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Margaret Thatcher and Liverpool Football Club

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Thatcher Keegan Hughes England“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. Die, die die!”

Emotive words hurled from the lungs of the Kop ever since Margaret Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister started to take hold. The continued prevalence of these words has acted as a reminder of the strength of feeling against policies that affected a community and a football club.

Liverpool FC is no stranger to politics. The club has traditionally been a focal point for political outrage to be vented in public. During Thatcher’s time, chants for the team would be supplemented with chants for solidarity against a government that was perceived to be victimising the city and therefore the fans too.

With a solid working class fan base, the club’s identity became intertwined with left-wing politics reflecting those who attended on match day. Indeed, the club’s domestic and European Championships captured throughout Margaret Thatcher’s reign were advertisements for the Liverpool way in a social sense as well as a football one.

It was a mechanism for voicing the deep sense of feeling against the Conservative government.

This hostility was fostered during the recession under the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s supremacy, which had a profound effect on Liverpool. The docks had long provided a huge portion of jobs in the city but with the containerisation of Liverpool’s waterfront, swathes of unemployment ensued making the recession even tougher to bear for those on Merseyside.

Record numbers left Liverpool, never to return.

Resentment of the government increased and with Thatcher implementing new stop and search powers to the police, tensions continued to grow. The culmination was the Toxteth Riots which encouraged one of Margaret Thatcher’s key allies, Sir Geoffrey Howe, to suggest that Liverpool should be placed into ‘managed decline’ rather than look to address the poverty issues facing the city.

This recent revelation came as no surprise to those in Liverpool who had always suspected that there was a negative agenda against a city once described as the ‘New York of Europe’.

However, it was perhaps inevitable that Thatcher would clash with the city. One of Thatcher’s most memorable quotes was when she opined “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.”

This perhaps demonstrates the contrast of her social politics in comparison to the prevailing feeling in Liverpool. Notoriously a proud city, the people of Liverpool have always felt a togetherness whether in adversity or in triumph. Margaret Thatcher’s ideal of destroying community and replacing it with individual indulgence went against the grain in Merseyside and contributed to the revulsion she is afforded in the area.
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And while the sense of feeling directed at her from fans of Liverpool Football Club were intrinsically linked to the hardship faced by the town and people who attended the match, Thatcher’s already testing relationship with Liverpudlians was broken in the wake of Hillsborough.

While reforms from the Taylor report were introduced, there was no investigation into the police force, no criticism of the police force and no attempt to help any campaign for justice for those who lost their lives attending something so routine, as a football match.

In spite of Taylor’s report pouring scorn onto the officers that were interviewed, there was no response from the government. Thatcher had already required the help of a bloated and mobilised police force to crack down on unions and ‘the enemy within’, it was therefore no surprise that she was reluctant to start a root and branch investigation into an organisation that had strengthened her position so valiantly. It has sadly taken years of campaigning and social strength for the truth to emerge.

There is an odd symmetry that Liverpool the city has never recovered from the years of Thatcher’s premiership and Liverpool the football club has never recovered from the years post Hillsborough, both marked by the Iron Lady’s time in power. The decline of club and city has almost certainly affected the resentment to the former Prime Minister.

It would perhaps be an overstatement to suggest that the greed within modern football was a direct result of Margaret Thatcher’s model for Britain but she created a society in which the only thing that mattered was the power of the pound. So while leeches get fat from the proceeds of the game and corruption manages to permeate some of the highest levels of football, football clubs as an institution should always be remembered for what they are: a club, a group of people with a connection to a place, an idea and a team, not just a mechanism for monetising companies belonging to owners, or a status symbol for those looking to gain favour with western countries, governments and finances nor are they simply a means for entertainment.

Football clubs are a part of community, an idea that was stifled if not destroyed by Margaret Thatcher and it is no surprise that Lord Coe said that ‘she never really understood sport’. Liverpool Football Club has always understood the significance of football and the community and of course it should do when the supporters of that club continue to harness the club as a vehicle to promote their interests and beliefs.

When the Kop recently unfurled an old ‘Solidarnosc’ banner, a reference to support for Polish workers, it re-affirmed that the political spirit of the club was not dead. And perhaps this is the greatest lesson that should be taken from the death of such a polarizing figure. Not that enjoyment should be had in her demise but that the Football Club continues to reflect those that truly own it, the fans and the community as long as it lasts.
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11 comments

  • hud says:

    Evil woman. She hated Liverpool and it’s people

  • Bill says:

    The soldiers performing the 30 gun salute have been ordered to fire into the coffin to make sure she doesn’t come back.

  • Jonesy says:

    Would love to see her brought back to life just so she could die with greater pain.

  • Red2theBone says:

    Im from Denmark so I couldnt really relate too much but of cus I know about her just newer knew it was this bad. This was very interresting reading I think it would be good for everyone to read cus it reflects on much of the bad stuff going on in the world and football world today. My view of thatcher changed bad to hatred after reading this. . . . thx YNWA

  • Red2theBone says:

    *from bad to hatred* was what I meant :-/

  • jay says:

    This woman hated all honest working class people,be they from concrete jungles like
    liverpool or countryside mining villages with coal pits,she destroyed the steel works and
    turned brother against brother during the minners strikes of 1984,peoples lives were
    destroyed when thrown on the scrapheap in these depressing times,my own dad found himself
    on the dole aged just 40 and had to re-educate himself all over in order to get work,go back to 1982 with her chances of being re-elected slipping away what does she do? start
    a war with argentina over a worthless piece of land in the middle of nowhere,over 250
    british servicemen lost their lives for nothing!but for me her biggest crime was the sinking
    of the belgrano with over 800 young argentines dying in the cold south atlantic,the ship was sailing away from the islands so that in my book is a war crime,some might call it
    murder,during her time in number ten many many people took their own lives through her
    twisted logic and her hatred of the working class who she looked upon as a sub species,so i rejoice at this hags passing and dont apologise for that,iam sure that many people feel the same,this woman does not deserve respect for she ripped apart this country and sold it off bit by bit and following governments have followed her blue print
    be it tory or labour! i will also celebrate when blair croaks so dont call me anti-tory tyrants
    come from in all colours,well maggie you will have to meet yer maker and am sure your
    best mates saville and pinochet will give you a warm welcome when you get there!

  • philip leonard says:

    If there isn’t society but just a collection of individuals so what was her role as a PM for so many years.What & who she represented if not the greatest sum of local urban suburban and rural communities that is known as UK.How could she refer & preach “patriotism” without the existence of any social structure.Can you have a building without bricks and what is the importance of bricks if not been built into a building .If we learn something from history is that history and time abort anybody that don’t respect them.Her legacy will be a legacy of greet & selfishness and that’s enough of a punishment
    YNWA passionate 4 LFC from 1975
    From NYC

  • Jonesy says:

    Similarly its like saying theres no flow of traffic just individual cars! How ignorant she was.

  • Chan says:

    As a Liverpool fan and as an honest, ordinary chap with a regular job trying to eke out a living i can relate to the anger most fans have towards her.

    I come from a country where we had a semi ditaor who had ruled us for more than 2 decades and still do so indirectly. This despicable man had brought corruption and “the means justifies the end” way of doing things to a whole new level. Under this chap ALL our state institutions answers to this man and his cronies, not the people.

    Guess what, do you know who gave him the inspiration to do all this and is one of his best friends ? You guess right, the enemy of LFC and the City of Liverpool.

  • Ian Wilson says:

    Her legacy lives on….her ‘greed is good’ culture is firmly ingrained in society!
    A vile woman who tore our city apart…we will never lie down!

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