the 70s. I got transplanted to Henley on Thames. I took Leeds with me as a symbol of my sense of injustice, of despising these softy southerners, and I had this huge scowl on my face. What you were saying about a chip on your shoulder was very real to me. Jimmy Hill would slag them off. It is a perfect metaphor for me.

AC:

When we leave Leeds, the north, we come up against a kind of hostility which has a parallel with Jewishness – anti-Leeds remarks were being made alongside anti-semitic remarks. So this chip on the shoulder was armour to protect me. It’s starts out as a positive thing. But ultimately I see it as a negative thing. In New York, Caz, is your sense of Leedsness enhanced by leaving Leeds?

CP:

You’re not going to turn this on me. I have exactly the same narrative experience of growing up in this city that you have, and that many people in this room have. My
identity, having had the privilege to grow up in this city during the Revie years, is deeply connected to Leeds United FC. And that is what is so eloquently stated in this book. It would be very hard to be a young kid, interested in football, coming of age in this city in the late 60s or 70s and not take immense pride in the internationalisation of Leeds. I went to see Leeds play Juventus in 1971 when we won the Fairs Cup. I remember on the top deck of the bus as a 13-year-old kid I saw Italian fans. I’d never met Italians. I remember beating Lyn Oslo 10-0. I remember the world coming to me through Leeds United, being educated geographically about where I was in Europe through the adventures of this team. I remember learning about Scotland through realising we had Scottish players. Part of my eduaction as a kid – of breaking out of what you call the parochialism of Fortress Leeds City – came through the magical adventure of that team. You developed a chip on your shoulder, a scowl, a strength of mind which you carry with you. So the team is deeply tied up as an adolescent, which is an incredibly impressionable part of one’s journey through life, with my development as a human being and a thinking individual.

That is what is so beautifully and eloquently captured in this book, along with the notion of what it means to be a migrant. And you were alluding to this. And to finding yourself adrift in a city. My father listened to the 1963 England-West Indies test series, wondering why the hell his son didn’t give a damn about cricket. All I was interested in was getting to Elland Road as fast as I could. Gary Sprake lived by my school. I went with a paper towel, knocked on the door, his landlord looking down at this little black kid asking ‘can Gary sign this please?’ Sprake came down and signed it. That’s your entry into the city. That gives you a way in as an immigrant. It’s a very important and poignant part of Leeds’ history. I think sport has played a huge part in the narrative of the development of this city. For all sorts of people, particularly in terms of class and mobility.

AC:

The Bowyer-Woodgate saga brought on such a great sense of shame for me. Even now, we haven’t recovered from it. I was so optimistic about the new Leeds, and the new Leeds United; I bought into the Ridsdale spiel about a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan club. For all his faults he had a vision. It felt like we had reinvented ourselves. The final hurdle was to be popular as well as successful. I want Leeds to be everyone’s second favourite team. When Eric Cantona was here we were heralded internationally, then we sold him to our biggest rivals for £1m. And they went on to dominate English and European football. For me, the Bowyer-Woodgate is a similar thing. We had an amazing team of young, homegrown talent and we messed it up big time – not just financially but in terms of how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by the rest of the world; the old insular image, seige mentality – even racist image – came back to haunt us. Whatever happened in that terrible moment down by The Majestyk when a young Asian student got beaten up and almost died – this veneer of multiculturalism was shattered. By the way Leeds United, the manager David O’Leary and some of the fans reacted. To the rest of country it was the same old Leeds, the same old racists, the same old Dirty Leeds.

CP:

They were right

AC:

That is the dark, sinister, unsavoury part of Leeds; the schizophrenia I was talking about. The tension between that side and the ambitious, outward-looking side hasn’t been resolved. Ten years on, Bowyer-Woodgate still resonates. On the doorstep of Elland Road we have an Asian community that, on the whole, does not support Leeds United. They were beginning to, but Bowyer-Woodgate shatterred the attempt to integrate them into LUFC. It led to alienation. The Leeds Jewish population integrated.

CP:

The answer is easy. People are interested in what your club looks like. You don’t walk into a club in the street if it doesn’t look like you should be in there. When I asked Peter Ridsdale how many in a club that employed 75, how many black people he employed who didn’t wear football boots were in the club – he said none. That’s your answer. Why would you want to be a part of that? That’s bullshit. It’s like this university; any institution has to reform itself to make itself an institution that suggests people are welcome.

Q:

It’s a false premise. I’ve got loads of Asian mates and they all support Leeds United. At Elland Road I see quite a few Asian fans.

CP:

It’s still a problem. I was at Leicester over ten years ago when Leeds started to sing ‘You’re just a town full of Pakis’. So if you’re an Asian football fan you’re still going to go, but the club did nothing. The Kop in the 70s sang: ‘I’d rather be a ****** than a Scouse.’ But I went back to stand there. But it’s not representative of the community, of what they could have…

Q:

It’s the same with any other big club

CP: