Celtic Fans And Hillsborough. Why Liverpool Fans Will Truly Never Walk Alone.
Of all the clubs in England, Liverpool is always the one I’ve felt the closest emotional connection to.
Their fans are very similar to ours, in their passion and their outlook.
They are a community club, rooted in their city and its history, as we are rooted in ours. Their fans have a clear-headed understanding of the politics of this island – how could they not? – and have a radical edge every bit as sharp as that of groups like The Green Brigade.
They understand solidarity.
They’ve made it one of their watch-words.
It’s not a coincidence that Celtic Park and Anfield are easily the two finest grounds on this island in which to enjoy a European footballing occasion, and whilst you can argue all day about who’s fans give the most vocal support the two clubs simply tower above the rest in that regard.
Speaking, I think, for all decent football fans, Hillsborough is one of those events which defines your life, something that, when you truly grasp it, alters your perception of the world and the way you think about it completely. It crosses all boundaries and barriers.
When I first read Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch it was the chapters about Hillsborough that stood out most for me, the way he felt on that night, the way he felt in the weeks afterwards, the way he realised he’d had his own lucky escapes.
I was too young, when it happened, for the full emotional weight to hit me the way it did him, but I’ve watched every documentary on it that I can find, as well as Jimmy McGovern’s magnificent drama. I can understand how Hornby felt, and reading his words and being able to connect them with the scenes from that day gives you a sense of creeping dread, and makes you feel sick in your soul.
These were people like us, people we could have known, grown up with, shared experiences and memories with.
This could have been us.
More than anything else, it’s the sense that this was so f***ing needless that hurts the most; this wasn’t an unavoidable tragedy, some kind of natural disaster or act of God. It wasn’t something that allowed, or allows, people to mourn and get on with their lives. Because it was avoidable, and not even in the way that, say, leaving a dangling cable for people to fall over it is …. This wasn’t just a preventable disaster, but one that was born from certain attitudes and a host of official screw-ups on the day in question. This one was caused by people, by police, by those who were supposed to be responsible for the safety of those in their charge.
Those people thought of the fans that day – all football fans – as if they were second class citizens or worse.
They penned them in like animals, allowed those pens to become over-crowded and did nothing to alleviate the situation until it was already too late. It wasn’t just that these were mistakes made – mistakes happen – but the mind-set from which those mistakes sprung. And to make those kind of mistakes, deadly mistakes, is bad enough … but to then try and shift the blame onto the dead and those who mourned them … unconscionable.
B*****ds. How dare they?
Which is to say nothing of The Sun, and Kelvin Mackenzie’s moment of madness (one of many, but far and away the worst) which trawled the gutter, found bottom and then just kept digging like kids trying to reach China from a back garden.
There’s no amount of invective or foul language that I can use that will ever come close to exhausting how I feel about the people who work at that paper, who commissioned those pieces, wrote them, edited them, or allowed them to be published.
It was an assault on decency itself.
It still reeks like snake shit today.
That my club has such a close association with the families of those who died, and with those who campaign for the justice that’s been denied them, even today, even when everything that they’ve been saying for all these years has been fully vindicated … well it’s a source of more than just pride to me.
Our club and our supporters could never have turned their backs on the Liverpool fans.
I cannot imagine a world in which we would have.
The stories from fans of both of our clubs on Hillsborough and the aftermath and how a deep connection was forged could fill a book, and I’m not joking. I’ve spent much of the day reading them. They are heart-warming, inspiring, and tear-inducing.
We were, of course, the first club Liverpool played after the tragedy, hosting a fund raiser at Celtic Park fifteen days after the disaster. That game raised over £500,000 for the families; my old man, who was a steward at the time, said even he and his colleagues donated their wages to the fund.
We lost that game 4-0. Our fans cheered every Liverpool goal.
There has probably never been a more emotional version of You’ll Never Walk Alone sung at Celtic Park.
Watching the footage still makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up today.
Over the years, Celtic fan sites have written anniversary tributes, we’ve helped share articles beyond count on the Justice for the 96 campaign, we’ve given every emotional and even financial support that we were able to.
And there have been banners, so many banners, amongst them the one The Jungle Bhoys and those from the Kerrydale Street forum had made in October 2006, twenty-six feet long and emblazoned with the words “Justice For the 96”, the two club crests and, of course, the legend “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
The gesture was returned by a grateful Anfield support, when they invited some of the Celtic fans to a Champions League match against PSV, and unveiled their own banner, with the words “Thank You Celtic Fans, We’ve Never Walked Alone.”
Damned right.
Justice for the 96.
