Re: Football and social class

Torquay as a "middle-class club". That's an interesting concept, Wildebeeste, I wonder what that was based upon?

But, before I postulate my various theories about Wildebeeste's initial class-based assessment of our club (cue "cheeky northern git" and similar terms of abuse), I will apologise for being about to make an veritable Everest out of the molehill of Wildebeeste's passing comment. That's because I sense there are grounds for a possible discussion regarding the links between social class and football. And, more's the point, how these are altering as society changes. Or not, depending on your point of view.

So, to start with friend Wildebeeste, are we witnessing a traditional northern prejudice - sorry perception - which suggests we are all middle-class/posh/Tory-voting shandy-drinkers or whatever?

I'll be generous about this and admit it works both ways. Only last week, when visiting friends "within the M25", was I treated to a few age-old prejudices about the north of England. All I can say really is that it's nice to enjoy London and, at the same time, circumvent the metropolis and live my life on a SW-NE axis (a neat geographical arrangement that Wildebeeste is probably also starting to discover).

Did Wildebeeste make the assumption that seaside resorts are predominantly middle-class places? Well, I guess they are to an extent. But they're complex places - shifting populations, one-dimensional economies and all that - and often perform badly on deprivation indicators. There again, over an extended period of time, they also have a nasty habit of electing rather too many blue-rosetted politicians (for my liking anyway). "Nowt as queer as folk by the sea" as they say. Or has there been something of a "self-improvement" mentality that has attracted people to move to the seaside, set up a business and vote Conservative? Some of the best patents I ever had fell into those categories.

Maybe Wildebeeste, as a small Grockle - with funny accent, bucket and spade and scabby knees - once approached Plainmoor from the direction of Babbacombe as opposed to either Ellacombe or Plainmoor itself. That, as we've hinted previously, would have provided an altogether different impression of our club's social-economic milieu. It's rather like, as Wildebeeste would appreciate, the direction from which you chance upon the city of Sheffield.

But Wildebeeste is an educated man and I'm sure he did his homework and piled masses of sociological data into a computer. Then, after nights poring over columns of figures, he reached the conclusion that, judged by the relative proportions of local residents in each of the social classes (A, B, C1, C2, D and E), Torquay United didn't quite cut the mustard as a sufficiently proletarian club in the true Marxian sense. Thus, in the spirit of North East Derbyshire's famed class solidarity, there was little sympathy as the Grim Reaper arrived at Plainmoor via, ironically, 1980s socialist Czechoslovakia.

At which point I must pause lest I imitate Alpine Joe any further. But the serious point remains that, historically anyway, the socio-economic composition of local populations impacted upon the fortunes of football clubs. Clearly people of all classes - however these may be defined - supported the local club. Yet, at the same time, it was traditionally helpful if your club could draw proportionately more on what may be called the "football watching classes." And, in short, I believe Torquay United were at a disadvantage in that sense.

Which begs questions about future directions. We are, for example, regularly told that Britain has become a more classless - or alternatively an "increasingly middle-class society" - in recent years. There's plenty of evidence, and argument to the contrary of course and the recession is challenging many of these conclusions. But, when listening to my London friends' view about the north, I could only conclude that the different parts of the country are becoming more alike in the work we do (or not), the lives we lead and the environments in which we live (for better or worse). Increasing similarity may also be true for football crowds where I observe the workless are largely absent and the typical fan is veering towards being in employment, earning a middling-salary and living in their own house. A kind of - and I know this expression has different meanings to different people - "Middle England" world.

Now that may surprise my friend from "within the M25" who has been talking about watching a game at Newcastle United where he was first taken as a boy during a family holiday in the mid 1960s. He remembers Newcastle as a "rough, tough working-class city". I suspect he'll be taken aback by the crowd he finds at St James Park. It won't be as he remembers from the days of the Mighty Wyn. It could easily remind him of a better-behaved and rather more respectful version of Stamford Bridge.

So might Wildebeeste inadvertently be drawing our attention to something unspoken? Will it be the case that the same "middle-class clubs" (to coin his expression), which he saw as ripe for culling (excuse the liberty being taken), will be the ones to thrive in future as the game becomes increasingly "classless" or how ever you wish to describe it?