“When it comes to thinking about politics and race, we cannot always rely on culture as a way to remedy deeper structural questions. Having particular players or particular footballing cultural moments as a point of identification is immense. However, it cannot be a deliberate or a forced thing.”
Clive Chijioke Nwonka
“The theory of race, specially created, it seems, for some pretentious self-educated individual seeking a universal key to all the secrets of life, appears particularly melancholy in the light of the history of ideas. In order to create the religion of pure German blood, Hitler was obliged to borrow at second hand the ideas of racism from a Frenchman, Count Gobineau [4], a diplomat and a literary dilettante. Hitler found the political methodology ready-made in Italy, where Mussolini had borrowed largely from the Marxist theory of the class struggle. Marxism itself is the fruit of the union among German philosophy, French history, and British economics. To investigate retrospectively the genealogy of ideas, even those most reactionary and muddleheaded, is to leave not a trace of racism standing.”
Leon Trotsky: What Is National Socialism? (June 1933)
Black Arsenal was published to coincide with the start of the 2024/25 season. It is co-edited by Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Associate Professor of Film, Culture, and Society at University College London (UCL), and writer Matthew Harle. It is the first of its kind. The book was remarkably 10 years in the making, with a stunning amount of research undertaken.
Asked about the origins of the book, Nwonka said, “Well, it was me thinking a lot about my own background as a person and things that had inspired me. I had started working at the London School of Economics, and I was thinking about the role of race in culture and the ways of thinking associated with it. I was being introspective with myself and realising that John Barnes was important to me in terms of being my first source of inspiration and recognition.
Then that led to the inspiration for Black Arsenal. I was at university, trying to make sense of what this concept meant and what other factors might be involved. The chapter ‘Defining Black Arsenal’ is all about the genesis of that idea. Then you start looking at history and why Black people in London gravitate mostly towards Arsenal.
Whether you are from south London or wherever, and then you realise there is a history that goes beyond Ian Wright, back to the 60s and 70s, to Brendon Batson, Paul Davis. It goes back to what Islington was in the 70s. It goes back to the JVC centre and the community work the club were doing in the 80s. All these factors were already in place before Ian Wright arrived in 1991.”[1]
The book examines the black history of Arsenal football club from a broadly academic standpoint. It also features contributions from former players such as Ian Wright and Paul Davis, as well as contributions from Paul Gilroy, Gail Lewis, and personal responses from Clive Palmer, Ezra Collective, and writer Amy Lawrence.[2].
The timing of the book could not be more prescient. Since its publication in 2024, there has been a significant and distinct growth in racist and fascist forces. Recently, as Chris Marsden writes, “Unite the Kingdom demonstration in August this year was the largest far-right mobilisation in British history. Estimated at between 100,000 and 150,000, participation in London exceeded the numbers usually mobilised by anti-Muslim demagogue Tommy Robinson and extended beyond his usual support base of football hooligans and fascist thugs. This core periphery was boosted by the presence of workers and their families, including from among the most deprived layers, who have swallowed the far-right’s message blaming social distress and the collapse of essential services on migration.[3]
It should be noted from the start that Arsenal have not always had a spotless anti-racism stance. Like most businesses, it has made its fair share of mistakes regarding its stance on racism. During the refurbishment of the old Highbury North Bank in 1992, Nwonka recalls, “I remember as a kid, the first week of the Premier League season, there were all these half-rebuilt stadiums because of the Taylor report [into ground safety after the Hillsborough disaster]. Of course, no one wants to watch a building site on Sky Sports – so the idea came up that you cover it up with these illustrations of your imagined fanbase.” The original North Bank mural was an artist’s impression of a sea of white faces, with red and white scarves, which had to be replaced with a more inclusive mural.
The contributions from Paul Davis and Ian Wright are important, as they were key figures in the development of a more integrated Arsenal team. Davis paved the way for Ian Wright and later generations of players. Ian Wright was a game-changing signing from Crystal Palace. Always the rebel, he appealed to both black and white younger working-class fans. He, in turn, set the stage for Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, and Bukayo Saka.
Despite being seen as a bit of a rebel, Wright and Arsenal, for that matter, have not been shy in exploiting the commercial possibilities of such a global and multi-racial fan base. Nike and now Adidas have moved quickly in exploiting Arsenal’s multicultural teams for profit; Nwonka thinks there is a danger of such exploitation.
“With things like the Arsenal Africa shirt or the Jamaica shirt,” he says, “they have been quite open about the fact that they recognise that there was a consumer base that will find the resonance in something that pays homage to Afro-Caribbean culture. However, I have been attending the Notting Hill Carnival since I was four years old. Moreover, you would always see Arsenal shirts there all the time, rather than those of QPR, Brentford, Fulham, or Chelsea. However, what some brands often do is invest in what they imagine to be Black culture, whereas Black Arsenal, I believe, begins with Black people.”
Football has been a global game since its inception, played worldwide. However, with the advent of satellite television from companies such as Sky, the game has reached a far greater level of global integration.
As David Storey relates, “ Football has always had essential linkages connecting places. Some clubs were formed by, or as a result of, British migrants, and in some instances, this is still reflected in contemporary football. Football has always had essential linkages connecting places. Some clubs were formed by, or as a result of, British migrants, and in some instances, this is still reflected in contemporary club names or colours. Athletic Bilbao’s origins and English name are attributed to English migrant workers in the Basque Country (Ball, 2003). A similar explanation accounts for Young Boys in Switzerland, Go Ahead Eagles in the Netherlands, and The Strongest in Bolivia, among others (Goldblatt, 2007). The shirt colours worn by Juventus were reputedly borrowed from Notts County (the world’s oldest professional club) shortly after the Italian club’s formation (Lanfranchi club names or colours.
Despite this early evidence of international linkages, English football remained somewhat insular for many years (2001). Despite this early evidence of international linkages, English football remained somewhat insular for many years, with restrictions on the importation of foreign players. While the migration of professional footballers is a long-standing phenomenon, and relatively pronounced in countries such as Spain, France, and Italy, the migration of players into or out of Britain was much less apparent (Taylor, 2006). However, recent years have seen substantial numbers of footballers from other parts of the world arriving in the Premier League (and into the lower tiers in the English league system). This internationalisation has occurred alongside the increasing commercialisation of the game.”[4]
While I wholeheartedly recommend this book, it should be of interest not only to Arsenal fans but also to the broader reading public. The historical study of black footballers who played for Arsenal is a legitimate pursuit. However, much of the content of the book is dominated not by a class attitude towards racism, but by too many contributions, including Nwano’s, that see the rise of racism through racially tinted glasses.
Nwonka addressed this, saying, “Of course, I have got a small quantity of criticism from some quarters. One person, when I first posted about the Black Arsenal idea, wrote to me to say: ‘I have been going to Arsenal since the 1970s. I do not see race; I watch football.’ I thought to myself: ‘Well, I am not going to sit here and tell someone whether they should or should not see. However, have you stopped and thought that maybe the reason that you do not see race when you go to Arsenal is that Arsenal has normalised racial difference in a way that some other clubs have not? Moreover, that may be an important thing to recognise?”Nwonka’s original idea for the book was for it to be dominated by appropriate references to French poststructuralists and the postmodernist and pseudo-revolutionary Frantz Fanon, who was and is a darling of the Pseudo-Left groups. Fanon and Poststructuralists were among other pioneers of the anti-Marxist Critical race theories, which is a “body of academic writing that emerged in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which combines postmodernism and subjective idealist philosophy with historical revisionism and racial sectarianism. Although written in a different form, the book remains dominated by these anti-working-class theories that prioritise race over class
[1] www.arsenal.com/news/dr-clive-nwonka-talks-new-black-arsenal-book
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Athletic
[3] Britain’s largest far-right protest capitalises on Starmer’s xenophobic, anti-working-class agenda
[4] Football, place and migration: foreign footballers in the FA Premier League
David Storey- Geography, Summer 2011, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Summer 2011), pp. 86-94
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd
A Trumpet of Sedition 