Whilst we’re waiting for our newsletter system to be upgraded, we thought you might like to see what we’d planned to say yesterday. We’ll be back later in the week with feedback from the gathering with Mr Al Hammad…
Independent Latics – Newsletter 27-03-23
Hello and once again, well done. As I post this over 500 season tickets, potentially worth over £150k have been put behind the No Plan/No Ticket campaign. That might not be enough to have paid Mail Brannigan’s wages, but it’s a significant statement to the board and owners.
It was good to hear Friday’s news that the players have been paid their wages.
We’re not going to claim credit for the money arriving, we believe that the chairman and owners had been working to get that money to the club, but we do believe the strength of feeling that you, and your fellow supporters showed through this and the Speak Now campaign was integral to Mr Al Hammad writing his open letter to you all.
You’ll have had chance to read this and take on board the messages it contains and will have formed your own view on what it means for the future of OUR club. Regardless it is clear that there is a plan in place and that the chairman is keen to prove his commitment to Wigan Athletic. He acknowledges that work is required to rebuild trust and we hope that his actions in the coming weeks back that up.
So what about No Plan/No Ticket?
Whilst we respect what happened on Friday, and recognise that the communication around it are a step forward compared to previous weeks, we believe that the current position falls short of what you asked for on Thursday. The players have been paid and we have the start of a plan for the future but we’re still missing two, important assurances:
- That the 125% wage contingency funds are in place
- That funding is in place to get us to the end of the season
Hopefully those assurances will arrive in the coming days, but until they are the campaign will stay open and we’d ask you to continue supporting and promoting it.
And what’s next for Independent Latics?
The best way to start answering that is probably to address two questions that have been asked a lot over the last week
What is Independent Latics? Honestly, it’s no more than an idea right now, the idea that Latics’ supporters deserve a voice that can speak out on their behalf, to ask the challenging questions that other groups might not be able to, in public and, when needed, to hold the club to account for its actions.
We could pull a list together of how we think such a voice should work, and maybe we will in a future newsletter. But for now the simple idea we’re promoting is:
A football club belongs to the fans and every football club should have a strong, independent fans’ movement to protect the best interests of those fans and work for the common good of their club.
How that idea becomes a reality isn’t just for us to decide. What use is an independent supporters group of it doesn’t take into account what supporters want?
Who are Independent Latics? It may seem cheesy, but the actual answer to that question is you. If there is going to be an organisation it will be about its members.
Although that’s probably not the question people want answering. They’re probably more interested in who’s behind the tweets and the campaigns so far. There’s a few of us 6-8 in a core group, myself, Alan Moore (@notapatchon), and Liam O’Connor (@wiganontour on Twitter) have been most active communications wise, the others are mainly assorted fanzine writers, podcast persons and people who were active in raising issues during administration.
But, we’re not “in charge”, we’re keen for this to be more than a protest movement, we see a future democratic organisation and it will be the open, democratic processes that decide who leads Independent Latics into the future.
But there is work to do before we get to that point, the first bit is for this group to deliver a proper plan to move things forward. That might take a couple of weeks, but we do have a rough idea of the stages we’ll need to go through:
- We’ll need to set up some kind of working group, people with the skills and connections to get things going.
- We’ll need to draft some kind of statement of intent, a description of the things we think a group like this should stand for
- Create some form of initial membership so that you can join a discussion on that statement, formalise it into some kind of constitution and elect a committee of people to take it forward
Sounds easy on paper, doesn’t it? First things first though and you can expect us to come out asking for people to join a working group either next week, or the week after.
But in the meantime…
We need to remain vigilant. We believe players and staff are due to be paid next Thursday (6th April), we will continue to press for assurances around that and we need to be ready to go again if the worse happens. Before that, remember that speculation and rumour aren’t necessarily helpful, we need more news, not more noise.
We also need to get behind the team. Survival might be beyond us now, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go down fighting or with our heads held high. There are events planned by other groups around the QPR game and we will be supporting those. We could set-up our own, but that seems a little divisive for a group that is supposed to be all about unity. If you’re not already aware of the events, then keep an eye out on our Twitter account over the next few days.
Until then,
Keep on keeping on and see you on the other side
