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Jock Stein battles bigotry & bias at the BBC
(by TheHumanTorpedo)
From Helenio Herrera to Don Revie, some of football’s greatest ever names have went head to head with Jock Stein and came out second best.
The Big Man enjoyed many triumphs as Celtic manager. But not all of them were on the football pitch.
Managing Celtic meant much more to Jock Stein than just preparing his team for a Saturday. Stein was a football man to the core but he was deeply aware that the Hoops were more than just another team.
To him Celtic was 24 hours a day and seven days week. They were his cause in life. It was a cause he never got tired of fighting for.
No one got to know that better than Peter Thompson and the sports department of BBC Scotland.
Thompson had enjoyed a spectacular rise through the ranks at BBC Scotland, starting off as a tea boy before going on to become a respected radio broadcaster and eventually Head of Sport in the late 50s.
Hard work and ample talent had ensured Thompson became one of the most influential broadcasters in Scotland. To the outside world he liked to portray an image of professionalism and impartiality. But behind the scenes the truth was somewhat different.
There was something within Scottish society that riled Thompson . Something which he loathed. Something which seemingly represented all he detested. That something was Celtic Football Club.
In his autobiography veteran Scottish broadcaster Archie McPherson declared that if an earthquake had swallowed up Celtic Park then Thompson would not have shed a tear.
Under Thompson’s rule BBC Scotland’s Sports Department employed a sectarian recruitment policy akin to that operated at a certain football club on the south side of the Clyde. Prejudice seeped into the culture of the department. McPherson, who at the time was a rookie reporter, recalls BBC colleagues sitting around debating how you could spot a Catholic by the supposedly different way they pronounced certain words.
For years Thompson was able to easily disguise his loathing of Celtic simply because the Hoops were so poor that they were almost an irrelevance as a football force. But all that was to change in March 1965 with the arrival as Celtic manager of Jock Stein.
Stein immediately began re-establishing the Bhoys as the dominant team in Scotland and with a pin sharp astuteness he quickly identified anyone who might attempt to undermine his team and their achievements. Thompson and BBC Scotland were soon on Stein’s radar.
Until the arrival of Stein, the relationship between BBC Scotland and Celtic Park had been cordial. But the new Hoops manager saw behind the formal façade presented by Thompson and his cronies. He recognised their loathing for Celtic and the prejudice behind it. They were, in the words of Stein, “A bunch of bigots”.
Life for Thompson and co was about to get very uncomfortable.
Stein would pull no punches in his crusade against the bias of BBC Scotland and he seldom missed an opportunity to hammer home his contempt for those running the corporation’s sports department. He nicknamed Thompson ‘Blue Peter’ and when once asked for his favourite comedy programme Stein’s answer was Sportsreel – BBC Scotland’s flagship sports show.
The Celtic boss frequently aimed jibes at BBC reporters and officials and although Stein frequently took part in interviews with corporation staff they were often awkward and unrevealing.
In contrast to his relationship with BBC Scotland the politically shrewd Stein had cultivated a valuable network of loyal contacts elsewhere in the media. He used these moles to plant pro-Celtic stories in the press and, perhaps more frequently, to obtain information on everyone from his own players to other journalists.
Many in the press lapped up Stein’s attack on their rivals at BBC Scotland but the Celtic manager’s crusade was not aimed exclusively at Thompson and co. Anyone who openly displayed an anti-Celtic agenda risked facing the considerable wrath of the Parkhead chief.
On one occasion at Hampden the pre-match entertainment involved the landing of a helicopter on the turf of the national stadium. As the chopper took off from the pitch one hack in the press box remarked to colleagues that if the helicopter crashed he hoped it would be into the Celtic end.
The comment was made by the reporter supposedly safe in the knowledge that he was among like minded friends. But he had underestimated the extent and loyalty of Stein’s informers.
After the final whistle word reached Stein of the journalist’s remark. The Celtic manager quickly hunted down the guilty party. Cornered by a furious Stein the reporter was left quivering with fear as this hulk of a man unleashed a ferocious verbal thrashing.
The message was clear. Those who used Celtic as a convenient target for their anti-Catholic vitriol now had a fight on their hands.
Back at BBC Scotland the pressure was mounting on Thompson to end the feud with Stein. Celtic were no longer an irrelevance. They were a team feared and respected across Europe. A team laden with silverware and plaudits. Thompson bristled with anger at every Celtic success and was becoming a forlorn and frustrated figure. As the whole world celebrated the football and achievement of Stein’s Celtic the BBC reporters in Glasgow were left on the outside looking in.
Thompson insisted the best policy was to ignore Stein’s success. But how can you ignore a man who was rewriting football history. It was an intolerable position for those BBC journalists who only cared about football.
Archie MacPherson had, as a BBC reporter, felt the full force of Stein’s scorn and contempt. But he recognised that not only was Stein the future of Scottish football but that his anger was fully justified. During an interview with the broadcaster Stein made another attack on BBC Scotland’s recruitment policy. MacPherson took this opportunity to make it clear to the Celtic manager that Thompson’s views were no longer shared by all of his BBC colleagues.
MacPherson would slowly win the trust of Stein. At BBC Scotland Thompson’s hard-line stance against Celtic and their manager made him an increasingly isolated figure. With Stein racking up the trophies the corporation could no longer afford to treat the club from Parkhead as a second class outfit.
This acceptance was cemented when Stein took his seat in the BBC studios as a panellist for a Scotland international clash. On the day Stein took his seat in front of the camera the once all powerful Thompson was nowhere to be seen. He simply couldn’t stomach seeing the Celtic manager being treated with such reverence and respect by his BBC colleagues. It mattered not. Big Jock had bagged another victory. Thompson’s time was over.
MacPherson said of Jock Stein: “He came to Celtic not just to manage them, but to battle for them”.
As Peter Thompson would learn. Jock Stein lost very few battles.