Thee arrival of 'fascist but not racist' Paolo Di Canio has deeply divided fans of the passionate north-eastern club
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The Guardian, Friday 5 April 2013 19.32 BST
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New Sunderland manager Paolo Di Canio's opinions on fascism remain troubling for fans of the club. Photograph: Scott Heppell/AP
For Dave Allan, the giant miners' lamp that guards the entrance to the Stadium of Light in Sunderland helps explain the furore that has engulfed the football club and city this week since the appointment of the Italian Paolo Di Canio, who once proclaimed himself to be a fascist, as manager.
"Round here, when the Durham miners speak, people listen," says Allan, a lifelong Sunderland fan whose father took him to his first game in 1961 when he was nine years old.
To underline the club's links to the region's industrial heritage, the stadium – 10 minutes' walk across the Wear from the railway station – stands on the site of the Wearmouth colliery, once one of the biggest mines in the UK but which closed in 1993.
After the Di Canio announcement, the Durham Miners' Association, a powerful force in the area, demanded that the Wearmouth banner that had held pride of place in the stadium since the late 1990s be returned, claiming the decision was an insult to those from north-east England who died fighting fascism in the second world war.
"People outside the north-east may not realise what a big deal that was," says Allan.
The row over Di Canio's appointment escalated following the resignation from the club's board of the former foreign secretary David Miliband in protest at the Italian's "past political statements".
But what many people outside the city do not realise is that the football club is not so much woven into the fabric of the community – and the traditional labour movement that still dominates many aspects of life in the north-east – it is often one and the same thing.
"The football club is the symbol of of the city," Allan says over a cup of coffee in a smart glass-fronted city centre cafe. "It represents who we are and the history of mining and shipbuilding is all bound up in that.
"When Di Canio was appointed it felt like that had been forgotten – here was someone who seemed to have the complete opposite values to those that have made the club."
Allan says the appointment has split the city. "It has been extremely divisive because it has turned Sunderland fan against Sunderland fan … It has made us go inward-looking rather than uniting against the world to protect our Premier League status."
On Thursday, the club and miners – perhaps realising how damaging it would be for both parties if there were to be an ongoing split – held an emergency meeting to see if there was any common ground.
It followed Di Canio's latest attempt to distance himself from his previous position, with a statement released through the club's website stating: "I am not a racist and I do not support the ideology of fascism."
Many people remain sceptical about Di Canio's politics. Graeme Atkinson's uncle was killed in Wearmouth colliery, aged just 14. His body is still buried beneath Sunderland's stadium.
"I cannot abide the idea of that man, with all that he has said and done in the past, being the manager at my club," says Atkinson, 64, a lifelong Sunderland fan and anti-racist who now lives outside the city. "It is hard but I will not be going back there until he has gone, if ever again."
There are other walking round the city centre, however, whose only care is that Di Canio keeps Sunderland in the Premier League. Outside the railway station Paul Richards, 26, says: "Politics has got nothing to do with football. Why should it? If he can keep us up, all this crap will be forgotten pretty quickly."
The club hope he is right but for some of those who live and work in Sunderland the damage may already have been done. Last Saturday, as the club was playing its last match under its previous manager, Martin O'Neill, the far-rightwing English Defence League (EDL) were holding one of their increasingly regular demonstrations in the city.
For Kevin Rowan, regional secretary of the northern TUC, the appointment of Di Canio and the ensuing row over his politics could not have come at a worse time for the city. "There is a particular set of issues in Sunderland in that there has been a lot of EDL activity over the last few months and we are a bit concerned about the reaction to Di Canio's appointment – that it may be pouring more fuel on to that particular fire. It is quite a tense atmosphere already."
The EDL demonstrations centre around plans for a mosque. Some argue that the presence of the far right in Sunderland is down to outsiders who have come in to stir up trouble; others say the economic downturn and a feeling that the city has been overlooked by the main political parties has provided a fertile ground for groups such as the EDL.
Whatever the cause, Rowan says there is a risk that the club could become a rallying point for far-right groups – or that in some way far-right activists would see the appointment as a legitimisation of their view. "Sunderland is already a place where there is ongoing far-right activity … so the fact we are talking about this kind of issue is not great."
The city lives and breathes football. Stop anyone in the street and they have an opinion on what the club needs to do to avoid relegation. But it is also a place that is being hit hard by the government's austerity measures and the prolonged economic downturn.
Traditional industries of mining and shipbuilding are long gone and although new industries, such as the car manufacturer Nissan, have breathed life into the city, it is struggling.
Its unemployment rate – more than 10% – is above the national average and last year the Labour MP for Houghton and Sunderland South, Bridget Phillipson, said long-term youth unemployment in her constituency had risen by 194% over the previous 12 months. "Sunderland is a proud city but we are suffering badly under this government," says Allan, a city councillor.
Stuart Baxter, 25, a painter and decorator who has been out of work for four months, says the economic hardship is one of the reasons people care so much about the football club. "It gives the whole place such a buzz when we win whatever else is going on. I don't ever go, and I don't like football really, but I love it when Sunderland do well."
As this week's row intensified, Margaret Byrne, the club's chief executive, acknowledged that Sunderland was a "traditional football club, with a rich and proud history". She added: "It has a strong ethos and ethics and that has not changed in any shape or form."
After addressing the "misconceptions that surround [Di Canio] and historical comments and actions attributed to him", Byrne said it was time to draw a line under the matter and focus on the remainder of the season.
Outside the stadium, though, Jack Smithson, 15, typifies the quandary facing many Sunderland fans, with football so much a part of their personal, and political, identity. Passing the miners' lamp statue with his mother, the pair had just been to the club shop to buy a couple of Sunderland hoodies.
"I don't really like him that much," says Smithson, "but I will keep supporting the club."
