There’s nothing particularly innovative about commemorative football shirts. The attention Clapton Community Football Club have received for our tribute to the International Brigades sits comfortably, within a recent tradition, of clubs using their most immediate visual medium to support particular campaigns or causes.

In 2017, Celtic embroidered their home shirt with a large cross to remember the Great Famine in Ireland. The year before, the Republic of Ireland team risked the wrath of Fifa by honouring the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising on their famous green tops during a match with Switzerland.

Many who argue that political symbols have no place in football tend often to forget this principle around November each year. The vast majority of professional clubs in Britain now emblazon their shirts with a Remembrance poppy.

Earlier this summer our club, Clapton CFC, ran a competition among its then 300 or so members to come up with a design for this season’s away strip. Sixteen ideas were submitted, with a knockout vote set up to decide the winner.

Many of the kit suggestions took inspiration from existing iconic team colours – Dukla Prague, Peru, Sampdoria – but the outright winner was an original design inspired by the colours of the International Brigades and the Spanish Republican flag.

The new Clapton CFC away kit. Photograph: Clapton CFC

About 2,500 men and women from Britain and Ireland travelled to Spain between 1936 and 1939 to defend democracy and oppose fascism. London has 20 public memorials to the Brigades, commemorating those from the city who went to fight for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. You can find one of these, a modest plaque, in a park close to Clapton supporters’ spiritual home, the Old Spotted Dog Ground in Forest Gate. Clapton fans are currently estranged from the ground after disagreements with the club chief executive, who had initiated liquidation proceedings to sell off part of it – causing fans and life members to break away.

In our first months as a fan-owned club, the collective decision we took to honour Brigades from East London and beyond turned out to be a significant point in the developing culture at Clapton – collectively making decisions that encourage our members’ involvement. Before submitting the design to vote, the shirt was drafted by one of our members, Thom, a retail worker who hobbies in Photoshop.

The idea behind the theme had been excitedly thought out over a few pints between friends at our local. We sought approval from the International Brigades Memorial Trust and contacted our kit supplier, Rage Sport, about the feasibility of the design in practice. Rage Sport are a non-profit making sportswear manufacturer, from Caserta in Italy. They produce kits from materials made by fairly paid workers for grassroots football clubs that are principled in fighting racism, fascism and inequality.

The whole process was self-initiated, community-organised and democratic. Values borrowed from the ideals of the Spanish Republic. Without us really being aware at the time, we were practising, at least in some way, ideals represented by our adopted colours.

Recent years have seen a welcome rise of fan-owned football clubs both in the UK and around Europe which, in an age where big clubs with distant owners far removed from their local fan base, helps ordinary fans feel connected. There are different ways of operating a fan-owned model, but at their heart is the ideal that the club is run for the benefit of its fans, by its fans.



A Clapton fan. Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris/The Guardian

Using a model provided by Supporters Direct, Clapton CFC is set up as a cooperative. Each member has an equal share in the club and an equal vote in future decisions, with complete transparency. The club’s board only serves to ensure the company remains solvent, with all other operational decisions devolved to working groups that any member can join, without any official hierarchy.

For the price of a £10 membership – £5 for anyone short on funds – an equal £1 share means each CCFC member owns their part of a football club and a verifiable piece of a community. This cohort of “owners” is now over 600 in number. The structure, although experimental, is set up to engage as many people as possible and hopefully draw on the widest range strengths and skills.

The hope is that by working in this way, the club can encourage individual supporters to have the agency to take on roles and push ideas through – working-class people, young supporters and anyone on a limited income can take ownership of a project where it is structurally impossible to be edged out by wealthier counterparts.

Following our first match in the new away shirt, a photo of two players celebrating a goal suddenly received a flood of attention on social media, disproportionately from Spain. For a football club in the 12th tier of English football, we were suddenly, massively boosted by an internationalist movement.

Stefan Kilron and Stefan Neilsen celebrate together – and become big in Spain. Photograph: Clapton CFC

Among the overwhelming gratitude the club received for honouring these colours, something considered still too controversial to do in Spain, there was also the appreciation of the shirt’s origins – it is grassroots, community-funded, designed and produced by ordinary, working people. It wasn’t a top-down marketing decision from a large sports brand. It’s was intended as a small commemoration by a group of enthusiasts and volunteers.

The reason that the Clapton CFC away shirt possibly resonates more than other football shirts from higher-profile clubs, is as much of what it represents as the timing of its production. The ideals of the International Brigades and Spanish Republic are becoming increasingly relevant, as shown by recent events across Europe, in the rise in popular support for the far-right.

Throughout this season our players will be wearing their colours, of being anti-racist, anti-sexist, pro-working class. Unexpectedly, they’ll be joined by thousands of others from across London, the north of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Spain, Poland, Italy, Mexico, the USA and beyond. We intend for these principles to start at home – at our next match.