Number Ten

ANDY BURNHAM

Few politicians have done more to champion the cause of football supporters than the new prime minister, Andy Burnham. Long before fan-led reviews, independent regulation and debates about football ownership entered the mainstream political sphere, Burnham recognised that football’s greatest strength lay in the communities that had sustained clubs since the game’s inception. It was a realisation that helped transform a grassroots idea into a national movement that continues to shape English football today.

Early in 1992, fans of Northampton Town were considering how they could save their club, which faced financial collapse after years of mismanagement. Rather than simply raising money with no influence over how it was spent (as many other fan groups had done across the game for decades) Brian Lomax proposed a revolutionary alternative: supporters should invest in the club while also securing democratic representation in its governance.

The Northampton Town Supporters’ Trust (NTST), founded by Lomax, became the first organisation of its kind in English football. Structured on a one-member,one-vote basis, it raised funds, acquired a stake in the club and secured two representatives from the NTST on the club’s board (each elected by the trust).

Although Northampton’s experiment received little national attention, it established the model of supporters being responsible custodians of football clubs. Similar ideas soon emerged elsewhere, notably at AFC Bournemouth, where supporters helped rescue the club from financial ruin in 1997, becoming majority shareholders in the process.

These examples dovetailed with the emergence of a more politically active football supporter in the 1990s, with campaigns against rapidly rising ticket prices, commercialisation and poor governance. Yet while fan activism was growing, it lacked a national structure capable of spreading successful models across the game. This is where Burnham’s contribution became pivotal.

Working with the Labour government’s Football Task Force during the late 1990s, Burnham, who was not yet an MP, was examining many of the major issues within football such as supporter relations, ticket pricing and community engagement – topics on which he had previously written articles for WSC from his perspective as an Everton fan, on FA Cup final ticket distribution (see WSC 101 ) and the club’s future at Goodison Park (see WSC 125 ). During his work with the Task Force he became aware of the innovative approach being pioneered at Northampton and recognised that the supporters’ trust model offered solutions to many of football’s structural problems.

As he told me in 2014, when being interviewed for my book, Punk Football: The rise of fan ownership in English football : “Having supporters on the board could change a football club. Not only could fans tell the board what supporters wanted, they also had the power to do something about it. Our view was that if this model could be promoted elsewhere in football, then perhaps the sport could start to be reformed from the bottom up, with supporter power acting as the agent of change.”

Burnham’s influence grew further when he became a special adviser to culture secretary Chris Smith at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 1998. Having helped develop the Football Task Force’s recommendations, he was now working inside the department responsible for implementing them. He pushed for the creation of an organisation that could promote supporter ownership, provide advice to fan groups and help establish trusts across the country.

The result was the launch of Supporters Direct in 2000 . Its creation represented a watershed moment for English football. Instead of isolated supporter groups fighting individual battles, there was now a national organisation dedicated to helping fans establish democratic trusts, acquire stakes in their clubs and improve governance throughout the game. Since inception, Supporters Direct (which merged withthe Football Supporters’ Federation in 2018 to form the Football Supporters’ Association), has helped establish over 100 supporter trusts, many of which have secured shareholdings, board representation or, in some cases, full ownership of their clubs.

While the model has more commonly thrived at non-League level, it has still impacted higher up the pyramid. Both AFC Wimbledon and Exeter City remain majority trust-owned, and Brentford were saved from going under via the efforts of their trust, Bees United, during the early2000s. The idea that underpins these and many other clubs was born from the determination of ordinary fans. But it required political champions to help turn it into a national movement.

Andy Burnham performed that role more than anyone else. By recognising the potential of supporter ownership, helping establish Supporters Direct and giving the movement credibility within government, he ensured that supporter power became a permanent part of English football’s landscape. Jim Keoghan