Peace At Last

Someone was saying to me the other day that five years ago she went on holiday with her husband while he was reading The Damned Utd and he never spoke to her for a week,” reveals its author David Peace. “This time they’re going for two weeks. At the airport he was picking up Red Or Dead and she said, you must be fucking joking!”

You can understand her concerns when: Red or Dead weighs in at a door-stopping 720 pages. The Damned Utd was a riveting and acclaimed portrayal of Brian Clough’s ill-fated 44-day tenure managing Leeds United. In contrast, Red or Dead is a touching and affectionate portrait of the late Liverpool manager Bill Shankly.
It is a timely ode to one man’s single-mindedness, passion and the genuine respect he had for fans, in a Premiership era that’s dominated by the exhausting sagas surrounding the likes of Wayne Rooney, Gareth Bale and Luis Suarez.
“In 1979, Shankly said we must get back to sanity a few years before he died,” Peace says. “There is a chapter in the book called ‘A Sea Change’. I’m not going to blame Margaret Thatcher for Luis Suarez. But there was this sea change where everyone started being completely out for themselves.
“Football simply reflects society in a very excessive way,” he reflects. “Also, not once during the 720 pages do you come across the word agent. You’ve got to be careful about rose-tinted glasses, but most Liverpool players were humbled to play for the club.”
Rather than a love letter to a bygone age, Huddersfield Town fan Peace believes that Shankly continues to be an inspirational role model, the kind of “secular saint” we need more of. 
“John Peel is a great example of a Liverpool fan who was massively inspired by Shankly,” Peace offers. “He said that the highlight of his life was carrying Shankly’s suitcase out of a hotel. Like Shankly, he made it his business to reply to every single letter.”
Music connections resonate for Peace.
“I think someone else who is a lot like Shankly even though there is no obvious or direct connection is Joe Strummer,” he adds. “Again, he had time for everyone and always spoke to his fans as equals, in a Shankly kind of way. No matter who you were, he spoke to you. He had as much time for the fanzine guy as the serious journalist from a newspaper.
“Peter Hooton of The Farm has been a great supporter of this book. The two people that had the biggest impact on his life are Shankly and Strummer. There are definite parallels even though they are from massively different backgrounds and eras. There’s still the same personal quality.”
To date Red Or Dead has received a warm reaction from the Shankly family, which is in stark contrast to the fallout after The Damned Utd when a less than impressed Johnny Giles threatened to sue.
“At every reading and every event people came up and said how much they loved the book and how much they loved Brian Clough because of the book,” Peace says. “I’ve never once encountered someone who had an issue with it. Then, you had the reaction of Johnny Giles, which wasn’t really as controversial as it sounds. We never went to court, even though there seems to be this image of us that it was like Rumpole of the Bailey or Oscar Wilde. I’ve never met him. It was settled for not very much money in the end between him and the publisher.”
Of recent managers, Alex Ferguson is obviously a very intriguing potential subject.
“I’m not saying I’m necessarily going to do it, but Ferguson is fascinating,” Peace agrees. “Firstly, there is the link to Shankly. He was inspired by Shankly and what he did at Aberdeen was amazing and is a story in itself. He used to play tapes of Shankly on the team bus. Gordon Strachan said he had to put his hands over his ears because he heard them so much.”
Peace is extremely proud of his book about the miners’ strike GB84.
“It means the world to me when someone says they’ve read it. Then I really thank the success of The Damned Utd.”
Another dark chapter of the eighties that Peace considers worth revisiting is the Hunger Strike.
“Again, I’m not saying I would do it because there is a tremendous responsibility there to tell that story and the sacrifice and struggle of those men and their families,” he says. “You’d want to be pretty sure as a writer that you were able to pull it off. But it’s one of those stories from the time that you would never want to be lost or forgotten. These are stories that need to be examined and explored.”
For the moment, Peace fans have his Shankly epic to get stuck into.
“If there is a hope for the book it’s that it is not just about nostalgia or a lament,” he says. “Shankly shows the power of what can be done – if you’re prepared to go and do it. He never thought he couldn’t do something – and he had the power to inspire and motivate people. We live in a world where the trade union movement is being destroyed, but football still brings people together. There’s a tremendous power out there, if people work together and there are various clubs that do that. It would be a sad thing if we gave up and despaired. Shankly never would.”