Interview Anthony Clavane, author of Promised Land
The acclaimed writer tells us about his bittersweet love for the city
Interview: Anthony Clavane, author of Promised Land
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“I was born in Leeds. I’m now an exile and live, of all places, in Colchester. Colchester United inflicted the most humiliating defeat on Leeds United in the team’s history, in 1971, so my family haven’t really forgiven me! I do miss Leeds. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I’ve been away for about 20 years. But it has helped in writing the book: I’ve approached it as someone who loves Leeds but also can see the, let’s call it, the foibles. For me this book’s about the good, the bad and the ugly. When I grew up in Leeds we went through a golden age in the 60s and 70s but it all then got bad and ugly in the 80s.
“There isn’t hooliganism now, but I think it goes with the fact that in the 70s and the 80s hooliganism was actually the national sport, it took over from football. And Leeds United, like football itself, were in decline. In fact the racism was so bad that I stopped supporting Leeds in the 1980s because of all the racist insults and the bananas and the fact that the National Front magazine was sold outside the ground. I remember seeing ‘Hitler is a Leeds fan’ scrawled on one of the walls outside the ground. The reason why I think in the 70s and 80s Leeds was like that was because society was breaking down: you’ve got punk rock and you’ve got Mrs Thatcher; you’ve got a kind of destruction of the north. And I’m not using that to excuse what happened, but at the time there was rioting, there was racism; it was a dark, depressing time. David Peace’s book The Damned United and his Red Riding quartet really expose the sinister element of Leeds in that time.
“David Peace’s work inspired me because I read it in one sitting and thought ‘I’ve just got to write something which is about why I love Leeds’, but also something that David picks up on, which is this kind of darkness which is always, always there, no matter how much we try to get into what I call the promised land. In recent times we’ve had Leeds develop into this Barcelona of the north, but at the same time there’s a lot of areas which are very poor, a kind of forgotten Britain, and I think there’s a secret history of Leeds which The Damned United tapped into, and I also try and tap into.
“Michael Marks [of Marks & Spencer], he came over as a penniless Jewish immigrant, and Montague Burton [Burtons], and Arnold Ziff who built the Merrion Centre, and then you go up to the present day where you’ve got Manny Cousins who was chairman of Leeds United and Leslie Silver, what you’ve got is 150 years of Jewish history in Leeds, which to put it succinctly is a success story, the success of integration. It shows that an immigrant community, admittedly over 150 years, can integrate and help shape the city. Both the community and the city have emerged together.
“People in the south say to me Leeds is white, homogenous, working class, maybe even racist. I say well if it’s racist, how do you explain the fact that Leeds had the first black player to play in an FA Cup final, how do you explain the fact that you had the first ever Jewish directors of a major football club, and how do you explain the fact that the city itself became a city because of migrants from Ireland, from Eastern Europe, even now, we should be proud of our diversity. There was a famous Leeds United team [Clavane reels off 11 names] – do you know that not one of them came from Leeds? The only one who did was Paul Madeley from Beeston, he was Mr Versatile and wasn’t in the first 11. Most of them came from Scotland, Ireland, South Africa… it’s a diversity which I think has helped to shape the city and the football club and we don’t make enough of this. But then that’s what I love about Leeds.”
Promised Land is out now in all good bookshops
Posted on Wednesday 15th September 2010
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