HOW THE RUGBY LEAGUE MAN BECAME A POLITICAL FORCE
In many towns across the North, people find solace in watching rugby league, a sport that reflects the rebellious nature of British politics. John Morgan reports from Batley.
THE GOOD things about life in Batley, says Janet Virr, are its “magnificent buildings, the pride and the heritage is wonderful – and there’s a fantastic rugby league team”. The retired primary school headteacher spins around to proudly show off her Batley Bulldogs rucksack.
The club is at the heart of the community, though it “needs more supporters”, Virr admits. In truth, it feels like the rest of Batley and the Heavy Woollen District – a cluster of West Yorkshire towns that took its name from the local cloth manufacturing industry that has all but vanished – needs more backing, too.
“Unfortunately, there is a downside in the shopping areas,” she concedes.
We’re standing next to the town’s marketplace, and its clear what she means. It’s an attractive space, surrounded by a civic trinity of Victorian town hall, Carnegie library and Methodist church, but today it’s hosting just two lonely stalls.
Walking down Commercial Street, we pass a charity shop, an Admiral Casino, a vacant unit, a Pound Express and a William Hill betting shop, with a Coral bookmakers opposite – hardly a vibrant high street. The biggest store on the road by far is the Tesco Extra, which opened in 2003.
The Batley Variety Club, which once hosted stars such as Louis Armstrong and Roy Orbison, closed in 2016. The local police station, which is now empty, was put up for sale last year, with West Yorkshire Police blaming “sustained austerity”.
Batley, a town with a population just under 40,000, is the kind of place that researchers at the centre-right thinktank Onward had in mind when it published a report in October, just before the start of the general election campaign.
It urged the Conservatives to target “rugby league towns”, a group of traditionally Labour seats in the north of England, for their high numbers of “Workington Man” voters – older, Brexit-backing, working-class men who prioritise “security and belonging” rather than freedom in social and economic policy.
During a Tory election celebration this month, Cabinet Minister Michael Gove credited Onward and its report with a “starring role” in helping deliver the election win. Nineteen of the 20 target seats identified by Onward turned from Labour to Tory, including several rugby league towns: Wakefield, Warrington South, Keighley, Barrow, Dewsbury and, of course, Workington.
The constituency of Batley and Spen – represented by Remain-supporting Labour MP Jo Cox until she was murdered by a right-wing extremist in nearby Birstall during the Brexit referendum campaign – wasn’t on that list.
It was regarded as too long a shot. Yet even here, Labour’s majority was cut from around 9,000 to 3,500 votes.
Many voters in the town, which is thought to have voted 60:40 for Brexit, will be glad to see the UK finally leave the EU tomorrow night, and Batley is a place that illustrates the demographic and economic factors shaping life in rugby league towns and thus changing the country’s electoral landscape.
As a sport with a deeply antiestablishment heritage, the rugby league link between those 20 towns is important.
It’s a game that began as a revolt, created in 1895 when clubs from industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire split from the public-school men who ran rugby union. Resentment of the English rugby union establishment – centred on London and closely connected to fee-paying schools – remains strong among the game’s supporters, as does anger over the game’s neglect by the London-centred national media.
Though Batley’s past glories include winning the first Challenge Cup in 1897, these days they reside in the second tier, with attendances averaging around 1,300.
Tony Hannan, co-editor of rugby league magazine Forty20, spent a year with Batley Bulldogs for his book Underdogs. Hannan says rugby league is “about community” for its supporters, with none of the social cachet that accompanies watching rugby union.
While many were surprised by the Brexit vote and nature of the Tory election win in December, Hannan says “if you’ve been knocking round in rugby league circles – which is still, despite the game’s best efforts, very much a working-class, northern concern in this country – you probably wouldn’t have been quite so surprised”.
Much of this has to do with the decline of towns. Batley is only 15 minutes’ train ride from the thriving centre of Leeds, the only big-city club in rugby league, but its economy is in a different world.
One mother walking with her son says that “the town centre feels downgraded”. What’s to blame? “Tory party policies,” she says. “There’s lots of homeless, lots of crime. It’s not even safe for children to walk on their own.”
Tracy Brabin, a Batley-born former Coronation Street actress who became Cox’s successor as the local MP, argues that Onward’s rugby league towns analysis was an easy way “for southern thinktanks to patronise us in the North – they don’t understand my community and I won’t be told by Southerners what my community is”.
“Our communities have been absolutely under siege because of 10 years of austerity,” says Brabin, who is backing Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership. But she also recalls conversations with people “stood in the foodbank talking to me and (saying), ‘I’m going to vote Tory for change’.”
Have the policies of previous Conservative governments – deindustrialisation and austerity – been huge factors in the economic struggles of the rugby league towns?
Will Tanner, Onward director, coauthor of its pre-election report, rejects this.
He argues the current political mood is a turn against “economic liberalism, not conservatism”, and the way such policies have “benefited some places much more than others”.
He thinks that rugby league’s antiestablishment heritage was “relevant” to Tory election success.
The Conservatives’ election slogan “was anti-establishment – getting Brexit done against the odds, in spite of a broken Parliament… It is hardly surprising that message resonated in rugby league towns”, he adds.
The uncertain future of rugby league as a sport also reflects the nation’s politics: the game is financially constrained because its base is in deindustrialised and deprived towns.
It wants to expand into new markets in North America, yet preserving the traditional identity that has sustained it for 125 years is a challenge in itself.
Virr praises Batley Bulldogs for their work getting women playing rugby league and seeking to bring the town’s large Asian community into the sport.
But she worries that “the age profile is going up” among Batley supporters and that “the game we love is not what other people want these days”.
Rugby league is sometimes caricatured as old-fashioned.
But in terms of what it reveals about the impacts of deindustrialisation, globalisation, austerity and regional inequality on our national life, it is England’s most modern sport.
Rugby league is still, despite the game’s best efforts, very much a workingclass, northern concern in this country – those in those circles wouldn’t have been surprised by Brexit.
Tony Hannan, co-editor of rugby league magazine Forty20.