Guest Post by Neale Williams
Yesterday’s performance at Liverpool was dismal, but the performance of some of our fans was even worse. I was shocked at the levels of racist chanting before the match in the bar beneath away supporters stand and was equally appalled at the baiting of Liverpool fans over the Hillsborough and Heysel disasters. To top it all off I witnessed one of our fans calling Joey O’Brien a square head and urging him to xxxx off back to potato land.
Now I like football banter as much as any fan, but the anti Tottenham song about foreskins ending with xxxxing Jew is not banter – it’s racist. This song was sung by around a 100 fans in the bar before the match and came in the same week as the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Aushwitz and Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Whilst I don’t think that every fan who sings this song is a Nazi, I do think every fan should consider the hatred expressed in this song is in danger of legitimising the anti semitic Nazi ideology that led to the systematic murder of over 6 million innocent men, women and children simply for being Jewish.
Moreover, the baiting of Liverpool fans about the Hillsborough and Heysel disasters is equally disgusting. The song “always the victim” disdains the memory of the 96 innocent Liverpool fans who died at Hillsborough and the 39 Juventus fans who died at Heysel. These disasters could have happened to any football fans as the deaths at Ibrox and Bradford amply show. Blaming fans for negligent policing decisions and crumbling dangerous stadia lets the authorities off the hook and protects the people who are really responsible.
I was proud as a West Ham fan to visit the Justice for the 96 campaign shop opposite Anfield with my son before the game yesterday. There we paid our respects to the dead and the bereaved. We also talked to Steve who is an Evertonian who lost his brother at Hillsborough. Nothing can bring his brother back, but the relentless campaign for the truth supported by fans in Liverpool and beyond has established the innocence of the fans on that day and also nailed the attempted cover up of the establishment and the police. Justice is coming but only as a result of the efforts of the JFT96 campaign and the solidarity shown by many others.
It is in this tradition of solidarity that we should all seek to stand. Banter is fun, bigotry is not.
Neale Williams