Why Liverpool fans booed the national anthem at Wembley - an open letter to Jacob Rees-Mogg

To: Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP​

CC: Patriotic/Conservative Liverpool fans

Subject: Booing the anthem, your boys and the city

Dear Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP,

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, 30 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.

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You may think they aren’t mature enough for this but Jon-Paul Gilhooley, the youngest of the Hillsborough dead, was old enough for his body to be tested for alcohol. He was just 10.

Yet none of this explains fully why we try to drown out the national anthem. That’s been going on for a long time, especially in the 1980s. Even before the booing many Liverpool fans sang ‘God Save Our Team,’ as they did at the 1965 FA Cup final, rather than laud the monarch. It’s because of the peculiar nature of the place.

The city is different. Many of its residents do not consider themselves English. There’s a reason for that. Liverpool is a town of immigrants – it has Britain’s oldest African and Chinese communities and the port attracted people from across the globe.

The most distinctive influence has been Irishness. The Potato Famine had a massive impact on Merseyside. Dispossessed and starving Irish flooded across the sea in the mid-19th century and became the dominant community. They suffered the same anti-immigrant rhetoric that we’ve seen in recent years (despite Ireland being part of the United Kingdom at the time). For decades, many Englishmen did not regard large sections of Liverpool’s society to be their countrymen. It worked both ways: the constituency in the poorest area returned an Irish Nationalist MP until 1929. Scouse was an identity that grew out of Irishness and many of the stereotypes that remain today are rooted in anti-Celtic preconceptions. If you trawl through the newspapers of the past 180 years you can see the patterns and the way they are repeated against other communities today. Nigel Farage merely echoes the cliches of the past.

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This brings me to another point. Your family makes a huge song-and-dance about being Catholic. Lots of Scousers are Catholic. In Liverpool it’s not the upper-class, dinner-party talking-point version of the religion, though. It’s the poor people’s type. On the other side of the divide there’s a dwindling Orange Lodge presence in the city. I’m sure you and the boys would be interested to see what it’s like to be in a place where people are allowed to parade the streets expressing anti-Catholic rhetoric. It would provide a small glimpse of the sort of extreme Protestantism you find in Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland, where your co-religionists are considered second-class citizens by some – including the Democratic Unionist Party who are propping up your government. Anyone who’s seen this sort of divisiveness up close knows how dangerous the politicking around the Irish Border has become.

Which brings us to the European Union. A significant part of Merseyside’s revival was bankrolled by Europe. The Echo Arena, John Lennon airport, the cruise liner terminal and many other symbols of the city’s regeneration benefited from EU money. That’s why a majority voted Remain. Westminster has not been so generous to Liverpool.

I hope this explains the booing. There’s no single cause but a complex set of cultural and historical reasons.

Feeling like outsiders makes us all the more welcoming and we’d be pleased to have you and the boys as guests. Over the years I’ve come across a number of people who have purported to love the club but expressed contempt for the city and Scousers. It would be terrible if your children became that sort of Liverpool fan. They would have much more fun joining us. They wouldn’t even have to boo the anthem.

But it would be wonderful if they grew up to be Kopites. It would be funny if they returned to the country pile in Somerset after a trip to Anfield quoting Shankly about socialism, raging against the injustices over Hillsborough and extolling the positive effects of immigration and Europe. Just let me know the game you fancy and we’ll sort it out.

Best,

Tony