Sit Down Protest

I was reminded earlier about the sit down protest against chairman Peter Swales by Manchester City fans in September 1993. Back then we used to protest a lot against Swales – in fact some of my recent research has shown that the earliest Swales Out demonstration I’ve found so far took place in 1979. They intensified over the years with 1993 being the peak. In September 1993 City’s hopes of replacing Swales as chairman increased with the news that Francis Lee was prepared to mount a takeover.

I’ll write more on this whole period soon but for the moment I wanted to highlight that one of the protests that took place during 1993-94 was a sit down protest on the Kippax. Emma Tamara Taylor took the photo of the protest and she kindly allowed me to use it alongside other great Maine Road images she’d taken in my book Farewell To Maine Road. Emma, of course, retains copyright for her photo and it cannot be reproduced without her permission.

The photo was dated 11 September 1993 and I do remember well that this was a number of protests we staged though at the moment I can’t remember if this was against all-seater stadia or Peter Swales (I’ll go through my research notes over the coming weeks and will check it all out). There was also the candlelight protest on the Kippax too. The idea of these protests was that fans wanted to show their displeasure. Unfortunately protests on 11 September 1993 seemed to have passed the media by as this brief report shows:

Here’s a preview article from the Mirror which highlighted the role of the man who became known as the ‘Blue Vicar’, Jim Burns.

More on the protests, Swales out and so on in a few weeks time. Watch this space!