In 1979, a football match was played at the Hawthorns,
home of West Bromwich Albion.
On one side, 11 white players.
On the other, 11 black players.
Whites versus blacks.
Yes, really.
Stranger still, back then, it all felt rather progressive.
Now, the very thought of it makes you wince.
You didn't realise that we were actually making history
at that time on that day.
From the journey of coming over here,
not seeing black players, and then we can put out a team.
Everyone was of one mind - "We're going to beat them."
So, what does this tell us about how things were then for black people?
We don't want these people in our society.
We will not abide by the Race Relations Act,
being all true white British people!
CHEERING
I was a traitor, I was a white whore
and he was being ruled by the white girl.
WHISTLING AND MONKEY CHANTS
When I was on the pitch, I heard everything.
They were calling me a coon. "BLEEP off back to your country."
You would watch amazing football and think, "If only they were white."
And here's Regis...
And what can we learn about how far we've come today?
To see Cyrille and then Laurie Cunningham, Brendon Batson,
to see them get through, you know that it can be done.
You can do as many of these documentaries as you like.
You won't change what's in people's heads right now.
My football team's been a massive part of my life
for nearly all my life.
Match days at West Brom takes me right back to being a little kid.
My grandad used to drive me up here
about three hours before kick-off,
give me a bag of chips and curry sauce
and just leave me in the car for three hours
while he went for a pint with his mates.
I'd just sit there eating the chips, doing my homework,
watching the crowd gather,
just getting into a frenzy of excitement
and at about 2.50pm, he'd take me into the ground.
For as long as I can remember, my club's put me through the mill
week in, week out, year in, year out.
My obsession took root very deeply back in the '70s.
I mean, it's a Hall of Fame.
To me, it almost feels like a family album.
Look at that for a strike!
Look at that!
Tony Brown. He feels like my Uncle Tony.
Here's John Wile.
I wish he was my uncle, too.
A heroic figure. It just kind of feels like family.
I can't express it any other way.
Ally Rob - ferocious.
Getting in some crunching tackles.
"Crunching" being a euphemism for fouls.
And Cyrille.
Look at those biceps there!
Here's Brendon. Look at that body shape.
Look at the afro. Look at the focus.
Look at the sweat on his legs.
He's beautiful, and there's the late great Laurie Cunningham.
That we had so many black players
gave the whole experience something extra.
It made us feel different, special.
I recall matches where we scaled footballing heights
and matches where my black heroes were subjected to the vilest abuse.
But there's one match that intrigues me more than any other,
that if played today would surely cause an outcry.
1979 - a testimonial for Len Cantello to reward him
for his long service to the club.
As for exactly whose idea it was to play blacks against whites,
no-one at the club can remember.
Nobody wants the credit or, possibly, the blame.
The first expert witness for my investigation is a man who was there
and saw it all through his viewfinder - Laurie Rampling,
unofficial club photographer for as long as anyone can remember.
This is going to be like an Aladdin's Cave for me.
This way, Adrian.
My word! Look at this.
This is the first little anteroom.
This is where I do all my work.
I love that picture. Yep, it's one of my favourites.
This must be one the most extensive collection
of Albion stuff...
In all the United Kingdom. If not the world!
Is there anything you haven't got?
This needs a sign on it -
the Rampling Albion Museum. The Rampling Albion Den.
So, what about pictures of that actual game?
Yes. I've got pictures here.
This is from my archive of the game.
What do you remember about it?
Do you remember the idea being hatched?
I do. I remember it and I thought, "What a fantastic idea!"
Straight away, when you knew what the occasion was about,
you knew you had to get a picture of the team group
because it probably wouldn't ever happen again and it hasn't.
Do you remember what you thought when you looked through
that viewfinder and just saw all those black players?
The first time you ever saw that happen.
Wow! It was a photograph that had a wow factor
and I thought, "That's going to be
"one of the most iconic pictures in football."
In that era, the National Front still active,
there was a lot of people who basically wanted to fight,
whites versus blacks.
But, obviously, a testimonial game,
it's a fun game. But was there any kind of racial charge to it?
If there was, I certainly didn't feel that,
because by this time, you'd got Brendon Batson,
Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham.
Albion heroes, if you like, you know.
So there's a piece in The Guardian from 1979.
It says the local Community Relations Council said,
"It can only be an innocent mistake.
"I hope the club will have second thoughts.
"A match of this kind could be used by certain sections of the community
"to make political capital and there could well be trouble in the crowd."
There were eyebrows raised by certain people
whether it was a good idea
and I remember, I said at the time, "Well, why?"
And even today, I say, "Well, why?
"Why was it a bad idea?"
And that's the question - why, arguably, wasn't it a bad idea then?
And why, in retrospect, does it feel so plain wrong now?
By 1979, Britain had been through a right old turbulent decade.
For a generation, the West Midlands,
where I grew up and the Albion ply their trade,
had been something of a cauldron of racial tension.
In the white community,
there was fear, bewilderment and ignorance in equal measure -
something our new Prime Minister soon had a handle on.
People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped
by people with a different culture.
Why should they have our jobs?
If we start beating them up and that,
they might get the message to clear off.
Filth!
With the milk of human kindness running this sour,
was a whites versus blacks football match really the wisest move?
To get a sense of how the players felt about it,
I've arranged to meet three members of the white team that day -
John Wile, our club captain...
That's the goal and it's gone to Wile.
..prolific goal scoring midfielder Tony "Bomber" Brown...
In goes Brown! Yes, that'll do it!
..and our frankly terrifying defender Ally Robertson.
And a free kick against Alistair Robertson,
which he got the worst of.
Well, I've got three of my heroes here.
I want you to know you're still my heroes even now.
My love hasn't waned with time.
So you all lived around here, didn't you?
One big happy family. Absolutely.
Brendon lived here.
I lived up here. You lived over there.
That's right. But we all met in there.
THEY LAUGH
I want to buy you three a drink.
Come on. That sounds all right to me. Let's do it.
You're still in good shape, you three. You're moving very well.
You've got a new hip or two, haven't you?
But you're moving well. Er, three. Three!
THEY LAUGH
I'm just getting this. Is this yours, Ally?
Yes, I found that in my dad's loft.
Just when I see this, you know, I cry.
There was a semifinal at Highbury.
That's when you cut your head against Ipswich.
John Wile being treated for West Brom.
A fairly horrific sight being cleaned up.
Have you still got the scar from that?
Believe it or not, it was very, very small.
Was it? It was just in the wrong place.
That hasn't been stitched, but in a fight, it would have been stopped.
We come to Len Cantello's testimonial,
the black versus white match.
I remember thinking at the time and I was 12 or something,
I was like a liberal, white, middle class boy,
thinking, "Oh, that's really sweet." It felt progressive to me.
What are your memories of it?
I can't remember that much about it.
The only thing I can remember
is there were more coloured people or black people in the ground.
The game itself doesn't sort of stick in my memory as something.
I think, that year, I played something like 76 games.
It was just another game to us.
I think it was just a way to get more of a crowd,
something different, yeah,
and interest because there were quite a few testimonials.
People get fed up of testimonials. This was certainly different.
There have not been very many black versus white matches.
That's what I'm saying. The idea was fantastic.
I came from a small mining village
and you never saw a black person up in that area.
And when I moved down here and my family came down to visit,
they always used to remark on the fact
that there's a lot of black people down here.
I'd never seen a black person.
I'd come down to West Brom and I was in digs in Handsworth
and I always remember picking my mum up
and we brought her down Soho Road.
She couldn't believe all these Afro-Caribbeans.
She couldn't believe how many black people there were.
They're caught square. This is a chance.
And no-one could believe how many black players we had -
three of them, when the number of them in all British football
barely ran into double figures.
The media loved them
and the manager, Ron Atkinson, knew how to work the media.
He dubbed them The Three Degrees, a nickname which stuck fast.
When those lads come, they were no different to anybody else
because we saw them dress in the dressing room.
You dressed with them.
You bathed with them. You saw them undressed?
You'd never had a black friend, never saw a black man
and, suddenly, you're in a bath with a black man.
Little things were said, but it was part of the dressing room banter
and dressing rooms are completely different
from anywhere else, Adrian.
Do you know what I mean? Shrugged it off and laughed it off
and just got on it with, you know what I mean?
That's the way it was. With the banter,
you're learning about the language, you're learning about each other.
Sometimes, was the line ever crossed?
You must have seen them angry or upset.
Somebody might have said something which was a bit too much.
Outside the group, yes.
And I have seen it outside the group,
but we'd be the first ones to stand in and say, "Go away."
In our lads, I don't think I've heard one person say a bad word.
Looking back now, do you think you feel any different
about their experience? Do you ever find yourself thinking,
"Blimey, it must have been harder for them
"than we thought actually at the time?"
I do. Definitely, it must have been.
We didn't realise at the time
because it was all this football banter and that,
but you don't know how they felt inside themselves, you know.
It's fascinating. They remember lots of it very well, that era,
but don't remember really anything about that black versus white match.
That's the white players.
I'll be very surprised if the black players involved,
every single one of them, didn't remember every detail of it.
As these black players gathered for that match,
did they have any misgivings about playing in it?
Did it feel right? Wrong? Odd?
Or just a bit of harmless fun?
Cyrille and Brendon meet me
in what feels like a different world altogether.
Their memories of the match and the whole era are as fresh as you like.
I was watching you in the '70s.
You were living through that brutal time.
How could you get across the brutality of it?
Well, first two, three years as a professional footballer,
I tell stories, like you go to Millwall, Chelsea, Tottenham,
you're getting 10,000 people
singing, "Nigger, nigger, lick my boots."
I mean, 10,000 people!
Having three black players in a side in the late '70s was radical.
In those days at West Ham,
just a hail of bananas are coming towards us.
I remember throwing one to Cyrille,
I think you put it down your shorts and I peeled one.
But I look back and I'm thinking, "What else could I have done?"
Could you show hurt?
It made you angry, but we learned to channel the anger to motivation.
We go, "Right, we're going to show you how good we are."
Has he got the poise?
He has!
The hurtful part was that my wife wouldn't come.
She came a couple of times and said she wouldn't come again.
She went, "I'm not going to go again, Brendon,
"because it's disgusting."
It's the volume that suddenly is a shock.
BOOING The booing of the black players...
repaid by Tony Brown!
My kids go, "Blimey, Dad,
"we can't understand how you've managed to come through that."
But that was our life and that's what we had to deal with.
Either you're determined and you want to make it
or you're not and you fade into the background...
It's survival of the strongest.
What it comes to is you've got to overcome.
You have these barriers, you have these...
Either you give up and you go, "I can't take this no more,"
and you give up or you say, "You know what,
"despite these barriers, despite the racism, despite this,
"I'm going to overcome this by my ability and my sheer will
"and desire to be a professional footballer,"
and that's what we done.
So when the idea of this game was floated, a black versus white game,
without hindsight, what was in your mind then?
You just think, "Why not?"
We all thought, great idea, great idea.
But it was just a novelty and we never once thought
about any of the social aspects of it. No.
We didn't hear any dissenting voices.
There was never anybody who rang us up and said,
"Do you realise the implication?"
Nothing at all, it was just a novelty thing.
And it was fun. It was fun.
Don't forget, we were always in the minority -
from a kid, only black player
and, suddenly, this is a whole team of us.
That was one of the attractions of it.
We were actually playing in a team made up of black players who,
only a few years ago, there were hardly any of us.
Did the game matter, the outcome of the match matter to you?
Oh, big-time. Because for us, it was historic,
to get from the journey of coming over here, playing,
getting told you're not good enough, not seeing black players
and then we can put out a team.
It was great.
Everybody was of one mind -
"We're going to beat them." "We're going to beat them."
Some marmalades get some of their tang from added flavouring.
The further we move away from the '70s,
when Cyrille and Brendon were playing,
the more culturally cruel it feels.
They're quite jolly, really, aren't they?
What on earth were the Black and White Minstrels about?
And Love Thy Neighbour, for heaven's sake!
Equal rights does not entitle nig nogs to move next door.
Black people were invited to turn the other cheek
and join in the laughter.
Some found this harder to do than others.
Up the road from the Albion
are our arch-rivals, Wolverhampton Wanderers,
and in the centre of their defence and that of the black team of '79,
George Berry and Bob Hazell.
This picture here, what are your memories of that?
What is your emotional response to seeing that?
It's fantastic. It just brings back memories, great memories.
Of a great day. It was a great occasion
that everybody wanted to be a part of.
And we also wanted to win.
More so than the Albion team!
It's interesting. The white players involved were very hazy
about the whole thing, but the black players
absolutely remember it completely. It was significant, wasn't it?
Actually, we didn't realise
that we were making history at that time, on that day.
There was plenty of racial strife about
and there was some unease.
It could kick off between black fans and white fans,
the National Front could get involved or something.
Did you remember feeling that?
No, I think the black fans were still too shit scared
to come to games during that time!
That's how it was because with all the violence that took place
and I know many black people who wanted to come to games,
but because of the way the violence was, they just wouldn't come.
MONKEY CHANTING
When did you see the red mist over monkey chants,
a bananas being thrown, whatever horrors you had to go through?
How did you deal with it?
Did you ignore it? Could you hear it?
Yes, when I was on the pitch,
I heard everything.
We heard every chant and every racial chant, we definitely heard.
Sometimes, when I was getting the abuse,
I felt isolated in so much as
the opposition players would be giving me stick,
but my team-mates were laughing.
I was at Leicester City
and the Leicester fans were racially abusing other black players.
I cannot for the life of me
see how they can racially abuse other players and it not affect me.
I remember the manager had a dig at me.
"Oh, Bob, they're just very small minded people.
"Ignore them." I said, "You ignore them
"because you can ignore them,"
but I says, "Me, I'm out there, I feel it."
You can see I'm getting a little bit worked up now, can't you?
But that's how I felt about it.
I felt completely let down by them.
We were playing against Watford in the cup.
Right at the end of the game, I went to clear a ball,
which was one of my trademarks.
I actually scuffed it and it went to Luther Blissett,
who smashed it in the top corner.
That's a dangerous one from Berry.
Blissett... 3-0.
Well, that was a pretty dreadful mistake,
an unfortunate error by George Berry.
The game was finished and I was obviously very disappointed
walking off the pitch. We were out of the cup and everything.
As I was walking, this bloke, a fairly big geezer,
he was giving me so much abuse.
What was he saying? Don't be afraid of using the words.
He was calling me a black bastard and a fucking disgrace to the club
and "fucking fuck off back to your country"
and "you coon" and everything, the whole lot.
Everything. Anything that could have been classed as racial, he said it.
I thought, "Actually, I ain't taking that."
So I confronted him and I said, "What did you say?"
He says, "You fucking..."
I just jumped into the crowd and give him a right hook.
I was a bit of a boxer when I was a youngster!
So, you both still seem quite bitter and angry?
I'm bitter and angry when we talk about the past,
racist things that we had to go through,
in what was the best time of my life.
It's very well put, that,
cos these were the greatest times of your life
and you weren't robbed of them, but they were sullied.
Mm-hm.
As tough as things were for the black footballers,
at least they could show two fingers to the racists
by socking it to them on the pitch.
Up in the stands, their families -
at least those who could bear to be there -
were ploughing lonelier furrows.
Bob and George's wives, Joy and Maureen, are still best of friends.
Well, I felt like a minority within the football club
because I think the majority of the time,
I was the only black wife
and you would scour the room,
just to hopefully see another black face.
Inevitably, that never happened.
So, you would really and truly rely on other wives or girlfriends
to approach you because you'd want to feel accepted.
One option is just not to go to the matches.
For that reason, and also I'm sure all the abuse that you heard?
I would want to go. We would have to support him.
Here's Berry... There's Richards.
Beautiful goal!
We chose to live in an area as well near Alton Towers.
I think we were the only black family in the village.
So, that was really difficult
and I think some of the acceptance came from the fact
that George was a footballer
and I wonder what it would have been like for somebody
who was just an ordinary working class person
and not George Berry, the footballer.
George is, and was, an uncompromising figure.
Not for him any attempt to fit in, keep his head down and conform.
You say "George Berry" to anyone
and you know the first thing you're going to hear is, and quite rightly,
I mean, that hair arrangement is simply magnificent.
It was one of the best in the world!
Yes. I wonder if the Jackson Five were getting copies
of Shoot or something, but it's all... Respect to George Berry.
And all his as well.
No pretending, yeah. He used to have his Afro comb and it would be there.
It was my job to plait it every so often
to make sure we could comb it through properly.
It's almost like dreadlocks.
Interestingly, you didn't really see dreadlocks
until Ruud Gullit about 15 years later.
Bob did want to locks his hair.
Did he? But, at that time, the FA would not allow it.
Did they construct some sort of health and safety argument?
I really don't know what it was,
but I cannot put my finger on their exact reasonings for it.
But because they were so old school,
I think that if it was a case of making a statement about yourself
and you wanted locks, it was too much for them to handle.
While the racist abuse hung heavy in the air,
there were many random acts of kindness and solidarity.
Bob went through a particularly unpleasant patch
after a sending off with, it was said, racist undertones.
A lot of it came from one time when Bob was playing against Arsenal
and things were said to him.
And there's some trouble,
tensions boiling up right at the end.
And Hazell really has lost his cool.
CHEERING And he's off.
I was able to keep some of the clippings
and the hate mail came because he was sent off
and as soon as he got sent off,
the goal was scored and Wolves were out.
It was an awful time.
BOOING Bob Hazell going off.
Arsenal winners by two to one, right at the death.
You got this one. This is after...
This was after that game.
Snoopy-headed paper.
That's right. Well, that's not going to be hate mail, is it,
on Snoopy paper. No, no, no. Just read it to us.
"Dear Bob, I was a member of the North Bank at the Arsenal cup tie.
"I would just like to tell you that not all of those at the match
"shared the opinions of the minority who are giving you stick.
"I am not coloured or foreign in any way.
"Take no notice of any crowds
"and answer their jeers with skill and with best wishes."
And what was really beautiful about this letter, it's from a girl.
And at the time, she was aged 14 and a half.
I was really touched by it.
For a kid who goes to a game,
it might have been quite frightening for her, seeing such a thing happen.
I don't know.
Perhaps the most dazzling of all the black players among these pioneers
was the son of a Jamaican jockey -
Laurie Cunningham, our third Degree.
He had the skill and speed to bewilder defenders.
Cunningham again.
And have us rubbing our eyes in disbelief up in the stands.
He was the first British footballer
of any colour to play for Real Madrid.
He was killed in a car crash in Spain in 1989, aged just 33.
Laurie's career began at Leyton Orient,
where a statue of him will soon grace that corner of East London.
'Today, his family are seeing it for the first time.'
Hello, everyone. Sorry to intrude.
I don't feel worthy to be sharing this moment with you, actually.
Why not? I'm not part of the family,
but it's 40 years ago I was looking at him in the flesh as a...
You know, mouth wide open.
None of us could believe what we were seeing. Stunned.
I feel like crossing myself or something!
Is it emotional when you first clapped eyes on it?
Yeah. It's real.
It's captured the moment, hasn't it? Larger than life.
So there's pride, but there must be sadness as well.
Yeah. He was so young, you know, to be taken like that so tragically.
But not just a great player,
he was influential in a wider sense, wasn't he?
A pioneering figure for so many black players.
I mean, everybody wanted to play like him. Every footballer wanted...
They wanted to get some of his skills.
But they can't, because you can't be trained to do that.
He would do something, pick the ball up and then that's it.
Players standing there, looking, "How did he get there?"
You know? That was it.
And his personality was different to Brendon and Cyrille's.
He was quite a flamboyant dresser, wasn't he?
He had style. He had a lot of style.
Mixed his clothes together, his colours together, you know.
And that is how he was, man.
That is how he was. He stood out from the crowd
and you knew it was Laurie. It must be quite emotional now.
I mean, you lost him. He was so young. I was just...
It touched me. I mean...
Yeah, it touched me, you know? I miss him very much, you know?
Yeah. I miss him, man.
He just went suddenly, just like that.
Left me the Monday and he's dead Saturday.
I've never seen my mum and dad crying.
It touched us all, losing him. It touched us all.
The whole world knew about Laurie's football skills
and his friends are adamant he was no less gifted
with his dancing shoes on.
As a teenager, as he was making waves at Orient,
he was grooving with the best of them on London's dance floors.
Laurie met his first proper girlfriend, Nicky Brown, in 1974.
Not the easiest time to embark on a mixed-race relationship.
So when did you first clap eyes on my hero?
Tottenham Royal.
The Tottenham Royal, soul/funk night
and that was my love
and I was dancing, and some of the moves he was doing,
and, somehow, we migrated
and, as crowds did then, they gathered round.
So we kind of did a bit of a dance-off,
where he'd do a move and I'd do move and you have a dance-off
in a friendly way with each other.
And then a Marvin Gaye tune came on and we had a slow dance
and seven tunes later, we were still dancing.
And it was just right.
Seeing through your eyes,
what was the experience like of being a black player at the time?
These were hard times, the '70s.
It was a tough period.
It was hard, anyway, walking down the road as a mixed-race couple.
I was a traitor.
I was a nigger lover or a white whore
and he was a traitor, being ruled by the white girl
who was only after his money.
So, it came from both sides.
So, how did you deal with it?
It depended on the circumstances.
I did a quick risk assessment and it depended on the circumstances.
I loved him, so I didn't want anything to hurt him.
But then, sometimes, a line would be drawn?
Yeah. We went to our favourite takeaway in Birmingham,
along the Hagley Road,
and we'd just got our takeaway and three big blokes came down the road.
And as we walked past, one spat towards me
and said, "Nigger lover, white whore."
And I said to Laurie, "Leave it."
And he looked, turned and looked and he said, "I can't leave it."
And so I turned round and they'd already stopped
and were turning and coming back, anyway.
One of them went to head-butt him.
It happened so quick.
But Laurie, being like he was,
ducked to one side and cuffed the back of his head
and the man's own force threw himself on the ground.
And then he threw the other one on top of him
and the other one on top of him, Laurie did.
Where one of them had fallen, his nose was bleeding
and then he was the one that turned round and said,
"That's Laurie Cunningham, I love you.
"Sorry, Laurie."
And Laurie's going, "Look at your nose."
And then what? All shake hands, "Lovely to meet you" and off you go?
I just don't get it!
And that's what I'm saying to you. You never really get it.
Cos then when we did jump in the cab and go home...
you can't really... You don't say anything.
There's nothing you can say.
Because you can't work it out. You can't... You can't compute it.
So you'd do things,
like I went, "Oh, no, you've got his blood on your shirt."
So we discussed what would be the best thing to get it out.
And then it's only later on that night,
a few hours later when you've processed it.
And it's like, "Whoa!"
What fascinates me,
there's some guy in his 60s somewhere in Birmingham now.
Does he tell the story in a pub?
"You know, this one time, there was this black bloke,
"I was going to beat him up.
"And you know who it was? Laurie Cunningham!
And he was ever so nice!
I wonder if he's dined out on it, yeah!
I do. And he probably has.
Or... But maybe that has led to him evolving.
Or maybe he hasn't and he just tells it as a funny story
and doesn't realise what a racist he sounds.
You'll never know.
Will you? You'll never know.
This casual racism, for all its evil banality, was only half the problem.
Darker, more organised forces were at work, too.
We've created a powerful movement out of nothing!
No power on earth is now going to stop this movement!
We'll carry on marching like a great army
towards the Britain of our dreams!
CHEERING
The word "nigger" means a person of a black face.
And I will always call that person of a black face a nigger!
CHEERING
The far right were about more than mere rabble rousing.
The National Front waded into football fans
as part of a deceptively sophisticated recruitment campaign.
We will recruit patriotic, pro-British youngsters
because we need everybody in the National Front.
I think there's a lot you can do with a soccer hooligan
and we feel that the very, very fanatical adulation by supporters
with their particular club is a sort of sublimated patriotism.
SIRENS WAIL
Nigel Bromage says he was targeted and groomed by the NF
to be one of their foot soldiers.
We meet outside his old battleground -
St Andrew's, home to Birmingham City.
So, the atmosphere in there,
what words would you use to describe it, then?
You could feel the hatred.
It was horrific. When you were coming in,
there was NF lads who had gone down to Birmingham market
and they would basically get a massive amount of bananas
and they would then be giving them out
or they'd be giving them out at the front of the Kop
and then saying, "Here you are, lads, take these in with you."
So, how was it organised round the ground?
When we go in, people would be positioned around the ground.
So you tend to have five at the back,
split to have sort of two corners
where there'd be five in each corner there
and then you'd basically start a chant from the back
and then each of the different groups would start to involve
and then the whole idea, then, the chant would get bigger and bigger
as normal supporters got involved,
and then the idea, then,
it would look like it's hundreds, if not thousands.
And, in reality, it was organised by a core of 40 or 50.
That's skilfully done, in a way. Yeah.
The violence at that time could be anything
from mass brawls on the terraces itself
and it wouldn't just be fists and boots.
You know, I've witnessed Stanley knives used
and when somebody is standing next to you,
and then they have their face slashed with a razor blade,
a Stanley knife, and that just spurts all over everybody.
I was probably here as well. But you must have seen my team here,
Cyrille, Brendon, Laurie come and play.
Yeah. And you would watch amazing football.
You'd look at it and then a lot of the time,
you'd think, "Oh, if only they were white."
And that was your feeling, if they were white, yeah,
they could be accepted then.
So you monkey-chanted at my heroes, then.
How could you do that? Yeah.
Yeah, I'm afraid I did.
Nigel doth repent.
He now runs an organisation
devoted to teaching about the dangers of racism.
It's fascinating that it turns out there was kind of more to it
than a load of football fans just being sort of casually racist.
I mean, there was a lot of that happening.
It was a disgrace, awful for the players
and horrendous for the black fans in amongst them.
But there was also far right elements
intent on actually organising it,
positioning themselves around, doing the monkey chants
and then getting everybody involved.
There were dark forces at work, really.
As determined and noisy and violent as the far right were,
they were on the losing side in this war.
By the time of the whites versus blacks match,
relations between whites and blacks and Asians
did seem to be changing for the better.
And football, not least West Brom,
was playing no small part in drawing them together.
The Deol siblings lived above their parents' paper shop
just near the Albion.
It became a meeting point for fans of all colours.
So this is it, this is where the Deol commercial empire...
It was! All change.
Yeah. We used to have "Sandwell Evening Mail" across there.
There'd be, like, newspaper boards here.
Express and Star board there. The ice cream van was there.
Yeah, the Walls sign was there.
It just all looks changed now.
It feels really small now, but then it was a really big shop, wasn't it?
It was kind of the hub of the community.
Inside what was their shop,
the family take me back to 1970s Smethwick.
Find the one of you outside the shop in your West Brom kit.
That's my favourite. So... That's what the shop looked like.
Can you see that? That's 1977.
Brilliant. You can see that pose, that's John Travolta's pose.
Yes! Whatever.
Oh, wow! That's me and Dad outside the shop.
Most of the window was full with footballs.
You know, it wasn't just us who wanted them.
All the kids bought the footballs to mess about
in the park around the corner or in the car park opposite.
Before we get into cliches,
"it was tough for you as an Asian family"... Yeah.
I'm sure there were challenges. But you had a very happy time
from day one, as I understand it, your family?
It was just fit in, buckle down.
Get on with it. "We've made this place our home and we are going to fit in."
It didn't matter what background you came from.
Around here, it was football.
It was a religion. Yeah.
Because it was what everyone talked about and everyone did.
It was the glue. Yeah.
I bet you there weren't more than ten Asian females in that crowd.
No. No, there wouldn't have been.
You were quite ballsy, weren't you?
There were not many Asian girls there, for definite.
I don't remember seeing any others.
That was the nice thing about Dad.
If I wanted to go to the football, as long as he knew who I was with,
where I was going... And it was daytime.
He was quite brave, doing that.
He would say to me, "Go to a policeman if there's a problem."
Yeah. "Look out for the horses,
"cos they'll be doing all the security.
"I want you back straight after the match."
Did it have particular resonance in you,
seeing black men playing for West Brom when you're Asians?
Yeah, big-time, cos it was someone of colour.
Yeah. So you kind of felt that that was the change.
You were the foreigners.
"Look, someone of colour's there, someone of colour is valued."
Someone else who's come to this country is doing really well.
It definitely gave you a bit of pride.
I remember... That's where we used to play across the road, football,
and kids would want to be Kevin Keegan or Andy Gray or Bomber Brown.
Suddenly, they wanted to be Laurie Cunningham.
Even though they were still in a tiny minority,
with the Three Degrees playing, black and Asian fans began to feel
the Hawthorns was a safer place to be.
Herville Hector was 19 years old in 1979.
He's one of the very few black men who dared to go to games.
So, the black versus white game, what did you think when you heard
that was happening for Len's testimonial?
I just thought, "Blimey!"
You know, a black team against a white team.
"Let's see how they get on."
And there's a massive buzz around the ground,
the fans were all talking about it,
and it was just great going to the game,
wondering, "Well, let's hope they can beat them."
Let's hope they can beat them to show the black players
coming more and more into the game. So, what made you a West Brom fan?
I mean, you're in 25,000 white people.
Were you ever frightened?
People go on about how the black players got abused,
bananas thrown at them, other stuff said to them.
The same happened to us as supporters
and obviously when we went to those games,
we relied on the white guys that were with us to sort of protect us.
Did it feel wrong at all to have a black versus white match?
Or did it feel like a nice thing to you?
It felt nice to me, because all the things that were going on,
the racism that was going on at the time,
and you felt that there was nothing being done about it,
for that to be at the forefront of the football,
saying, "Well, hang on, maybe this is the start of change."
Increasingly, black players were getting backing from the terraces.
Where once they'd been abused,
banners were now waved celebrating their brilliance.
The players in our black XI
were all about proving they had the talent
and just about the numbers to play in the white man's game.
There were legends like Cyrille and Brendon and Bob and George.
Remi Moses, who went on to play for Manchester United.
Garth Crooks, too.
Others weren't so well known.
Stewart Phillips was at Hereford United.
Ian Benjamin went on to play for Northampton Town.
And there was a small, timid-looking left back
from the Albion's reserves, I must confess,
I'd never come across until now.
Though I'm always fascinated about the views of the famous players
and what they remember of that game,
this guy has really captured my imagination now -
the so-called Fourth Degree.
His name's Vernon Hodgson.
Just kind of a bit part player, basically a reserve player.
Career didn't go anywhere
and I've heard that he's been a bin man all his life,
30 or more years since this game,
so I'd absolutely love to track him down.
And I didn't have to go far to find him -
hard at work on the industrial estates around West Bromwich.
Vernon? Is it you?
It's Vernon.
Hello. Did you play for the Albion, by any chance?
Yes, I did, yes.
Amazing. The Fourth Degree.
Are you the man? Yes, I'm the Fourth Degree.
And did you play in the black versus white Len Cantello testimonial?
Yes, I did, yeah. I came on for 20 minutes in that.
I had 20 minutes.
We head to Vernon's sister's hairdressing salon
round the corner in Tipton.
So, who spotted you?
Where did your football career begin?
Birmingham City, a chief scout for Birmingham City in 1974.
How old were you then? About 14, 15.
I was the first black professional at Birmingham City.
What was the atmosphere like in the dressing room
when you had a black player for the first time in yourself?
What was the reaction?
Well, it was almost like you get a minute's silence
when you first walk in.
And when I first started for the reserves,
I remember the coach jumping up and down.
And I thought, "What's happening?"
I remember him going, "Leave him alone,
"he's only bloody 16, give the lad a chance!"
And then I listened to what they were saying and they was shouting,
"We don't want a wog playing for us," blah-blah-blah. Yeah.
But by the end of that game,
I had people coming up and shaking my hand.
They liked me in the end. It's almost heart-warming,
but it would be a nicer story
if they weren't calling you a wog in the first place.
Vernon's from West Bromwich.
Signed by Birmingham City, he was promisingly talented.
But he did his knee in when he was 17,
which, at that time, more or less meant your career was over.
After a brief spell at Lincoln,
Ron Atkinson gave him a trial at the Albion,
right at the time of Len Cantello's testimonial.
So, what do you remember of the black versus white game?
You were playing alongside the superstars, then?
Yeah. I thought, "My God!" It was ground-breaking.
I can remember having a laugh with Cyrille and all of them.
We was all joking about, like, when we would run about passing the ball,
we would shout for the ball in Jamaican.
We only joked about that.
So, I've got this picture of you.
Here you are. I just want to give you a hug for some reason!
You look a bit lost and nervous, just sort of staring down here.
Gosh. I think I was worrying about my knee.
A lot of times back then when I played in the reserves,
it might sound sad now,
but I'd have a drink in the night-time
to try and forget the niggle in my leg. Right.
In the morning when I'm playing in the reserves.
But it never went away.
It just grinded and grinded until in the end,
I felt like I wanted my leg off from the knee down.
Really? Seriously, yeah. It's that painful?
So, what on earth is it like to have tasted
being a professional footballer and then your career is knackered?
Nightmares for the rest of your life, every so often.
I wake up and think, "I've got training today."
Really? Never goes from you.
Never goes from you. So, you've had a life's work on the bins.
And you seem very happy with it.
Well, as soon as football was over, I turned into, like, a town drunk.
I drank a lot. Really a lot.
A lot of people gave me until I was 27 and I'd be dead.
What got you out of that?
I'd say the bins.
It changed my life, my job has, definitely.
The black players of the '70s,
legends and unknowns alike, were pioneers.
They forced the door ajar for the likes of Ian Wright and Dion Dublin
in the '90s, with anger to burn, to kick that door right down.
So, what's your response when you see that from 1979?
Unbelievable. Hairstyles! Hairy afros!
You're a teenager in the '70s.
What did watching the Three Degrees mean to you?
Well, it was simply inspiring and Cyrille Regis was the one
because of the goal he scored that used to start Match Of The Day.
Smashed it home. You heard him hit the ball, strike the ball.
Lovely piece of control by Regis.
Oh, and what a great shot!
Oh, one of the goals of the season! Cyrille Regis!
Laurie Cunningham got his second with this header from a corner.
4-0.
I think with Laurie,
this guy is one of the best I've ever seen
in respect of left foot, right foot, pace.
Still with Cunningham. Oh, he did so well there.
My team was West Brom, only because of the Three Degrees.
They were opening new doors for black players, black people,
to try something new.
If he can do it, I'm going to have a go.
From Cyrille Regis...
To see Cyrille, Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson get through,
you know that it can be done.
You know it's hard, but you knew that there was people
that were an exception to the rule.
If you're good enough, you can get there, as hard as it is.
The players I've talked to from that era are different to you two.
Famously, Cyrille had a lot of bananas thrown at him.
Cyrille picked one up and ate one. In a million, million years,
I can't imagine you doing that.
I came rough and raw.
I was still fighting in car parks at 19, 20, 21 before I got to Palace.
And all of a sudden, I've gone from a builder
to a professional footballer and I would get the ball for a throw-in
and that, and you're getting vitriolic abuse, there to here,
and you're thinking to yourself, "If I ever saw you..."
You know what I mean? That's what I'm thinking.
Whereas Cyrille and all of them lot,
it was literally like a Martin Luther King.
Turn the other cheek. But you're not Martin Luther King, then.
No, I was Malcolm X at them times, you know what I mean?
I didn't want that to happen to me. I didn't want that.
Ian and Dion's generation marked the transition from black footballers
being a shining if beleaguered minority
to an era when they are merely the norm.
In 1993, Kick It Out was started to try to tackle racism in football.
That year, Paul Ince became the first black player
to captain England.
By the turn of the century,
around 10% of professional footballers in England were black
and black culture became a big part of the game -
a far cry from 1979 when the FA told Bob Hazell,
"No, you can't have dreadlocks."
Now, as the most marketable man on the planet showed,
you can do what you like with your hair, whatever colour you were.
So, what about culturally?
I imagine that white players of that era
listen to Elton John and Billy Joel and Neil Diamond
and stuff like that. What were you listening to?
Did you change anything?
I was going to the Wag, going to Crazy Larry's, Brown's,
listening to soul and funk.
But were you bringing the white boys with you?
They were following our lead.
They'd be going, "What's this rubbish?"
And when you got in their car to go to training,
they're playing that rubbish in their car.
So, culturally, you brought new music into the dressing room.
What about goal celebrations?
You know what? I think Shearer, Al, he copied one of my celebrations.
How did that celebration go? I scored a goal and done this dance.
And I saw Al score a goal where he'd done something,
where it wasn't his normal five finger,
right arm up, bent like this.
He'd done something like...
I saw it. He tried to copy you?
When I saw it, I laughed at him. It was only the other day.
I was like, "Al, I'm sure I saw you do a celebration."
"No, I didn't!" Did he remember? Course he remembered!
Today, around 30% of professional footballers in Britain are black.
Many of them are among the brightest stars in the game's galaxy.
As for racist chanting, if it happens now,
it tends to make national, even international news.
So, problem solved?
Or perhaps not.
Jason Roberts is Cyrille Regis' nephew.
Racism sorted?
Job done?
Not for Jason. Not a bit of it.
So, when you started playing,
the days of monkey chanting were long gone.
When did you first come across blatant racism?
One thing that really changed the way it worked
was Twitter and online and the internet,
because that was when you were able
to receive abuse in a very direct way.
You literally had to look at that.
On social media, people are emboldened.
They're in their room by themselves, they're not engaging with you
and it's much easier to show their true feelings.
And their true feelings is they tweet me
and say I'm a fucking nigger or I'm this, or I'm that,
or my family are this.
What kind of thing? Don't spare us. What kind of things have you...?
I mean, black bastard, you know, fucking nigger, whatever it may be.
"Go home". Yeah, all of that kind of stuff.
So we have the Twitter terrace, then.
The racist terrace is on Twitter now.
Absolutely. It kind of felt like people's feelings,
they knew they couldn't vent them on match day,
so they find a way to be able to voice their displeasure at you
or how they felt about your culture or your race
on their phones or at their computers at home.
Did you think that'd gone?
Did you think that had disappeared from society
until it came up on Twitter? Because I kind of thought it had.
I can't believe, still, people are saying it.
I have to be honest - from the black players' perspective,
it was somewhat of a unifying experience because all of us
were going through this thing in front of each other.
And I think it's sort of told the truth that,
no matter what you are, whether you were a Premier League footballer
or a bus driver or a janitor, the fact is,
you were just a black bastard at the end of the day
and this was the forum where we all shared that experience.
No-one's saying things aren't miles better.
But neither can anyone pretend
old school racism isn't alive and well on social media.
And while every other player is black,
what does it say about the game that such a tiny minority of black men
are to be found in dugouts or boardrooms?
Les Ferdinand is director of football at Queens Park Rangers.
One of the very few black men in such a role in this country.
To cut straight to the chase, then, a third of the Premier League,
for example, is black.
Mm-hm. And none of the managers are, and hardly any of the coaches,
in the Premier League, really, that I can think of.
You're about the only black bloke
in directors boxes all over the country.
Yeah, in most of them, yeah.
When I look now, I don't know how many black players
have tried to get into roles as directors of football.
I'm not sure there's too many, because perhaps they feel,
like management, like coaching,
that...that door won't be open for them.
And, you know... I was once asked by someone at the FA,
"Is there a problem with black players believing
"that they won't get an opportunity to be managers and coaches?"
And I said, "The mere fact you're asking me that question,
"you know there's a problem."
So he said, "Well, this is what we're trying to change."
And that was in...1998.
Hardly anything's changed.
Exactly. And we're now in 2016.
So, what's it going to take?
We won't be able to change boardrooms now.
Don't matter how many programmes we do.
We ain't going to be able to change boardrooms now.
It's years down the line that this is going to happen,
this is where the change is going to take place.
You can do as many of these documentaries as you like.
You ain't changing that.
You ain't changing what's in people's heads right now.
My journey back into the weirdly monochrome world
of 1979's whites versus blacks match is nearly at an end.
Ever since I was a little kid...
empty football grounds, obviously especially this one,
absolutely transfixed me.
It's like you can smell, you can feel
the joys and horrors of all the years.
I just get slightly overwhelmed.
It's particularly moving today,
because having become slightly obsessed
with this testimonial we've been talking about,
black versus white, we're having a bit of a reunion.
We've tried to get hold of as many players who were here that day
to come along and some of the supporters, too.
I can't wait to see who turns up.
'First to arrive are Cyrille and Brendan.'
Hello, how you doing?
All right. Better for seeing you. Nice to see you.
What do you feel when you're here?
Look at the pitch, you know, you get itchy feet.
I do, anyway.
'Then Tony "Bomber" Brown and Ally Robertson.'
Big man!
You all right?
'Next, Vernon Hodgson.'
It's the fourth Degree.
Vernon, how are you, mate? Nice to see you.
'Ian Benjamin and Stuart Phillips.'
Just this, look. Here you are, on here.
You just, you look so sort of...
If you actually looked closer to that...
Yeah? ..I am looking down at Cyrille and Laurie Cunningham and thinking,
"What the hell am I doing here?"
Is that right? It was just amazing to be there.
Hello, mate. How you doing?
'Herville Hector turns up to represent the black fans.'
'And finally, Laurie Rampling, Albion's photographer.'
And to thank them for turning up at this little reunion,
'I've a little something for them.'
Here, you are.
I've just got something to show you on here, if you...
'I've got hold of some news footage from the match that day.
'Suspecting, rightly, as it turns out,
'that none of them have seen it before.'
OK, everyone, have a look at this.
NEWSREADER: 'The black players have been mustered
'from seven different English League clubs.'
Ten years ago, you'd have been lucky to find half a dozen throughout the country.
But, today, they feature in such unlikely sides as Hereford United.
Albion's Len Cantello was celebrating ten years with the club,
and had in his line-up old favourites like Johnny Giles.
But, as we were to discover,
the collective skills of the All Blacks proved too much on the night.
Cunningham opened the scoring. A neat shot from 20 yards.
There you go! Hooray!
'Cantello's XI took the lead, but Garth Crooks levelled the score.'
It had been an entertaining night and when it looked as if the game
would end in a draw, Stuart Phillips of Hereford United made it 3-2.
The innovation had proved attractive to the 7,000 who'd turned up
and had given an insight into the deepening reservoir
of black talent within the English game.
That was fantastic. I'd never seen that footage.
Just a feeling, speaking personally, I just had a feeling,
this is special. It's unique.
Have you seen that, Cyrille? No, it's the first time.
A bit of history like that,
it's fantastic. Have you seen that before?
No, never seen that before. Must be strange.
Don't know at the time that it was going to be something,
like, so important.
I just basically turned up with my boots.
I think it's only now, just looking back,
on the occasion that I realise the importance of it.
What I recollect, Adrian, actually, after all these years in the game,
before the game, in the dressing room, we were told to let them win.
LAUGHTER
Only joking!
'So the black team got the victory they wanted...'
Oh, you hear the creaks!
'..And Laurie gets another memorable picture for his archive.'
That's it, job done. Got them together.
I tell you what I won't miss, fascinating though this has been,
I'm sick of talking about people in terms of whites and blacks.
So I don't have to do that now for a while.
There are reasons to believe there will be a happy ending
'to the story of black footballers in Britain,
'even if we are further away from it than I thought.'
'Football can often feel way behind the rest of society.
'On days like today, though,
'it feels like it may actually always have been a few steps ahead.'
LAUGHTER