“I felt lucky to be watching with adults”: David Lammy

Sports Gazette’s Paddy Knowles caught up with the MP for Tottenham for an exclusive chat about all things sport, community and how the two can shape our society

It’s 8:56 AM on a winter’s morning in a cyan-tone North London, like a photo with all the warmth edited out. Standing outside the Tottenham Community Sports Centre you can’t help but wrestle your own eyeballs as they are repeatedly drawn to the ostentatious monolith of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium across the road, all shiny metal, glass and sharp-edged contours.

My teeth begin to chatter and I follow suit with John Beckles, a former boxer and longstanding staff member at the centre. We discuss how we think David Lammy might arrive and conclude that the Shadow Foreign Secretary will have some sort of fancy, new car, possibly a Mercedes, and will surely be chauffeur driven. 

Minutes later, we spot an unassuming man wandering towards us from the street, looking a mix of uncertain and disorientated. If I was expecting Lammy to be an intimidating figure of authority, I may have been mistaken.

Friendly and polite, if not seemingly a little guarded, he greets us and Kevin Lincoln, manager of the centre who has been involved since its inception in 1969, and we begin a short tour.

The Tottenham Community Sports Centre is best described as humble. Many rooms have the feel of a school gym that the headteacher has been promising to redevelop since you joined all those years ago, and much of the equipment has a well-loved feel. But those weathered signs of affection reflect a facility that has given so much of itself to its community.

Kevin explains that the centre is in a constant fight for survival, not made any easier by the Covid pandemic, which is a major threat to the existence of the 90+ clubs that use it regularly. This includes groups comprising of minorities whose access to the facility is likely the only opportunity their members have to do sport and connect with others.

Kevin’s passion for the centre is uncompromising and he’s not afraid to question Lammy’s lack of engagement with his facility since his election in 2010, though the Labour front bencher is keen to point out that he was in fact here to record a segment opposing the European Super League in 2021.

The fact he’d only been to the centre once in 12 years and it was all for a PR stunt to oppose a universally criticised elitist competition, perhaps wasn’t the redeeming statement he’d hoped.

“Working class culture was writ large”

We settle next to the boxing ring and Lammy politely ignores both of my attempted jokes framing the interview as a boxing metaphor. The bell rings and I ask about his history of being a football supporter. He paints a picture of a world far removed from the gloss of the product of the modern day:

“In those days [the 70’s] I wouldn’t describe watching football as multicultural, it wasn’t a multicultural experience! It was slightly scary! I felt lucky to be watching with adults.

“There was a lot of powerful masculinity, working class masculinity. You didn’t see many women, it wasn’t multicultural; it was a place where working class culture was writ large.

“Football has become much more of a family thing, this was the era before corporate boxes, it was very cheap to buy a football ticket. I think this began to change in the 90s when football became the big money thing that we know it to be today.”

Football culture becoming less hostile and more diverse is visually apparent from the contrasting images of crowds today to decades ago. This move away from the hooliganism that saw English clubs being banned from European competition in the 1980s can only be considered a good thing, but what of the product born out of the influx of money of the 1990s?

I ask whether this change has been for the better or for the worse, whether today’s class divisions are being stretched by a lack of social space for working class communities. I get a non-answer.

“It’s hugely important that football remains connected to ordinary people”

I change tack and we discuss how his role as Tottenham MP plays a part in the local sports community which elicits a seemingly more comfortable answer:

“It’s my job to defend this community. The story of the birth of Tottenham Hotspur, starting in a local Anglican community in the latter part of the 19th century and birthing this global monolith is an amazing story that always connects sport with this amazing constituency”.

It’s impossible not to wonder just how connected those two entities are, how much of the local Anglican community is still visible in the global brand of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Yet, if there is one way of maintaining that link then it’s through the fans and by ensuring their voices are being heard in Premier League boardrooms, and on that point Lammy looks across the House of Commons floor for praise.

“The work that Tracey Crouch has done is to be welcomed, I do think football needs a regulator, I do want to see supporters, supporters’ trusts and supporters’ associations represented on that regulatory body. 

“It’s hugely important that football remains connected to ordinary people and it’s history.”

Considering Tracey Crouch’s successes in driving change inside of football’s governance, it’s tempting to wonder whether the Labour Party is being left behind on this topic. Lammy has previously joked that his political party membership and his Spurs support are not altogether different. Considering polls are placing Labour anywhere between 15 and 25 points ahead, would he feel differently now given it’s quite likely his party may be leading change after the next general election.

Yet his response is light on detail and, dare I say it, ambition: “Our [Spurs’] history is the beautiful game and similarly with the Labour Party, we have been out of power more often than we have been in power. Sometimes we’re a bit purist in our ideals.”

Indeed, the notion of being “purist in ideals” but profligate in delivery does evoke clear parallels between both Labour and Tottenham. However, with a realistic chance of being able to make genuine changes for the better of communities, time will tell whether this comparison loses relevance. Ironically, the Spurs motto Audere est facere, may be a tagline the Labour front bench could find inspiration in.

In the meantime I share Kevin’s hopes that David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and advocate of sport in the community, is able to visit the Tottenham Community Sport Centre more than twice in the next 13 years.