You can send a form letter to your MP about the debate using the VoteFootball site but it is more likely to be effective if you send a personal letter using the WriteToThem site produced by the lovely people at MySociety. It is likely to only take 5 or 10 minutes. Write about what you know and feel. Be concise. Give links to more detail and evidence. Be polite. Ask for a specific action.
On 9 February the House of Commons will be debating the following motion:
That this House has no confidence in the ability of the Football Association (FA) to comply fully with its duties as a governing body, as the current governance structures of the FA make it impossible for the organisation to reform itself; and calls on the Government to bring forward legislative proposals to reform the governance of the FA.
Can I ask you to attend the debate and support the motion?
There have been many governance failures of the FA, and other English governing bodies. I am particularly concerned about the lack of representation for fans and the lack of action against the owners of football clubs who act against the interests of the game, the fans and the communities in which the clubs are rooted.
There are numerous current examples of fans protesting against and boycotting their clubs because of the actions of their owners. For example, Charlton Athletic, Coventry FC, Blackburn Rovers, Leeds United and my own Blackpool FC.
Reformed governance of the FA which provides transparency, accountability and gives power to fans will help alleviate the situation at Blackpool, and other clubs, and can reduce the chance of similar cases happening again.
Please support this motion to help make that happen.
Blackpool football club is in a terrible state. Thousands of fans are boycotting the club until the owners, the Oyston family, go. We know that if we don’t get the Oystons out then they will keep damaging lives and could destroy the club.
Image copyright Reuters, snipped from that terrible excuse for a paper The Sun.
The reason we boycott
The boycotts are not about money. Yes, there is a wasted opportunity of a £90m windfall from Blackpool’s recent season in football’s top division and much of that windfall has been loaned from the club to other companies rather than spent on football. The terrible waste of that money is damaging the club but that is not the reason we boycott.
The boycotts are also not about being a laughing stock as the club fell 3 football divisions in 5 years and couldn’t even put out a full squad at the start of the 2014 season. The Oystons are currently in a legal battle with someone who owns 25% of the club. A legal battle that is bringing yet more shame on the club as allegations fly in the courtroom. Blackpool is a laughing stock because of the Oyston’s management of the club. We will not forget the shame but that is not the only reason why we boycott.
The boycotts are mainly because the Oyston family have abused fans; taunted them and taken legal action against them. An unknown number of legal actions are ongoing. These legal actions carry a large cost.
The real human cost of legal action
Fans from across the country have raised money to help Blackpool fans defend these legal actions but money is never everything.
Some individuals have lost their jobs, businesses are in jeopardy, relationships with partners have broken down and health has suffered.
they went on to say
some of the people caught up in this situation ha[ve] been seriously impacted — two cases of cancer, a stroke victim, depression, loss of a baby and an attempted suicide all in the last twelve months.
Devastating stuff.
These are some of the people that used to fill that stadium, who used to cheer on the team and travel around the country with other Blackpool fans.
This is not just a club being damaged, this is people’s lives being destroyed.
They don’t get it
Unfortunately too many other people either don’t realise or don’t care that the football club is acting this way. They are not speaking up to say that this must stop or taking any form of action to help get the Oystons to go.
The club and its employees didn’t comment on the legal action or the tales of the damage the legal action has caused to fans, instead they released “funny” Christmas videos. Some fans still go and put money in the club’s coffers rather than joining the boycott. The local paper tries to stay neutral and frequently reports on Blackpool as a normal football club when it should campaign for change. The local council and its leader stay curiously silent. The footballing authorities sit on their hands, rather than trying to save the club and help the fans.
I’d invite those people who still don’t get it to work with the fans who are both trying to stop the damage being done to our fellow fans and trying to save the club. There is a big job to do. Every voice, every pair of hands and every pair of feet can help.
It is also an urgent job. If you don’t help now and we don’t get the Oystons out soon then we may find ourselves with a much bigger task.
Building something new from the ashes that the Oystons leave behind.
It may seem like there’s a long way to go for Blackpool fans, but we should be proud of what we have achieved
Counting the fans in a recent picture by ex-Blackpool player (big) Ben Burgess showed 475 fans at a this week’s game vs Bolton. The club claimed there were 1,372 fans. Bolton had 2,261 away supporters. Nearly 5x the number of Blackpool fans.
The Oyston family have taken legal action against fans. Abused them. Taunted them. A fan was jailed. An unknown, but large, number of fans are banned from Bloomfield Road. Thousands of fans are boycotting and refusing to go back until the Oystons go. We’re not paying any more. I’m one of those thousands. More legal actions are on the way against more fans.
Protesting, like thousands of fans did at Judgement Day 2, takes time and effort. Boycotting your football club is hard: it hurts. Being on the end of legal action is horrendous. It can damage your job, your relationships, your life.
We all have doubts
Sometimes it’s hard to see if the boycotts and protests are achieving anything. Perhaps the Oystons will never leave?
After all the bid to buy the club by the Blackpool Supporters Trust was rejected, the Oystons refused to even negotiate a price. The club denied a recent bid even happened. The leader of the town council, Simon Blackburn, said the council “cannot take sides”. He is curiously silent on a matter that affects so many of the people he represents.
The Oystons have a long history in Blackpool and seem to want to cling on like a particularly unpleasant leech sucking blood out of its victim. Sometimes it can feel like failure is inevitable. That the club will sink and that no one will stand together with the fans and stand up for the club, the community and the town.
Perhaps we have to get behind the team despite the owners? Maybe a cheap season ticket offer will be available? Perhaps there’ll be some new players? Perhaps they’ll win a few games?
Many Blackpool fans will have had these nagging questions going around their head. We all have doubts.
We should ignore them.
We should ignore our doubts because the protests are working
I think the Blackpool fans have achieved something. The protests and boycotts are making a difference. You can tell by the reactions of the Oyston family. The protests and boycotts affect them. They reacted by taunting fans. They reacted by taking legal action against people trying to change the ownership of the club. They reacted by spending a tiny amount of the £90m Premiership windfall, just part of the millions that has gone into the club over the last few years, to buy some players. That must have hurt. Owen Oyston even attended an open meeting of fans for the first time in three decades.
But the protests also work by influencing other people. Crowd numbers have dropped to levels not seen since the late 1980s/early 1990s. Visiting fans spend less in the ground. Thousands of previous season ticket holders are boycotting the club. Ex-players and managers have spoken out. The opposition leader of the town council and the local MPs have called for action. The Oystons, and their disgraceful management of the club, regularly feature in the national press. There is the looming spectre of a court case from Valeri Belokon who owns 25% of the club.
Players don’t want to come to the club and supporters don’t want to go to matches. This makes it harder for the Oystons to keep hold of the club. Despite the tangled finances the club becomes less useful to the Oystons and possibly even damaging to their other businesses. More people now know how badly the Oystons run their businesses and treat people.
Perhaps as that court date approaches the Oystons might choose to approach the Blackpool Supporters Trust and start talking about a price to let them get out?
This doesn’t mean that we can expect a quick exit by the Oystons or that it will be an easy life afterwards. It took nine years after Wimbledon was stolen before its fans had a club back in the football league whilst eleven years after they were formed FC United Manchester have not made it into the league and there is unrest between fans in the stands and those in the boardroom. Some fan-owned clubs will face the same difficulties as ones owned by individuals like the Oystons. The grass is not always greener. We always need to scrutinise those in power whether the times are good or bad.
But we should take heart, the protests are working and getting the Oystons out will make the club and Blackpool a better place.
We won’t give up, no matter how long it takes
There’s another reasons we won’t give up.
Many of the people marching and boycotting have faced legal action from the Oystons or are banned from the club. Other people have been abused by the Oystons, whether directly or indirectly given the Oystons’ utterly unpleasant comments about people with special needs. Even if some of us give into our doubts then these people can’t go back unless the Oystons go. We should never forget, and I cannot forgive, the Oystons and the way they have treated our fellow fans.
Image from Blackpool Supporters Trust. If you’re not a member you should join them.
We are not just protesting for ourselves, we are protesting for other people. Blackpool fans are standing together, calling for the Oystons to go and for new owners who put football first.
We should be proud of our boycotts, our protests and of the work the Trust have done to show how a new democratic and fan-owned Blackpool FC could be run. We are fans. We stand together. We are a community. And we won’t give up, no matter how long it takes.
Last week someone asked me “Why do you tweet about Blackpool FC so much?”. I gave them my usual answer.
I tweet about Blackpool to tell the story of what happened after the 2010/11 season in the top division and how it hurt me, my family and the place I call home. I also tweet to give publicity to the facts and to help Blackpool fans change the ownership of their club. I believe that no football fan should go to or spend money with Blackpool football club for any reason. An ethical boycott can help make change happen.
For many people who don’t follow football closely that one season in the top division may be where the story ended. People might have thought that the natural order of things was back in place as Blackpool dropped down the divisions. They’d be wrong. There’s another story.
The Oyston family have controlled a majority ownership in Blackpool football club since 1987. There have been many incidents during the time they have owned the club. I am going to focus on incidents after that promotion.
Being in the top division in the UK can be financially lucrative due to money from television deals. Even if the team is relegated they will receive so-called ‘parachute payments’ over the next few years. In the season Blackpool were promoted the extra income the club would receive even if they were immediately relegated was estimated to be £90m. I thought about what that money would mean to Blackpool. What the extra visitors and investment would do to help improve the club and the town. It was an astonishing opportunity.
This isn’t about a sense of entitlement and a belief that money can buy success. During most of the years that I’ve supported Blackpool they weren’t the most successful of clubs.
Image of 2010 playoff final by Gordon Segar and licensed CC BY-NC-ND-2.0. The empty seats are corporate ones. The fans celebrating are Blackpool fans wearing the brightest tangerine.
Brett Ormerod scored that day. He went on to score against Spurs in the top division. Brett scored for Blackpool in all four football league divisions. Not surprisingly he’s my favourite player.
Most of my family were with me at Wembley. As we walked back to my flat in South London draped in tangerine and carrying flags we were applauded by the drinkers outside the local pubs. I expect there were similar scenes up and down the country as over 30,000 Blackpool fans made their way home.
I was born and raised just outside Blackpool. My family still live there. I’ve been to many games over the years. I’ve also followed many more games by watching text updates on the internet and shouting along from afar. Over the last 20 years I’ve spent chunks of timeworkingabroad and livinga long way away. Those updates and that football club (ok, and my family…) were part of my link to home. Sport can be part of what connects you to your home. It is for me.
Blackpool is not a glamorous team but neither is it a glamorous town. I enjoyed living and growing up there but for many people it has a reputation as a place you visit for the Pleasure Beach, stag nights, hen parties and a donkey ride on the beach. Blackpool has pockets of extreme poverty. But I saw something both on that day at Wembley and in the couple of years that followed.
I saw more and more people being proud of coming from Blackpool and I saw more people understanding what I meant when I said “I’m from Blackpool”.
I no longer had to qualify it with “the seaside town in Lancashire, up the coast from Liverpool or left and up from Manchester”. People would nod and go “oh, isn’t that the place with the football team?”. “Yeah”, I’d say, “we’re the small town that beat world-famous football club Liverpool home and away :)”. The town and population of Blackpool, one of the most deprivedtowns in the UK, was more widely known and was walking tall. That was good for the place and the people
It hurts to not go to games. To see the damage and pain (both financial and emotional) the last few years have caused to the club and to the thousands of people in Blackpool who want to see change at the club. They each have their own story. Some will be similar to mine. Some will be wildly different.
The club is part of my link to my community and the place I come from. I tried going to see a football team near where I currently live but it was a bit too posh for my tastes (there was no Bovril or pies!) and I also spent most of the match checking the Blackpool score. To be honest I was checking the score in the hope that Blackpool would lose and a couple more fans would stop going.
With new ownership we can get some hope back. Maybe build a training ground that joins the club with the community and helps the town grow. Maybe a team that we can get behind and go on another crazy trip through the football divisions. I don’t mind if that trip is up the football league or down but I do want that trip to be with people that I believe in, trust and that I want to shout and sing along with. I want that trip to be with a football club that I can be proud of. One that makes me walk tall rather than feel ashamed. My tangerine scarves, shirt and the flag we carried home from Wembley are waiting for that moment.
A tangerine scarf and flag. Programmes, other scarves, tops, hat and other Blackpool paraphernaliaare out of shot.
Neither I nor my family go to Blackpool games any more. We will not put any more of our money, time and goodwill into the club whilst it is owned by the Oystons.
Two years ago we decided that was the best way we could help change the owners of the club. The support has to dwindle. The revenues have to shrink and keep on shrinking. There has to be no financial reason for the Oyston family to want to own the club. That will encourage them to leave. That’s the right outcome.
Thousands of people have made the same decision: “Not A Penny More” (#NAPM).
I sometimes give a really short answer when asked why I tweet about Blackpool FC: because it hurts and I want that hurt to go away.
You can help me and thousands of Blackpool fans by sharing the facts and spreading the message of an ethical boycott that can make change happen.
About me
Hello. This is the personal website of Peter K Wells. I do politics, policy and delivery to try to make data and technology benefit everyone. I also do bad jokes and music references.
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