by Tony Evans
Even before the arrival of the twentieth century, Merseyside’s reputation as a violent, drunken place was well established. Then, in the 1960s, against all expectation, Liverpool became the centre of the world, at least for teenagers and devotees of pop culture.
The Beatles took the planet by storm. Their music had a phenomenal effect but it was only part of their appeal. Their irreverent attitude – cheeky, faintly hostile, rebellious – was as quintessentially Scouse as their accents and suddenly everyone wanted to talk with this nasal cocktail of Irish, Lancastrian and Welsh tones. Briefly, Liverpool was the most fashionable place to be. Of course, the Beatles left for London as soon as their bank balance could justify it.
A decade on, things had changed significantly for the worse. Britain’s trading outlook switched from the Commonwealth and Americas towards Europe. The docks began to contract and industry relocated. Between 1966 and 1977, 350 factories closed or moved away from Merseyside. More than forty thousand jobs disappeared in the 15 years before 1985. In the year of the Heysel disaster, Liverpool’s unemployment rate reached 27 per cent. Nearly half the young men aged between 16 and 24 – the age group that comprised the football clubs’ most fervent fans – were on the dole. This did not go unnoticed. The undercurrents of class war were evident in the coverage of events in Belgium. ‘Unlike Juventus, the majority of Liverpool fans who travelled to Brussels were recognizably and overwhelmingly working class,’ the Sunday Times said. ‘Even without their team favours, many would be instantly recognizable in their ragged jeans, training shoes and do-it-yourself haircuts.’
Refugees from the potato famine would be more identifiable from this description than the sharply dressed Scallies who followed Liverpool around Europe. Ragged? I set off for Brussels wearing a pair of expensive suede boots from London’s Jermyn Street, Levi 501s bought on New York’s Sixth Avenue, shrunk to fit in the bath at home and bleached pale in the same tub, a Ralph Lauren polo shirt and a John Smedley crewneck sweater. As for the haircut, that was the cheapest bit: £6 in Torbo’s on Scotland Road. It was not a high-end barbers but it looked presentable enough. The sweeping generalizations had less to do with dress sense than snobbish assumptions. Wilful misunderstanding dominated most of the discourse about Liverpool and football.
If the unemployed were to be sneered at, those who were in work earned little more respect. When they fought for their jobs and refused to accept the terms offered by management and government, they were looked upon as troublemakers. Liverpool’s dockers were prominent when the port workers faced down the Conservative regime in 1972. Ford’s factory in Halewood became a byword for industrial action. Genuine grievances were dismissed as pointless militancy and laziness by outsiders.
By the early 1980s, poverty was growing and an outburst of social disorder cemented Liverpool’s reputation as a grim and forbidding place with a populace of shirkers. In July 1981, longstanding tensions between a heavy-handed police force and the predominantly black community of Liverpool 8 erupted into violence. CS gas was used by the authorities against rioters – the first time it had been deployed in the United Kingdom outside Northern Ireland – even though gas had not been used in Brixton during arguably more severe rioting earlier in the year.
The Conservative government’s reaction was to discuss whether Merseyside should be cut loose and left to wither. Geoffrey Howe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed running down the area as government policy:
I fear Merseyside is going to be much the hardest nut to crack. We do not want to find ourselves concentrating all the limited cash that may have to be made available into Liverpool and having nothing left for possibly more promising areas such as the West Midlands or, even, the North East.
It would be even more regrettable if some of the brighter ideas for renewing economic activity were to be sown only on the relatively stony ground on the banks of the Mersey.
I cannot help but feel that the option of managed decline is one which we should not forget altogether. We must not expend all our limited resources in trying to make water flow uphill.
It would take 30 years for the public records office release of documents to confirm this but many residents of Liverpool knew they were considered worthless by those at the highest level of politics. They fought back at the ballot box, voting for a left-wing Labour council that immediately set itself on a collision course with Whitehall.
‘It was seen as a rogue area because it was resisting the Thatcher government,’ Peter Hooton said. ‘Every other area complied with the free-market zealotry.’
Merseyside’s one saving grace during this period was football.
‘In a city cast as an outsider in its own land, battered by the deliberate economic downturns and clear-outs of the early 1980s, Liverpool Football Club was an enduring source of pride, a magnet for the energies and emotions of a public hungry for success,’ wrote David Goldblatt in The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football.
Everton had emerged as the other most significant team in the English game in the mid 1980s. The clubs were flagbearers for the city. The players recognized it. ‘We all understood the situation,’ Graeme Sharp, the Everton striker, said. ‘Unemployment was high and you knew the hardship the fans were going through. You’d see all the away fans and think, “How did they manage that?” It made you realize how important football was. We were well aware what people were sacrificing. It gave you great respect for the fans.’
Everton and Liverpool’s success lifted spirits in a depressed region and gave people who had little to boast about bragging rights over the rest of the country. The horrible deadly night in Brussels had undermined this.
In among the shame, anger, mourning and confusion, it felt like something special had been ruined. Little wonder Grobbelaar considered walking away from the sport.
3
The story of the Blues
The unholy story of professional football in Liverpool started in a church. In the era of physical protestantism, St Domingo’s Methodist Sunday school encouraged its boys to join in the sort of healthy pursuits that would prepare young men to be servants of the Empire. Football was not just recreation but a pastime with a purpose. It taught teamwork and was held to build moral fibre.
The team became popular. Very quickly, non-parishioners wanted to join the fun and in 1879 the club was re-christened Everton. They held matches in Stanley Park until the league demanded that they play in an enclosed area. Everton moved to a pitch off Priory Road.
Football was the mass-participation sensation of the Victorian era. Crowds flooded to see the games and Everton once again found themselves too big for their home. The land’s owner didn’t like swarms of people on his property, and the club were on the move. Their next home would become famous: Anfield.
Everton were happy at their new ground. They won the League Championship for the first time in 1891 while residents of the growing stadium. The future on Walton Breck Road looked bright. Then, a year later, a boardroom row threatened the future of the club.
Like so much that was controversial in the city, drink was the cause. John Houlding, a local MP and brewer, was one of Everton’s powerbrokers but when he attempted to buy the ground, his enemies on the board opposed him. Houlding wanted to be able to sell his beer to the burgeoning crowds. He got the property but lost the club.
Everton found a new home at Goodison Park less than a mile away and Houlding was left with a football ground, no team and no thirsty customers. The brewer decided to form his own club. He held a meeting in his Sandon Hotel, just yards from what would become the Kop, and created a new entity. Liverpool Football Club played their first game in 1892. The rivalry began immediately.
Everton were the senior partners. They had a glamour that their neighbours lacked, even though each club had won the title five times by the beginning of the 1960s. They were owned by the Moores family, who had become rich running football pools and had built a huge retail empire. Everton were known as the ‘Mersey M
illionaires’. They spent only four years of their history outside the top flight of English football and have been continuously in the highest division since 1954. As Liverpool became successful in the 1970s, though, Everton struggled.
In 1981, they appointed Howard Kendall, one of their great former players, as manager. He returned to Goodison the same month that Liverpool won their third European Cup. The gloom would deepen before things got better for fans on the Gwladys Street End terraces. For the first time in Merseyside history, a generation of Evertonians had grown up as second-class citizens.
At an Anfield derby in November 1983, the former residents of the ground capitulated meekly to the upstarts who succeeded them. The 3–0 Liverpool victory looked to hasten the end of the Kendall era. The Kop sang: ‘Howard Kendall, Howard Kendall, there’s a taxi at the gate!’
It was bad enough to have twenty thousand Kopites howling abuse at you but football is a profession that you cannot leave at the office. It comes home with you. Kendall’s worst moment was when his garage door was daubed with the words ‘Kendall Out’.
It was the lowest point. The only way was up.
Kendall was on the brink but the same month as the humiliation at Anfield, the Everton manager signed Andy Gray for £250,000 from Wolverhampton Wanderers. It was a masterstroke.
Four years earlier, the Scottish striker had moved to Wolves from Aston Villa for a British record fee of close to £1.5 million. At 27, he had problems with his knees – hence the knockdown price. He was just the man Everton needed to provide an extra dash of know-how to help transform a squad of callow youngsters into serious contenders. ‘Andy had passion, desire and drive,’ Graeme Sharp said. ‘He gave a group of young players experience. He had unbelievable passion on and off the field.’
Still, Everton lived on the brink. The side lurched through the winter and spring, barely surviving a number of crises. Each time Kendall was ‘one game from the sack’, the team would eke out a result. The various turning points became part of Everton folklore.
At Stoke City in the third round of the FA Cup, the manager opened the dressing-room windows for the players to hear the noise of four thousand travelling fans. ‘He just said, “Listen to that. Are you going to let them down?”’ Sharp recalled. Everton won 2–0.
Sometimes they needed more than the fans’ help. Against Oxford United, a team from two divisions below, Kendall’s team were trailing 1–0 and on the verge of a damaging League Cup defeat. Kevin Brock, an Oxford defender, mishit a straightforward back pass and Adrian Heath kept Everton in the competition. They won the replay.
In the FA Cup, Gillingham – who were in the same division as Oxford – had a last-minute chance to knock the top-flight team out in the waning moments of a replay. Tony Cascarino missed the opportunity and Everton progressed after another rematch.
It did not feel like it, but Kendall’s team were growing more confident by the week. They reached the League Cup final – against Liverpool, of all people – in March and matched their neighbours in a 0–0 draw at Wembley before being outfought in the replay at Maine Road as Liverpool won 1–0. In the FA Cup, they were unstoppable.
In May 1984, Kendall brought Goodison its first trophy since 1970 when Everton beat Watford 2–0 at Wembley.
It was just the start. The close season of 1984 did little to halt the momentum. In 1984–85, Everton emerged as one of Europe’s best sides. In October, they went to Anfield and put down a marker. Sharp scored a spectacular 25-yard strike in a 1–0 victory and the nature of the relationship between Liverpool and Everton changed again. ‘We grew up going to Anfield and getting nothing,’ Sharp said. ‘We were underdogs. We had an inferiority complex.’
After winning the cup, Kendall’s side had developed a new attitude.
‘We could sense it coming together as a team,’ Sharp said. ‘The goal at Anfield gave us massive belief. We could challenge Liverpool. We could beat them.’
They stormed to the first division title, leaving second-placed Liverpool 13 points in their wake. They captured the Cup-Winners’ Cup, their first European trophy, in Rotterdam in May and were unlucky to miss out on a treble when Manchester United beat them 1–0 in the FA Cup final. There was a growing swagger about Everton. Perhaps with a little less of it, they might have won the cup.
‘I’ve got a picture of me with the Cup-Winners’ Cup, filled with champagne on the plane back from Rotterdam,’ recalled Derek Hatton, who travelled with the squad. ‘It was incredible. Everyone was throwing back the drink and the mood was fantastic. We got back to Speke at 2 a.m. on the Thursday morning. Remember, we were playing Manchester United at Wembley in the FA Cup final on Saturday. If we win, we’ve won the treble.
‘As we walked down the stairs from the plane, Howard turns round and says, “Shall we go to Chinatown?” So off we all go. A couple of the team were getting picked up by their wives and they were fuming that they missed out.’
Liverpool’s Chinatown is the second oldest in the western world behind San Francisco’s. Its restaurants were notorious venues for late-night eating and drinking.
‘When we finally finished, the sun was up and we were all well away [drunk],’ Hatton said. ‘Kick-off at Wembley was less than 60 hours away.
‘The final went to extra time and we got beat 1–0. I mentioned it later to Howard and said how different it could have been. Imagine if the team would have stayed in Rotterdam overnight, got a good night’s sleep and done things the way teams do today.
‘He said, “Here we go again. If we wouldn’t have done things like that, we wouldn’t have been the team we were.”
‘He had a point. The togetherness of the team on nights like this was brilliant to see. I did say, “We could have missed out Chinatown, Howard.” He had an answer to that: “I was starving!”’
Kendall’s team was hungry for trophies. The future looked gloriously bright. They were going into 1985–86 as England’s dominant side. They would represent the country in the European Cup, the Continent’s most prestigious competition.
Then came Heysel. For the first time since the precarious days of late 1983, Everton’s momentum was halted. And none of it was their fault.
The absurdity of the situation was highlighted when Kendall travelled to Zurich after Everton were named as World Soccer magazine’s Team of the Year for 1985. João Havelange, the FIFA president, presented the award to a manager whose side were not allowed to compete in international competition.
Peter Reid still struggles to comprehend the thought processes involved. ‘People died at Heysel and that put football into perspective,’ the midfielder said. ‘But it was unjust to ban all English clubs. People who did nothing wrong were penalized.’
Everton were aghast at the injustice of it all, ‘We were collateral damage in someone else’s war,’ Southall said.
‘We couldn’t believe it,’ Andy Gray said. ‘We felt cheated. Our supporters had been brilliant in Europe. We’d done nothing wrong. After winning the title, we were excited about playing in the European Cup. In the run-up to Heysel, we were talking about wanting Liverpool to beat Juventus because we wanted to get them in the European Cup. We were imagining getting them in the final and beating them. Can you imagine how good that would have been? That was what we were looking forward to and the opportunity was denied us.’
Gray had been the catalyst for Everton’s revival but his career at Goodison was about to come to a close. Kendall reacted to the disappointment of the European ban by spending £800,000 on Leicester City and England’s Gary Lineker, who had been the division’s joint top scorer the previous season with 24 goals for a team that only escaped relegation by two points. It signalled the end for Gray, who returned to Aston Villa for £150,000 despite petitions from Goodison fans demanding that the striker stay. Whatever the new season would bring, Everton had strengthened their squad. Across Stanley Park, Liverpool were still struggling to come to terms with the enormity of what had happened in Brussels.
; There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Anfield’s response to the disaster. A new stadium had been in the planning stages but the blueprints were ripped up after events in Belgium. Instead, Liverpool replaced all the 100 watt bulbs around the ground with 60 watt versions to save money. No wonder their prospects looked dim.
Ever since Bill Shankly arrived in 1959, the club’s upward trajectory had seemed unstoppable. They were promoted into the top flight in 1962 and confounded the expectations of fans by winning the title twice, in 1964 and ’66, with a first FA Cup final win sandwiched in between.
Things got even better in the 1970s. The floodgates opened: eight titles, an FA Cup, four League Cups and four European Cups ended up in Anfield’s trophy room by 1985. Shankly’s successors – Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan – had been seasoned in the club’s legendary Boot Room and had decades of experience. Paisley was 55 when he took over the reins of the team, Fagan 62.
Kenny Dalglish was 34 with no coaching experience. No one could be sure whether elevating the club’s greatest player into the manager’s chair would work, even under the best of circumstances. Now, the young manager performed his first duty at the helm of the club: laying a wreath for the dead of Brussels during a service at Liverpool’s Catholic cathedral two days after the disaster. The mood was bleak as Dalglish and Bruce Grobbelaar placed down the red and white flowers hung with ribbons in the black and white colours of Juventus. ‘We were all still in shock,’ Dalglish said. ‘No one could have imagined something like this happening. All you could do was try and behave with respect and dignity.’
With Anfield in turmoil, the decision to appoint such a young man to lead the club looked like a huge gamble.
4
Summer of discontent