We published the story of Noel Lloyd and Positive Action Movement in The Square Ball magazine in November, and now we’re putting the full text permanently online at TheSquareBall.net/Noel-Lloyd.
It’s an incredible story, that follows Ken Bates’ rise through the Lancashire construction business to become chairman of Oldham Athletic, where his schemes for corporate facilities and restaurants, the increased ticket prices, the insulting remarks about fans in his programme column, and the club radio station, will all sound sadly familiar to Leeds fans; to Rhodesia, where Bates had business connections, and where he took Oldham on a summer tour in 1965 and was photographed with Prime Minister Ian Smith, in spite of United Nations Resolutions that imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions on Smith’s “illegal regime … [ruled by] a racist minority”; and then to the British Virgin Islands, where Bates was on the precipice of a success that would be worth almost £200million in today’s money and leave him owner not just of a business, but of an island the size of Manhattan, for 199 years. … Continue Reading