Voices of Football: Gerald Sinstadt, The Man Who Spoke Up

The voice of football in the north-west for more than a decade had a thing or two to say about racism.

Racism, as has now become just about indisputable, has been on the rise again over the last three or four years, but the truth of the matter is that it’s always been with us, and that it never really went away. What has changed has been its method of delivery. Racist football supporters don’t need to sit in a stand and shout things that may end up in them being banned from the ground and perhaps arrested any more. Nowadays, they can target their abuse, and they can do it from the comfort of their own homes.

At the end of the 1970s, though, things were very different. As 1978 drew to a close, the Winter of Discontent was starting to bite, while the weather was continuing to deteriorate. On the 30th December, a blizzard hit the south and south-east of England. The following day was the coldest New Year’s Eve in forty years. For those who didn’t want to go out in that sort of weather on New Year’s Eve, there was football on the television. In the north-west of England, Granada Television was presenting The Kick Off Match.