Brendon Batson: Arsenal's Trailblazer and the Three Degrees Legacy - Part One
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to It Was What It Was. This week Jonathan and Rob welcome special guest Brendan Batson, a former Arsenal, Cambridge, and West Brom player - who made a significant impact on British social and footballing history.
Part one focuses on Batson's early life in Grenada and Trinidad, his challenges adapting to the British climate in the 1960s, and becoming Arsenal's first black player.
Join us for part two on Friday where Brendan recalls his time at West Brom - and the birth of the famous 'Three Degrees'.
00:00 Introduction and Special Guest Announcement
01:21 Brendan Batson's Early Life and Migration to England
03:18 Adapting to Life in England and Discovering Football
06:34 Challenges and Racism in Early Years
11:48 The Windrush Generation and Social Context
14:48 Racism in Football and the National Front
19:13 Conclusion of Part One
20:00 Scouted by Arsenal: The Beginning of a Football Journey
21:23 Challenges and Triumphs: Early Arsenal Days
22:38 Facing Racism: The Harsh Realities of the 60s and 70s
25:06 Breaking Barriers: Becoming Arsenal's First Black Player
27:44 Struggles with Racism on the Field
31:36 Guidance and Growth: Learning to Cope
34:32 Career Progression: From Arsenal to Cambridge and Beyond
36:33 Ron Atkinson's Influence: A Turning Point
37:41 Conclusion: Reflecting on a Pioneering Career
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to It Was What It Was. I'm Jonathan Wilson. I'm with Rob Draper. And today we've got a very special guest. We're speaking to Brendan Batson, great Arsenal, Cambridge, and particularly West Brown player. And Rob, I'm really looking forward to this. Yeah, Brendan, not only a great player, but there's a great slice of social history in this |
| 0:25.2 | podcast, which I think is extremely interesting. |
| 0:28.4 | I mean, he's part of this fantastic West Brom team, which is a bit unheralded, but they're |
| 0:33.0 | only beating by the likes of Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. |
| 0:35.6 | Who are European Cup winners at the time? |
| 0:37.5 | Brendan's distalled to that team, a really, really good player, but also hugely significant. |
| 0:43.1 | He's the first black player to ever play for Arsenal, and he'll play in his West Brom team |
| 0:47.7 | with Cyril Regis and Lloyd Cunningham. |
| 0:49.9 | They'll be known as the three degrees, which we'll explain later in the podcast. |
| 0:53.7 | But really, |
| 0:54.5 | it's the first time I think the colour and black players are acknowledged positively in the English |
| 1:00.1 | top flight. And that's why Brendan is such a significant figure, not just a footballer, but a |
| 1:05.8 | pioneer in Britain's social history. I think that's absolutely right, a great footballer, but also a hugely |
| 1:11.6 | important figure from a social and cultural point of view. So Brendan, thank you very much for joining |
| 1:16.2 | us. Good morning and welcome to It Was What It Was. Yeah, good morning. Thank you for inviting me on. |
| 1:21.9 | Brendan, we're here to talk about your book, The Third Degree. And I have to say, I mean, |
| 1:26.6 | just on one level, it's a fantastic football read. The characters that you were involved with, some of them, I really didn't know that you had been involved with people like Bertie Me, Don Howe, Legends of the Gay, but of course, Brian Rob said, Ron Atkinson, who we're going to obviously talk about later, and Laurie Cunningham and Cyril Regis. |
| 1:50.5 | But in addition to that, it's this extraordinary social document of the first windrush generation, really. |
| 1:55.0 | You know, you're the children of that, the first migrants from the Caribbean. |
| 2:00.6 | You experienced that this is now part of history and Horton slides the British social history. |
| 2:02.3 | So it really works on two levels. |
| 2:06.2 | Can you just tell us a little bit about your early life, where you were born and how you come to be in a cold, dank, dark British in the late 1950s? |
... |
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