Songs of pain and despair
Tragedy chanting is getting worse. If hate supersedes basic decency, perhaps it's time to give up football and find a new interest
Football has always made people irrational. Supporters say and do things at the match that they would not say and do elsewhere. But sometimes you can have an epiphany.
One of mine came at an FA Cup semi-final. No, it’s not the semi you might expect.
This game was four years before Hillsborough and took place in that dreadful, violent year of 1985. The match was at Goodison Park. Liverpool versus Manchester United. The atmosphere was the most toxic of any fixture I have ever attended.
It seemed like the entire city was in uproar. Ugly street battles took place all the way from town to the ground. The Abbey pub off Walton Lane looked like it had been shelled. There was glass everywhere except in the windows.
Inside the stadium was no better. There was fighting in every part of the ground and missiles rained from one section to another. Too many people appeared to have lost touch with their humanity. It was brilliant, I thought. It felt like rivalry distilled to its purest form.
I was with my little brother, 10 years my junior, and we were in the main stand, so had a brilliant view of the anarchy. Just one seat lay between us and the directors’ box. Munich songs boomed from the Liverpool sections.
Then, 10 minutes before kick off, I glanced to my left. There was Bobby Charlton. No one was talking to him at that moment and he was just staring ahead, expressionless, while the soundtrack of hate went on all around him. In that instant the 1958 air crash was no longer an abstract concept. I thought, “his mates died there.”
I said to our kid, “No Munich stuff today.” But I wasn’t really telling him. I was telling myself.
Heysel was just 46 days away. It was unimaginable that the sort of madness that we relished at Goodison could result in the deaths of 39 people. That felt unreal. Many of us didn’t realise anyone had died until we were well out of Brussels. I heard on the boat coming across the Channel. It was hard to comprehend.
Four years and two days after Goodison, at another FA Cup semi-final, we got to see what mass death was like, close-up and personal. The thought of Bobby Charlton had nagged away at me since 1985. How must he feel? How does he even go to games? Well, all my mates survived the Lepping Lane terraces but you didn't have to know the people whose lives had been extinguished a matter of minutes earlier. Seeing the full extent of the carnage still had a profound effect.
Back on that day at Goodison, I never imagined I’d have an inkling about how Charlton really felt.
This week, Jamie Carragher and Sky Sports did a segment on “tragedy chanting” with Charlotte Hennessey, whose dad Jimmy was unlawfully killed at Hillsborough, and Gareth Senior, a Leeds fans who was with two friends when they were stabbed to death in Istanbul the night before a Uefa Cup semi-final against Galatasaray 23 years ago. It is worth watching.
Abuse related to the deaths of fans at football matches is growing. Certainly, the Hillsborough chants – and the sly dogwhistle songs that indirectly reference the unlawful killings of 97 people – are worse than at any time since 1989.
There’s a modern component in the mix, too, which makes things more insidious than the 1980s: social media. It’s bad enough hearing the abuse in the ground but Charlotte has been relentlessly trolled by anonymous accounts who think it’s clever to send sickening messages to someone who lost her father in appalling circumstances.
Why do people do it? All I can do is attempt to explain the Munich songs from my point of view as I remember it.
I don’t recall them being a big deal until around 1978. Older people on Merseyside used to talk about how they cried when they heard the news and detail the devastating effect of the death of Duncan Edwards 15 days after the crash.
Most of those singing the songs were teenagers and young adults, born after 1958. Two decades in the past might as well be ancient history for those under 20.
The majority of people spewing invective about Munich, Hillsborough, Heysel and Istanbul were not born at the time or too young to grasp the gravity of the events. They are frequently sketchy on the facts.
There was also a pathetic sophistry at work in the 1980s. We resented the oft-repeated assertion that United were “the biggest club in the world.” Haters used to say that this was only because of Munich and they’d used the catastrophe as some sort of marketing tool. Palpable nonsense.
A modern equivalent is when trolls say, “I’m sick of hearing about Hillsborough.” Really? I wish I never had to speak or write about it again. One survivor and campaigner summed it up. “Every time I talk about it,” he said, “I lose a little bit more of myself.”
Four decades ago, things didn’t stop at football-related events, either. There were chants about the 1979 fire in a Woolworths store in Manchester that killed 10 people. In the 2000s songs and banners lauded Harold Shipman. The sickness goes beyond football and transcends generations. But the behaviour took place in a few pubs, a handful of trains and among hard-core matchgoers. The internet has given the abuse a global platform that echoes back into the stadiums.
The instinct to dehumanise rivals and their tragedies is strong. Back in the bad old days, some sought to justify things by claiming it was dark humour. That’s bollocks. They're probably still doing it. That's if they haven't fallen back on whataboutery.
Bobby Charlton is one of the heroes of English football. Being a World Cup winner gives you that status. The majority of people can’t comprehend just how heroic he is, though. He had to sit through decades of tragedy chanting featuring him and his dead team-mates. Who knows the impact it had on the 85-year-old? He comes from a generation that would never talk about mental health. It must have had an affect, though. These days there are plenty of people prepared to speak about the pain these songs bring.
You would hope that offenders with their sick songs would look at Charlotte and Gareth and have their own epiphany. The reality is that Jimmy Hennessey was placed in a body bag while still alive and zipped up. Vomit was found when it was opened. Kevin Speight and Christopher Loftus bled to death on an Istanbul street while their friends frantically tried to save them.
If you think these things are good material for chants, you need help. One day you’ll look back and wince. I do.
There’s one other aspect to be considered. Those who are sick of hearing about Hillsborough misunderstand why it’s still an issue. It remains a matter of concern because of the police cover-up and the lack of accountability.
This has wider implications in a society where those in authority too often try to deflect their failures and refuse to live up to their responsibilities.
This goes way beyond the aftermath of the unlawful killings of 1989. Government officials and police have lied and concealed information in many, many cases over the decades, denying families truth and justice. There are too many instances of this in British life and all except Hillsborough are unrelated to football. Grenfell is the most recent example but the tainted blood scandal, where haemophiliacs were given transfusions infected by AIDS, is another. Cover ups pulse through British life. Just ask the children of servicemen who were exposed to radiation during the Cold War. Many veterans died of cancer as a result, their partners had a remarkably high rate of miscarriages and the genetic impact on their children is still being studied.
A law is going through Parliament to compel public bodies and officials to act with transparency – a duty of candour. This is a legal compulsion to tell the truth when questioned. It is known as the Hillsborough Law. Unfortunately, the term has become toxic – as illustrated by the tragedy chanting.
And there is the essence of stupidity inherent in tragedy chanting. When you let football hatred get in the way of real life and your own interests, you’re reaching a new level of idiocy.
In the end it's simple. If you sing songs like these, you’re pretty damn tragic.