Rugby League Clubs

Debate between Jim Shannon and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jon Trickett]

My hon. Friend is right that rugby league is a sport that grew up in working-class communities and especially in mining communities, so it is surprising that it has not taken root in his constituency. However, when we consider the discrimination that rugby league has suffered from over the years, it is maybe not so surprising. One of the things I will argue is that we need to do more to develop the sport across the whole country, especially in communities such as his. My hon. Friend is right, too, that whenever a player was injured in Featherstone in my patch, they would go to the pit head and shout down, “Send us up another forward,” or whatever it was, and one would emerge quickly, get changed and get on to the pitch. It was very much part of the mining tradition.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. Rugby union was my game—I apologise to him—but rugby league has had a magnificent, transformative impact across the United Kingdom. It is the beating heart of towns, providing vital structure, mental health support and community pride for young people, yet it is facing a financial squeeze. Does he agree that the Government must extend rugby league funding to support the sport’s future and enhance the funding strategy to protect these invaluable community assets from the financial ruin that they face?

[Jon Trickett]

The hon. Member makes an important point, and I agree.

To develop a bit about rugby league, in the areas I am most familiar with, rugby league—and sport in general—can be the most important agency for social cohesion. Sport can provide something that brings everybody together, whatever their different points of view or life experiences. In my constituency, Featherstone Rovers have played for decades, and there is a massive amount of pride in the fact that we have that team. I will come to the difficulties they are facing, and I hope we can find a way forward.

Let me remind the House that the BBC used to cover rugby league more or less weekly on “Grandstand”. Most people in this room are probably not old enough to remember the famous commentator, Eddie Waring, but I do well. So familiar was rugby league in those times, because of the BBC coverage, that many of Eddie Waring’s favourite expressions were well known across the whole country. Mike Yarwood, who was a great mimic at that time, used to talk with Eddie’s accent—which I cannot do. He used to talk about “up and under”, which was one of the ways a ball could be kicked. More importantly, when somebody was sent off, his favourite expression was, “Well, he’s been sent for an early bath”—I very much hope that you will not send me for an early bath today, Ms Vaz.

Rugby league ought to be a nationally recognised sport. I will come to the discrimination and the problems with television in a second, but let me remind the House that anyone who wants to watch rugby league on TV now has to go to two separate pay-per-view channels. It costs £61 a month, which is 5% of the total income of a person living on the minimum wage. People are being priced out of the spectacle, which is a great shame, because it is leading to the atrophy of the sport across the communities where it ought to be played. It is also stopping us from spreading rugby league further—I will come back to that in a second.

Rugby league was a product of the class system that operated in sport in those days. The so-called gentlemen, who did not need to be paid, would play rugby union. Those who were too poor could not afford to play rugby union, so rugby league was set up, so that players could be paid. That was the start of rugby league as a code; but the truth is that the divisions that existed then continue today.

I have identified one or two statistics that may surprise the House. If we look at the honours system, eight rugby union players have received a knighthood; there have only been two from rugby league, one of whom is the great Kevin Sinfield, who was knighted for his contributions to charity. That difference shows a level of discrimination. When we look at the national squads for rugby union, two thirds or more went to public school. I cannot find a single player for the national rugby league side who went to public school. It shows the class divisions, which surprisingly continue in sport after all these years.

It is disappointing that fewer than 40 universities have a rugby league side, whereas every single university that I can find has a rugby union side. Again, that shows that something is not quite working between the two codes. When it came to covid, as we know, sports were remunerated, but here is an astonishing fact: rugby union received about £130 million, whereas rugby league got £10 million or £11 million—ten times more went into rugby union from covid. I do wonder—perhaps the House would agree—whether those in the civil service making these decisions are often people who went to universities and schools that had rugby union, but have little comprehension of the importance of rugby league in areas such as mine. I think that demonstrates clear discrimination, and I hope that the Labour Government are aware of that—if they were not, then they are now, because I have drawn it to the Minister’s attention.

I want to move on to the situation facing Featherstone Rovers. Wakefield, which I now represent, has the honour of having three separate professional rugby league sides: Wakefield, Castleford and Featherstone. Unfortunately, due to bad management, Featherstone has gone into administration, and we have been struggling to find a way to bring the Rovers back to life. The team is the core of the people of Featherstone’s identity, as was mining—mining was stripped away many decades ago, but references to mining can still be seen everywhere in the township in Featherstone. The rugby league side, Featherstone Rovers, is a matter of great pride, and the fact that it went bankrupt and there is nobody playing on the pitch at the moment is heartbreaking for so many people I represent.

Gradually, we have been putting together a plan to try to bring Featherstone Rovers back to life. That has been difficult, and I have spent many hours trying to achieve it, but thanks to the recent appointment of a new chief executive at the Rugby Football League, we are now making progress. The RFL has said that it is prepared to help to acquire the assets, bearing in mind that there is a stadium with buildings around it and several acres at the back of it. The administrator has been difficult, but he has come to the view in the end that, because it is a community asset, he is prepared to sell it for slightly less than he might have thought it was worth in a completely commercial sense. We think that it can be acquired for about £1 million. When Labour was in charge of the council—it has changed hands recently—it put aside several million pounds for each of the three rugby league clubs. There is £700,000 still unallocated to Featherstone, and the council, under its new management, has now said that a substantial part of that, possibly half a million, will be made available to the rugby league for it to be able to acquire the assets.

Here comes the interesting part, because in Featherstone, thanks again to the Labour Government, we have something called Pride in Place, and we have been allocated £20 million over the coming ten years. I am a member of the Pride in Place board, by virtue of being the local MP—I do not know if I need to declare an interest, but I do in any event. The board has said that it is prepared to make a substantial contribution to the acquisition of the stadium and the surrounding land. It has been difficult to put this together, but the board is unanimous, and, led by the by the chair Kay Binnersley, we are now in a position to say that, when the money arrives from the Government in the next financial year, it can then be made available to the RFL.

I have met the new chief executive of the RFL, who is a dynamic and progressive individual, and we have agreed that we want to create a partnership between the Pride in Place board and the RFL to try to take this whole thing forward. That is desperately important, because without Featherstone Rovers playing, it has not been easy to create a fixture list, because there will be one less team than is required to set up the fixtures. There is an urgency to this. I have to say that it has been frustrating dealing with the RFL over the last year and a half on this matter, as it went from one temporary chief executive to another, but now it has a decision maker in place, and I am confident that he is determined to make this happen, and clearly he needs to do that for all the other teams in the rugby league.

UK-Chile Relations and 50th Anniversary of Coup in Chile

Debate between Jim Shannon and Jon Trickett

Thursday 14th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett]

My hon. Friend is of course right. Famously, the Chicago boys, as they became known in Chile, were those in the economics department of the University of Chicago who developed a reactionary theory about how economies ought to be managed. It was implemented first in Chile, as my hon. Friend has just remarked, and that was the point I was making. It was rolled out elsewhere, too, and there were conservative and right-wing politicians throughout the world watching what was happening in Chile to see whether, not so much the bloodshed, but the economic experiment could be brought about in their countries too—and of course we have seen it in our country.

I was reflecting on why this is still a contemporary matter and want to refer to some correspondence I received today from the Bell family, refugees from Chile at the time of the coup. The brother of the father of the family was murdered by the military and I understand that the father was imprisoned and tortured. They say in an email:

“As a family, we experienced unspeakable horrors at the hands of Pinochet and the military coup.”

It goes on to talk about communities in the UK who welcomed them, but the family has doubts about the role of the UK Government and I am going to come on to that. The email goes on to say:

“For 50 years we have been fighting for justice, searching for those who were disappeared and campaigning for the perpetrators to be held to account for the human rights violations.”

And we know the facts: the junta killed 3,600 people, tortured 40,000, and some 200,000 were driven away from their home country by what was going on there. The scale of this is hard to come to terms with, yet it happened and there are families who still today do not know where their disappeared ones are.

There is also a programme to build a memory forest for every person who was a victim called Ecomemoria. I recommend that Members have a look at it; there is a memorial there to each person who was killed.

As a young person I was beginning to think about politics. I had been a manual worker; I had left school at 15 with no qualifications and I had come across the ideas of socialism. I looked across the world; the distance between London and Santiago is 7,000 km but somehow it was inspiring to see a country trying to create a new path to this creed that I was beginning to embrace, called socialism. It was particularly inspiring to listen to President Allende, who insisted that:

“The road to socialism lies through democracy, pluralism and freedom.”

I was a young man, as I have said, and our hearts stood still as we hoped he would be able to find a peaceful road to socialism, although all the time we were hearing on the radio and the television that there was a possibility that something would happen there, and that was frightening. But we were also being told by the BBC and others that Chile had a long history of democratic representative government, and that the army and the Chilean state apparatus would not move against a Government; but, of course, they did.

Let me quickly talk about the United States. Allende moved more slowly than he promised he would. I was watching and thinking, “Get on with it, because there’s much more to do try to feed the poor and liberate so many working people in Chile.”

Early doors, Allende took public ownership of the copper industry. It was copper, above all—it was a resource that the Americans, the British and others were using—that turned the tide. Nixon’s crimes are well known, but among them we should add this: he had authorised action—I think he had put $3 million to one side—to try to prevent Allende from winning the election. The money was used in such a way as to try to achieve that. The CIA conducted spoiling operations prior to the Allende victory. Nixon personally authorised the agency to seek to instigate a coup to prevent Allende from taking office. Those were inappropriate—let us say it no more strongly than that—deeply reactionary activities by Washington. Santiago is 1,000 km further away from Washington than London. We cannot say that any kind of military or other threat was posed by Chile to the interests of the United States or Britain.

Moving on to the British Government, Edward Heath recognised Pinochet within 11 days of the coup. Diplomatic cables that have now become available in the National Archives indicate that the British Government were fully aware of the violence being used by the Pinochet regime against innocent people, whose only so-called sin was to hope for a better world. They were working people, socialists, trade unionists and activists of various kinds.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate forward. I spoke to him beforehand, and he knows what I will say. It is important to put on record that in 2022, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom reported an increase in antisemitic social media posts and media publications against Chile’s Jewish community over the past few years. The US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism has said that antisemitism erodes democratic institutions and values. I know that the hon. Gentleman and I stand together on that issue. Does he agree that it is time that our Minister and our Government conveyed to the Chilean regime that something must change, and that they cannot keep persecuting Jewish people just because they happen to be Jews?

[Jon Trickett]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I have spoken in this House about antisemitism, and I have been the victim of antisemitism, because we have Jewish blood in my family. I have even been to Leeds court as the victim of antisemitic behaviour. Nobody feels more strongly about this issue than me, and I am sure the whole House stands in condemnation of antisemitism generally. The hon. Member has made his points. I am not here to speak about that, so I will not follow him further down that track.

I was just speaking about the Heath Government. In the spirit of all-party truth, I need to record the fact that during the first of Harold Wilson’s Labour Governments, it appears to be the case that there was at least one MI6 officer in Santiago collaborating with the Chilean military prior to the coup.

When the coup happened, Heath was the Prime Minister, and Alec Douglas-Home was the Foreign Secretary. It is shocking to see what happened. They were aware of what was going on in Chile. The Foreign Secretary sent official guidance to British embassies across the world, only weeks after the coup, outlining British support—it is impossible to read it any other way—for the military junta. He said:

“For British interests…there is no doubt that Chile under the junta is a better prospect than Allende’s chaotic road to socialism, our investments”—

meaning British investments—

“should do better, our loans may be successfully rescheduled, and export credits later resumed, and the sky-high price of copper (important to us) should fall as Chilean production is restored”.

I am sorry, but it is simply not good enough for judgments on what is happening in a foreign country to be made on the basis of our commercial interests, as I said at the beginning of my speech.

The Heath Government defied calls from all sides to impose an arms embargo on Chile. In fact, they delivered Hawker Hunter jets to Chile before the 1974 general election, when there was a change of Government. It was Hawker Hunter jets that laid siege to the presidential palace during the coup. Over the past few days, it has been possible to listen to a Spanish language broadcast from BBC Latin America and hear the chilling sounds of the jets—British-made jets—attacking the palace, which resulted in the death of Allende. I am sorry, but it is not good enough that those events happened all those years ago, and I do not think we know the full truth about them yet.

As a Labour party member, I am sure that Members would expect me to say that, when Labour came back to office, I was pleased that the Wilson Government cut off all diplomatic relations and then instigated an arms embargo against the junta. However, Mrs Thatcher restored relations when she won the election a few years later in 1979.

The Wilson Government also accepted 3,000 Chilean refugees into our country. As I have said, I met a number of them in Leeds. Many of them are still here and have a personal interest in what happened. Those Chileans, who had fought for a different kind of country and a different kind of world, and who had friends, comrades and colleagues who were tortured and killed in the Santiago stadium and elsewhere, were among the finest people I have ever met. We can be proud that Britain had a tradition of accepting refugees into our country in such circumstances. If that were to happen again, I would like to think that Britain would be prepared to do the same. We took 3,000 Chilean refugees. Sweden took 40,000.

Let me wind up with a couple of points. I got to know those people. I worked with them and helped to feed some of them who were in the underground. We helped to house them—not many of them, just two or three. There were 250 in Leeds. They brought a different culture. We had Chilean music and Latin American music. It was the first time I had heard it. There were even cafés and restaurants opening serving Latin American food. It was a tremendously exciting time, but it was heartbreaking as well.

Before I make my final points, I just want to reflect on one thing. It has been possible to hear another sound on the BBC website this week, and it is even more chilling than that of the Hawker jets—built in Britain—attacking an elected President. It is the sound of the Chilean soldiers going to attack the palace of the elected President and they are singing a marching song. Visit the website if you like, but the sound is awful—it is bloodcurdling—because the marching song is a song developed by the Nazis. When we think about antisemitism, we know that it has resided above all with the Nazis. To think that the soldiers were attacking their own democratically elected President and singing marching songs from the Nazis is really bone-chilling.