This article on the true-faith website had me in stitches…
Ever been to Sunderland? No? Well, frankly unless you have to, there’s no real reason to do so. It’s not very good. I wouldn’t say it’s a dump, its just bland with little character, a functional, muddled town centre and a mix of two-storey buildings and brutalist 60s and 70s architecture given the green light for construction by the Sunderland council of that era, just like loads of other places. It’s easily forgotten. There are one or two decent little streets but it’s a poor show for the self-proclaimed biggest city in the North East (I think they really mean, biggest council, which of course is an altogether different proposition). There are very few buildings, public places or civic architecture worthy of note.
If you do speak to dead-canny old-timers from Sunderland they will bemoan the demolition ball destroying the old town hall, railway station and various other architectural gems of a proud industrial past. Sunderland suffered bombing damage during the war also. More switched on Sunderland locals will bemoan development failing to make the most of its natural assets, namely as one of the few towns with a beach in walking distance of its town centre and indeed its coastal location, which put to work could provide the place with a uniqueness and identity it currently lacks. The Brighton of the North anyone?
Another running sore is the lack of development of what was the old VAUX Brewery site on the south side of the River Wear and opposite the SoS. The toffs who owned VAUX, namely the Nicholson family, who have for years portrayed this image of Sunderland’s doughty defenders, floated a well run Brewery, family firm and provider of employment to thousands locally, brewing popular beers and importantly a local brand floated VAUX on the stock exchange and doubtless made a killing. Inevitably VAUX was bought up and swallowed into the SWALLOW group. No pun intended. It was a tragedy for communities, individuals and families. To me it seemed as though some sleek skinned business types in the Square Mile decided to asset strip VAUX regardless of the impact on Sunderland. Its called capitalism and this was it in its worst, rapacious forms. It was SWALLOW who closed the place down and sold the land to TESCO who have sat on it for years. Local politicians rightly see the old VAUX site as an iconic site for development and an opportunity to make a step change to Sunderland’s identity, sky-line and image. TESCO want to build a shop. With a few bells and whistles admittedly, but overall they want to build a fuck off TESCO and make loads of wedge. Hey, its what they do! Rival plans have been submitted and debated. Loads of arguing and so on. It’s a sorry but not unique tale of town centre development. Gateshead has been through much the same painful scenario.
To the less enlightened though no less voluble Sunderland denizens all of this is of course the fault of the Geordies. If you don’t believe me, just take a trawl through one of their messageboards and you’ll find evidence of this unshakeable conviction quick enough. There are people in the deep south of the US communicating with three-fingered aliens who are less spinning-eyed in the conspiracy theorist paranoia than this mob. Play the Blaydon Races backwards and you can hear it in dulcet Geordie tones - “we must keep fucking Sunderland off”.
This is how it goes.
The bogeyman from the Tyne has been engaged in a secretive war of attrition against Sunderland over many years. A handpicked, elite band of Geordies (probably from the old Leazes End and the Benches - they were mental there as well, like) is engaged in a relentless campaign to keep Sunderland back so Newcastle or Newcastle-Gateshead can thrive (Enter what is all that about small-minded, resentful Mackem type rant here). And its been going on for years, man!
When in the 1850s, Dobson, Grainger and other city fathers collected their thoughts, finance and ingenuity to build a city of palaces - Grainger St., the Grainger Market, Market St., Grey St., Central Exchange Buildings, Central Station, the Royal Arcade, The Laing, Central Arcade and of course the Theatre Royal etc it wasn’t because those great men wanted to leave a legacy to future generations of Geordies and indeed the country, it was to fuck the Mackems. Heh-Heh!
When the Stephensons brought their Rocket engine out of their workshops on Forth Bank they danced around the top of Scotswood Road shouting - “Howay, then Sunderland, what the fuck you got to compare with this then, like?”
More recently when local Tyneside politicians and developers pressed ahead with renewal of the Quayside and indeed Grainger Town as well as the Metrocentre, the Baltic, The Sage and indeed the whole string of pearls along the Tyne they didn’t want to effect an urban renaissance in the most populated area of the North East, it was so they could totally fuck Sunderland off. They were probably in the Strawberry laughing when they agreed it as well. That is all that occupied their every thought.
The Sunderland conspiracy theorists will have you believe it was this secretive Mag Opus Dei caucus of Geordies, which has spiked every effort to regenerate Sunderland. Ignore the complex funding models designed in Westminster and Brussels to decide where Government funding is deployed, it is this Mossad-like group of Geordies moving silently within the corridors of power, probably with umbrellas tipped with poison all on a mission to keep Sunderland down. All the money goes to Tyneside comes the cry as they look the other way at the tankers full of money given to NISSAN to locate on Sunderland Airport (that’s where it went), reclaimed the land and put the road infrastructure in that made the SoS possible and made any number of other business parks around Sunderland rise from the soil. You know when it chucked it down and made the Sunderland Air-show a washout a few years ago? That was the Geordies that like. Obvious.
And of course there is the Tyneside, now Tyne & Wear Metro system. For years we heard them whine and whinge they were helping pay for it but never used it because it never went to Sunderland (handily ignoring the train network they had that essentially did the same job and that much of Tyneside didn’t have the Metro either - try getting it if you live in Whickham, Low Fell, Blaydon, Prudhoe, Westerhope, the whole of the West End of Newcastle etc. Now, we know the rattler goes to Sunderland. All of these years on from the point when the Metro was offered to the burghers of Sunderland in the early 70s but who turned it down on the basis it might bring people INTO Sunderland. Yes, no typo, read that again. Now they do have the Metro and they are complaining it is making it easier for shoppers to travel to Tyneside for shopping etc and the reverse isn’t happening. Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs. Fancy that happening eh? What with Sunderland having Jackie Wilson’s Market, the New Monkey and everything. Not that they are using the yellow fellows that much anyway and the Sunderland extension continues to be a drain on the public purse having been built for political rather than economic or social reasons.
Personally, I love all of this Mackem paranoia but obviously I’d like them to think we aren’t shafting them at every turn so we can get on with the business of er, shafting them at every turn, wouldn’t I? The truth is out there.
Part 2!!
Anyone of a certain vintage will recall that little more than twenty-odd years ago people from Sunderland proudly proclaimed themselves as “Geordies” and had done so for decades previously. Indeed the common perception outside the NE was exactly that, though not many actually had Sunderland on their radar at all. How many times have you been on your holidays and clocked some whopper from the Village of the Damned letting onto some palookas from outside the North East; “I’m a Geordie from Sun’lun me like bonny lad-kidda-why-aye, man?” Loads is the correct answer. Some of you have felt duty-bound to correct them and put them in their place whilst others will raise a quizzical Tyneside eye-brow, drain another San Miguel and reflect upon the severely fucked up Sunderland psyche. We’ve always known Newcastle upon Tyne and NE1 in particular is Grand Geordie Central to its hinterlands of Tyneside and beyond. The city has an aura and we accept it as the HQ of our identity even for those who live in the NE but outside of its city walls. The place provides us with so much and is a source of civic pride and identity. It also blesses us with our football team. We do not choose, we are chosen. Newcastle United is THE Geordie team and if Sunderland wanted to be a Geordie team too then they were always likely to be a placca variety and by and large that is what they were – a kind of K-Tel Music for Pleasure version of the real thing. And Sunderland fans cottoned onto this a long time after they should have and were rather put out by the whole thing. Knowing they were floundering and acknowledging the importance of a definitive identity to a football club’s soul, they decided to make one up. And so, they started calling themselves “Mackems”.
The term “Mackem” was invented by Tynesiders as mild ribbing in the shipyard trade for the peculiar, albeit hick pronunciation of certain vowels by Sunderland shipyard workers who plied their trades between the Tyne and the Wear. The spelling of the word “Mackem” is a recent invention and part of the desperate longing to develop a niche identity within the football fraternity. They love having a pop-corn bucket prominently displayed on SOCCER AM, whilst we cringe at SKY doing the same with GEORDIES. That comes with our self-assurance and confidence. They think not being insecure is “Mag arrogance” (c).
For years, people from Sunderland were referred to as “Mak’ems and Tak’ems”. Had the term been developed in a modern day NE devoid of its traditional industries they might just as reasonably been called “Soowper-doowper-compuwters”. Some of the more humourless of their number (lots) used to take umbrage of the term but it was never really meant as a violent form of abuse until the 70s with the onset of football hooliganism and a growing enmity between our inferiors from the dirty old town down the road. Indeed it wasn’t until the late 80s, early 90s when Sunderland people began using the term to describe themselves in a move similar to the adoption of “nigger” and “queer” by blacks and gays in the US.
The word “Mackem” though has always been problematic for Sunderland. It is a term for a particularly small part of Sunderland, namely the shipbuilding communities around Southwick, Pallion and Hendon. For those outside of those neighbourhoods it is largely meaningless, particularly those from East Durham – Seaham etc which has always been overwhelmingly a Red & White heartland and traditionally a coal-mining area. No-one from Co. Durham has any business calling themselves a Mackem!
The whole “Mackem” thing becomes even more risible when applied to Sunderland fans from outside Wearside, notably the lost boys of South Tyneside etc who have been known to rail against the label “Mackem”, proclaim themselves “Geordies” and have even been diffident towards Sunderland fans from Sunderland, preferring the company of fellow South Tynesiders regardless of whether they are Black & White or not. There are still some Sunderland fans from South Shields, Jarrow etc who remain offended by being called “Mackems”. And these are some of the most loyal Red & Whiters Sunderland has supporting them and whose dedication frequently puts “Mackems” to shame. It all makes for one mixed up mindset.
Of course some of the SKY generation have latched onto the “Mackem” tag gleefully and SAFC and supporters groups, always unsure of an identity to promote, have jumped on it as well. It’s all a bit, well, lame though not as laugh-out-loud-in-public as “Black Cats” and the heaven sent “Stadium of Light”. By the way, whatever happened to Rokerites?
Not that it ends there of course.
The takeover of SAFC by the Irish Drumaville consortium fronted by the perpetually grinning placca -faced ninny Niall “Mother Theresa” Quinn and Roy “Sunderland Is A Nothing Club” Keane has foisted another dimension to an already confused sense of self in the Village of the Damned. They have now become pseudo-Paddies or to use its latest PR spin Sunder-ire-land or some such. I know I’m squirming for them as well. It seems they have swallowed the whole of Quinn’s blarney, hook-line and sinker and come back for the rod. They have become de-facto a football club version of a very bad St. Patrick’s Night piss-up with those big Guinness hats, ridiculous ginga leprechaun beards where the ability to break into the first chorus of “I’ve been a wild rover …” qualifies them as being sons and daughters of the owld country. It’s embarrassing. Its only second hand information but I’m told numerous bars in Sunderland, sorry, Sunder-ire-land are now done up in that cod-Paddy décor with the owld character in the corner on der fiddle – no, not that kind of fiddle, it’s an instrument.
All of this has led to the characteristic understatement from those in the Village of the Damned put on earth for the amusement of Geordies that Sun-der-ire-land is now the hot ticket in the Emerald Isle. Forget Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, (enter anyone else who is doing quite well at the minute) or Celtic (or Rangers for that matter). Sunder-ire-land, a relatively little known yo-yo club on the NE coast is massive in Ireland. Well, why wouldn’t it be? Ahem.
By all accounts Sunderland, sorry, did it again, Sunder-ire-land is chocca with whoppers from Ireland on match-days. I don’t know about that but I do know despite being the No.1 team in Ireland and er, massive in the North East of England, Niall Quinn and Roy Keane are still not selling out home games or getting the same support as Bob Murray and Peter Reid seven or eight years ago despite the “Magic Carpet” guff. Why it’s great to get these plums flying in, in their numbers for games beyond the fiscal advantages they bring is beyond me. They are exactly the same sort of glory-hunting no-mark we and to be fair some of the more credible old time Sunderland fans have despised when seen traipsing along to Old Trafford, Anfield etc when they should be supporting football in their own communities at Cork City, Bohemians et al. They are no different to Home Counties dorks heading for the Mega-stores at Old Trafford, Anfield etc on match-day and an embarrassment to the switched-on hard-cores of those clubs. Mackems boast about these whoppers flying in - which says everything really. I suppose we’ll just have to content ourselves being The People’s Club – the authentic football soul of the North East.
Not that we should be complaining of course. As one of the tf cognoscenti clocked on holiday at Galway Races last year, the SAFC mobile promotion unit was punting weekends at Sunderland matches which involved flight into Newcastle Airport, a stay in a Newcastle hotel and a night out in Newcastle. Ta for the custom. I think the trip involved a couple of hours in the Village of the Damned but that was optional.
Geordies? Mackems? Mackem-Geordies? Geordie-Mackems? Paddies? Paddy-Mackems? Mackem-Paddies? God knows.
One thing is for certain, we’ll be happy being what we are and what we’ve always been. The Geordies. No other explanation necessary. Thank You.
Javel Groupe
Let’s be brutally frank. Before the Industrial Revolution of the mid-1900s, Sunderland barely existed in any meaningful form. The two major centres of population in the North East were the City of Newcastle upon Tyne and the City of Durham. Both are ancient cities occupying strategically important locations in straightforward military terms (hence the castles) and grew as centres of commerce, (Newcastle being a city of markets and its Quayside a location for merchants dealing in all kinds of schmutter from all over the world and notably the Baltic States), law (most courts in the NE were and indeed still are based in those cities), religion (check out Durham’s rather impressive Cathedral and of course the two in our city centre – one for the Steel Rods and one for the bead-rattlers) and of course learning – Durham University and its annex in Newcastle – Kings College, which later became Newcastle University in the early 60s. Both Durham and Newcastle Universities share a long and fruitful relationship, one being born from the other and to this day are the region’s pre-eminent centres of academia. Newcastle and Durham Universities are symbolic of the links between the two ancient settlements of our region and it is a happy partnership.
Both Newcastle and Durham are ancient cities with long, deep and interesting histories. Newcastle’s history can be tracked back to Roman times – Pons Aelius being the Roman name for the city and basically, we’ve always been an important place. Newcastle’s pre-eminence as a city in the NE came with the industrial revolution and the massive growth in population in Tyneside and the rather handy River Tyne which was wider, deeper and longer than any other in the region which therefore allowed it to become handy to export coal from the coalfields of Northumberland and Durham, build ships, tanks and all other kinds of engineering carry-on. Sunderland’s growth came almost exclusively as a result of the Industrial Revolution, almost as an overspill for shipbuilding from the Tyne. Sunderland grew as a workers town and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that and in fact a great deal to recommend it. Middlesbrough was the same. However, what this has always meant is that Sunderland was always on the back-foot and remains so in its relations with Newcastle. And by and large always will be until it gives up its green-eyed obsession with wanting what Newcastle and Tyneside has got. That’s impossible. Anyone recall the whingeing on they did when we put the Millennium Bridge in and how they wanted one as well. Jesus, I didn’t hear us creating and asking for a Glass Centre did you? (Cough).
What has amused in recent years is the tendency for Mackems to jump on various footnotes of history – Roundheads and Cavaliers, Jock Invasions of the North East and the propensity for a small fishing village at the mouth of the River Wear to side against Newcastle in these conflicts. Like they would have any choice in the matter if a Scottish or Roundhead Army thought their place was a canny little place to hold up ahead of a ruck with the King or the English up the road. It’s a bit like saying Jersey was on the same side as Hitler in WW2. The attraction of Mackems to this mythology is to kid themselves that in ancient or even pre-Industrial Revolution times they counted for something. They didn’t. They don’t count for much now but they counted for less back then.
We know certain burghers in Sunderland were mightily put out by the Royal doo-dah to give the Tyne sole rights for the export of coal from Northumberland and Durham but that was as much a decision based on geography and geology as it was politics and economics. And isn’t about time they moved on?
The other great unspoken element of these offs with various armies of Jocks and Roundheads of course is the fact most of County Durham stood alongside Newcastle in these conflicts. Shoulder to Shoulder. The Tyne and Durham as one against the invader. Speak to many Mackems and they will proudly boast of their Durham lineage and of Sunderland being the football club of the county. We can’t argue that Sunderland once fell within the boundaries of County Durham but when push came to shove it was Sunderland which stood with outsiders to the region whilst the stout yeomanry of Newcastle and County Durham stood together for king and country whilst the treacherous snides down the road chucked their lot in with whoever looked like holding the best cards at any given time. Poor judges as it happens as well! Sunderland - the team of County Durham? Don’t make me laugh and don’t make the many thousands of Durham Mags sneer with contempt either.
Holden Caulfield
