{"id":6128,"date":"2012-09-21T05:33:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-21T04:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=6128"},"modified":"2013-02-26T13:05:57","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T13:05:57","slug":"man-utd-fans-should-sing-youll-never-walk-alone-at-anfield-this-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=6128","title":{"rendered":"Man Utd fans should sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ at Anfield this Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rodgers and Hammerstein are not generally associated with hymnody but it seemed apt when the organist at our local Methodist church decided to play \u201cYou\u2019ll Never Walk Alone\u201d during Communion last Sunday. In its original context in the musical Carousel<\/em> the song is sung to comfort a newly-bereaved widow. But it is also the anthem of Liverpool Football Club where the families of the 96 fans who died in the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster finally found some succour last week.<\/p>\n

What made it all the more poignant was that the organist was playing in a church in Manchester, a city just 30 miles from Liverpool, but where a deeply entrenched rivalry divides the two great cities and their football teams. You might think it trivial to talk about a merely sporting antagonism in the face of such issues of life and death. So it ought to be. And yet it is not.<\/p>\n

The day before I had been at Old Trafford to see Manchester United. We were playing Wigan. And yet anti-Liverpool chants from a small section of the crowd showed that the unfolding of the evidence of the Hillsborough Independent Panel had done nothing to assuage the visceral hatred of some United fans. Rather the national outpouring of sympathy for Liverpool seemed to have inflamed a hardcore minority.<\/p>\n

In the pub afterwards more boors screamed the same chants at the television screen when the Liverpool players appeared ahead of their match at Sunderland. \u201cMurderers,\u201d they chanted repeatedly, and \u201cAlways the victim; it\u2019s never your fault\u201d, peddling the 23-year-old calumny that those who died were killed because of the bad behaviour of fellow Liverpudlians.<\/p>\n

The findings of the independent panel exonerated the Liverpool fans on such a charge but, as Winston Churchill once put it \u201ca lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on\u201d. People will persist in believing a lie if it suits them.<\/p>\n

What hope for football yobs when a senior policeman does something similar? Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison in a statement acknowledging that the disaster was the fault of the police felt compelled to add: \u201cFans\u2019 behaviour… made the job of the police… harder than it needed to be\u201d. Sir Norman has denied being a member of a black propaganda unit set up to impugn the reputations of those who died in order to shift blame away from the police. But there can be no doubt of his poor judgement in this injudicious statement.<\/p>\n

Poor judgement abounds below the public surface. The tribalism of the policeman or football fan is rooted in the seductive idea of defending one\u2019s own. Twitter was awash with it. I had an extended altercation with one United fan who denied that the tasteless chants had been heard, and then admitted his primary concern was to defend the reputation of the club. South Yorkshire Police used the same argument 23 years ago.<\/p>\n

All this is why it is essential for those in authority to lead by example. At the match between Reading and Spurs this week the club authorities played \u201cYou\u2019ll Never Walk Alone\u201d before the game to a standing ovation from both sets of fans. Everton preceded their last game with a rendition of \u201cHe Ain\u2019t Heavy…He\u2019s My Brother\u201d in tribute to their fellow Merseysiders.<\/p>\n

United\u2019s manager Sir Alex Ferguson had called for an end to the hostility between his club and Liverpool. He was not heeded by some. Perhaps he should remind his fans that when eight Manchester United players died in the Munich aircrash in 1958, Liverpool offered United five players so the Manchester club could finish the season.\u00a0 Ahead of the match between Liverpool and Man Utd on Sunday he needs to make a gesture of considerable magnitude. And on the day the United fans should know what to sing.<\/p>\n

The Church Times<\/p>\n

How the victims of Hillsborough were betrayed again and again and again \u2013 all across the institutions of the British state<\/a><\/h1>\n

Why the Hillsborough Independent Panel is a model for uncovering the real truth<\/a><\/h1>\n

Time for a judicial inquiry into the culture of the British police<\/a><\/h1>\n

Finally vindication for the families of the 96<\/a><\/h1>\n

Hillsborough: A litany of lies \u2013 2011<\/a><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rodgers and Hammerstein are not generally associated with hymnody but it seemed apt when the organist at our local Methodist church decided to play \u201cYou\u2019ll Never Walk Alone\u201d during Communion last Sunday. In its original context in the musical Carousel the song is sung to comfort a newly-bereaved widow. But it is also the anthem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,92,38],"tags":[81,362,101,93],"class_list":["post-6128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-ethics","category-manchester","category-society","tag-football","tag-hillsborough","tag-liverpool","tag-manchester-united"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6128"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7435,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128\/revisions\/7435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}