Interview: Gordon Brown on ‘Slim Jim’ Baxter

Former prime minister Brown on his Fife football roots and why a legendary figure still fascinates

APPARENTLY there are two of them, maybe four. Secret service guys. Long black coats, dark glasses and shooters – or maybe not. Maybe that’s my imagination playing tricks. I can’t see them but I’m told they’re there. Discreet as you like. It’s a trippy day in Kirkcaldy. Raith Rovers are hosting Ross County. There are 1,700 normal Joes in Stark’s Park, allegedly some special branch dudes – and definitely one former prime minister. I know because he is sitting beside me. Gordon Brown shifts forward in his seat as the first whistle goes and claps his hands in excitement and says, “We could do with some points today.”

“Yeah, bad run you’re on,” I say.

“Haven’t won in five,” he replies. “Second bottom. Need something.”

“Your boys not with you?” I ask.

“No, I brought them here years ago and I think I might put them off. Hehehe”

So much for the rites of passage. Brown came here with his father as a seven year old. Stood just over there. It’s seated now, but not back then. He came here with his brother, too. They used to sell the programmes out the front. “They cost sixpence, I think. That’s when I first learned about economics.”

Seems like a parallel universe now, but he still remembers what it was like when the Old Firm used to come, the dead weight of the extra programmes in his bag and the extra coinage rattling around in his pocket. “After 20 minutes they let us in. I’d seen Baxter by then, of course.”

A day at the football with Gordon Brown. A day at the football talking about Jim Baxter and the few seasons he spent here before leaving for Rangers. A day hearing about Brown’s idol and his latest efforts to honour his memory.

In the past, Brown was heavily involved in the campaign that saw Baxter immortalised with a statue in his home place and now he is an ambassador for the newly-found Raith Rovers Hall of Fame, the first inductee being Slim Jim on the night of 21 May at the Adam Smith theatre in Kirkcaldy.

That’s why we’re here, sitting in the stand at Stark’s Park and watching the stalemate. Forty five minutes gone and no goals but at least we are being transported back to a different age when a kid was out on that pitch running amok with his cheek and his skill, a young boy that climbed out of a coal pit on a Saturday and then went and made fools of hardened pros a few hours later. We’re talking about the late 1950s. Brown was only a lad sitting at his father’s side, but he recalls a presence on the field in those games, a buzz in the stand and the name Baxter, Baxter, Baxter being repeated over and over.

“Where’s this lad from?”

“Hill O’ Beath.”

“Where’d we find him?”

“Crossgates Primrose.”

“He’s good.”

“He’s better than good.”

Or to quote Scott Symon from a moment in time: “I have never seen a player run a Rangers side ragged like that before in my life.”

Cynicism about politicians is natural. Cynicism about politicians who claim to have had a lifelong love of football is almost a necessity. Some of the time their supposed interest is opportunistic and cringe-making, but in Brown’s case it is different. Well, let’s face it, you wouldn’t begin with Raith Rovers if you were looking to exploit football’s popularity and all the votes that lie within, would you? Not unless it was in your blood in the first place. He wouldn’t come here with increasing regularity since his exit from Downing Street if he didn’t care passionately about what is happening. “I’m a shareholder,” he says, with a smile. “It’s a charity investment!

“I’ve never tried to claim to be anything that I’m not. I support football, I watch a lot of football, I’ve played a lot of football as well as rugby and tennis and running. I did a lot of sport when I was young. Loved rugby. I played as a centre, a winger and then as a wing-forward. See Dave over there? Dave is a director here and we played on the same school team – Kirkcaldy High School.”

Dave says, “Aye – and Heriot’s and the like wouldn’t play us in case they got beat.”

And now we’re off on a diversion from Baxter and we’re talking about rugby and Brown’s school days.

“I was pretty quick,” says Brown.

“You were the slimmest on the team,” says Dave.

“The first time I played for the first team, I’ll never forget it,” says Brown. “I scored a try, I was on the wing and I kicked it ahead and managed to score and we won 6-3. You don’t forget these things. It was at Buckhaven. Pretty bad weather. We were unbeaten for a long time. I was only there for the first season and we were up against many of these Edinburgh schools and any time we played an Edinburgh school we really wanted to win, put it that way.

“At 16, I lost the sight of an eye and that was that. We were playing a former pupils XV. It was the last match of the season. First scrum of the day and they were trying to teach us something. It was an accident, but I got kicked in the head and the technology wasn’t around then to save the sight in the eye.”

Down on the pitch, County are dominating. And then they score a soft goal to add to all the other soft goals Rovers have been giving away. In the gloominess of the moment, we reach for Baxter, as if his ghost can do something about the predicament of his former team.

“Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, but he was offered a trial with Raith Rovers but he was still working in the pit. The trial was on Saturday afternoon but he had to stay in the pit until 1pm so the only way he could get to the trial was to swear at his foreman and get suspended and that, so the story goes, was how he started off.

“The first game I was brought to was a new year’s day match against East Fife in 1958 or ’59. I’m pretty sure I was seven. I remember being here, sitting with my father. I was cheering for Raith Rovers and my father was clapping when either team did well. I said to him: ‘Why are you not just supporting Raith Rovers and he said: ‘You have to support good play on both sides’.

“I laugh about that now, but that was Baxter coming through at that point. He had personality on the field, he had tremendous character, he was assertive, he could dominate a match with his ability and it all looked so effortless. It’s often been said that Jim thought that training was for other people. I’m not sure if he ever actually said that, but he was just so natural on the field. He was a born footballer. He went to Rangers in 1960 and the directors were blamed for selling him. People were under the illusion that we could have kept him somehow. We couldn’t, of course.”

It was only long after Baxter retired that Brown got to know him. He was a constituent who became a friend. He recalls his brilliance on the field and his mischief off it. He laughs at the memory of a gala football night in Glasgow from years ago, a night that celebrated the greats of the Scottish game. Some England icons made the trip north. One of the Bobbys – Robson or Charlton – was there, he remembers that much. “There weren’t enough Scottish goals against England to last three or four hours so they just replayed it on a loop, including Jim’s performance in 1967. Every time you looked at the screen it seemed that Baxter was doing the keepy-uppy. He wasn’t very well at the time, but the night was very funny.”

Slim Jim. There will be some amount of reminiscing at the Hall of Fame bash, some number of stories about a wondrous talent that bloomed too briefly. “Jim would have said himself that he didn’t fulfil his potential,” says Brown.

“He broke his leg and, during the period of his broken leg, that was when his big drink problem started. He was like a Scottish George Best. We never saw the best of them.

“I have a picture of Jim in my house in Scotland. It’s been written that I had it in office in Downing Street, but I didn’t. It was too precious to be taken away from Scotland, it would have been a great loss to Fife. I might never have got it back.

“Would they have understood him down there? I don’t know, but to me he is one of the greatest footballers of his generation and I look forward to paying tribute to him again.”