'We Wanted To Destroy The Essence Of Englishness, Sweep Away The Monarchy And Cripple The Class System'

It's 1984, the Miners and Liverpool are facing down Thatcherism in a violent, ugly year. Part 14 of Good Guys Lost starts with Duke's funeral in Holy Cross and ends with stabbings in the Holy City

Read part 13 of Good Guys Lost here

IT WAS BACK to Holy Cross for another funeral. Duke arrived in a firestorm – literally – but he was sent off on a lovely mild spring day. There should have been a triumphant celebration when he returned from jail. Instead there was only a wake.

Before he came home I went with my auntie to his house on the fringe of Knotty Ash. In the living room she put up the sheets. “The sheets” was an old tradition that was dying out. As far as I knew, there were only three exponents of the art in the city. The other two charged for their services. My auntie did it free for friends and family; if anyone outside that circle wanted it done she merely asked for a donation for the church.

The custom had come from Ireland and was once commonplace. It was the process of converting an everyday room into a place where the corpse could repose and visitors could come, pray and pay their respects.

We got to the house and unpacked what we needed. We brought a stack of stiffly starched, white cotton sheets. My auntie tacked one corner up on the wall and began to deftly pleat the material, doubling the cloth down the long drop before pinning a neat crease at the bottom. She worked quickly and created a pleated white grotto around the spot where the coffin would be placed. The folded white sheets covered the window and half the room and the gathering of the stiff fabric made the walls appear padded. The carpet was covered, too. It created a separate chamber for Duke’s return.

From another bag she produced a sheaf of green fronds, which were placed strategically around the walls. The effect was completed with an anguished Jesus on the cross. While we worked she told me of the significance of the greenery and how it had to be a particular plant. I wasn’t really listening. When she died less than a decade later her knowledge and expertise went to the grave with her. No one did the sheets for her. It took me years to realise that in that room, awaiting Duke’s return, I was witnessing the last stirrings of a culture. I was so wrapped up in the individual death that the wider picture was obscured.

The coffin arrived and was put at the centre of this white recess. A suburban living room had been transformed into a chamber where the body could lie in state. The funeral director opened the lid of the ornate wooden box and fussed a little with the body. He stepped back, took a look and judged all to be well. He turned to my aunt and offered congratulations for her work. “Maureen,” he said, “this is beautiful. No one does this like you. You’ve done Duke proud.” He was on familiar terms with the dead man. Cynically, I wondered whether Duke had generated plenty of business for him over the years.

My auntie went out and brought the widow to the coffin. She, too, was moved by the transformation of the room. The little lost boy was with her, sullen, overwhelmed and confused. “Kev,” I said. “Fancy having a shootie in the back garden?” The child nodded. He needed to be away from the misery. So did I. The women would be round soon to say the rosary and the men would dribble in near the end to sip whiskey and beer and make maudlin small talk until alcohol loosened inhibitions and made them laugh. Late on it would get raucous. Duke would not mind. Legend had it that he was the driving force in removing one of his friends from a coffin and sitting the corpse on an upright chair with a glass in his hand so the dead man could be part of the conversation. That was the sort of thing that used to happen around Scottie. It was hard to imagine it occurring in Knotty Ash. That time, and place, had passed long before Duke. Even so, it would be a long night.

* * *

There were a dozen bottles of spirits on a table opposite the coffin and a pile of 24-can trays of beer in the hall. After the prayers, the women retreated to the kitchen to smoke, make tea and prepare snacks. The men congregated around the body, pausing for a moment of contemplation when they arrived before entering the conversation. Billy showed up about 8pm. He could hardly look the widow in the eye but she generously hugged him. “Duke thought the world of you,” she said. It seemed to make things worse.

It was hard to get any sense out of Billy. He stood looking into the coffin for too long. A man I didn’t know came in and stood by his side. For a moment Billy did not seem to notice and then he turned and you could see the realisation hit him. “The Gasman,” he gasped.

“I didn’t think you’d remember me,” the man said. “It was a long time ago.”

“Not a night you’d forget,” Billy said. “I never said sorry.”

The Gasman laughed. “Come on, let’s have a drink. It all turned out alright for me.” He looked at Duke. “We’ve a lot to thank him for. He wouldn’t want us to be miserable tonight. Tell me what’s happened to you.”

A few minutes later Billy called me over. “This is the Gasman… Gazza. He was with me and Duke that night. You remember the kid with the knife and the big-shot ideas about staying?” They both laughed. “This is him.”

“You back at home now?” I was unsure of the niceties of a conversation like this. Was that a compromising question?

“No,” he said. “I live in Holland. It’s a great place.”

“What do you do?” It was a really stupid question, the sort of idle, unthinking and uninterested query one of my former university colleagues might have asked at a student party. Billy spat out a mouthful of Double Diamond. “Christ!”

Gazza took it coolly. “Import-export,” he said. “Shipping goods in and out. And what do you do?”

“He’s just got himself kicked out of university,” Billy said. It was a reprimand.

Again Gazza was relaxed. He shrugged. “Don’t let it worry you. Sometimes it seems like things could not get any worse but the situation turns into the best opportunity of your life.” What was it about funerals that made people want to tell me that things would get better?

“I’m living proof,” Gazza said, looking at Billy. “If you’re ever down on your luck and need work, give me a call. A spell abroad would do you goo…”

“No!” Billy interjected, a touch too forcibly. Gazza did a double take and then chuckled. “He’s probably right.” He did not take offence.

“I just meant he should knuckle down and get that bloody degree,” Billy said, flustered. “I mean, that’s what Duke wanted.”

“He did,” Gazza said, still amused. “Come into town with me for a drink, boys. Too much misery here.” He turned to Billy. “We’ll get a cab. It’ll be better than the last time we were in a taxi.”

* * *

If you don’t want to wait for the next extracts, the paperback is available here

The day of the funeral was memorable for a few reasons. Me and Billy were bearers, the first time I had done the job. People said it was an honour.

After we placed Duke in front of the altar, a down-and-out appeared at the church door and shuffled down the aisle on his walking stick. No one was sure what was happening and the surprise froze the congregation.

The tramp, in his 60s, reached the coffin, put both hands on it to support himself and knelt down. For an appalling moment the casket shifted its weight and tilted towards the man. It looked as if it would slide off its trestle but, after a short wobble, it held. Now men were moving out of the pews towards the tramp.

Before they got there he stood up, suddenly remarkably lithe, and pointed his stick into the air. Miming a rifle, he produced a fat-cheeked boom as he issued an imaginary gun salute. He got two shots off before he was gently ushered towards the back. Duke had given him a few quid to keep going over the years and this was his tribute.

There was one more to come. Duke had written to Billy and asked him to sing at the service. He requested He Ain’t Heavy. It seemed that the weight of the world was on Billy as he went on to the altar to perform it. He was behind me as we carried the coffin. I could feel him shaking. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t sing today. I won’t be able to get the words out.”

When the moment came, he rose to it. The acoustics suited him. The song was plaintive, painful and beautiful. All that unquantifiable, thrilling vibrancy was there in his voice that day. All the emotion, love and, curiously, joy that Billy could project were illustrated in that church. At the epicentre of despair, the sound was unbelievably uplifting.

Duke, of course, knew what would happen. That’s why he wanted Billy to sing. His charisma lingered with his dead body. Soon it would be just a memory and its resonance would fade. It has. Now, even I wonder if I’m making all this up. And I was there.

* * *

It was not all grim. It should have been but it wasn’t. In May 1983 the Conservative Government were re-elected in a landslide. A different sort of electoral avalanche happened in Liverpool. The Labour council took more than two-thirds of the seats they contested and they did it behind a manifesto that put them on collision course with Whitehall.

The gloves were off. We voted for jobs and services. Most of the country took a different view. That was OK. We wanted confrontation.

There was a sense of purpose, a pre-revolutionary mood, that is impossible to describe. We felt that Liverpool could take on vulgarism and beat it; that decency and social values would resonate with the British public and they would have the good sense to throw out the notion that it was every man for himself. We were wrong, of course.

When you’re in a bubble where everyone agrees with you it is easy to become delusional. At the demonstrations in support of the council there were thousands of people. It felt like a mass movement. It was only a local phenomenon. Most of the country despised us. Even the people who should have been our allies.

That became clear during the Miners’ Strike. We travelled to Yorkshire to bolster the picket lines. The local strikers were grateful for our support, the funds we raised and the food we brought but they didn’t understand us. We embraced the idea of being the enemy within – hadn’t we always been? – but Yorkshiremen hated being thought of that way. They regarded themselves as the backbone of the nation; England’s spine. You could see that they despised the way we loved the notion of being traitors. Our thought processes were alien. We wanted to destroy the essence of Englishness, sweep away the monarchy, cripple the class system and all the faiths and fancies of Albion. Those miners wanted nothing of the sort. They suffered dreadful working conditions and backbreaking labour and all they craved was appreciation, recognition and not to be treated like dangerous outsiders. You could see how bewildered they were by our attitude. Had they not been forced into this life-or-death economic struggle with the government they would have enjoyed running us out of their county.

The physical impact of the strike was the least of it. The miners were tough people. They could go hungry and cold but the tangible destruction wrought by Thatcherism was not the worst affront. The metaphysical cruelty was far more insidious and barbaric.

The rhetoric from Westminster demeaned their past, made their present uncomfortable and denied them hope for the future. I remember being outside the Grimethorpe pit on a chilly spring day, looking around and thinking: “This is terrorism.” There was fear in men’s eyes. They could see the long, slow torture coming their way. They knew their history and had pride in the struggles of their forefathers but they understood, deep down, that this was a battle they could not win. You can only succeed when the opponent is rational. This was not an ordinary industrial dispute about money. This was a brutal imposition of political ideology, underpinned by a vindictiveness that made little economic sense. Thatcher and her vulgarists would impose their will whatever it cost individuals, the nation and those on the receiving end. The entire weight of the state was set against these people who regarded themselves as pillars of society. No backing down, no arbitration. History was over. Britain would never be the same again.

* * *

Back in bloody Manchester Street Billy finished his pint. “Come next door,” he said. “You’ve not come to see the band play. I know you think what I’m doing is selling out. That’s fine, it puts a few quid in my pocket. I’m doing quite well these days.” He was. The group had a residency at the Bierkeller at the bottom of Mount Pleasant every Saturday night and the place was packed out. Nearly 1,000 people crowded in there each week. Bands that would go on to have huge No 1 hits would never get audiences like this without record company promotion and television exposure. They were a local sensation.

As proof of his financial health, Billy pushed a £10 note across the table. “Have a drink. Your dole doesn’t go far. Anyway, I want your opinion.”

If it was a bribe, it worked. I followed next door to the Ministry and went into a room with padded walls, low lighting and a stack of amps. I thought of the sheets and the metaphor for Billy’s dead career. He approached the microphone and ran through a set of new songs. They were overtly political and I could tell he was proud of them. I stood in front of him at first but, conscious that the amplification was draining the charisma from his voice, went and lurked beside him where I could listen to the human tones and when I heard that the thrilling timbre was still there, hairs stood up on my neck. The songs were OK. Not great but OK. They were three years too late. After 40 minutes he stopped. “Well?”

“Brilliant, mate.” He had given me a tenner. “Let’s go have another pint and talk about them.” He nodded.

“I’m doing a miners’ benefit,” he said. “In Derbyshire. We all have to do what we can.” It turned out we couldn’t do much.

* * *

In peacetime there cannot be many years that were as violent as the 12 months from spring 1984 to 1985. A civil war was taking place and we did not recognise it.

I spent a lot of time travelling. Politics, picket lines and, most of all, going the match. Every victory for Liverpool on the pitch felt like a boost for our civic pride. We sang a song that said: “They all laugh at us, they all mock us, they all say our days are numbered. But I was born to be Scouse, victorious are we…” The lyrics and melody were taken from the slow march of the King’s Regiment, the local infantry. It was adapted for footsoldiers in a very different fight. If you think that these words were about football, you are insane.

The greatest day was just after the miners’ strike began. Liverpool played Everton at Wembley in the League Cup final. It was the first time these neighbouring clubs had met in a final. It felt like the whole of the city invaded London.

The match was on Sunday. We went on the train early Saturday afternoon. Reds and Blues were mixed in the carriages and some of my Young Socialist mates were going up and down the aisles raising money for the miners and distributing ‘I support Liverpool City Council’ stickers in red and blue. All the young scallies, in their half-and-half ski hats – Liverpool or Everton on one side, Celtic or Rangers on the other – snapped up the badges. When we got off at Euston, the roar of “Merseyside” resounded across the station. The chants hailed Derek Hatton and Arthur Scargill. They may have been the most hated men in Britain but we’d support them ever more. We were colonising enemy territory. It was Scouse power in action. Thousands of us filled Soho and the West End. The locals looked at us with disgust. It was exactly how we liked it.

Mobs of young urchins performed mass smash and grab assaults on jewellery shops on Edgware Road. Others raided Bond Street for clothes. Mostly we gathered, drank and sang loudly. The game? What did it matter?

Two months later Liverpool went to Notts County needing a point to win the league. We stood in the huge, open away end at Meadow Lane and chanted not about the glory of the team but about the big industrial battle that was unfolding. The Nottinghamshire miners had resisted the call to strike. Throughout the match we taunted them with the worst insult we could conjure: “Scab, scab, scab!” Politics was entwined in our lives and existence.

Going to away matches taught you about how outsiders perceived the citizens of Liverpool. Trying to spend a £20 note in London was difficult. People did not want our money – literally. The moment they heard the accent, cashiers began to scrutinise the currency. They would hold the note up to the light, check the aluminium strip and analyse the watermark. Often, they would then refuse to accept it. There were forgeries around but pubs frequently used this little cameo as an excuse not to serve us. You could see friendly faces turn suspicious the moment the accent hit their eardrums. We weren’t wanted outside the city and enjoyed being away all the more for making the locals uncomfortable.

My bloody year started in Italy. Liverpool faced Roma in the European Cup final. Although we were wary about playing such a big game on another team’s home territory, we were not used to trouble in Europe.

Trips to the Continent were about drinking and, for the Scallier element, robbing. We laughed at the idea of the ‘English disease’ and the hooliganism that often accompanied England’s representatives abroad. There was little to smile about in Rome.

Even before the match local youths were stabbing and slashing away fans. All Scousers were fair game.

I will always despise Romans. They think their city is still the capital of the world. Their arrogance makes London’s self regard look like insecurity. They expected to win and be anointed the best team in Europe. We beat them, of course.

Then they beat us, physically, outside on the streets. Just 8,000 Liverpool supporters were in the Stadio Olimpico and a fair proportion of us were on the receiving end of Italian rage. They have elevated stabbing people into a cultural symbol in the Eternal City. If you want to know what puncicate means you won’t find it in an Italian-English dictionary. I’ll show you my arse and you’ll get the picture.

Puncicate is the act of knifing a rival in the buttock. It’s meant to humiliate the victim but not cause permanent harm. Shithousery as tradition.

When we came out of the ground, there were thousands of Romans on the road that traversed the ridge above us. They hurled down bricks, set fire to deep, metal bins and rolled them down the slope at us. When the chaos was at its worst, the police fired tear gas. Not at the troublemakers but into those who were under attack. While I was choking and gasping for air, a cowardly Roman crept up behind and pushed a stiletto into the fleshy area a couple of inches from my right hip. In the madness I thought I’d been kicked in the buttock. We backed off down the road and would have been in even bigger trouble without the arrival of a mob of Lazio ultras who turned up to taunt their local rivals. They were ready. They wore scarves wrapped around their faces and seemed used to the gas. The Lazio slashed at the Roma with their own knives and, while the internecine feud continued, we retreated to the relative safety of our coaches. I was appalled to see my jeans were soaked in blood. An older man had been stabbed in the kidney – presumably the knifeman missed his target – and was in a critical condition. He was loaded into an ambulance and I managed to hitch a ride. I was lucky by comparison.

It was carnage at the hospital. Blood everywhere. So much of it was surreal. At one point the emergency room doors flew open and a huge blond man in a red shirt appeared. He stood and surveyed the 30 or so stab victims waiting to be treated, many of whom were wearing Liverpool jerseys.

He spoke in a braying Californian accent. “I came all the way from LA to see the Holy City so why the hell have I been stabbed in the ass?” I understood his confusion and dislocation. I was in a world that I couldn’t comprehend, too. It was about to get worse. There were numerous stabs in the back waiting round the corner.

* * *

The stiches came out after a couple of weeks but sitting was still uncomfortable when we boarded a minibus to Yorkshire 19 days after that night in Rome. We were going to a coking plant in South Yorkshire called Orgreave. There had been a call for a mass picket. By the time we got to our destination the temperature was in the 80s. I don’t recall much of the day. I have vague memories of standing around – everyone else was sitting in the sun – and then the next thing I can clearly remember is five days later.

The narrative of the day is readily available to anyone who cares to look for it but the forces of the state instigated bloodshed and attacked peaceful demonstrators as they sunbathed. It seems I dodged the repeated police cavalry charges and advances by snatch squads on foot until the final mounted rout in the village. I managed to get my elbow up to deflect a blow from a baton-wielding rider and the truncheon broke the joint. A second horsebound policeman then had a free shot at my head. I was knocked cold but my mates got me back to the bus and revived me somewhere on the way to Liverpool. They took me to the Royal where doctors set the arm and kept me under observation for two nights. If anyone ever tells me I don’t know my arse from my elbow, I inform them the arse has the scar, the elbow’s misshapen. I learnt a lot that summer. I’d been a victim twice. Duke would have been ashamed of me.

• Next: Surviving in a broken city