Sat 12th Mar: Sign On, Sign On… Giuseppe Garibaldi, Miners, Scabs and Victims

Sign on, sign on, with a pen in your hand. Been there done that, would’ve bought the t-shirt if I could have afforded it. More likely, tbh, I’d have nicked the t-shirt and sold it to further fund the acquisition of a small amount of opioids to numb the sheer misery and pointlessness of said signing on. Two years of it, pretty much 50:50 split between the delights of the Everton office on Breckfield Road and the Nottingham one on Castle Boulevard. A special place in hell for both and for the horrible, belittling bastards who worked in them at the time. Unemployment and signing on was no laughing matter and remains nothing to torment other people about. Not only is it cruel and unfunny, in the case of Nottingham-Liverpool rivalry there are no winners. Literally, in terms of numbers and in terms of there just being no winners, only people having a tough time. Unemployment rates in both cities are within a fraction of a percent of one another and there will be places in North Notts where it is certainly much higher than either with deprivation on a shocking scale. I’ve tweeted this elsewhere, but currently, by the collated measures put together by the Mirror, Nottingham is the UK’s 4th most deprived city, Liverpool sits at 42nd. Nottingham ‘leads’, on crime, poverty, child mortality, pretty much whatever figure you look at. If you doubt me: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/englands-most-deprived-towns-cities-18838926

There are no winners here.

By North Notts, we’re talking about the ex-coalfield of course. It took Sheff United precisely 13 seconds to chant “scab, scab, scab” at Bramall lane last week. I know that because I timed it. Sad, I know, but we all need a hobby. As pathetic as ’sign on’. Chanted either by people too lazy or stupid to think about the facts or too young to have any clue what they’re really on about. Interestingly, in my recent travels through the world of South Yorkshire/North Notts lower league football, no one has ever broached the subject with me, yet they all know where I’m from. Maltby, home to the mighty and now close-to-my-heart, Maltby Main FC, is a town decimated by the loss of the mine. Memories of the strike and the subsequent pit closure must still hurt deeply, but people are decent and smart enough to move on and not make sweeping generalisations. For what it’s worth, I did some time on the picket lines and fund raising for the NUM as a young lefty (unemployed remember, so plenty of time on my hands), as did many others from round these parts. It’s not that straight-forward, black or white. What we have here is two great cities, both with predominantly socialist history and leanings, made the enemy and targeted by successive Governments. Nottingham typically returns 50 Labour councillors to 2 of anything else. Only once in history (immediately after the miner’s strike) did the Tories have a foothold and even that was close, with Nottingham being one of few cities in England to regularly return a Communist (power to Councillor John Peck and the people of Bulwell!). NFFC have proudly worn the unique Garibaldi Red since formation in 1865, as tribute to Giuseppe Garbaldi, Italian freedom fighter, hero to Marx, Engels and Che Guevara and described by legendary socialist (and sort of posh Scouse!) historian AJP Taylor as “the only wholly admirable figure in modern history.” OK, many are probably unaware of that and care little, but it gives our biggest fan group their name which counts for something. Anyway, miner’s strike, it’s all such a long time ago. As is…

Let’s get it over with. Heysel. There, said it. 1985. 37 years ago. Anyone involved will now most likely be at least my ripe old age. Late fifties, maybe into 60s. Nothing whatsoever to do with the current generation of Liverpool fans, who are categorically not murderers, as some would have it. And, come to that, neither are the vast majority of Liverpool fans old enough to have been there. There were no murder verdicts as a consequence of Heysel. There were convictions and people served time, but for the kind of behaviour that was commonplace at football grounds across the UK and Europe at the time. Battles for territory, missile lobbing, terrace charges… they all happened. Put them in a crumbling, unfit stadium and you have a disaster, a tragedy no less, waiting to happen. And that’s not to disrespect the victims, as so often in these things, a mix of the innocent, young and old. Did LFC and the CIty of Liverpool respond appropriately? The claims that it was West Ham fans masquerading as Liverpool was neither great nor realistic and that narrative was soon ‘unclaimed’, though the damage it did was done. Did Liverpool ‘own it’. Well, they certainly tried to engage with Juventus and the city of Turin, attended memorials and put a discrete memorial in place at Anfield, so yes, kind of. But how much is it to do with the current generation? Very little, I’d suggest. No more than say the brutal murder of Craig French (17 y.o Boro fan killed by Forest fans, see blog piece about that for more), the horrible ransacking and looting of the village of Toddington en-route to Wembley or the robberies from shops and assaults on ‘working girls’ in the Amsterdam red-light district back in 1980 for just three grim examples.

The ‘West Ham did it’ claims seem to be dragged up by those still banging on about Liverpool always being the victim, which is a bit desperate really. It’s difficult to hear the victim claims without actually believing that the sub text is “shut up about Hillsborough.” It feels like a cover up for something more unpleasant. I’ve gone on about it enough in other blog pieces and elsewhere, so I’m not getting into my views on Hillsborough, other than to say that if any relative, friend, associate of mine was part of an unlawful killing of 97 people at a football match - or anywhere else for that matter - then I’d certainly be campaigning about it until my dying day. Add to that a state-sponsored cover-up, media distortions and years of disrespectful abuse from opponents and, yes it’d become a bit of an obsession for me too.

Let’s be right here, a protracted, painful judicial process found that the 97 were unlawfully killed. Not by their own fans, but by mistakes made by the authorities and the conditions at Hillsborough. There was precisely zero evidence of forced entry, forged tickets, a stampede, hooliganism or drink being at the root of the tragedy. Precisely zero. Nothing found whatsoever by a state system desperate to back up its own lies. Other than in the notebooks the Police were found to have tampered with and the reports fed to the S*n as part of the cover-up. I’ve repeatedly tried to put myself in the position of having been to a football match, watch my fellow fans and friends die, maybe standing next to them, helpless to save them, and then spend the rest of time being told it was my fault. It’s unimaginably cruel.

So, as we approach next Sunday. Can we be kind to one another? No unemployment or poverty shaming, no scabs, no you‘re-all-Tory stuff, no murderers, no always-victims, nothing offensive. Football is tribal. A bit nasty at times. For many, me included, that’s part of the fun. Edgy. Sanitised football is crap. Chant “we hate Nottingham Forest..“ in my direction and I’ll gladly give the traditional “…and Nottingham Forest hate you, you BASTARDS!” in response. Sunday’s match is a competitive fixture, which both clubs and sets of fans will want to win desperately. It’s not a memorial event, though I hope and believe that NFFC will find a way to pay tribute, but it needs to be about the football. I want to be able to stand, with a pint or three after, with some Liverpudlian friends and shout “Cilla, Doddy, John f*cking Aldridge, John, Paul George and Ringo (and Pete Best), your boys took one hell of a beating!” ;-)