Dean of Durham, child of Jewish war refugee, writes open letter to Paolo Di Canio over fascist claims

Dear Paulo Di Canio,

We have never met, and I am the first to admit that I don't know very much about football. You do, and I respect that. However, I hope you will allow me to say something about your appointment as manager at Sunderland FC as personally as I can.

My relationship with the Black Cats goes back a long way. I married into a family of fervent lifelong Sunderland supporters.

My wife and I got engaged on Cup Final Day 1973, figuring that if Sunderland won her father would say yes to anything and if they lost, he would be past caring.

All these years we have wanted SAFC to do well. We have been glad when it did, and sad when it didn't. We know how much its football success has meant for the people of Sunderland and the North East who are rightly proud of your new Club.

Sunderland manager Paolo Di Canio

But today I am wondering what to do.

Your appointment raises very difficult questions.

You see, I am the child of a Jewish war refugee who got out of Germany and came to Britain just in time. Some of her family and friends perished in the Nazi death camps. So I find your self-confessed fascism deeply troubling. Fascism was nearly the undoing of the world.

It cost millions of innocent lives.

Mussolini, who you say has been deeply misunderstood, openly colluded with it. You are said to wear a tattoo DUX which speaks for itself. This all adds up to what I find baffling.

You say that you are not a racist, but it needs great sophistication to understand how fascism and racism are ultimately different. I can promise you that this distinction will be lost on the people of the North East where the British National Party is finding fertile ground in which to sow the seeds of its pernicious and poisonous doctrine.

You did not necessarily know this before you came. But I believe that unless you clearly renounce fascism in all its manifestations, you will be associated with these toxic far-right tendencies we have seen too much of in this region.

At your press conference today, you had the chance to do this, to say in so many words that you have been misunderstood (just as you say Mussolini was). You were asked where you stood on fascism, but declined to give an unambiguous response.

One sentence is all that it would have taken.

I’m genuinely perplexed as to why you didn’t take the opportunity that was handed to you. Maybe your minders told you to stay on-message.

But don't you see that it is no answer to plead that this press call was about football, not politics.

Where a Premier League club is concerned, you can’t ever separate the two. Politics and high-profile sport, like religion, are about the whole of life. Football is deeply political. To say otherwise may be convenient, but it's naïve.

Premier League players and managers are big role-models for the young. Is fascism what you or Sunderland FC want our children and teenagers to admire and emulate? And if this doesn’t trouble you personally, should it not trouble those who appointed you?

The Club now stands to suffer loss of support as well as see its standing and respect damaged not just in this part of the world but internationally. Its reputation has been hard won. I am just one of thousands who would be sad to see it squandered.

So there it is. Please tell me how to go on supporting the Black Cats with a good conscience, even from the sofa, because believe me, I want to. Please tell me that I have misunderstood, or missed some fundamental issue here. I am simply telling you with a heavy heart that it feels hard at the moment to stay loyal.

Yours sincerely, Michael Sadgrove

UPDATE: After Paolo Di Canio released a statement saying he does not support the ideology of fascism, the Dean of Durham, Michael Sadgrove, added the following to his blog: “My open letter to Paolo di Canio was written out of concerns that I know many shared.

“I wrote it with care, trying to voice what I thought were the important questions that needed asking.

“Mr Di Canio’s statement has provided these answers and I warmly welcome that.

“This will allow everyone to move forward and focus on football at Sunderland, and the job to be done at one of the North-East’s great clubs.”

More Sunderland AFC News