You probably didn’t see Sunday’s Community Shield match between Liverpool and Manchester City. It was
a 1-1 draw and City won on penalties, but I’m sure that’s as meaningless to you as the idea of community.
It’s what happened before the match that may have attracted your attention. Liverpool fans booed the
national anthem before the game. As your two young sons are supporters of Jurgen Klopp’s team it probably
disgusted you. It certainly upset a lot of people across the country to judge by social media. Nanny probably
ordered the boys to cover their ears but they would still have been exposed to seditious behaviour.
It must be hard for you to comprehend why so many people chose to disrupt God Save The Queen.
Margaret Thatcher was very keen on creating ‘enemies within’ and she lumped all football supporters into
that category. That was a mistake. Most followers of the game love their nation as much as you do.
Liverpool fans are unusual. It might be worth finding out why.
Perhaps you should bring the boys up to Anfield for a game. Not in a corporate box but in the crowd, mixing
with normal Scousers and diehard supporters. I’d be more than happy to be your guide and explain the club
and the city to the boys.
Let’s start with the club. Politics is ingrained in its culture. That’s because the man who turned Liverpool
FC from a provincial backwater to a continental powerhouse viewed the game as something bigger than
sport. Bill Shankly was a miner as a teenager and brought the ethos of the pits to the pitch. “The socialism I
believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards,” he said. “It’s the
way I see football, the way I see life.”
Words like that mean something on Merseyside, where many people still feel excluded from the rewards
this country can offer. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that a Conservative cabinet discussed the ‘managed
decline’ of the area. In plain English that meant withdrawing resources from the region so that residents
would be forced to leave. Effectively starving them out. To even consider this was mind boggling. You
remember that time: it was the same year you were making the rounds of newspapers and television shows
as a 12-year-old, sporting a monocle, wearing a suit and tie, billing yourself as a ‘schoolboy financier’ and
flaunting your privilege.
At least in their dress sense, your boys seem more like normal kids.
That’s why I think they would enjoy going to Anfield. It’s a hospitable place and somewhere people go to let
down their hair. Shankly wanted everyone to enjoy themselves. There’s a statue of him outside the Kop that
bears the legend ‘He made the people happy.’ They’ll love the singing, the flag-waving and the way the
team plays. Klopp has his multi-national, multi-cultural team performing with a joyous flamboyance.
They may ask some questions, though. Like why the number ‘96’ is everywhere, from banners in the crowd
to the shirts they wear. The boys are too young to go into too much detail but they are old enough for an
overview of what happened at Hillsborough in 1989 and the intervening years. It’s probably enough for
them to learn that 96 people were unlawfully killed at a football match after a series of errors by the
authorities and that the blame was deflected from those responsible on to supporters. They would be
shocked to learn that Irvine Patnick, a Conservative MP, was one of the key people in spreading the lies and
that, 40 years on, the families of the dead are still fighting for justice. They might be surprised that Boris
Johnson, your close political ally, repeated many of the slurs when editor of The Spectator and – even more
appallingly – did not retract them when questioned in Parliament last month after becoming Prime
Minister.