`Super-Clubs', Local Loyalty and Regional Identities

Gavin Mellor

Institute of Football Studies, University of Central Lancashire, England

Introduction

The question of who attended English Association football matches in the years after the Second World War is one of the most under-researched areas of the sport.1 To begin to redress this deficiency, this essay will present a study of the diversity of football crowds in the North-West of England in the immediate post-war period. Using evidence from local newspapers and oral history interviews, it will investigate the class background of football supporters and assess the size of supporter catchment areas from which football clubs could expect to draw. It will also discuss the reasons for people's attendance at football matches between 1946 and 1962, and question whether supporters always followed clubs because it was their `birthright', or whether some simply went to see certain players or a particularly successful team. Finally, the essay will examine the issue of `regional' support for post-war football in the North-West of England, and will question whether football supporters in the late 1940s and 1950s lacked some of the intense local loyalty that is often attributed to fans today.

Football supporters and class

The virtual absence of reliable empirical data on the social structure of English football crowds for any period of the game's history has meant that very few studies have ever been conducted on the subject. However, a small number of crowd analyses have been attempted as part of more general surveys of the English game. In both Tony Mason's overview of English football between 1863 and 19152 and Nicholas Fishwick's analysis of the game in the inter-war period,3 it is concluded that respectable working-class males developed into the dominant social group in English football crowds; "decent workaday folk", as Fishwick terms them, enjoying "the winter pastime of millions".4 Other groups of supporters are noted by both authors, as indicated by Mason's statement that the decline in middle-class support during his period was not "absolute",5 and Fishwick's claim that "contingents ... of women and middle-class supporters" existed during the inter-war period.6 However, the overriding impression provided is that English football was largely the preserve of respectable working-class males by the end of the inter-war period.

English football crowds after the Second World War have received few such specific analyses. Even in general histories of English football and sport more generally, most authors have been unwilling to address the issue of who attended English football matches in the late 1940s and 1950s, leaving instead a vacuum into which received wisdoms and unfounded impressions have been allowed to step.7 Those that have addressed the issue have tended to assume the almost exclusively working-class nature of football crowds in this period, particularly when discussing the changes in English football supporting that supposedly took place during the late 1960s and 1970s.8 But on what evidence are these assumptions based, and how do they stand up to the scrutiny of detailed empirical research?

The photograph presented below is of Preston North End's Deepdale ground on a match day in 1939. Although the picture was taken in the inter-war period, one can suggest that it is relevant to the study of English football crowds in the late 1940s and 1950s, and constitutes an important piece of evidence for refuting the supposed social homogeneity of football crowds during that period.

Figure 1. Preston North End's Deepdale Ground, 1939 (Lancashire Evening Post).9

From the photograph above, it can be observed that Preston North End had a large car-owning support in the period immediately prior to the Second World War. The number of cars and vans in the picture, coupled with the very existence of a large car park at Deepdale and the sponsorship of the West Stand by a car dealer testify to this. In assessing the class structure of football crowds in the North-West of England in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the importance of this evidence is apparent when one considers the patterns of car-ownership that existed in Britain during the same period. In 1939, under two million car licences were held in Great Britain, a figure that did not rise significantly until the mid 1950s.10 This, aligned to the relatively high price of owning and running a car during this period, implies that the vast majority of car owners in the years immediately prior to and after the Second World War were from the commercial, professional and lower middle classes.11 If this was the case, then the photograph above can be interpreted as an indication that Preston North End had a significant number of middle-class fans in the late 1930s. There is no reason to believe that they were atypical in this respect, nor that their support altered markedly in the post-war period. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that football clubs in the North-West of England in the late 1940s and 1950s were socially heterogeneous, and that middle-class fans may have formed a larger section of post-war English football crowds than has previously been thought.

This photographic testimony to car ownership among football fans in the late 1930s is supported by evidence that relates directly to the immediate post-war period. Newspaper reports of football matches in the North-West of England in the late 1940s and 1950s regularly included remarks attesting to the existence of a notable number of car-owners among post-war football supporters. For the Preston North End versus Blackburn Rovers match in 1946, for instance, a special report conducted on the travelling Blackburn Rovers support by the Lancashire Daily Post describes a journalist having to turn back from Blackburn Road in Preston because of the "advancing mechanised column" of cars.12 Similarly, in a description of Preston North End's away following in 1947, the same newspaper mentions a "steady stream of cars" among the modes of transport used by fans to travel to the game.13 Outside Preston, the Lancashire Daily Post noted in 1947 that "several hundred private cars" set out from Burnley to carry supporters to Wembley for the team's Cup Final appearance of that year,14 while in 1953, a letter in the Bolton Evening News called for increased traffic control to be introduced in the town for Bolton's home matches.15

This evidence of class diversity across post-war football fans is supported by a letter that appeared in the Bolton Evening News in January 1953 on the issue of overcrowding at Burnden Park. A controversy over access to Bolton's ground had been present for some weeks in the letters' page of the newspaper, centring particularly on crowd control measures at Cup games. By the end of January, the argument led one reader to write to the paper to complain about the attitude of so-called "snob spectators" who, he claimed, should watch local football if they didn't enjoy the crowds at first-class matches.16 Sentiment of this kind could indicate that football crowds were not only socially varied in the immediate post-war period, but also that they occasionally contained a level of class conflict.

Evidence of the class diversity of English football crowds in the late 1940s and 1950s also came from a series of oral history interviews conducted with football fans in the North-West of England during October and November 1997. One Preston North End fan stated that post-war crowds at Deepdale were made up of "professional people" as well as "the traditional cloth-cap Lancashireman",17 while a Manchester United fan commented that Old Trafford was "a place to be seen" for the local industrial and commercial hierarchy in the immediate post-war era.18 In particular, he stated that a season ticket in the stand at Old Trafford during the 1950s was a sign of some status, and that much kudos could be gained locally from owning one. Other respondents also recalled `affluent' people attending football matches in the late 1940s and 1950s, and again commented that the better off would tend to congregate mainly, though not exclusively, in the seated areas.19

Taken together, the above evidence suggests that notable numbers of individuals from the professional, commercial and lower middle class attended football matches in the North-West of England in the immediate post-war era. This is not to say that middle-class people were particularly numerous in their attendance or even that they supported their respective clubs regularly; evidence of this kind simply indicates that some middle-class people attended some football matches some of the time. However, the very fact that affluent people are identified in photographic evidence and match reports and are remembered by oral history interviewees testifies to their existence, and offers an important corrective to those historians who tend to regard football crowds in the late 1940s and early 1950s as indistinguishable, homogenous masses.

Catchment areas and `super-clubs'

In addition to the assumption of social homogeneity in English football crowds in the immediate post-war era, it has also been common for historians of football to suppose a geographical homogeneity among the supporters of football clubs in that period. In academic discussions about the historical relationship between football clubs and local identities, debate has often been conducted entirely in terms of the residents of the towns or cities from which football clubs take their names, thereby ignoring the very notion that notable numbers of people from outside those areas could have supported the game.20 But, as with the class assumptions already discussed, how does this presumption of geographical exclusivity relate to the reality of post-war football crowds, and how does it stand up to close historical scrutiny?

There may be little reason to doubt that the majority of English football supporters in the late 1940s and 1950s came from the town or city in which their team played. However, there is evidence to suggest that divergence from this `ideal-type' may have been greater than has previously been considered. In descriptions of football crowds given in the North-West local press throughout the immediate post-war period, supporters from a variety of locational backgrounds were often referred to, suggesting that some football clubs at least were anything but a preserve for working-men of the immediate locale. For the local derby between Preston North End and Blackburn Rovers in December 1946, for instance, the Lancashire Daily Post claimed that ticket applications had come in from as far away as Kendal in the Lake District,21 while in a description of a lock-out at a match between Preston North End and Middlesbrough in January 1947, the same newspaper stated that "the most disappointed people were visitors from Lancaster, Morecambe and other towns" (see Figure 2).22

Figure 2: Sketch Map of the North-West of England.

Evidence of geographical variation among football supporters in the North-West of England was particularly strong in east Lancashire. In 1953, the Bolton Evening News noted that a "football special train" had run from Barrow and district to both Preston and Burnley for a Cup tie weekend,23 while in March 1960, the Blackburn Evening Telegraph noted that a football special for the Blackburn versus Burnley Cup match had picked up at all stations from Skipton in west Yorkshire.24 For the same match, the Blackburn paper also stated that inquires for tickets had come in "not only from east Lancashire, but from all parts of the county, from the Fylde [north-west Lancashire] to Manchester and Liverpool",25 while for Blackburn Rovers' next Cup match in March 1960 it claimed that people from as far away as Leyland had queued for tickets.26

It is interesting to note that much of the newspaper evidence that exists on the issue of locality comes from match reports on FA Cup ties and other `big' or `glamorous' games. While this may be due to the fact that newspapers in the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s devoted more space to describing football crowds at significant games, it may also indicate that football crowds were more geographically varied at Cup ties; not least because fans from across the region would regularly seek out glamorous matches to watch. In February 1962, an article hinting at this process appeared in the Blackburn Evening Telegraph. It stated that Blackburn Rovers were hoping for a 30,000 crowd for their forthcoming Cup tie with Middlesbrough at Ewood Park, despite the fact that Burnley were playing Everton 10 miles away and Manchester United were playing Sheffield United.27 This indicates a belief that attractive matches in the region could influence the level of support for some teams, particularly if those teams were not generally successful.

Despite this concentration on `big' matches, however, there is also evidence of geographical variation in post-war football crowds in the North-West of England at less important games. This evidence came mainly from oral history interviewees. One respondent recalled large numbers of people regularly attending Preston North End's home games from as far away as Southport in the 1950s,28 while an Everton supporter claimed that people from Blackburn and even Dublin travelled regularly to Goodison Park in this period.29 The same also appears to be true of Burnley. One Burnley supporter remembered the club drawing regular support from areas such as Todmorden, Rawtenstall, Haslingden and Accrington in the 1950s and 1960s, and claimed that the club had a large following in Skipton and other areas of west Yorkshire.30

At this point, it is important to note that those teams in the North-West which appear to have had the most geographically varied support in the immediate post-war period were those positioned in relative isolation from other successful Football League clubs. Towns such as Burnley and Preston have large areas to the east and north respectively which have no indigenous top class football clubs, and it is these areas that seem to have provided the majority of their `out of town' fans. This may explain why teams such as Bolton Wanderers appear to have been much less successful in drawing crowds from outside their immediate locale in the same period. Indeed, even when Bolton ruled in 1953 that ticket applications for their FA Cup Final versus Blackpool would not be considered from people who lived outside the town and the immediate surrounding villages, the Bolton Evening News only received one letter of complaint.31 The fact that this letter came from Adlington indicates that the club did not consider their area of support to stretch much beyond ten miles from Burnden Park.

To explain the development of `out of town' football supporters in the North-West of England in the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, it is important to note that post-war Lancashire had excellent and affordable rail communications that easily allowed the transfer of fans across the region.32 It is also important to note that coach excursions from small towns and rural areas in the North-West were frequently run to the region's larger football clubs on match days in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.33 This indicates that many football clubs in the North-West of England were readily accessible places in the immediate post-war period, and that people from beyond the towns and suburbs could, if they wished, regularly gain access to matches in the major urban areas.

In addition to issues of transport, it should be noted that at least one football club, Preston North End, had a deliberate policy in the immediate post-war period of developing connections with towns throughout the North-West region in an attempt to expand a limited `natural' support base. Evidence of this comes from an article that appeared in the Lancashire Evening Post in January 1954 on the issue of football fans from outside Preston attending North End's matches only to be disappointed by the non-appearance of club favourite Tom Finney. In the article, football correspondent Walter Pilkington hints that Preston North End had a clear goal from the inter-war period onwards of garnering support for the team to the north of the Ribble. He states that club president `Jim' Taylor "broke away from the parochial atmosphere which pervades most provincial clubs [and] set out to attract custom from towns as far afield as Lancaster, Morecambe, Kendal and Barrow", and asserts that Jim Taylor was:

"far seeing enough to realise that a club such as Preston could not hope to flourish on gates from 12,000 and 15,000, this figure being based on 10 per cent of the locality's population. He wanted at least another 10,000 people at Deepdale for every home League match, so he and his colleagues on the directorate went in for glamour."34

Although Pilkington does not make clear exactly how this policy was implemented, or, indeed, what constituted "glamour", one can identify from his account how people to the north of Preston may have been encouraged to identify with Preston North End, especially with so few League clubs in the area.35

If Pilkington's account of the ambitions of Preston North End's directorate is accepted, a number of potentially fundamental problems arise for traditional understandings of football supporters in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Most centrally, it opens up the possibility of Preston North End (and to some extent Burnley) being viewed as a `proto-super club' with world-class players drawing support not only from the town, but from all over the region. The model of discriminating consumers attending football matches, not because it is their `birthright', but because they want to be entertained is usually associated with football in the late twentieth century. However, in the aforementioned article, Walter Pilkington asserts unequivocally that people attending Preston's matches from outside the area during this period were there for one thing and one thing only: to see the talents of Tom Finney. For this, he describes their attendance as "patronage rather than support", evoking the image of a passive theatre audience. "Are they really supporters of the football club", he asks, "or football lovers drawn by a box office magnet, namely Finney?"

To assume that these supporters felt no emotional attachment to Preston North End, however, may be to misunderstand the nature of their support. If it is asserted, pace Pilkington, that individuals from outside Preston had the capability and willingness to be ardent supporters of the club in the 1950s, then a number of potentially important questions are raised, not least for traditional understandings of football and community. As stated above, a great deal of the academic work conducted on the topic of football and community has tended to emphasise the geographical homogeneity of football clubs' support. If it can be shown that certain football clubs have long drawn emotionally committed support from outside their immediate locale, then it must be concluded that this work is partial and incomplete, and has tended to confuse the specifics of `football communities' or `football sub-cultures' with the more general communities of towns and cities. By giving the impression that issues of football and community and football and locality relate only to people who live in the immediate locale of football clubs, one must conclude that this work has ignored an important section of the football supporting public, and that further work is needed to understand the relationship between football and locality for these more geographically disparate groups.

Football supporters and `regional' identity

In addition to regular and committed football supporters who originated from outside the immediate locale of football clubs, a further interesting and under-researched group of fans that emerged from newspaper and oral history research were those who, between 1946 and 1962, regularly attended the matches of more than one club. Evidence of supporters who did this was particularly strong in oral history testimony. Many respondents recalled attending matches in which their chosen team was not playing, and some contended that they travelled regularly to watch their local rivals play. The existence of fans such as these raises a number of fundamental question about the whole nature of football supporting in the North-West during the post-war period, and draws attention to the fluid nature of such concepts as loyalty, rivalry and parochialism in the football context.

To explain the type of cross-club allegiances that existed among football supporters in the North-West of England during the late 1940s and 1950s, one woman oral history respondent (albeit a rather extreme example) stated:

"Well what we used to do, I mean you can't afford to do it now, but we'd go to four or five matches a week .... [We] had a season ticket at Bolton, and Stockport used to play on a Friday night so we had a season ticket at Stockport as well. Well, we reckoned if we were going to go to every match we might as well get a season ticket. So it was a season ticket at Bolton and a season ticket at Stockport, but Stockport were like the second team if you will. But if Bolton hadn't a night match during the week and North End were at home or Rovers, United, City, Bury, Blackpool, Burnley, we'd go. The only ones we didn't go to were Liverpool and Everton because we couldn't get back .... Any match within travelling distance that we could get to, we'd go."36

Similarly, a Preston North End fan recalled that in the 1950s, specialist coaches were run regularly from Preston to Blackburn and Blackpool on Saturdays when Preston North End were away, so that the people of Preston could attend the matches of Blackburn Rovers and Blackpool.37 Another stated:

"At one time I used to go and watch Blackpool when they were at home, if Preston were away and Blackpool were at home. I'd go there because to be able to watch Finney one week and Matthews the next week, I mean, I don't think there are any footballers today anywhere near the standard they were".38

Indeed, this attitude towards attending the matches of rival clubs to see their best players or the players of the opposition was common among respondents. More than one interviewee spoke specifically of attending games in the 1950s to watch Finney, Matthews, Lofthouse and others, while one Tranmere fan explained that he used to watch Everton play because he didn't have a television and he wanted to see the best players in the country perform.39

In contrast to this `instrumental' approach of watching more than one club to see certain players, other respondents claimed that they did so because of their active respect and emotional attachment to a number of teams. In particular, certain respondents who watched football in the late 1940s and 1950s claimed to be less parochial in their attitude towards football than their later counterparts, and frequently referred to themselves as fans of "football in Lancashire" or "football in general".40 This `regional' attitude towards football was even evident in areas that are today exemplified by bitter rivalry. One Manchester City supporter stated that the seemingly long-standing animosity and antagonism between Manchester United and Manchester City fans was a product of recent years, and that he knew of supporters in the 1950s who had season tickets at both grounds.41 Another Manchester City supporter talking more generally of football in Manchester in the 1950s recalled that:

"Then it didn't make any difference if you were a football supporter and you came from Manchester. If you were United you wanted United to win first and foremost, whoever they were playing, and you wanted City to be somewhere near, just below you. If you were a City supporter, you wanted City to win and United just to be perhaps two or three places below".42

The same supporter also summarised his general support for, and regional pride in, football in the North-West of England in the late 1940s and 1950s by stating that:

"When Blackpool played Newcastle in the Cup Final [in 1951] we wanted Blackpool to win `cause they were from Lancashire, and Burnley [in 1947], we wanted Burnley to win because they were from Lancashire".43

This oral testimony is supported by newspaper evidence. From investigating the North-West's local press in the late 1940s, it can be said that a `regional' view of football was common in the area during the immediate post-war period, and that newspaper readers were quite often encouraged to take pride in the activities of all the region's sports teams. In March 1948, a review of the forthcoming weekend of sport in the Manchester Evening Chronicle highlighted this attitude perfectly when it stated:

"FA Cup semi-finals ... opening of the flat racing season ... RL Cup ties ... RU County Championship final and international. These are the events that make tomorrow the greatest sports day of the year. It only needs Manchester United and Blackpool to win through to an all-Lancashire Cup final, three Red Rose clubs to reach the RL semi-finals and Lancashire to retain the RU County title to make it the greatest sports day in the history of Lancashire. Here's hoping".44

The Evening Chronicle patently believed that their readers `supported' or at least took an interest in all the region's sports teams, and implicitly portrayed Lancashire as a county without bitter sporting partisanship.

In a similar expression of regional pride, the Manchester Evening Chronicle's reporting of the build up to the 1948 FA Cup Final between Manchester United and Blackpool also expressed a belief that Lancashire's football fans should `support the county' as well as their own clubs. In the week running up to the final, the paper published letters from the Lord Mayor of Manchester and the Lord Mayor of Blackpool, both of which expressed their delight that the final was an all-Lancashire affair. The Lord Mayor of Manchester stated that:

"While, naturally, as a partisan, I hope the trophy will come to Manchester, nevertheless, I endorse the saying, `may the best side win'. All Lancastrians derive much satisfaction and jubilation knowing that the Cup is certain to come to the County Palatine".45

Similarly, the Mayor of Blackpool reflected that:

"As the Mayor of Blackpool and a Lancashire man, this year's Cup final is a two-fold source of pride and joy to me. Whoever wins, I can take pride in the fact that it is an all-Lancashire final and that the Cup must come to our beloved county. May the better team win, and if that team can be Blackpool, then my pleasure in the result will also be two-fold".46

From both of these expressions, it was clear that the FA Cup of 1948 was portrayed as an important expression of Lancastrian solidarity, and an event that could be enjoyed by the county as a whole. Partisanship was presented as an acceptable expression of supporting one's team, but not at the expense of one's respect for other teams, or of one's support for the county.

It should be noted, of course, that evidence gathered on this issue of football `regionalism' should be handled with great care. This is particu larly true of the oral history testimony, as it is possible that the above recollections may be touched with nostalgia and the often repeated sense that football crowds were more `sporting' in the immediate post-war period than they are today. However, a number of respondents certainly displayed a regional pride in football in the North-West during their interviews, and often testified to wanting all teams from the region to do well, especially against `southern' opposition.

To place this `regional' approach to football in its historical context, there is evidence of intense parochialism among football fans in the North-West of England as early as the 1890s; most famously when a feud ensued between fans of Preston North End and Burnley in the early part of that decade.47 From football's `respectablisation' in the inter-war period,48 however, it is possible that the culture surrounding football became much more receptive to the notion of respecting other people's clubs, and even the active supporting of more than one team. Unfortunately, the reasons behind the possible adoption of this `regional' approach to football so far remain unclear and require further research.

The reasons behind the apparent decline of regionalism in football from the early 1960s onwards also presently remain unclear. Despite this, however, one can posit that a fundamental cultural shift occurred in England at some stage between the late 1950s and late 1960s that resulted in the `one club' intense parochialism that is so prevalent in the game today. To investigate this process, it may be fruitful to consider the affect of an increasingly dominant London-based `national' culture on the regions in the early 1960s, and question whether it resulted in the concentration of loosely defined `regional' identities into more consolidated `local' counterparts. It may also be useful to investigate changes within working-class culture during the period, and question whether socio-economic shifts in working-class life in the late 1950s, including increasing affluence, the continuing decline of organised religion, and new educational philosophies based on free expression rather than disciplined instruction, caused a decline in `respectable working-class values' such as collectivism, good manners, and mutual respect, and resulted instead in a certain degree of individualism, cynicism and the deriding of other people's interests.49 These are starting points for discussion, and most certainly not answers in themselves. If proved to be useful, however, they may explain the apparent generational divide in attitudes towards the concept of `regional' support for football in England during the 1950s and 1960s, and, of course, the increasingly violent parochialism that manifested itself in the new wave of football hooliganism that blighted the English game from the early 1960s onwards.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues in the Department of Historical and Critical Studies at the University of Central Lancashire for their perceptive criticisms and helpful comments on this paper. Special thanks go to Dave Russell for his invaluable insights into the issue of football and regional identity.

References

Oral History Interviews, October-November 1997

Blackburn Evening Telegraph, various editions, 1946-1962

Bolton Evening News, various editions, 1946-1962

Lancashire Evening (formerly Daily) Post, various editions, 1946-1962

Manchester Evening Chronicle, various editions, 1946-1958

Bale, John, The Place of `Place' in Cultural Studies of Sport, Progress in Human Geography, 12 (1988), pp. 507-524

Critcher, Chas, Football Since the War, in: Clarke, John, et al. (eds.), Working-Class Culture - Studies in History and Theory (London: Hutchinson Education 1979)

Devine, Fiona, Affluent Workers Revisited: Privatism and the Working Class (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1992)

Fishwick, Nicholas, English Football and Society, 1910-1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1989)

Goldthorpe, John, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971)

Hobsbawm, Eric, The Formation of British Working-Class Culture, in his: Worlds of Labour: Further Studies in the History of Labour (London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd. 1984)

Holt, Richard, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989)

Hunt, David, Preston North End Football Club: A Social History (forthcoming)

Marwick, Arthur, British Society Since 1945 (3rd edn.) (London: Penguin Books Ltd. 1996)

Mason, Tony, Association Football and English Society, 1863-1915 (Brighton: Harvester Press 1980)

Mason, Tony, The Blues and the Reds, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 134 (1998), pp. 107-128

Mogridge, M.J.H., The Car Market (London: Pion Limited 1983)

O'Connell, Sean, The Car in British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring, 1896-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1998)

Richards, Jeffery, Football and the Crisis of National Identity, unpublished paper

Russell, Dave, Football and the English: A Social History of Association Football In England, 1863-1995 (Preston: Carnegie Publishing 1997)

Walton, John K., Lancashire: A Social History, 1558-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1987)

Walton, John K., Reconstructing Crowds: The Rise of Association Football as a Spectator Sport in San Sebastian, 1915-32, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 15 (1) (1998), pp. 27-53

Walvin, James, The People's Game, The History of Football Revisited (Edinburgh: Mainstream 1994)

Notes

1 See Walton for a discussion of existing work on English football crowds. Most of the work so far conducted has tended to concentrate on crowd size. Those that have attempted to study crowd composition have mainly been concerned with the pre-First World War or inter-war periods. Walton, 1998, p. 27 & 45.

2 Mason, 1980, pp. 138-167.

3 Fishwick, 1989, pp. 48-67.

4 Fishwick, 1989, p.58.

5 Mason, 1980, p. 157. Mason also states in his analysis of pre-1914 football crowds in Liverpool that they had a "fair sprinkling of what might be termed lower-middle-class" people in them. See Mason, 1984, p. 120.

6 Fishwick, 1989, p. 58.

7 This is true of both Walvin, 1994, and Holt, 1989.

8 For instance, in his article on football after the Second World War, Critcher presumes the working-class nature of post-war football crowds with no supporting evidence: Critcher, 1979, pp. 168-173.

9 This photograph has been reproduced with the kind permission of the Lancashire Evening Post.

10 Mogridge, 1983, p. 89; Marwick, 1996, pp. 32-33.

11 See O'Connell, 1998, pp. 19-38. In O'Connell's sample of pre-1939 car owners, one in eight is said to have been from the working class, one in seven from the lower middle class, and four in seven from the professional or commercial middle class. Also see Marwick, 1996, p. 61.

12 Lancashire Daily Post, December 7th, 1946, p. 4.

13 Lancashire Daily Post, January 1st, 1947, p. 6.

14 Lancashire Daily Post, April 25th, 1947, p. 6.

15 Bolton Evening News, January 30th 1953, p. 6.

16 Bolton Evening News, January 30th 1953, p. 6.

17 Interview with Tom Woods, 7th November, 1997. The tapes of all oral history interviews referred to in this paper are in my possession. It is hoped that they will ultimately be stored in the Football Museum, Deepdale, Preston.

18 Interview with Ken Bailey, 11th November, 1997.

19 Differential pricing arrangements applied not only between seating and standing areas but also between different standing parts. Touchline enclosures were usually more expensive than the areas behind the goal. It is probable that the vast majority of middle-class people who stood at football matches in the post-war period watched from the more expensive areas as they could have afforded a better and covered view.

20 This criticism can be made of John Bale's work on football and locality and Richard Holt's discussion of spectating and civic pride. See Bale, 1988, pp. 513-516, and Holt 1989, pp. 166-175.

21 Lancashire Daily Post, December 1st, 1946, p. 4.

22 Lancashire Daily Post, January 30th, 1947, p. 4.

23 Bolton Evening News, January 29th 1953, p. 6.

24 Blackburn Evening Telegraph, March 16th 1960, p. 1.

25 Blackburn Evening Telegraph, March 9th 1960, p. 1.

26 Blackburn Evening Telegraph, March 22nd 1960, p. 1.

27 Blackburn Evening Telegraph, February 8th 1962, p. 12.

28 Interview with Tom Woods, 7th November, 1997.

29 Interview with John Miller, 17th November, 1997.

30 Interview with Walter Monk, 28th October, 1997.

31 Bolton Evening News, April 2nd 1953, p. 3.

32 For a history of the development of railways in Lancashire, see Walton, 1987, p. 219.

33 A number of oral history interviewees testified to using coach excursions to `out of town' matches in the immediate post-war period.

34 Lancashire Evening Post, January 23rd 1954, p. 7.

35 The only League clubs to the north of Preston in this period were Carlisle United, Workington (after 1951), and Barrow. All these clubs spent the immediate post-war era in the Third Division North.

36 Interview with Joan Palin, 3rd November, 1997.

37 Interview with Walter Horam, 25th, November, 1997.

38 Interview with Tom Woods, 7th November, 1997.

39 Interview with John Miller, 17th November, 1997.

40 For example: interview with Joan Palin, 3rd November, 1997.

41 Interview with Anthony McKenna, 13th November, 1997.

42 Interview with Dave McCormack, 21st November, 1997.

43 Interview with Dave McCormack, 21st November, 1997.

44 Manchester Evening Chronicle, March 12th 1948, p. 8.

45 Manchester Evening Chronicle, April 23rd 1948, p. 4.

46 Manchester Evening Chronicle, April 23rd 1948, p. 4.

47 David Hunt, in his forthcoming history of Preston North End, has found evidence to this effect.

48 See, Russell, 1997, pp. 118-123.

49 These issues are dealt with more fully in Jeffery Richards' unpublished paper, `Football and the Crisis of National Identity'. For a more general view of changes in working-class culture in post-war Britain, see Goldthorpe, 1971, Hobsbawm, 1984, and Devine, 1992.