Iftar At Anfield Is Part Of An Honourable Merseyside Tradition That Brings Credit To Both Everton And Liverpool
Football was initially a slow burner in a city consumed with the impact of mass immigration and sectarianism but the game helped break down barriers – a lesson that can be learnt today
All the usual suspects few into a rage this week when Anfield hosted an Iftar attended by nearly 3,000 people of all faiths. Words like “invaders,” “death cult,” and “appeasement” were bandied around on social media. It further infuriated the far-right scaremongers that the call to prayer is much more welcomed in Liverpool 4 than God Save The King.
In this fractious election year, where the sitting government has little more to offer as policy than whipping up fear about small boats carrying asylum seekers to the south coast, the racist dogwhistles and the demonisation of Islam are only likely to grow louder. The people of Merseyside have heard this sort of thing before.
Liverpool, the city, has experienced mass immigration in a way not even London can equal. The influx of starving Irish in the wake of the potato famine in the middle of the 19th century transformed the area and created a volatile social and political atmosphere that, at times, verged towards civil war.
The desperate immigrants of nearly two centuries ago were as unwelcome as those in the dinghies arriving near Dover. The media coverage of those “interlopers” was depressingly similar to what we see today. They were aliens who followed a corrupt and dangerous religion and, in many cases, spoke an incomprehensible language. If allowed a foothold, they would undermine all that was good in British society. Xenophobia and fear of the unknown were as prevalent in the Victorian age as they are now. The first stirrings of multiculturalism provoked extreme reactions.
What’s this got to do with football? Nothing, at first. It took the sport quite a while to gain a foothold in the city. Although Everton are founder members of the Football League, the game was a slow burner in terms of working-class support. Liverpool were late to the party, emerging from a split with their neighbours in 1892. More than 50 clubs around the top four divisions are older than the Reds.
There is little sense in contemporary newspaper reports of the fanaticism that would come to characterise the supporters of both teams. The sport initially attracted predominantly middle-class audiences to Anfield and Goodison. A quarter of Liverpool’s season-ticket holders were policemen in the years before the first world war.
Why was this? The politics of immigration was one of the main reasons. The dockside area of north Liverpool sent an Irish Nationalist MP to Westminster. Surviving extreme poverty and the struggle for an independent Ireland preoccupied this part of the community.
On the other side, the Protestant Party, led by Pastor George Wise, bitterly fought to limit the influence of Catholicism and Irish nationalism. Even more than Belfast, Liverpool became the flashpoint of religious violence. In an article titled Nationalism and Sectarian Violence in Liverpool and Belfast, 1880s-1920s, academic Gareth Jenkins wrote: “… sectarian street violence was relatively common in Liverpool and relatively uncommon in Belfast from the 1880s to the 1920s, despite the fact that both cities were marked by roughly similar sectarian tensions during this period.”
In June 1909, the city exploded in five days of anarchy. A government inquiry later heard that 3,200 Catholics were forced out of their homes in Everton and many Protestants had to flee the docklands in an outburst of ethnic cleansing. Who had time for football in an environment like that? Sport was incidental to the lives of the majority of citizens.
Yet Everton and Liverpool would help break down the divisions on Merseyside. While Liverpool were famously created by an Orangeman, John Houlding, both clubs were inclusive from the start. Everton’s board tended more towards Liberal and Irish Nationalist politics while their rivals had more of a Conservative bent but prominent individuals from across the political and religious divide were involved in both boardrooms. Unlike Glasgow, religion was not a determining factor at either stadium.
The heat went out of the “Irish Question” – at least in Liverpool –after the establishment of the Free State in 1922 and the demographics of the crowds at Goodison and Anfield began to change. The energy that was formerly expended in sectarian politics seems to have been transferred to supporting the local teams. As the identity of the north end, the poorest part of the city, morphed from Irish to Scouse, the clubs assumed greater importance.
The city, so different to the rest of England, began to channel its identity into football. The working classes embraced the game in greater numbers.
Local papers had long run competitions where they published pictures of the crowd, circling individuals who could claim a cash reward. In pre-Great War period, the spectators were well-dressed, the published occupations of the winners were predominantly white collar positions and their addresses were in wealthier districts. By the late 1920s, the supporters captured by photographers were shabbier, their jobs were often in manual labour and they hailed from rougher areas of town. Interestingly, winners resided in Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods, whether the shots were taken at Goodison or Anfield.
Football had become a place where both religions not only mixed but where previously sworn enemies came together with common purpose. Barriers were broken down on the Gwladys Street and the Kop.
That makes it even more appropriate that Ramadan should be honoured at Anfield. Religion was not a barrier for Everton and Liverpool. Neither club has the best record when it comes to racial matters but sectarianism was not an issue. Even at the height of the Troubles, fans of both teams wore half-and-half ski hats with Celtic or Rangers colours alongside their own and chanted the name of their favoured Old Firm club, often while standing next to a friend whose sympathy lay with the other Glasgow side.
Football helped outsiders assimilate on Merseyside and gave them something in common with even those that opposed their presence in the area. Iftar at Anfield is part of an honourable tradition in the city and one that does both clubs credit.