by Ciarán O’Donoghue, West Ham supporter and Newham and East London Socialist Party
Thousands of West Ham football fans gathered by the directors entrance to the London Stadium on 20 September to call for the resignation of David Sullivan and Karen Brady from the club’s board of directors.
This protest follows last year’s successful campaign to reinstate concession tickets, which were cruelly removed by the club. This would have meant that pensioners, as well as young and disabled people, would have had to pay full price.
Both this campaign and the recent protest were led by fan group Hammers United, with members of the Socialist Party standing alongside them at many of these protests
At the most recent protest, there were chants of “sack the board”, “support the team, not the regime”, and “you sold our soul for this shit hole”. The latter is a reference to the club’s move from its beloved Upton Park stadium to the rented London Stadium in Stratford, ripping West Ham out of the working-class community it was founded in.
The club rents the stadium, which is owned by a holding company of the Greater London Authority (GLA). The rent doesn’t cover the operating costs of the stadium, so the GLA subsides it. Matchday catering is run by Delaware North, an American multinational company, which charges fans extortionate prices for food and drink.
At Upton Park, West Ham was seen as having one of the best atmospheres of any football stadium in the country. West Ham share their football ground with an athletics stadium, something that fans didn’t have any say in, which hinders the matchday atmosphere.
If Sullivan sells up and Brady resigns, it will be yet another huge victory fought for and won by the fans. But what will come next?
A minority owner of the club is Daniel Kretinsky, the Czech billionaire who has already done his absolute best to gut Royal Mail — cutting jobs and reducing the service days. He would mean more of the same rot.
These issues aren’t unique to West Ham. Capitalist greed runs rife in football.
The increasing costs of tickets, food, drink, and travel are making football increasingly inaccessible to the working class. The owners of Premier League clubs hoard all wealth, while clubs like Morecambe have to fight for their very existence.
The Socialist Party says we need to kick the billionaire owners out of football. Control and ownership of clubs should be in the hands of fans, players, staff, and the local community, through democratically elected committees.
The greed and corruption in football under capitalism needs to end. We must fight for socialism, and to reclaim our game.