by Tony Evans
‘There was creativity, vitality,’ Derek Hatton said. ‘This place was energized. People were engaged with politics. People cared. You could taste the pre-revolutionary feeling. I’ve never seen anything like it since.’
These were the darkest days of Thatcherism. The Conservative government that was elected in 1979 under Margaret Thatcher defined itself by coarse monetarist economics but it was hardly Conservatism. It was as much a revolt against the patronage of One-Nation Toryism as it was an assault on the poor. As one of its architects, Sir James Goldsmith, said: ‘Some say the acquisition of wealth is vulgar. Vulgarity is a sign of vigour.’
It was an uprising of the foreman class and those earning middle incomes. Thatcher was a greengrocer’s daughter from Grantham in Lincolnshire and the perfect symbol for a political philosophy that said you were responsible for nobody except yourself. She explained it in an interview in the mid 1980s. ‘We’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it,’ she said. ‘“I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.” “I’m homeless, the government must house me.” They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society.’
The selfish and the self-centred loved this notion. It resonated with those dedicated to the acquisition of wealth. This was the age of the Yuppie – an acronym for Young Upwardly-Mobile Professional – where conspicuous consumption was held up to be admired. Anyone with a social conscience was derided.
‘It was all about doing well for yourself,’ Neville Southall said. ‘Stuff everyone else. They wanted you to believe nobody cares about anyone. But they do. People’s generosity, people’s spirit came through.’
It was a confrontational time. The spectre of the Cold War hung over Europe. Real war had cemented the Thatcher regime’s rule in 1982 after Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a British archipelago in the South Atlantic. The ten-week conflict cost nearly a thousand lives and harnessed Britain’s innate jingoism behind the Conservative government.
There were adversaries closer to home. The Troubles in Northern Ireland rumbled on throughout the 1980s, with images of the ongoing street violence beamed into homes on the TV news on a nightly basis. It was an unwinnable conflict but Thatcher’s approach – at least in public – was simplistic. The combatants in the six counties were simply lawbreakers: ‘A crime is a crime is a crime,’ she said. The government gloried in an unbending, uncompromising image.
The most divisive conflict came on the mainland. Part of the core belief of the Conservative Party is that trade unions have too much political power and their demands for better pay and conditions skew the free market. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was the strongest of the workers’ organizations and the Tories were determined to crush the union. The NUM had effectively brought down Edward Heath’s government in 1974. The grudge lingered.
The most significant industrial conflict of the post-war era began in March 1984 with the closure of Cortonwood Colliery in South Yorkshire. The bitter dispute lasted a year. It split the country. The miners, so often considered the backbone of Britain’s industrial power, were demonized. Thatcher made it clear that compromise was off the agenda. ‘We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.’
The battle lines were drawn. Police and pickets clashed across the coalfields. The most serious disorder came at Orgreave coking plant in June 1984. The picketing miners were enjoying the sun and having a kickabout when mounted constabulary charged. The fields around the plant resembled a Dark-Ages battlefield. Television news reversed the sequence of events when the trouble was reported, attaching undeserved blame to the striking miners. Fake news is nothing new. Arthur Scargill, the union leader, was left beaten and bloodied as police units ran wild. The Guardian later described the day as ‘almost medieval in its choreography, it was at various stages a siege, a battle, a chase, a rout and, finally, a brutal example of legalised state violence’.
The miners’ dispute became increasingly bitter. The entire apparatus of the British state was galvanized to break the cornerstone of the workers’ movement.
What has any of this to do with football? More than it appears. Working-class culture was under assault on all fronts. The prevailing Tory viewpoint sneered at the men down the pitshafts, seeing them as brutish, semi-educated and violent. The terraces were populated by similar lower-class oiks, they thought. The violence at football matches was inextricably linked with the conflict on the picket lines. Good, decent, hard-working people were appalled by that sort of behaviour, so Thatcher believed.
Peter Reid saw it differently. What was happening on the terraces and the streets around the stadiums was a symptom of a wider issue. ‘Football wasn’t immune,’ he said. ‘Society was reflected in football. It gave people an outlet for anger. It was the wrong outlet but it was definitely a vehicle for frustration.
‘There was a clear agenda against the miners, the unions and the working class.’
On Merseyside, football thuggery and what the Conservative government considered to be industrial sabotage converged. ‘A city possessed with a particularly violent nature,’ Thatcher declared after Heysel. Not only that, Liverpool had the temerity to elect a council that was at the opposite end of the political spectrum to the Prime Minister.
In the general election of May 1983, the Tories were re-elected in a landslide, increasing their majority from 44 four years earlier to 144. In Liverpool, there was a different sort of electoral avalanche. Labour won 23 of the 33 wards it contested. The party’s local appeal was obvious. The Labour manifesto pledged not to cut jobs and services and committed itself to slum clearance and a housebuilding programme. The battle was on.
The council could not carry through its plans with Whitehall slashing the allowances to the regions. So Liverpool set its own budget with a £30 million deficit. Locally, the illegal act went down well with the electorate. Nationally, it was another stick to beat the city with. This seemed to be a town where even the civic leaders had a total disregard for the law.
Nine of the 51 Labour councillors were supporters of the Militant Tendency, a group with Trotskyist leanings. The enemies of the council emphasized the revolutionary beliefs of the group and suggested that the entire Liverpool Labour Party was infected by entryist subversives. The dispute was cast in wider terms: this local council was a threat to the British way of life.
There was division and rancour within the city but the council’s stance inspired a significant part of the population. In March 1984, an estimated fifty thousand people took to the streets to support the local authority’s stance. The same mood coursed through those who followed the city’s football teams. On the trains to London for the 1984 League Cup final between Everton and Liverpool, the more politically motivated fans went down the carriages handing out ‘I support Liverpool City Council’ stickers in red and blue. They were well received. The concourse at Euston station rang with choruses of ‘Derek Hatton, we’ll support you evermore’ and coins poured into the fundraising buckets of striking miners. At last, Merseyside felt like it was fighting back.
Reid took pride in being part of a team that was the focus for such civic identity and resistance. ‘I was definitely conscious of that,’ he said. ‘We were flagbearers for the city. Football kept people going.’
Many players were middle earners and instinctively voted Tory. Reid was very different. He understood Merseyside’s twin obsessions. ‘I’m from Huyton,’ he said. ‘We’d see Harold Wilson walking round. Politics was important to people; so was football.’
Hatton tells a story that explains the link between the teams, politics and the city’s pride. ‘In the run-up to the League Cup final in March ’84, it seemed like everything was on the brink,’ he said. ‘The battles over the budget were becoming mo
re intense. Whitehall was threatening to get rid of the council and send in a commissioner to run the city and the media were screaming for our blood. And then we had a real crisis. Football.’
The local authority had plans for a parade after the League Cup final. The original idea was that the order of the procession would be decided on merit. ‘We thought the winners would take the lead bus and the losers follow on,’ Hatton said. ‘Then Howard Kendall said to me, “If you think we’re going behind those red bastards if we lose, you can fuck off!” He wasn’t giving an inch.
‘So now we had to convince the Liverpool supporters on the council to use their influence at Anfield to stop this blowing up into a serious diplomatic incident. In the middle of the budget battle, with all this massive economic turmoil, the most important item on the agenda was football. You wouldn’t want to underestimate the power of the game.’
Kendall wasn’t the only one irritated by ‘red bastards’. The government would have loved to crush Liverpool’s political leaders.
Thatcher was not prepared to fight on two fronts, though. A month after the League Cup final, Patrick Jenkin, the environment minister, backed down. Extra money would be released for Liverpool. The crisis had been postponed.
Jenkin was hoping the post-agreement publicity would centre on the compromise, with both sides taking a low-key approach. He didn’t figure on Hatton. The deputy leader emerged from the meeting in a euphoric mood. On the steps outside the ministry, he beamed for the press and said, ‘Victory!’
‘It was probably not the greatest strategic move,’ he concedes. The bad feeling between the antagonists was intensified. Teddy Taylor, a right-wing Tory MP, told Hatton: ‘Don’t get too cocky. Scargill [the miners’ leader] is our priority. But we’ll come back for you later.’
When the Tories came, there would be little support from outside the city. Hatton, in particular, had become a hate figure to those who backed the government. ‘The city council were seen as troublemakers,’ Southall said. ‘Hatton was seen as a typical Scouser because he was so loud. He believed what he was saying.
‘The city was fighting a lonely battle. It’s happened a few times over the years; 99 per cent of the time it’s been right.’
It was not long before Liverpool City Council were the last adversaries left in the political combat zone. The miners’ strike finally faltered and collapsed after a year on the picket lines. In March 1985, the colliery bands led the miners back to work, beaten but unbowed. Thatcherism’s main offensive had been successful. Thoughts turned to Liverpool.
The assault on the council would have happened anyway but it was easier for the government to go on the offensive in the wake of Heysel. Few people outside the region had any sympathy for a city with murderous football fans and extremist politics.
5
Reaching out
There is a modern school of thought that Merseyside somehow ignored Heysel and avoided the responsibility for the horror of Brussels. It is not true.
Within the city, a deep shame was mixed with a sense of bewilderment. Liverpool club officials had alerted UEFA that the stadium was unsafe and the segregation inadequate. When this was pointed out in the aftermath of the disaster, those who would see the city in the worst light assumed it was Scousers trying to wriggle out of responsibility. Even attempts to reach out to Turin were wilfully misinterpreted by those who were eager to score political points.
Hatton proposed a plan to twin the cities as an act of friendship. Trevor Jones, the head of the Liberal bloc on the council, sneered that this was ‘insensitive’.
A delegation comprising Liverpool’s senior clergymen – Bishop David Sheppard from the Church of England and his Catholic counterpart Archbishop Derek Warlock – and civic leaders went to the Italian city. The response to their trip was vindictive.
‘The conciliatory visit by representatives of Liverpool to Turin a week ago was, by all accounts, shamefully inept and lacking in humility,’ wrote David Miller in The Times. ‘Derek Hatton, deputy leader of Liverpool City Council, made it a blatantly party political platform, devoid of sincere remorse, and David Sheppard, the Anglican Bishop, who should know better, was a quiescent supporter.’
Hatton is still aghast at the suggestion. ‘As soon as I saw that people from the city were one of the causes, I knew we had to go to Turin on a peace mission,’ he said. ‘How could we ignore them? If we had not gone, it would have looked like we didn’t care. We did care.’
Unlike in Britain, the delegation was appreciated in Italy. ‘We went to Turin and they made us really welcome,’ Hatton said. ‘In the cathedral, there was a big service and the families of the people who died were there. They were so lovely to us. It was humbling.’
The politician could not help but feel it would have been a different reaction if the tragedy had been reversed. ‘I remember thinking, “Could you imagine if it had been the other way around?” It would have been much angrier in Liverpool, I’m sure. People would have been bricking the coach we were in. We were treated very well and the dignity of the Italians was impressive. It was very moving.’
It did not matter that Hatton and the bishops had actually tried to repair relations, they were still vilified. ‘That made it all the more infuriating when opposition politicians accused us of “playing politics” with the situation,’ Hatton said. ‘It was just a natural human reaction. We had to go to show our sorrow and support.’
The clergymen’s statement reflects Hatton’s viewpoint. ‘There has been a dignity about the way which Liverpool as a whole has felt responsibility for this tragedy,’ it said. ‘We are prepared to accept whatever blame is ours.’
Whether that was true across the city is something Hatton questions. ‘I don’t think the people of Merseyside accepted full responsibility,’ he said. ‘Given all that had gone on, the way the city was viewed by outsiders and the continued assaults from the press for the most trivial of reasons, they were used to having criticism thrown at them.
‘There was a sense, “This is just another brick they’re throwing at us, just duck and get on with it.”’
Miller’s article underlines what was happening. It contains the telling phrase ‘by all accounts’ that should undermine the entire point of the piece. The vast majority of discourse surrounding Merseyside and its problems was irrational and politically charged. It placed the city’s advocates on the defensive almost immediately. There was real anger across the region, though.
Two 18-year-olds, Terry Wilson and Steve McDonald, gave an ill-advised interview to The People newspaper in which they were quoted as claiming to have led the charge on Heysel’s terraces. They suggested their role in the violence would make them heroes to the Kop. Less than 12 hours after the newspaper hit the streets, the pair were in police custody – for their own protection. Furious crowds gathered outside their houses. Once released, Wilson went into hiding. Their parents claimed the boys had been manipulated by the tabloid and threatened to sue.
There were plenty of photographs of the real instigators and a police hotline was available for anonymous whistle-blowers. Within weeks, 27 men were arrested and all but one charged.
There were other attempts to build bridges in the summer of 1985. Peter Hooton, a youth worker in Cantril Farm when he wasn’t fronting The Farm or producing The End, organized a visit of Juventus fans to Liverpool.
Ironically, the contact between youngsters from the two cities had been planned months before Heysel. ‘Where I worked in Cantril Farm there was mass unemployment,’ Hooton said. ‘The only people in work were on government schemes. There was lots of apathy and no hope.
‘We started running youth exchange trips to give the youngsters some focus. It was called the Liverpool 28 Improvements Committee. It had no political affiliation. It was just about getting young people involved in fundraising and activities to give them a sense of purpose. The year before, we sent a group to Spain.’
After the events in Brussels, it became clear that ta
king young Scousers to Italy was out of the question. ‘We’d planned to go to Turin about six to nine months before we got Juventus in the final. After Heysel, we decided we couldn’t do the exchange.
‘Instead, we wanted to invite the Juve supporters’ club. A mate of ours from Turin, Mauro Garino, was involved. Kevin Sampson [the novelist who was then managing The Farm] had met him on his travels and we’d become friendly. We were with Mauro in Brussels.’
There were hurdles. ‘Mauro had to get the backing of the Ultras,’ Hooton explains. ‘They had a meeting and the head of the Ultras decided to come to Liverpool. We thought, “Better do something good, then.”
‘There was a reception at the town hall, we went to Anfield and they had a picture taken on the Kop, and then we had a meal at Goodison. The highlight was the Royal Iris.’
This was a ferry that was licensed for entertainment purposes. It was equipped with a stage and a dancefloor. On a warm August night, the delegation from Turin were treated to a cruise on the Mersey featuring local bands, a poet, a comedian and the Radio One DJ John Peel. The money raised went to the Heysel disaster fund. The show was newsworthy enough for a camera crew from ITV to be present.
The young Torinesi were given an insight into the manic hedonism that existed on Merseyside. Anyone thinking a musical cruise would be sedate had an eye-opening experience. The evening of Thursday, 1 August became one of the most memorable nights of the year. More than five hundred people crammed on to the decks of the Royal Iris and the night of madness that ensued became part of local legend.
James Brown, the man who would later go on to create the 1990s lads’ mag Loaded, was astounded and slightly scared by what he saw. He found that the audience were more akin to a football crowd than the type of people he would expect at a pop concert. ‘When you went to gigs in Leeds, the audience was mixed: goths, punks, casuals,’ he said. ‘The boat was just full of casuals. The place was full of guys in tennis shirts and trainers. Everyone had flick heads and bowl cuts.’
