The three degrees

The men who changed British football forever

Paul Rees, Constable, 352 pages, £9.99

When Cyrille Regis became one of the first black players to be selected for the full England team, he was sent a package in the mail. Inside it was a silver bullet and a note that read: “You’ll get one of these through your knees if you step on our Wembley turf.”

In the 1978-79 football season, Regis’s club, West Bromwich Albion — a relatively unglamorous and little-publicised club from the West Midlands — became the first British football team to field three black players: Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson.

They did so against the backdrop of the most divisive and poisonous racial tension in the UK’s history — a time when the far right National Front movement was at its most virulent.

As football once again finds itself under the spotlight for the treatment of black players and black supporters, this fascinating book, published last year in hardback, is now available in paperback.

It tells the story of a ground-breaking chapter in the history of British football and the country as a whole. It is a story about both sport and social change.

Review contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop.

Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk