West Ham Fans

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

6 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Mr Hyacinth Bucket.

He prefers:

 

[Ronnie Whelan]

4 hours ago, VladimirIlyich said:

No,not a negative review of their behaviour or anything but more about what should really be a common bond yet seemingly is not.

 

If there is one set of supporters from 'darn sarf' that should share a bond with our own fans it's West Ham. Their fanbase was largely drawn from poor working class low income,slum type housing of London's East End and the area being considered the arsehole of England's capital city by the snooty London based power heads. They had lots of families dependent on the Ford Dagenham plant, as we did with Ford's Halewood plant and the 'salt of the earth' Eastenders(get that fuckin theme tune out of my head!) gave short shrift to Oswald Moseley's Fascist Black Shirts in 1936. The East End was also alive with a buzzing Jewish population back then and we always knew where those working class communities stood against Hitler's rise around the same era. Historically we should be very,very similar if not the same. But they've always been associated with right wing groups such as the National Front,BNP,Skinheads,their infamous Inter City Firm football hooligans and that couldn't be further from our own fanbase. the East End also had a big working class Irish community,again like Liverpool. Yet with all these common links we are generally world's apart. What's that all about?

As you say on paper, they should share a lot in common with us. Gigantic historical Irish population and a haven for other minority groups like the Jews, the Italians and nowadays more those from Asia and Africa. A part of London that was looked down on and left on the margins. The story of Mosely's fascists getting battered in the 30s by loads of Irish dockers helping their Jewish friends shows a community sticking together.

 

I lived in London in the 80s and early 90s. London still had a very distinctive Cockney presence. I was mates with a lot of Del Boy types and salt of the earth London girls. They don't really exist anymore and if they do, they've fucked off to the home counties near their children. Nowadays, London is mostly very gentrified with a lot of foreign people and immigrant communities. When I was there it had all that but you still felt you were in London. The main working class immigrant communities across London were the Irish and the West Indians. Both got it really rough but their kids for the most part became distinctively Londoner within a generation or two. A really good mate of mine was London Irish and he sounded like Harry Redknapp. Another mate was known to everyone as Black Dave (yeah I know different times) and he sounded like something out of a Kray film. Probably, less so now as a lot of the kids follow that drill music shit and talk like they're from Kingston. I went down to an old Cockney mate living in Whitechapel and their culture is more or less gone. It's sad to see because they had a proper sense of humour and were boss for the most part. 

 

Maggie got the ball rolling with the greed is good shit. A generation who moved away from the grime of London to the home counties and raised their kids to be good little Englanders and hate those thieving Scousers and immigrants rather than remember where they came from and look out for others. A few times I missed away trains and Cockney dinner ladies would sort you out with grub on the house. Same across the country - Mancs laughing at your shit attempts at bunking a train but turning a blind eye. The working class has lost it's soul in this country with Liverpool being a beacon of hope for what it was and should be.

 

The fans I liked the most in London were the Arsenal ones. Always found them sound but I imagine most of them can't afford the games now.

[dockers_strike]

Dont have a problem with west ham fans. I know and have worked with a couple of them and found them to be generally sound. Yes, they had and still have a thuggish element but they dont generally resort to the back catalogue of vile songs united, city, chelsea and the shite fans sing. Or at least I cant remember hearing them do so.

[Chip Butty]

I have nothing in common with them, nor would I want to be likened to anything that is anything to do with west ham, millwall or chelsea fans, that's why even cockneys hate these 3 shower of gobshites. Go to Spurs, got to Palace, go to Brentford and you'll meet a much different and better class of cockney. 

[Strontium]

7 minutes ago, dockers_strike said:

Dont have a problem with west ham fans. I know and have worked with a couple of them and found them to be generally sound. Yes, they had and still have a thuggish element but they dont generally resort to the back catalogue of vile songs united, city, chelsea and the shite fans sing. Or at least I cant remember hearing them do so.

 

Next you'll be telling us they don't wear pearly jackets on the beaches of the Costa Blanca.

[Bjornebye]

Did anyone notice the lad at the front of the away end right behind their side of the goal? Flat cap and a sheepskin coat. He was early 20's. He must have thought it was fancy dress and turned up as a West Ham fan. 

 

 

@Fowlers God remember them throwing that banana at their own player after the scored against us at Upton park? I'm sure you had a picture on your phone. The banana was sat in-front of the away end all first half. 

 

We ended up drinking with a few decent ones in a pub down the road from the ground, they were sound. Probably because they won to be fair. 

[Pidge]

21 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Did anyone notice the lad at the front of the away end right behind their side of the goal? Flat cap and a sheepskin coat. He was early 20's. He must have thought it was fancy dress and turned up as a West Ham fan. 

 

 

@Fowlers God remember them throwing that banana at their own player after the scored against us at Upton park? I'm sure you had a picture on your phone. The banana was sat in-front of the away end all first half. 

 

We ended up drinking with a few decent ones in a pub down the road from the ground, they were sound. Probably because they won to be fair. 

I had that photo, yeah the ones in the pub were as confused as us - and mortified. 

 

Savage fucking Garden.

[Bjornebye]

4 minutes ago, Pidge said:

I had that photo, yeah the ones in the pub were as confused as us - and mortified. 

 

Savage fucking Garden.

Hahahahaha 

[VladimirIlyich]

1 hour ago, Ronnie Whelan said:

As you say on paper, they should share a lot in common with us. Gigantic historical Irish population and a haven for other minority groups like the Jews, the Italians and nowadays more those from Asia and Africa. A part of London that was looked down on and left on the margins. The story of Mosely's fascists getting battered in the 30s by loads of Irish dockers helping their Jewish friends shows a community sticking together.

 

I lived in London in the 80s and early 90s. London still had a very distinctive Cockney presence. I was mates with a lot of Del Boy types and salt of the earth London girls. They don't really exist anymore and if they do, they've fucked off to the home counties near their children. Nowadays, London is mostly very gentrified with a lot of foreign people and immigrant communities. When I was there it had all that but you still felt you were in London. The main working class immigrant communities across London were the Irish and the West Indians. Both got it really rough but their kids for the most part became distinctively Londoner within a generation or two. A really good mate of mine was London Irish and he sounded like Harry Redknapp. Another mate was known to everyone as Black Dave (yeah I know different times) and he sounded like something out of a Kray film. Probably, less so now as a lot of the kids follow that drill music shit and talk like they're from Kingston. I went down to an old Cockney mate living in Whitechapel and their culture is more or less gone. It's sad to see because they had a proper sense of humour and were boss for the most part. 

 

Maggie got the ball rolling with the greed is good shit. A generation who moved away from the grime of London to the home counties and raised their kids to be good little Englanders and hate those thieving Scousers and immigrants rather than remember where they came from and look out for others. A few times I missed away trains and Cockney dinner ladies would sort you out with grub on the house. Same across the country - Mancs laughing at your shit attempts at bunking a train but turning a blind eye. The working class has lost it's soul in this country with Liverpool being a beacon of hope for what it was and should be.

 

The fans I liked the most in London were the Arsenal ones. Always found them sound but I imagine most of them can't afford the games now.

Good post.

I've said before but that old racist attitude on pub doors and walls of the 1960s/70s 'No Dogs,No Blacks,No Irish' is how the modern day scouser is looked at. At least two of those descriptions,if not three. And as the saying goes 'If you treat people like dogs,don't be surprised when they bite back.'

[Rushies tash]

Where I live, I know a few West Ham supporters, and they're all sound. It's the Chelsea supporters who tend to be, without exception, utter bellends.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Where I live I'm married to a West Ham fan. She insists that the cat supports them too, but I'm not convinced; he'd rather lick his own arsehole than watch a David Moyes team, and who's to say he's wrong?

[Fugitive]

6 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Where I live I'm married to a West Ham fan. She insists that the cat supports them too, but I'm not convinced; he'd rather lick his own arsehole than watch a David Moyes team, and who's to say he's wrong?

Pretty sure he’d be dead against supporting any team with Zouma in it.

[TerenceBates]

On 20/10/2022 at 07:40, VladimirIlyich said:

No,not a negative review of their behaviour or anything but more about what should really be a common bond yet seemingly is not.

 

If there is one set of supporters from 'darn sarf' that should share a bond with our own fans it's West Ham. Their fanbase was largely drawn from poor working class low income,slum type housing of London's East End and the area being considered the arsehole of England's capital city by the snooty London based power heads. They had lots of families dependent on the Ford Dagenham plant, as we did with Ford's Halewood plant and the 'salt of the earth' Eastenders(get that fuckin theme tune out of my head!) gave short shrift to Oswald Moseley's Fascist Black Shirts in 1936. The East End was also alive with a buzzing Jewish population back then and we always knew where those working class communities stood against Hitler's rise around the same era. Historically we should be very,very similar if not the same. But they've always been associated with right wing groups such as the National Front,BNP,Skinheads,their infamous Inter City Firm football hooligans and that couldn't be further from our own fanbase. the East End also had a big working class Irish community,again like Liverpool. Yet with all these common links we are generally world's apart. What's that all about?

 

I'm a Hammers fan married to a lovely lady from near Liverpool - Warrington (I call her a posh scouser out of fun and mischief, she takes it with good humour and normally has a dig back at me). 

 

My family originated from the areas and situation you mention, Canning Town - ironically where Johnny Speight was borne. My late Grandfather a humble milkman was at the 1923 FA cup final. Supporting West Ham has run through the generations. What I can comment on having come from a poor nay abusive background on a council estate, is the older school of Hammers have different values to the younger fans who largely do live in Essex (I am still in East/North London). 

 

I am ambivalent about the monarchy and probably a republican if I had to label myself. The difference in Liverpool is probably the largely Irish and Catholic background/heritage of a big chunk of Liverpool supporters, hence ‘part’ of the anti-monarchy aspect and booing of the National Anthem, of course there are other reasons. Speight incidentally was also of Irish origin. The far right/NF you mention is almost true (My father would have supported Moseley and ironically in latter years I found in our ancestors both an Irish and Jewish connection in our DNA.  I fell out with him for years over these and other 'racist' issues and ironically the Mother of my two children is Jewish, so in her cultures eyes, so are our two sons. He never got it.

 

 I managed to climb out of the gutter and become successful, so I suspect did Johnny Speight. The East Enders of London old, had a lot of grit to overcome their impoverished back grounds. My own late Grandmother was a widow at 21 and single parent of three young kids in the 1930's, it would have been incredibly tough for her. Remarkably she worked through the blitz helping to pull the dead and injured out of the way. After the war she set up her own business. She loved the Royal Family and even had a corgi in latter years like Queen Elizabeth. 

 

It is a difficult to explain away all these nuances and paradoxes in life. For my part I have written articles on the antisemitism, racism as well as homophobia in football (see WHTID articles). In one such article I had written how I would not attend games against Spurs because of issues like the 'hissing' song and Jew-baiting that went on. Most fellow Hammer fans were totally in agreement with me. I took comfort from that and now attend games against Spurs. There is no profound antisemitism or racism from what I see at West Ham games, although that does not mean there are no racists or homophobic's there.

 

I guess what I am trying to say is you cannot generalise on fans and indeed groups of people. At football matches it gets tribal and governed by almost a mob mentality and those with the biggest gobs tend to get the biggest acknowledgment and followed by others. 

 

The NF you mention in the 1970's is another paradox. West Ham were one of the first clubs to sign players from African heritage, Clyde Best, Age Coker and Clive Charles in 1972 were the first trio of players way of a darker skin to play in the UK, way before the fanfare of the 'Three Degrees' at WBA. 

 

Most West Ham fans were very protective of them as were the likes of Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst. I travelled to Liverpool to watch West Ham play Everton. Clyde Best was treated to total abuse and banana throwing by sections of the Everton crowd and players. Clyde answered that by scoring the most unbelievable solo goal I have ever witnessed live. To their credit the Everton fans stood up and applauded. Clyde and Bobby Moore were my heroes as a child, Clyde was the nearest thing I could associate with Pele

 

Finally, I guess what I am concluding it is easy to polarise matters as you have mentioned, it is often the silent majority who represent decency and common sense. I often sense a good and healthy respect between most football supporters. All of us have idiots amongst their support including West Ham and Liverpool. It is up to the silent majority to speak out when they can. 

 

Apologies for long winded comment! Good luck for the season ahead… except when you meet us 