How do you spell Leicester?

Me as the office junior in 1961 (front row left)

When I left school in the early 60s I began work in the drawing office of an industrial furnace manufacturer in Preston where I was born. I was training to be a draughtsman and, of course, in the first year or two I was very much the office junior. One of my many jobs was to run the weekly football competition in the various offices. This was a pontoon type sweep; people would pay a small amount each week (I think it was about a shilling – or 5p in today's money) and draw a team out of a box. Each week their team’s goals would be added together and the first team to get exactly 21 goals won – and the “owner” of that team would receive all the money that had been collected from everyone over the weeks of the competition. As the office junior I was responsible for collecting the money, keeping a record of all the goals scored by various teams and when a new competition was started writing out the names of all the teams on little slips of paper, putting them into a box and then taking the box round all the offices so that everyone could draw a team out of the box. It all worked very smoothly but one incident, to this day, stands out in my mind.

Leicester City (the Foxes) celebrate

One Friday afternoon, as usual, I took the box and the slips around to the offices and entered an office where one of the sales reps worked. I didn’t know him very well and was slightly in awe of him – he was a commanding person, rather abrasive it seemed to me. He put his hand in my box and drew out a team and when he did so he looked at me and said sternly ”Didn’t they teach you anything at school – don’t you know the spelling rule ‘i before e except after c’.  I was partly embarrassed but even more terrified –  I was getting a telling off from this senior man who I always found rather daunting. He showed me the slip that he had drawn. The team written on it by me was Leicester City. “You spell Leicester ‘Liecester’ he went on – ‘i before e except after c”. He then grumpily complained that he would never win anything with Leicester City. I had a certain sympathy with that last comment - for even in those far off days Leicester were not known for their great footballing feats. But I was more than a little put out that I had misspelt the name. Having said that, I was also confused; I knew that I had checked the spelling of all the teams before writing them on the little slips but, still in awe of this guy, I apologised profusely and went on my way. Of course, when I got back to my own office I checked – I was right - it was spelt Leicester. He was wrong. His spelling rule was one of the many that are often quoted but rarely stand much scrutiny in the quirky English language. However, such was my fear of this man that I never corrected him, I just let it lie. But, ever since then, whenever I have seen the word Leicester the event has come back to me – and I have never once had any problem spelling the name of the town!

The Premiership title won at last by a team of nobodies!

I’m sure that there can be no-one on the planet who is not aware  that Leicester City have just won the English Football Premiership title, and I would venture, no one in the whole of the UK  would, I think, have any problem spelling Leicester today given the media coverage they have had in recent days and weeks. It has been the only sporting thing of note in the media  as the club edged towards the title. And, since they won it a few days ago, they have been the toast of the footballing world. Somehow a team comprised of largely unknown journeymen football players, managed by a well travelled but overall not too successful elderly Italian manager, Claudio Ranieri, have succeeded where the big names and big money clubs have failed in what is commonly considered to be the toughest league in the world to win.The east midlands of England is not known for its great football teams – it is an area of the “ordinary” – but, rather like Nottingham Forest’s Brian Clough did way back in the 1980s, Ranieri’s Leicester have defied all the odds and come out as “top dogs”. Leicester itself – and of course the team’s supporters – are jubilant and I guess still unbelieving of this apparent fairy tale. As the man in the office implied to me all those years ago Leicester City don’t win things – well, now they have!

Lady Jane Grey

We live quite close to Leicester and, as we occasionally do, yesterday Pat and I went for a walk through the ancient and beautiful Bradgate Park on the outskirts of the city. Bradgate is the ancestral home of the Grey family - the ruins of the family home are there – and it is very much part of English history. (see blog http://arbeale.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/historical-facts.html)  It was from Bradgate that the family’s most famous member came to be the “nine-day” Queen. Lady Jane Grey was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII and a first cousin once removed of Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII. Edward became king in 1547 aged nine but he was a sickly child and when, as a 15-year-old,  he lay dying in June 1553, he nominated Jane as successor to the Crown. For nine days Jane was queen but in the turbulent times of Tudor England she was deposed in July 1553, convicted of high treason and ultimately executed by Henry’s daughter Mary – who then became queen for  five years until she herself died at an early age to be succeeded by her half sister Elizabeth as Elizabeth 1^st in 1558.

Richard III

And Leicester has another link with those turbulent times. Almost a hundred years before the events involving Lady Jane Grey and her distant relations a battle had been fought only a few miles from Leicester – the Battle of Bosworth. It was the battle that deposed Richard III as king and established the first Tudor king, Henry VII – Henry VIII’s father. At the end of the battle Richard fled – to Leicester and for centuries there was speculation as to what happened to him. This was resolved about 18 months ago when his remains were discovered under a car park in Leicester city centre – the remains of what had in Tudor times been a monastery lay under that car park and Richard had clearly sought sanctuary there after the battle. His remains were interred in Leicester Cathedral with due ceremony and there is now a heritage site to commemorate him. These events that heralded the Tudor age have, in the last year or two ensured that Leicester is now “on the map”, so to speak and many now suggest that the city’s football team began to emerge into the potential champions since Richard received his full funeral and recognition – the club's success guided by some mysterious royal spirit thankful to the folk of Leicester for giving him a final and honourable resting place befitting of a king rather than having to lie unrecognised under a city centre car park !!!

Whatever the reasons, Leicester’s footballing heroics have been good for the game. For once, it seems, money is not talking. The big spending, billionaire clubs and players have had to look from a distance as this team of unknowns has taken the Premiership by storm – finishing about 10 points ahead of their nearest big spending rivals. Players who were unknowns are suddenly stars and as one of the football pundits on TV commented that’s got to be good – it will, he said, give young players everywhere the belief and the ambition that they too might one day “make it”.

We've won!

But there have been other benefits. Claudio Ranieri the quietly spoken Italian took over the club at the end of last season. He is in the twilight of his managerial career and although he has managed some big name clubs has not been the most successful of managers. Despite that, however, he has usually left clubs in a better shape than he found them and is well regarded throughout the footballing world. On his arrival Leicester were firm favourites for failure - relegation expected at the end of this season. But magically he has turned them round and made his group of journeyman players into champions. And at the same time he has earned much personal praise for the way that he has conducted himself and ensured that his team have conducted themselves on and off the pitch. Quiet, erudite, thinking, polite, friendly, gentle – all the adjectives that one doesn’t usually associate with Premiership football or Premiership managers - Ranieri has displayed in abundance. He has, rightly, become the loved face of football in the UK! For me that has to be good!

Claudio Ranieri and opera singer Andrea Bocelli singing
Nessun Dorma the operatic football "anthem" before
the team are presented with the trophy 

And there has been another spin off – not to do with the football but with the context of the situation. In the 2011 Census Leicester was judged to be one of the most ‘most ethnically diverse' cities in the country. It was widely tipped to be the first city in the UK with a minority white population but just missed out on that in 2011 with 50.6% describing themselves as white. It does, however, have one of the lowest rates of residents who identify themselves as white British, at 45% (compared with 80% nationally and 63.9% in 2001) and the highest proportion of British Indians, at 28.3%. Rory Palmer, the Deputy Mayor said said "What it means is that we have a very diverse population and we view this as a great strength and something the city can be very proud of.”  Quite.

Ranieri mobbed by adoring fans - an ordinary man who
 has done the extraordinary

For several years after I retired I worked in and around Leicester visiting schools to assess trainee teachers. Whether the school was in the leafy suburbs of Oadby where large expensive houses are the norm or in the inner city areas like Highfields where narrow streets of terraced housing fill the landscape; whether I visited a school in the Belgrave area where every shop it seemed sold Asian, oriental or Afro–Caribbean produce or whether I sat in the classroom of a school in suburban Wigston I saw not only evidence of this cultural diversity but also evidence of it working. In many classrooms the majority of the class would be of Asian or African or Chinese or some other ethnic community, many languages might be spoken and different faiths  followed. I worked with many trainee teachers of Asian descent and talked to a huge variety of head teachers and teachers from various cultural backgrounds. But the message was always the same: adults, children and families succeeding, getting on together and making good lives. When Pat and I go shopping in Leicester we might go to Sainsbury’s or ASDA or Tesco and if we do the check out will invariably be staffed by a non-white Britain and on the shelves  we will see ethnic foods on sale that we do not see in our own shops here in Nottingham. If we stop for a coffee at the Sainsbury superstore on Troon Road as we occasionally do on a Saturday morning we will be almost certainly served by a non-white British person and I nearly always comment on how good the fried English cooked breakfasts look as they are cooked and served by Muslims or Hindus or other ethnic/cultural/religious groups. Walk round the shopping malls of Leicester and you will see multiculturalism at work at an everyday level – it’s the norm, it’s what modern Leicester is about. And from what I can see it works.

I don’t suggest for a minute that everything is wonderful. But the city, the local administrators, the schools, the churches and mosques, the community centres and the people of Leicester have shown that diversity can and does work and that the points made by the Deputy Mayor are valid. This was obvious in the news reports from Leicester over the past week or so as the homed in on the Premiership championship. On our local East Midlands TV hardly a news broadcast went by without some reporting of the rising tide of excitement in the town as the championship got closer and an important element of each report was invariably the cross cultural support for the team. The team, comprised of a mixed bag of journeyman players from different nationalities and cultures, led by an Italian and the club owned by Thai millionaire who each week has ferried in monks from his native Thailand to pray for the team’s success  brought the many communities and cultures of the city together and has become a very real symbol of this  multi-faceted place.

All cultures  are represented.

So, here we have a city, almost in the very centre of England. It has no special privileges; it is a very ordinary place in a region, the East Midlands known for its boring ordinariness. As a region we are not a rich area, indeed we are below the national average, we don’t have many claims to fame in the sense of famous people or places, we are pretty average or below average by most indicators – house prices, employment, academic success and the rest. And yet Leicester has turned the footballing world on its head – their very ordinariness has  ensured that it has performed something quite extraordinary. In a world where global markets and capital rule, where footballers are paid obscene amounts, where clubs like Manchester United or Chelsea, or Barcelona or Real Madrid jet in top players from all over the globe and have budgets bigger than many small nations Leicester have bucked the trend. It may only be for one season – perhaps next year Leicester will again take their rightful place with the also-rans – but at the moment they are kings and their townsfolk, whatever their nationality, cultural background or faith are enjoying the moment. Every one of them wanting to bask in the glow of this success and comradeship. In years to come I have no doubts that fathers and grandfathers from white British, Sikh, Hindu. Moslem, Chinese and a myriad of other faiths and cultures will tell their children and grandchildren of the great deeds done by the team of 2016 and that they were there when it happened!

The right wing media would divide us

As I have been writing this blog it has occurred to me that Leicester’s success within this context is perhaps a timely reminder. As a nation we stand at a cross roads. In a few weeks time we will be voting in a referendum to decide whether we stay within the EU or whether we effectively cut ourselves off from our near neighbours in Europe and go it alone. Whatever the economics or politics of the various arguments in this situation I cannot for the life of me understand how those who would argue for us to leave the EU – can reconcile this with the fact that we now live in a global world. Half a millennia ago the poet John Donne reminded us that “no man is an island” – his words have never been more true than in 2016. Whether it be economic ties, global capitalism, political alliances, sports like football, package tour holidays, basic resources such as food, oil, gas or any other commodity or situation one cares to mention we are tied to each other. To ignore this and cut ourselves off is in my view totally ignoring the facts of the modern world. Leicester and Leicester City’s composition and make up of players, manager, owner, supporters etc. proves the point that we are stronger and more successful together than if we are apart and alone.

Sadiq Khan at his inauguration brings together the
London Communities

Secondly, we have had in recent weeks a particularly unedifying campaign for the Mayor of London. The campaign has been marked by unpleasant and unnecessary comments, speeches and incitement by the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith and reinforced by senior Conservatives from Prime Minister David Cameron downwards. The smearing has been directed at the Labour candidate for Mayor, Sadiq Khan suggesting amongst other things that Khan favours and has links with Islamic terrorists and the like. Fortunately Khan won by a significant majority and now the Conservative party is in some disarray as they are forced to back pedal in the light of public opinion and the knowledge that  their comments were  untrue. Khan himself has gone out of his way to emphasis the multi- faceted face of modern London and to confirm that he speaks for all Londoners whatever their cultural background. His has been a voice of calm in a very unpleasant few weeks.

Possibly the most divisive  and dangerous
man on the planet

But, Khan’s election and words come at a crossroads. As a nation we are at the crossroads of the EU membership and speeches on both sides of the debate have become ever more extreme – sections of the Conservative party and certainly the UKIP party have views which can only be described as irrational, extremist and divisive, intended to exclude people, to send back immigrants, to wave the flag of dissent by suggesting that foreigners in our midst take jobs, get benefits to which they are not entitled etc. At the other end of the spectrum we have a similar situation in the Labour party where anti-Semitism appears to be increasingly raising its ugly head. And over it all the right wing press jingoistically waves the flag and beats the drum of Britain is best, John Bull is king, white British is good and any other nationality, colour or creed is bad.

Michael Fallon - a rather foolish but thoroughly unpleasant man,
and a government minister. Fallon has a track record of
personally attacking and  smearing opponents, attacking
minorities with whom he happens to disagree  and was one of
 those who vilified Sadiq Khan

The “war on terror” grinds on and in its wake creates an ever increasing refugee crisis that, whatever one’s views, Europe especially will have to address.  I read in the New Statesman magazine the other day that “Jews are leaving France in record numbers as anti-Semitism rises.....as many as 8000 a year left in 2014, up from 1900 five years earlier” and already this year – 2016 – the 8000 mark has been passed. And across the Atlantic a would be President Trump is already ramping up the extremist language and threatening to build walls to separate the “Good old US of A” from its middle and South American neighbours and to “make America great again – presumably at the expense of those not fortunate enough to be born under the stars and stripes.

We live in changing times and times where increasingly, it seems to me, we live in a dangerous world and where we are only a few steps away from catastrophe. It is a time of  delicate checks and balances where instant mass communication, great movements of people, increasing concerns about individual and national liberty and security, and growing inequality across nations and continents generate and feed upon an excess of extremism.

Sadiq Khan at his inauguration: a Moslem in
 Southwark Cathedral

Against this back drop it has been good to hear the calming and conciliatory words of Sadiq Khan, the new London Mayor, and it has been a helpful and timely reminder to us all that as Leicester City have shown “ordinariness” and working together can prevail over all adversity. The everyday, journeymen players of Leicester City, all from different backgrounds and cultures but united in their ordinariness and led by their quiet, ordinary and unassuming manager from a far off country have with the support of their foreign owner and their thousands of ordinary, local fans who themselves come from the widest of cultures and backgrounds have all proved that ordinary endeavour and working together can bring results. Leicester’s Deputy Mayor was right when he said “.......we have a very diverse population and we view this as a great strength and something the city can be very proud of.”  Palmer’s comments about his city are also true about his football team and they should be true about us as a nation, and indeed, any nation in today’s modern world.  Those people and politicians who wish to divide us from our neighbours in Europe, or who wish to build walls, or who separate us on cultural lines should take heed; as John Donne said “no man is an island”.  We are better together than apart. Not to be so is a route that has the potential to lead us to catastrophe in our global and interdependent world.