Gary Drabble, Sheffield Socialist Party
At the first home game of the season over a thousand Sheffield Wednesday supporters marched through Hillsborough Park with banners, flares and flags in protest at the owner of the club, Dejphon Chansiri, part of the family that owns John West Tuna.
In recent months, playing and non-playing staff have had wages paid late, one stand of the stadium was threatened with closure on health and safety grounds, and the playing squad has been run down so that it is now mainly packed with young inexperienced players. At the same time ticket prices are among the highest in the league.
Many supporters see the answer as replacing the owner with another ‘better capitalist’.
However, this is not a solution. Increasingly the market is forcing clubs to the brink of extinction. Bury FC were expelled from the league in 2019, Morecombe came close to collapse in recent weeks.
The logic of capitalism has led to the establishment of the Premier League and concentration of wealth at a handful of clubs. But football clubs remain an integral part of working-class communities.
It’s not about replacing one capitalist with another, but about clubs being democratically owned and controlled by supporters and communities.
