Heysel 40 Years On: It Dishonours The Dead To Use Them As A Weapon In Football Rivalry

The second piece today looks at the impact on Liverpool and the importance of taking responsibility.

The earlier article, talking about the day, is here

FORTY YEARS. Four long decades. Yet still Heysel’s long, toxic shadow hangs over Liverpool. Even in a week where horror came dangerously close to tragedy, the events in Brussels two generations ago are invoked like original sin every time Liverpool or the team’s supporters are in the news.

The bare facts are straightforward. On May 29, 1985, before the European Cup final between the Merseyside club and Juventus, a charge by some Liverpool fans caused spectators in a “neutral” section of the ground to panic. In the ensuing crush, a wall collapsed: 39 people died and hundreds were injured.

In the aftermath, 14 Liverpool supporters were convicted of manslaughter and jailed. The police officer in charge of security at the stadium and an official from the Belgian FA were given suspended sentences.

This is obviously a sweeping statement but, in the second half of the 1980s, there was not a lot of guilt – or even empathy – around the subject of Heysel. Liverpool had long been considered a rogue city in the UK and Margaret Thatcher’s government further demonised Merseyside during its tenure in power. For many people, the enormity of Brussels did not hit home until after Hillsborough, and even then it was frequently ignored because – putting it bluntly – we had our own problems.

But Heysel was our problem. And still is. It is very possible that the approach to Hillsborough by the authorities would have been markedly different if not for the events in Belgium four years previously. There was a strong feeling that “poetic justice” had been visited on Liverpool supporters in Sheffield in 1989. There was less public appetite to look for the real culprits at Hillsborough because of Heysel. The “what-comes-around-goes-around” view of history gave the police and the authorities room to wriggle and dissemble. Hey, they killed 39 people in 1985, why wouldn’t they trample their own, steal from dead bodies and urinate on police officers? This was too easy to believe. Chants of “Murderers” were already established by the time Hillsborough came along.

The weaponising of the Heysel dead has become a recurring feature of any discourse about the behaviour of Liverpool supporters. This week, when a motorist under the influence of drugs drove into the crowd at Liverpool’s title-celebration parade, there were numerous individuals on social media who attempted to spin the discourse to suggest an attack by fans on the car provoked the incident. Heysel is invariable invoked, mainly by people who know almost nothing about what happened in 1985 and the findings of the subsequent investigations.

Incidents like Monday’s and the failure of the authorities in Paris at the Champions League final three years ago are met with the sneering response: “Why is it always them?”

Like “always the victim,” this has become a stock response to any calamity experienced by Liverpool fans. Squaring the circle to cast us as perpetrators and victims takes some leap of logic but that comes easy to a certain type of person. Boo the anthem? Well, they would, murdering bastards, killed their own, too…

One of the problems between 1985 and 1989 is that Merseyside had become so used to being attacked by the media and the government that the knee-jerk response was to circle the wagons and fight back. There was little rational discussion about Heysel either from those who used it against Liverpool or those within the city. The Belgian legal process was seen as a witch-hunt and many of those extradited and tried appeared to be scapegoats. That got in the way of considering the travelling fanbase’s wider influence on events of the day.

It was not unusual for people to say, “If they’d have stood their ground, no one would have died,” which is a callous and pathetic way of rationalising the deaths of 39 people. Thankfully, it has been decades since I’ve heard this said.

Others in football – not least Juventus – wanted to put Heysel to the back of their minds. In this environment, memories were allowed to fester and denial flourished.

Some of that denial lingered way beyond the rational. In 2008, a young Liverpool fan approached me in a bar in Madrid after the Atletico game and his opening gambit was “You’re a fucking liar.”

His father had told him that there was no reason for Liverpool supporters to feel any guilt over Heysel. Dad had been there and behaved in a perfectly reasonable manner, according to this young man’s story. I’d made everything up to, somehow, promote myself.

Of course, lots of Liverpool fans behaved impeccably in Brussels. But even they must have seen those who didn’t. To promote the idea of blanket innocence and pass it down the generations creates a new level of culpability.

My view when writing and talking about Heysel is that if we cannot be absolutely truthful about that day, then why would anyone believe us about Hillsborough? If that makes anyone uncomfortable, screw them.

There is an answer to “why is it always them?” It isn’t always us. Big clubs draw big crowds. Up until relatively recently, the standards of safety in stadiums and in policing were dreadful – and sometimes still are, look at Paris.

Had any other Premier League club reached the 2022 Champions League final, their supporters would have endured a similar nightmare in the French capital to Liverpool’s. Matchgoing fans of most big clubs who endured the 1970s and 80s have a litany of horror stories they can tell. Many of those who believe Liverpool supporters have a moral flaw that puts them and others in danger can only remember the safer stadiums of the modern age. And even this present fractious political and social environment is nowhere near as bad as the violent 1980s – and that goes way beyond football.

Imagine if Heysel and Hillsborough were reversed. Had the unlawful killings in Sheffield occurred in 1985, would the authorities inside and outside the game have learnt from the mistakes? Could they have evaded responsibility for so long? There would have been less latitude for the police and their co-conspirators to point their fingers at the innocent.

Four decades on, it is reasonable to assess the ramifications of Brussels on Liverpool, the club and the city. Yet the most important thing is to honour the dead and ensure they are never forgotten. Detractors say, “You never talk about Heysel. Some of us never stop talking about it.

When I wrote Far Foreign Land in the triumphant summer after Istanbul, I included a dedication: “In memory of those who have not been given justice.” Below it I listed the dead of Heysel and Hillsborough, not separated by disaster but listed in alphabetical order. Not everyone approved of that.

There is no “our dead” or “their dead.” Looking at the names and ages of those who dies at Heysel and imagining what sort of life they might have led and how old they might be now brings home the horror of it all.

It is our duty to try and ensure that people go home alive from the match. That means facing the truth unflinchingly and embracing the lessons of history. Because the people who are charged with protecting us won’t. That’s one thing we have learnt.

Those who use the victims as extras in their poisonous football rivalry are deranged. They are sick.

Forgetting those who lost their lives 40 years ago is unforgivable. The sorrow and pain of the families of the 39 people killed should be foremost on everyone’s mind.

Never again.