British Politics

Both are ****s, tbf

 

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

 

In the Shadow of the Poor Law
Britain has been a high inequality, high poverty nation for most of the last 200 years.

Stewart Lansley | Published in History Today Volume 72 Issue 1 January 2022

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Ben Jones

Shortly before the 1979 general election the Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan presciently warned of a ‘sea- change in politics’ in favour of Margaret Thatcher’s anti-welfare agenda. Today there is much speculation of a similar shift away from the small state, austerity politics of the last decade. With hikes in levels of public spending and taxation, the Guardian has talked of the emergence of a ‘new variant of capitalism’ and the New Statesman of a ‘new Toryism’.

The last century has seen two tectonic about turns in governing philosophy. The first came in 1945 with the reversal of the ‘hands-off’ economic and social doctrines of the previous century. The second came gradually from 1979 onwards when Margaret Thatcher turned her back on postwar social democracy. So, is history, as some are hoping and others fearing, turning again? Or are we witnessing a mere political tweak, a temporary, pragmatic response to a national crisis? As the economist Robert Lucas Jr. once observed, ‘We are all Keynesians in a foxhole’.





Cutting the cake
There is no better litmus test of whether history is truly turning than what happens to Britain’s deep-seated divisions. Few trends better illustrate the profound differences between the ideological outcomes of the post-1945 and post-1979 shifts. The first took Britain to peak equality and a historic low for poverty. The second triggered a remarkable doubling in the rate of poverty over the last four decades.

Poverty and inequality are umbilically linked. Poverty occurs when sections of society have insufficient resources to be able to afford a minimal acceptable standard of living. Its scale is ultimately determined by how ‘the cake is cut’. History is clear: high levels of poverty and inequality have gone hand in hand. Barring the short postwar period, Britain has been a high inequality, high poverty nation for most of the last 200 years. Ultimately, how the cake is cut depends on the strength of democratic structures, the power of social movements and the lengths to which business and financial elites have been prepared to go to preserve their wealth, power and privileges. In recent decades, as in the period up to 1939, these factors have worked in favour of those with capital and against the interests and life chances of those without.

Breaking the long high poverty and high inequality cycle requires, as the Liberal politician Sir William Beveridge declared in his 1942 Report, Social Insurance and Allied Services, much more than ‘patching’. 2022 marks the 80th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, which helped launch a more secure and comprehensive system of social security. Beveridge hoped that his path-breaking recommendations – a more effective system of National Insurance, family allowances and a national assistance safety net, as well as free healthcare and full employment, would ensure that no one fell below an acceptable minimum. But his hopes, shared by the Labour leader Clement Attlee, have never been fully realised. The surge in poverty over the last four decades has been driven by the steady dismantling of parts of the postwar social and economic settlement, resulting in today’s mean, patchy and highly punitive system of social support.





A necessary ingredient
In some ways the dark shadow of the Victorian ‘Poor Law’, more anti-poor than anti-poverty, remains a key driver of social policy. In the 19th century, poverty was widely seen as the product of God’s will, or of indolence. For some, the poor were necessary to provide labour and sustain elite power. ‘Poverty is a most necessary and indispensable ingredient’ declared Patrick Colquhoun, founder of the police force in England in 1800, ‘since without poverty there would be no labour, and without labour there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, no benefits to those who may be possessed of wealth’. Help for the destitute was confined to the harshness of the 1834 ‘Poor Law’, which ended the previous system of ‘outdoor relief’ that topped up low wages. The aim was to prevent starvation, not poverty, and to promote the Victorian ideology of individual responsibility and self-help. Those at risk went to considerable lengths to avoid the workhouse taint of pauperism. The Poor Law’s central principle was that workhouse conditions should be worse than the lowest living standards available to a working labourer. The moral shame attached to seeking relief was a deliberate attempt at deterrence. Workhouse conditions were often draconian, with bad food, strict discipline and high rates of child mortality. Families were desperate to avoid the hated institution.

There are remarkable parallels between the Victorian age and today in the way state policy addresses poverty. At least three of Beveridge’s ‘five giants on the road to reconstruction’ – want, ignorance and squalor – have yet to be banished. Poverty has been ‘normalised’. Work, as in the 19th century, has stopped offering a guaranteed route out of poverty. Today’s state institutions, such as the Department for Work and Pensions’ network of Jobcentres, are viewed as alien and coercive by large numbers who seek their help. Contemporary tax laws barely differ from the lax approach to tax collection from the rich applied by the Inland Revenue in the 1920s. Despite its impact on revenue, widespread avoidance by wealthy business magnates carried little social stigma. With no effective legal or reputational sanctions against avoidance, paying full tax rates became largely voluntary, just as it is today. As The Times put it in 1938, outside of the United States, ‘England offers the most opportunity of any country for such avoidance’.

Today, as then, a plethora of charities and a small army of volunteers have emerged to prop up an enfeebled welfare system. While the state continues to play the principal role, charitable groups – which also played a dominant role in Victorian welfare support – have taken on the role of what the 18th-century British politician and philosopher Edmund Burke once called the ‘little platoons’.

Today’s extractive model of capitalism – one in which a small elite of capital owners is able to use its political and economic muscle to secure an excessive slice of the economic pie – is the latest incarnation of the ‘collective monopoly power’ of the 19th century.





What you deserve
In recent decades, negative portrayals of claimants have become more frequent and strident. Old distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor have been dressed up by ministers in new language: ‘workers and strivers’ against ‘shirkers and skivers’. Ministers have turned to past explanations for inaction: that poverty is the product of individual failure; that low benefit levels are necessary to encourage the work ethic. In 2012 the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne told the Conservative Party conference, to cheers: ‘Where is the fairness, we ask, for the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next-door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits?’

The use of the word ‘scrounger’ in UK newspapers grew fourfold in the decade to 2012. Television producers dreamed up programmes, such as Channel 4’s controversial 2014 series Benefits Street, that treated poor families as entertainment. These stand in sharp contrast to the trenchant social and politically engaged content of earlier television drama, such as the BBC’s 1970s’ Play for Today series to Boys from the Black Stuff in the 1980s, which explicitly set out to ‘rattle the cages of the establishment’. New housing developments have incorporated separate ‘poor floors’, ‘poor doors’ and even play areas to segregate buyers of luxury private flats and social housing tenants.

In a return to the punitive policies of the distant past, the middle years of the 2010s saw more than five million state sanctions imposed on benefit claimants, two thirds of whom were left without an income. At one point, the Department for Work and Pensions was levying more fines through local Jobcentres than the mainstream justice system.





End of egalitarianism
Since the postwar social experiment – a period of egalitarian optimism – the fierce battle for ideas has been won by New Right thinkers and mainstream economists, who hold that inequality is necessary to drive economic progress. Sir Keith Joseph, a key adviser to Margaret Thatcher, put it bluntly in 1976: ‘The pursuit of income equality will turn this country into a totalitarian slum.’ A year after the 2008 global financial crisis, Lord Griffiths, the vice-chair of Goldman Sachs International, told an audience at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral that the public has to ‘tolerate inequality as the price to be paid for prosperity’.

The modern Labour Party also seems less sure about its former egalitarianism. ‘The commitment of the Labour Party to equality is rather like the singing of the Red Flag at its gatherings’, wrote the economist Tony Atkinson in 1983. ‘All regard it as part of a cherished heritage, but those on the platform often seem to have forgotten the words.’ New Labour’s ambitious goal to abolish poverty from the millennium failed in large part because Tony Blair allowed Britain’s inequality-driving and stability-sapping model of capitalism to continue.

Despite talk among commentators of a shift towards a softer governing philosophy, there are no signs that tackling poverty and inequality are to become a priority. Both remain baked into the inequality-driving practices of big business and the uneven division of gains from economic activity. In contrast to the war years, there is no serious government thinking about a vision for a post-crisis society. The much-vaunted ‘levelling up’ commitment has been dismissed by one commentator as a ‘slogan in search of a policy’.



Same old
Up to 1945, alongside the Beveridge blueprint for social security, there was a flood of reports, action and bipartisan legislation on issues such as schooling and child care and achieving full employment.

A proper test of a paradigm shift must be evidence of a change in the way rich and poor citizens are treated. The governing philosophy of recent times fails such a test. The last decade has seen one promise after another, from David Cameron’s pledge for an ‘all-out assault on poverty’ to Theresa May’s plan to end ‘burning injustice’. Yet little more than patching seems to be on the horizon. Without something closer to the transformative politics of 1945, the post-Covid society will look much like the old.



Stewart Lansley is the author of The Richer, The Poorer: How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed the Poor. A 200 Year History (Bristol University Press, 2021).

 

Tony Blair to have his "Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter" rescinded

https://www.change.org/p/the-prime-...-the-most-noble-order-of-the-garter-rescinded

 

The four-pronged attack on American democracy
Republicans are changing the rules to make sure their defeat in November 2020 can't happen again.

By Emily Tamkin

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Pete Marovich/Getty Images
WASHINGTON, DC – Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.






Donald Trump, however, will not say this. He has spent the year since he lost insisting that he won. His supporters believe the same. According to an NBC News poll from November, 38 per cent of respondents did not believe that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected, and half of Republicans did not believe their ballots would be counted accurately the next time they went to vote.

“There are always some sour grapes from the losing party after the election,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But this has gone to a new level of disbelief.”

Just as troubling are the other steps that Trump and his supporters have taken in the past year to undermine American democracy, both for his own benefit and that of the Republicans aligned to him. They are not only refusing to accept reality but are trying to change the reality of how people vote in the future.

“There really has not been anything like this in modern American history,” Burden said.

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Official intimidation

Over the past year, election officials in various places across the country have been threatened. A study conducted by Benenson Strategy Group found that a third of election officials expressed concern about facing harassment in the course of doing their job, and 17 per cent had already been threatened.

The For the People Act, a voting rights bill passed by the House of Representatives, does contain some protections for election officials – but the bill is stalled in the Senate. Unless moderate Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin agree to abolish the filibuster, it will not pass, since Republicans will not support it.

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Replacing the officials

Meanwhile, to the extent that election officials cannot be scared away, Trump and his allies are working to replace them with people who are more amenable to tipping the scales in his favour. Michigan Republicans have appointed to election canvassing boards individuals who appear more sympathetic to Trump’s claims. Similarly minded individuals won elections to become voting judges and inspectors in Pennsylvania. These were two of the states that carried Biden over the top to win the Electoral College in 2020.

[See also: Liberal democracy is still under threat]


Trump is not sitting by and passively watching this happen. He is endorsing people who will do what, in 2020, Republican officials in certain key states didn’t: say that he won. In late November, he endorsed two individuals who supported his audit of the election in the state of Arizona, where he falsely claimed he won, for seats in the state senate.

“We’re taking action,” Steve Bannon, formerly Trump’s White House chief strategist, said last month, “and that action is we’re taking over school boards, we’re taking over the Republican Party through the precinct committee strategy. We’re taking over all the elections. Suck on this.”

[See also: Why Donald Trump was the ultimate anarchist]

Warp the system

Not content to replace a key figure here or there, Republicans are reworking the electoral system more generally to make it friendlier to them. Over a dozen state legislatures have passed laws that will make it more difficult for people to vote. In Michigan, Republican officials are preparing to better organise their volunteers’ presence watching polls, and their challenges to elections through the courts. We know this because they said it out loud.

There is also gerrymandering, the process of redrawing electoral districts to hand one side a majority. This week, Biden’s Justice Department sued Texas for the redistricting plan that the state legislature came up with this autumn, arguing that the electoral map was gerrymandered in a way that discriminated against minority voters. But the lawsuit could take years to resolve; even if it is successful, it is unlikely to have an impact before the midterms next November.

Keep the faith

The single most effective thing to right American democracy’s ship, Barry Burden said, would be for elected officials, and in particular Republicans, to tell Trump supporters that there is no great conspiracy against them.

“What they need to hear is Republican leaders say that the election was valid and carried off properly and they should move on,” he said.

He is not optimistic that will happen. “Trump continues to play such a massive role on the Republican side of the aisle,” he said. He puts out statements that are duly shared on the social media platforms from which he himself has been banned. He issues endorsements. He is launching a media company. “A lot of Republican officials appear to be afraid of him.”

And so they conduct audits of states where Biden and Democrats won, in the name of “election integrity”, and make it more difficult for people to vote, claiming that they are trying to restore confidence in the voting process.

The irony is that, in doing so, they aren’t quashing a conspiracy, they’re creating one: a verifiable conspiracy against American democracy itself.

 

A year after the Capitol riot, the spectre of civil war haunts America

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The US Capitol building riot on January 6 last year was the moment America woke up to growing divisions that may yet tear democracy apart, although warnings of civil war are derided as “coup porn”
LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS
Sarah Baxter

Saturday January 01 2022, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times
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On Christmas Eve, President Joe Biden was on a sofa with the first lady, Jill, exchanging pleasantries about Santa on live television when a caller, Jared Schmeck, smirked: “Merry Christmas. Let’s go, Brandon!” — the now ubiquitous euphemism for “F*** Joe Biden”. It was a startling moment. The prankster claimed it was “an innocent jest”. He meant “no disrespect”. Or did he?

Those who described Schmeck as astonishingly rude were told they could not take a joke. Others were mocked for describing the 35-year-old as an “insurrectionist”. Yet a few days later the joker was on an alt-right radio show in a red “Make America great again” cap telling its host, the firebrand Steve Bannon: “Donald Trump is my president and he should still be president right now. The election was stolen. So I just want to make that clear.”

Message received. But how seriously should we take it? In the year since the January 6 riot at the Capitol, America appears to have lost its moorings. There is no shared trust in its institutions or commander-in-chief. Does it matter that Schmeck, along with 71 per cent of Republican voters, according to the latest YouGov/UMass poll, believes the election was stolen and that Biden is an illegitimate president? Or are we just being trolled?

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Trump supporters insisted they were doing their patriotic duty on January 6, 2021
JACK GRUBER/USA TODAY/REUTERS
My neighbours in Pennsylvania tell me — some with eyes gleaming, others matter-of-factly — that there will be a civil war in America in the next ten years. Do they mean it? Are they, dare I say, almost looking forward to it? They all own guns but they are not bad people. Mostly, they seem nice. Can they be trusted to defend democracy as we know it?

Anyone in search of reassurance should not read How Civil Wars Start, a new book by Barbara Walter, an expert on international security at the University of California, San Diego. Like me, she has noticed that some Americans are “excited” by the idea of civil war. “I get emails from people saying ‘we need some culling’, that the country needs to be shaken up. They treat it like a game,” she said.

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Talking on Zoom, Walter told me she was astonished on January 6 by the “impunity” of the protesters. “They truly believed that what they were doing was morally correct or justified. It didn’t occur to them that this was an illegal act. They felt it was their patriotic duty. They were taking their country back.”

She argues that America is closer to civil war than we think: “Most Americans cannot imagine another civil war in their country,” she writes in her book. “They assume our democracy is too resilient, too robust to devolve into conflict. Or they assume that our country is too wealthy and too advanced to turn on itself ... But this is because they don’t know how civil wars start.”

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The National Guard marches towards the Capitol on January 22, 2021
STEFANI REYNOLDS/GETTY IMAGES
Walter, also an amateur artist, has hung one of her own paintings in her office, with the word “peace” filling the frame. She says: “I actually can’t watch violent television shows — I watch the fluffiest cotton candy — because it’s an antidote to what I study all day.” She has been delving into the origins of civil war since the break-up of the Soviet Union and began to notice patterns. In 2017 she was asked to join a political instability task force set up by the CIA.

“We talked a lot about Africa, Syria, the Middle East, central Asia. We never, ever, talked about the United States — that was off the table for legal reasons — but I couldn’t believe how closely the US was honing to the same model.” The existence of superfactions, divided along ethnic, religious and geographic lines, is a sign in her book of incipient breakdown.



Emerging and decaying democracies, she says, are particularly vulnerable to violent conflict, aided by the “accelerants” of social media: “The internet has revealed just how fragile a government by the people for the people can be.” Walter believes that America has become a partial democracy or “anocracy”, which she describes as “somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state”.

With refreshing honesty, she recalls feeling “really happy” on January 6. I know others who felt the same delight that Trump and his supporters were being revealed in their true colours. According to Walter, “this was the gift that America needed to wake up because those of us who were sounding the alarm had been getting nowhere with it.

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A mob of Trump supporters fight with members of law enforcement at a door they broke open as they stormed the Capitol
LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS
“Until then, Americans were not ready to accept that their country was as divided as it was, that there was a subgroup of the white population that was not only not interested in democracy but was willing to use violent means to maintain its hold on power.”

The problem, she added more gloomily, was that January 6 was “the beginning of something” that is far from resolved. It marked the point when “you’re starting to see various far-right groups operating together as well as independently. It is rare that just one rebel group goes against the government”.

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Walter also warned that existing bulwarks were being eroded. “The US is very democratic in terms of all its freedoms,” she said, “but the fact that our elections are run by local partisan organisations and the executive branch has become more powerful over time makes it quite undemocratic in other regards.”

Barton Gellman has sounded a similar warning in The Atlantic magazine, in which he argues that January 6 was “practice” and that Trump’s “next coup” has already begun. For Gellman, the restrictions on voting rights introduced in some states and the replacement of steadfast Republican election officials such as Brad Raffensperger in Georgia — who refused Trump’s request to “find” an extra 11,780 votes — by enthusiastic proponents of “Stop the steal” are evidence that the threat to democracy will be greater in 2024 than it was in 2020.

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The Oath Keepers militia group marching on January 6, 2021
JIM BOURG/REUTERS
“There is a clear and present danger that American democracy will not withstand the destructive forces that are now converging on it,” he writes. “Donald Trump came closer than anyone thought he could to toppling a free election a year ago. He is preparing in plain sight to do it again.”

Three retired army generals — Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba and Steven Anderson — amplified these fears in The Washington Post recently. “We are chilled to the bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time,” they claimed. “The signs of potential turmoil in our armed forces are there. On January 6 ... more than one in ten of those charged in the attacks had a service record.”

Does this mean, as Walter claims, that America is entering the “open insurgency phase”? Admittedly, I never thought the assault on the Capitol would be so easily normalised by Republicans. There has been a host of excuses: that the rioters were merely honest-to-God patriots having a bit of fun, playing tourist by going walkabout in the halls of Congress, and — insofar as there was any violence — were innocent lambs swept into the mêlée by FBI or antifa (anti-fascist) agents provocateurs. But the alarmism can sound over the top.

“Please — stop the coup porn,” the conservative commentator Victor Davis Hanson has urged. He believes the doom-mongering is a cynical attempt to thwart Republican gains in this year’s mid-term elections and the 2024 presidential race by pretending there is an “existential threat to the nation”. But he then went on to spoil his case by describing the events of January 6 as a “buffoonish riot” by a “ragtag band of misfits”.



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Inside the American Redoubt: The Trump voters building a new state
Is that all it was? The mock gallows, the zip-tie handcuffs, the cries of “Hang Mike Pence” and the battering of the Capitol Hill police? There appears to be no common ground between those declaring the death of democracy and those seeking to downplay an appalling attack on one of its most powerful symbols — itself a sign of a deeply divided country.

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Trump, of course, is the master of the in-joke, the wink, the trolling of opponents until they are driven crazy by his claims. He has promised to hold a provocative news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday to mark the one-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol and rehash his claims that the election was stolen. “Remember,” he said in a statement, “the insurrection took place on November 3. It was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6.”

For her part, the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced a more sombre gathering at the Capitol intended as “an observance of reflection, remembrance and recommitment, in a spirit of unity, patriotism and prayerfulness”. Yet her honeyed words sound like a poke at Trump supporters. Patriotism and prayer have themselves become instruments of division — even Schmeck, the impertinent Christmas caller, regards himself as a “Christian man”. He told Bannon last week: “For me, it’s God first and foremost.”

This does not surprise Walter. It is part of the “lost cause” that once animated the South: that white, Christian America is under threat. “In the 21st century, the most dangerous factions are once-dominant groups facing decline,” she writes. White evangelical Christians represent two thirds of the Republican Party and whites are predicted to be in the minority in the US by 2045.

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A police officer detains a pro-Trump protester as mobs storm the US Capitol
SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS
Is this what underlies the “Let’s go, Brandon!” meme — the fear that urban, multiracial Democratic voters do not represent the true America? Joke or not, the insult has taken off in unexpected ways. It began in September when the crowd at a Nascar racetrack chanted “F*** Joe Biden” and an NBC TV reporter reportedly misheard the words as “Let’s go, Brandon!”, a cheer of support for the winning driver, Brandon Brown.

Last week Brown lamented that he was being “cancelled” because of the slogan and could not get sponsorship. By Thursday he was unveiling his new sponsor, a cryptocurrency called LBGCoin, which hopes to cash in on the controversy. So he too is having a laugh.

Where this will lead is open to question. Walter’s solution to conflict is to extend voting rights and make it easier to cast a ballot, an aim she shares with Biden and the Democrats, in contrast to the Republicans, who she believes want to “undercut democracy and maintain a permanent anocracy”. But this would surely spark new claims of election “fraud”.

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Barbara Walter says she has noticed that some Americans are “excited” by the idea of civil war
DEBORA CARTWRIGHT/ DBA DEL MAR PHOTOGRAPHICS
The “good” news is the next civil war will not look like the last one. “If America has a second civil war, the combatants will not gather in fields; nor will they wear uniforms. They may not even have commanders,” Walter writes. But, she predicts, there will be terrorist attacks and mass-casualty events that could force Americans who fear for family and country to choose sides. “Civil wars are unbelievably destructive,” she says. “It will scar generations.”

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There is a chance, of course, that America will come to its senses. “Everybody likes to think of their country as exceptional, unique and admirable,” says Walter. Yet sometimes it is true.

 

Pompey will not be happy, no private girls school for you

Leading group of girls' schools says it 'will not accept transgender pupils over fears admissions policies based on gender' will 'jeopardise status as single-sex institutions

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...hools-says-not-accept-transgender-pupils.html

 

Isn't 'single sex' a euphemism for ****ing?

 

PETER HITCHENS: Just like the Reds, the Greens think they're too good and noble to possibly be wrong but this country will begin to get colder and darker - just like the Soviet Union
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...like-Reds-Greens-think-theyre-nice-wrong.html

nutters will be nutters

 

Red Ken aide sold Britain's nuclear secrets to Czech spies: He was a key lieutenant of hard-Left London leader Ken Livingstone - but at the height of the Cold War, Charlie Rossi was passing vital intelligence to our foes behind the Iron Curtain
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ins-nuclear-secrets-Czech-spies-Cold-War.html

never trust a crazed leftie

 

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OLIVER KAY: What About Justice for Heysel?
by The Anfield Wrap | May 29, 2013 | Featured Writing, Footie, Heysel, Hillsborough | 35 comments

by Oliver Kay

NOW that the lies, the smears and cruel myths about the Hillsborough disaster have been exposed once and for all, those who clung to them out of warped tribalism have but one straw left to clutch. “What about justice for Heysel?”, they plead. “What about the truth of what happened there?”

Actually, they might have a point, even if they raise it out of malice rather than consideration for the bereaved. The publication – and belated national acceptance – of the real truth about Hillsborough has been a source of great vindication for all who were affected by that tragedy. But questions undoubtedly remain about the Heysel Stadium disaster, in which 39 spectators – 32 from Italy, four from Belgium, two from France, one from Northern Ireland – were killed in a stampede before the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus.

Those bereaved and outraged by Hillsborough have fought to keep their campaign for justice alive and been entirely vindicated for doing so. By contrast, Heysel remains the tragedy that dares not speak its name. So let us talk about it. Let us state a few of the facts about whether justice was done.

We all know that English football, collectively, was punished, with clubs excluded from Uefa competition. Liverpool immediately withdrew, in disgrace, from the next season’s Uefa Cup. Within hours the FA, under pressure from the government, announced that no English club would play in the following season’s Uefa competition – and that of course included Everton, denied a tilt at the European Cup, and Norwich City, denied a first ever European campaign. Two days later Uefa announced an indefinite ban on English clubs. It ended up at five years, with Liverpool serving a sixth as punishment for their supporters’ behaviour at Heysel.

This was not a knee-jerk reaction to a one-off night of mayhem. This – both the sanction and, it could be argued, the widespread loss of life – had been coming. Heysel was the disgraceful culmination of more than a decade of ugly incidents involving English supporters on their European travels: Tottenham Hotspur in Rotterdam in 1974 and 1983, Leeds United in Paris in 1975, Manchester United in St Etienne in 1977, the national team in Basle in 1981 and so on until the spiral of moronic violence reached its tragic conclusion – logical in one sense, crazy in all others – in Brussels.

As to whether individuals were brought to account, 27 arrests were made on suspicion of manslaughter and 26 men were charged. (These, incidentally, do not tend to be described as Liverpool supporters – in part because of claims at the time from John Smith, the club’s chairman, and two Merseyside councilors that National Front members from London had been responsible. There are many sensitive issues here, but let us not pussyfoot over this one. As Tony Evans, football editor of The Times and author of Far Foreign Land, a brilliant book about his experiences following Liverpool at Heysel and all over Europe, put it: “It was a red herring. Hooligans from the far right would not have been welcome.”)

The prosecutions stemmed from television camera footage of the charge – the third such charge in a matter of minutes – that led directly to the deaths of those 39 innocent spectators. There are dozens of points that are usually offered to explain the context, not least over ticketing, segregation and a crumbling stadium, but the context does not begin to excuse what happened. No amount of context ever could.

Those stampedes might have been considered standard terrace fare at the time, a token act of territorialism and intimidation, but it led innocent fans to flee in terror. Some tried to climb a wall to escape. The wall crumbled. Thirty-nine people were crushed to death. The world was appalled. Turin went into mourning. Liverpool and their supporters were left to live with what they know, 27 years later, to be an indelible stain.

As for “justice”, an initial inquiry by Marina Coppieters, a leading Belgian judge, found after 18 months that the police and the authorities, in addition to Liverpool supporters, should face charges. Quite apart from the hooliganism, ticketing arrangements and police strategy and responses were criticised. By this stage, English supporters were regarded across Europe as such animals that shock was expressed at how the authorities had played into their hands.

There was bewilderment, too, at the choice of stadium. And where have you heard that before? Uefa chose a ground that had been built in the 1920s and condemned in the early 1980s for failing to meet modern safety standards, which were far from stringent. Evans recalls that the outer wall, made of cinder block, was decaying, that he was not required to show his ticket and that, long before the stampede, he saw a crash barrier in front of him crumble.

Jacques Georges, the Uefa president at the time, and Hans Bangerter, his general secretary, were threatened with imprisonment but eventually given conditional discharges. Albert Roosens, the former secretary-general of the Belgian Football Union (BFU), was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for “regrettable negligence” with regard to ticketing arrangements. So was gendarme captain Johan Mahieu, who was in charge of the policing the stands at Heysel. “He made fundamental errors,” Pierre Verlynde, the judge, said. “He was far too passive. I find his negligence extraordinary.”

In 1989, after a five-month trial in Brussels, 14 of the 26 Liverpool supporters who stood trial were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and given a three-year prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, and each ended up serving about a year in total in behind bars. The remaining ten defendants were acquitted of manslaughter, but some had their £2,000 bail money confiscated, having been absent for part of the trial. And civil damages estimated at more than £5million were provisionally awarded to families of the Heysel victims against the convicted fans and the BFU.

But you never hear of this because the tragedy is taboo. It was only brought into the open when Liverpool and Juventus were drawn together in the Champions League quarter-final in 2005, at which point the Merseyside club, after consultation with their Italian counterparts, announced it would be a game of “friendship”. Before the first leg at Anfield, Liverpool supporters held up a mosaic to form the word “amicizia”. Some of the visiting Juventus fans applauded. Most, it seemed, turned their backs in disgust. And while the rejection of the olive branch met with a little consternation on Merseyside, Liverpool’s supporters know all too well about the type of apology that comes too late, brought by events, to sound truly sincere.

Heysel is an unspeakably awkward subject for Liverpool – perhaps more, perhaps less, for the anguish the club and the city endured four years later at Hillsborough. It is a black mark and it will be there forever. Supporters of rival teams chant “Murderers” and the Liverpool fans have little response. On one infamous occasion at Goodison Park in 2008, the away fans responded by singing “2-0 to the Murderers”. I know that this was somewhere between a knee-jerk response and an attempt to “reclaim” that offensive description, but it sounded awful. Were they listening in Turin? You would hope not.

For many years, Liverpool ’s response to Heysel was woefully inadequate. I was shown a copy of the club’s official yearbook for 1985/86. There were two articles about the tragedy on page three, but they were both of the “Let’s put this behind us, improve the matchday Anfield atmosphere and look to restore the club’s good name” variety. There was no direct reference to what had happened. There was no hint of an apology. Later there was a round-up of the previous European Cup campaign, in which 1985/86 was identified as a “watershed” because it would be Liverpool ’s last for some time.

Over time, there was a recognition that more – much more – needed to be done. In 2000 the city of Liverpool officially commemorated the anniversary of Heysel for the first time – on the suggestion, incidentally, of Peter Millea, the chairman of Liverpool City Council’s Hillsborough disaster working party.

They do at least now have a memorial plaque at Anfield, they do have extensive coverage of the tragedy on their official website and they do pay tribute on May 30 every year, even if it took far too long for the club to recognise the tragedy and the stain it had left — not unlike Sheffield Wednesday with Hillsborough, although the circumstances there involved appalling failures at executive level.

Heysel is a huge stain on Liverpool ’s history. It is undeniable. And yet none of this diminishes the club’s or the supporters’ right to grieve or to campaign or to express anger over what happened in Sheffield four years later.

One real mystery surrounding Heysel is that the tragedy is even more of a taboo in Turin.

Go on to the Italian club’s official website in search of a tribute and you will struggle to find anything beyond 106 words within a 645-word article called “Juventus wins everything”, a tribute to their successes in the 1970s and 1980s.

Of the club’s first European Cup triumph in 1985, it says: “The long-awaited success in Europe ’s highest accolade was tainted with sadness” … “Something unexplainable happened …. and 39 innocent victims lost their lives. Football, from that moment, would never be the same again.” … “It’s a joyless success, but the victory enabled the Bianconeri to fly to Tokyo in winter to play the Intercontinental Cup final. Argentinos Junior were beaten on penalties and Juve were the world champions.”

You will have to do an archive search to find anything more than that – specifically a couple of news articles on the anniversary. One includes details of a permanent Heysel exhibit at the museum which opened last year at the new Juventus Stadium. The club has decided that relatives of the victims will always be allowed permanent free access to the museum.

This is progress. For many years the bereaved met with what they perceived to be a sense of denial from Juventus about a disaster that overshadowed the club’s long-awaited first European Cup win. In The Truths of Heysel – a book written by Andrea Lorentini, whose father Roberto died in Brussels and whose grandfather Otello has led the campaign for the victims to be officially recognised by the club – writes of the “bewilderment, reticence, guilty silences and suspicion” the bereaved have faced in their dealings with Juventus.

Justice for Heysel? There can never be justice for 39 lives lost at a football match, but it is in Turin , not on Merseyside, that the cries of the bereaved have met with silence down the years.

The families do not want their lost ones to become a cause celebre in England , particularly not when the purpose has purely been to score points on the terraces. A little more recognition closer to home is what they want.

> This is an extended version of an article that originally appeared in The Times

35 Comments

1. please log in to view this image
   
   Russell Wareing on 29 May 2013 at 1:23 pm
   A really well written piece on a difficult issue.
   
   Reply
2. please log in to view this image
   
   Jimbo on 30 May 2013 at 10:30 am
   Thanks for posting this fellas, I had not read the full piece before. The attitude of many of our fans towards Heysel has always troubled me somewhat. The fact that there were obviously many other factors at play which actually contributed to the deaths, has perhaps given us an ‘out’ which we are sometimes too keen to take. Maybe this unwillingness to accept our part in what happened has increased other people’s eagerness to use it as a stick to beat us with over the years, albeit it often in a cheap and snidey manner at times. Then of course, Hillsborough has perhaps added another fly in the ointment, so to speak, as well as understandably overshadowing it.
   
   Having spoken to Juve fans over the years about it, it seems many are more aware of the full details of what happened than fans of other clubs, and while some (a minority) still talk of revenge, many of them have shown a willingness to forgive. As the article touched on, it seems many Juve supporters have been more preoccupied with their own club’s attitude towards what happened. You are as likely to come across debates about how the Juve team celebrated and how the club has done little to commemorate Heysel than you are about the evil of English fans. Then of course you have the fact that many rival supporters of other Italian clubs still use it as a cheap way to have a dig at them (by waving LFC scarves and banners, singing offensive songs etc), which will be something LFC fans can all relate to.
   
   The lack of a full and proper inquiry has also led to a lot of misconceptions too it seems, particularly among younger fans. You get the feeling UEFA has been only too keen to sweep Heysel under the carpet and consign it to history, rather than face up to its own failings on the night.
   While we have finally been able to make progress with regards Hillsborough it’s sad that Heysel victims groups in Italy have had less success. While there’s not a whole lot we can about that, we can at least show some solidarity with our fellow supporters, who understand what its like to loose people so unnecessarily at a football match. I’d urge any Liverpool fan to just drop by any Juve forum from time to time and offer a conciliatory post or two. They are more approachable on the subject that many would think and are often very glad to know that we have not forgotten the 39. It’s an event that ties both clubs and will do for a long time to come. Maybe we could be doing more to cement those ties, rather than it being an event that divides us. We have much common ground here when it comes to not just Heysel, but with regards Hillsborough also.
   Perhaps a podcast might be in order sometime, with a guest from the now disbanded Association for the Victims of Heysel (Lorentini?), a Juve fan or two, or an author of one of the few books written on Heysel?
   
   Regards.
   
   Reply
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   IKCL on 30 May 2013 at 3:42 pm
   A really sensitive and wholesome piece of writing. I hope it has the necessary impact on mainstream media.
   
   Reply
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   BrianB on 31 May 2013 at 12:17 am
   Anybody here actually at Heysel?
   
   Reply
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   Greg B on 31 May 2013 at 1:00 pm
   Great article, if you want to read more indepth articles on someone who was actually there visit:
   http://tomkinstimes.com/2013/05/heysel-25-years-on-book-extract/
   extracts from Chris Rowlands book From Where I Was Standing
   Shocking and accurate.
   
   Reply
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   sam on 6 June 2013 at 12:09 am
   Having read this and an article by Tony Evans (which this seems to draw from) it seems to contrast with the article from TTT above which largely focuses away from the fans and points to the authorities. There seems to have been many factors involved and Liverpool fans do need to accept their share of responsibility. All I remember of the game was being allowed to stay up especially, to watch it on TV and being shocked at what I saw. I do recall a massive banner with “Reds animals” written on it though.
   
   Reply
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   kevin brodie on 12 April 2014 at 3:40 pm
   I was at Heysel. Everyone was to blame. UEFA, organizers, stewards, police, LFC fans, Juve Fans.
   I was in section Z. Never handed in my ticket.
   
   Kevin
   
   Reply
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     leonardo cirillo on 3 June 2014 at 1:09 am
     Ciao, scrivo dall’Italia. Hai ragione a dire che quella tragica serata erano tutti da biasimare. Tutti quanti non avrebbero potuto far di peggio. A me non è neanche piaciuta l’esultanza finale della mia Juventus.
     Non ero allo stadio (per fortuna). Adesso quando penso a Liverpool mi si associano due idee molto contrastanti: i Beatles e l’Heysel.
     Dopo quell’assurdo evento le istituzioni inglesi hanno messo le cose a posto negli stadi, mentre da noi in Italia …
     Personalmente quella coppa la considero solo una amara statistica, e penso che nessuno sano di mente la possa associare ad una vittoria dell’una o ad una sconfitta dell’altra squadra.
     Mi piacerebbe l’UEFA tolga dalle statistiche la Juve Campione d’Europa 1985-. Potrebbe essere la più bella azione di Michel Platini …..
     
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       Denis on 28 April 2016 at 4:25 pm
       Grazie per aver il tempo di rispondere e di procedere a tali commenti riflessivo.
       
       Reply
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   AnnaShmee on 16 April 2014 at 1:42 pm
   An excellent, thoughtful and honest piece of writing. As a blue born after Heysel I’ve never really known the truth of what occurred that night and it has become a taboo and something you feel scared to bring up as we all want to come together in support of Hillsbrough and show a merseyside united.Very sad to think 39 families must be feeling very let down by all parties involved.
   
   Reply
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   PorcoRosso_1878 on 20 April 2014 at 9:43 pm
   Well done Oliver, a truthful and painful piece of reading on a dark chapter of football
   
   Reply
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    Terry Smith on 29 May 2014 at 5:13 pm
    I am proud of the support Evertonians have offered across the Park and to the innocent families who have carried the awful burden and indescribable pain of Hillsborough. We don’t need reciprocation but the lack of it undermines Liverpool’s great history.
    
    I originally felt dismayed at Everton’s forced European withdrawal and eventual decimation juxtaposed with Liverpool’s fortune.
    
    But I have always felt Liverpool FC’s limited support and shirking from the truth of Heysel a disgrace. There is an annual indication and vindication of such hypocrisy every time the Kop allows the ‘Bucharest 1986’ flag to proudly fly. It’s condemnation not condonement would be a start……
    
    Reply
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    Jon on 29 May 2014 at 7:19 pm
    Thanks for this sensitive, balanced and honest article. I was there and despite some expressions of sorrow, regret and portion of responsibility, I don’t feel these have made their way into the public consciousness. Presumably even less so in Turin. Maybe that’s as much the fault of the media as us, but can’t help feeling that we, through fans groups and forums, could express such feelings with more vigour and intent. That has always saddened me. We appear to have done great things linking up with other fans abroad, the liaisons with Borrusia and the Gate 21 supporters group being great examples, but guess Juve has been a bit nervy to approach as outlined in the article. I recognise I can do my bit as an individual like going to Juve forums as suggested (thanks) but gestures through large groups would be a more powerful message. There is an opportunity albeit a further year down the line next May on the unbelievably 30th anniversary…… I really hope we mobilise to do something’s genuine and large.
    
    Reply
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    Bill on 29 May 2014 at 7:53 pm
    The seeds of Heysel were sown 12 months earlier in Rome when Liverpool fans were subjected to vicious attacks by Italians with no intervention from the Italian police, more than 40 liverpool fans were seriously injured (mostly stabbings) yet UEFA took no action against Roma. Little wonder then that 12 months later at Heysel Liverpool fans were packed cheek by jowl with Juventus fans trouble was bound to occur. This is no excuse for what happened that night but it does explain why a clubs fans with 21 years of spotless fans behaviour suddenly changed that night.
    
    Reply
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    Mark Chiappino on 29 May 2014 at 8:52 pm
    As a British 17 year old Juve fan, I travelled to Heysel on the Liverpool train/ferry and stood on the terraces with the Livetpool fans. Only a few hundred caused the trouble that led to the deaths, Uefa were partly culpable for the stadium choice, ticket allocation and the stadium authorities for the pathetic segregation of fans & policing.
    This is a good, well reasoned article, not afraid to pull its punches. It’s weird that a tragedy like this, at a televised showcase final is so under-reported and unexamined.
    I shall never forget it, nor the shock and sadness I saw on the faces of real Liverpool fans as we travelled home in the night and the news trickled in of what had happened.
    Shades of ’89 in the pre mobile phone era, nor shall I forget my Dad telling me of the hours he spent on the phone to a hospital in Brussels as they read out a list of the names of the dead & injured.
    
    I came home that day, a changed person, and hated football for a while. But you can’t hate the beautiful game forever and in 96 I travelled again, to Rome this time, and saw Juve lift the trophy in joyous circumstances. I cried in the Olimpico that night, for Juve, for me, and for the 39.
    
    Reply
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    richard boyce on 30 May 2014 at 11:55 am
    Although I was not present at Heysel,I had the misfortune to be on the ostende ferry with “fans “travelling to Heysel.I amongst many were subjected to some of the worst behaviour I have ever witnessed on a cross channel ferry.Many innocent holiday makers,many with children had their luggage stolen/robbed and then throw overboard.The ship itself was trashed and a trail of destruction left behind,this continued on the train to Brussels(I was travelling to cologne).It was also very apparent that a sgnificant proportion of the travelling fans were from other football clubs and were travelling purely for the mayhem and violence,which seems to have been the norm in Europe for English football fans at this time.Heysel was the personification of all that was wrong with English football in the eighties.
    
    Reply
15. Rich on 30 May 2014 at 12:36 pm
    It should be noted that Liverpool did not serve the sixth year of the ban, and were allowed back in to European competition after 5 years, denying Crystal Palace a first campaign.
    
    Reply
16. Peter Neall on 2 June 2014 at 3:43 pm
    I have regularly commemorated the Heysel disaster, in Anfield, Brussels twice and Turin once in the past five years; to specifically mourn and honour the dead as we do here for Hillsborough. The experience is very different.
    
    At Anfield I originally had to search for the plaque, asking security staff, the museum and the stadium tour folk before a player who was there finally took me to it. Since then I have left shirts, scarves, flowers and poems in honour of the deceased and also of both clubs. There is nowhere really to leave such mementos although they have always been respected. The location on the edge of the car park is in my view disrespectful but better than nothing. But it is not honoured.
    
    At Heysel stadium, although that is not what it is now known as in Brussels, I was pointed to a memorial, a similar sort of size and style to the Anfield one, quite high in the left hand side of the stadium as you face the grand entrance. It is difficult to find by accident! Almost all the emphasis in and around the place and the stadium is on the fact that the stadium of the tragedy has been completely rebuilt, renamed and sanitised and please don’t mention the tragedy as things have changed.
    
    There was nowhere to leave flowers, memories or prayers. The ones I left one evening at around 8pm were gone the next morning before 8am.
    
    At my visit last year I met a Juve supporter at the ground. He and I both had our scarves on, we neither spoke the others language but we exchanged scarves, embraced and cried together. It was a moving moment of real reconciliation.
    
    In Turin I asked at the tourist office about any memorial and was sent to the new ground on the edge of town. When I asked at the stadium tour office and at the Juve museum where the memorial was nobody knew. It took ten minutes before they found out, and then asked me to pay the full museum fee to go in to pay my respects. The memorial is a tall plastic column with the names engraved inside it and a very short piece in Italian. It is in a place where there is a continuous recording of singing and shouting at the Juve success and is in such a place that most folk just go straight by it. In the reports of the game there dis no mention of the disaster, just that penalty! It is an unwanted corner of history. I was given some very funny looks as I paid my respects in silent prayer, very different from the other supporters, most of whom were too young to really appreciate what I might have been doing there.
    
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    Schwarzie Long on 15 April 2015 at 1:19 pm
    As someone who attended Heysel with my dad, there are one or two omissions in Oliver’s wonderful piece. It does not convey what happened ‘on the ground’ at Heysel. I was only 14 years old then, but I will always remember being sprayed with CS gas by someone who tapped on our taxi window, as we thought, to ask directions. I remember being waved into the stadium by the police without being asked to show our tickets, and at a time when Liverpool were usually the only English club in Europe, I remember being on the ferry to France, with people wearing Liverpool scarves, but with tee shirts bearing the name of one or two other English teams underneath, so John Smith was right about that. I guess that was the only chance many English football hooligans had to travel abroad to cause mayhem, as their teams didn’t provide them with that opportunity back then. It was a sad day for our club, and I will never forget the fans that died then, but I was there, as a boy, and it’s something that will remain with me forever.
    
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      aao on 18 March 2016 at 9:38 pm
      Talking bollocks….
      
      Reply
      • John Jones on 27 April 2016 at 7:19 am
        Ah the intellect of football fans
        
        Reply
18. Courtney on 15 April 2016 at 9:40 am
    On the anniversary of the day of the Hillsborough disaster, you always have somebody throw in “well what about paying respect for the 39 that Liverpool Fans murdered”. It makes my blood boil, as it just completely irrelevant on the 15th April, our respects are paid every year on May 30th.
    
    This got me thinking, as I am only 23 myself, to read into the Heysel disaster a bit more as it isn’t covered widely by the media at all and you don’t really hear about it until that day in May arrives. I found this article very informative and brilliantly written, as well as the comments (apart from that last one)!
    
    Thank you for writing this piece about like you say, such a taboo subject. I think more people need to read it!!
    
    Reply
19. Brian Tierney on 2 May 2016 at 7:38 am
    From ”The good people of Liverpool”, how could we ever express our sorrow for what we did @ Heysel ? And what good would it do ? Their are bad people in every city and all we can do is apologise.
    
    Reply
20. Sarah Jay on 29 May 2016 at 5:43 pm
    Thank you for this article. I was not there, but have some strong memories of that evening. I was off school sick, but my best friend was allowed to come over and watch the game with me. I too recall seeing that ‘Reds Animals’ banner, and also seeing fans, apparently of both sides, hanging off the fencing at the front of the terraces, trying to pull it down.
    For a long time, with so little other information, those images allowed me to let myself believe the poor fan behaviour was from both sides and the tragedy could just as easily have befallen Liverpool fans.
    A few years ago I read a blog by a LFC fan who was present, and described with searing honesty the attitude among a section of fans (himself included), looking for revenge for the previous year, or just for a good fight. That burst my happy, complacent little bubble.
    As everyone on this page acknowledges, it has remained a very uncomfortable topic to raise, so thanks again for this balanced and enlightening piece.
    
    Reply
21. Billy Merritt on 30 May 2016 at 11:58 am
    I was in Rome the year before, it was a very hostile journey, I remember the scene as we entered Rome of kids in a playground shouting abuse at us and hurling missiles at the coach. When we arrived myself and a mate got on a tram to the Vatican and was told by a Roma fan that if they won the game we would be invited to the biggest party party ever, if they lost he advised us to get of Rome quickly or we would be seriously hurt. After leaving the Vatican we went for a pint in a nearby bar, there appeared to be good banter with some Roma fans but then armed Police arrived and started pointing guns towards Liverpool fans, me and my mate gave it toes and hid in the bog inside the bar. After it went quiet we headed towards the ground only to be chased by a large mob throwing bottles and stones at us, luckily we bumped into older Liverpool fans who helped us to safety.
    
    After the game we headed towards our coach, Roma fans were everywhere trying to pick off Liverpool supporters, I remember there was very little protection from the Police. We boarded the coach and there was glass everywhere as most of the windows had been smashed. The coach driver advised us to lie on top of each other in the isle to protect us from missiles being thrown through the broken windows as we left the city. Supporters told similar stories on the way home, some had been slashed on the arse and had spent time in hospital.
    
    I had experienced some scary away days in the 80’s but not on this scale, I wasn’t arsed that we had won a European Cup, I just wanted to get home safe.
    
    As was stated in this article Heysel was waiting to happen, it’s a pity the authorities did not learn from what happened in Rome and other previous games to put a strategy in place to prevent the inevitable.
    
    Reply
22. Andy Dunn on 20 December 2016 at 4:18 pm
    after a particularly nasty derby with recriminations flying and trying to educate people to what happened, I found your article. Much kudos to you fair and balanced I wish more Liverpool fans would read it and not use the clubs sanitized version, believe the seeds for this disaster were sown the previous year.
    
    Reply
23. Paul J on 30 December 2017 at 7:39 pm
    I am a Chelsea fan who has been going to games for over 50 years now and I vividly remember the Liverpool chairman of the time, blaming Chelsea fans for causing the violence. This is the real reason why the lovable scallys are hated at Stamford Bridge. My brother-in-law is a loyal Liverpool fan who was at Heysel and even he admits that the charge by the Liverpool fans was as a direct result of the appalling treatment him and others received in Rome. To this day neither of us will attend a Chelsea v Liverpool match. He is still scarred by what he witnessed that night.
    
    Reply
24. Rachelle on 31 December 2017 at 7:29 am
    I have no words besides thank you. Remarkable piece.
    
    Reply
25. Joginder Paul on 11 May 2019 at 1:10 am
    Both Liverpool and Juventus as a mark of respect for the victims should do some
    sort of ceremonial blessing, like a minutes silence.
    As it is apologetic, on aniverserys.
    
    The people that were found guilty of manslaughter do not represent the true values of Liverpool football club.
    
    Reply
26. Dimmers on 18 May 2019 at 11:42 pm
    Well written spot on comments too
    
    Reply
27. Clint Steele on 29 June 2020 at 6:40 pm
    As a Chelsea season ticket holder for many years, I witnessed the Heysel disaster unfold in front of me on television. The fact is and still is, that the then Liverpool FC board blamed my club, along with West Ham and Millwall for the disaster at Heysel and to this day they have never issued an apology of any sort whatsoever. This was a blatant deflection of the truth and is the reason that most Chelsea fans despise Liverpool more than any other. Not one person arrested or charged came from the London area and why would they. Liverpool were resented by most other clubs during that period, because they had the massive financial advantage compared to any other European club. For almost 20 years they were totally financially boosted by Littlewoods Pools, which made it impossible for any other club in Europe to compete with them. The biased Liverpool loving media, ignore this fact of how they continually `bought` their success over two decades.
    While in relation to Heysel, if any other club had been responsible for the deaths of so many Juventus supporters, it would used as a stick to use against them at every opportunity, as opposed to just pretend it never happened. Liverpool are a great club, but their fans have always been a disgrace, we see it time and time again, they have no respect for any other club or its supporters and as we have all just seen after their first Premier league win in 30 years, nothing changes in the violence and destruction which was apparent in and around the City centre.
    
    Reply
28. Chibi on 17 July 2020 at 9:54 am
    As you are a Chelsea fan, to say Liverpool “bought” their success, I think it’s case of the pot calling the kettle when Chelsea have been bankrolled by the Russians for a number of years. I could say Chelsea practically bought their champions League and Premier League successes. But both Liverpool and Chelsea worked hard to attract the backing in the first place. Both are great clubs. Yes it was wrong for Robinson to point the finger of blame towards fans of Chelsea with regards to Heysel, I can understand your anger at that. I think there needs to be a full disclosure and a written in depth report to help the football community understand the circumstances surrounding that awful night, and that’s not to excuse any of the LFC fans that were found responsible. The true supporters like myself are equally appalled as you are at what happened at Heysel, and any act of violence for that matter, and yes we’ve had a handful of idiots causing trouble which has let the club and it’s supporters down, like the recent celebration night with a handful of melon heads spoiling it in the city centre, I don’t recall any trouble when we won Ole Big Ears last season or when over 2,500 gathered to cheer the team after Istanbul. Unfortunately, all clubs have had their hooligan element over the years, and I feel to lump all of our fans together as a “disgrace” is unfair and uncalled for.
    
    Reply
29. Chibi on 18 July 2020 at 8:05 pm
    Sorry, with regards to the above comment it was more 250,000+ that lined the streets to welcome the team home, still no reports of any trouble though.
    
    Reply
30. Gareth Fieldstead on 25 October 2020 at 5:52 pm
    Clutching at straws there headhunter. To suggest Liverpool bought the title in the 70s and 80s is utter rubbish. Huge success at home and abroad allowed Liverpool to compete for top players. What you also forget is the fact that Liverpool had a tremendous knack of buying players when relevant unknowns and creating top class footballers. Hansen, Rush, NIcol, Whelan, Beglin to name a few cost minimal fees yet won numerous trophies. Man Utd and the likes of Notts Forest were the clubs that spent huge amounts.
    As for Heysel, if you look at the footage barely a fight took place. No wonder John Smith was horrified and had difficulty believing a set of fans with no history of hooliganism could be partly responsible. Prior to Heysel the violence that season was at Millwall, Chelsea, West Ham and Leeds. Liverpool or my club Everton did not get a mention by the press/television when it came to the antics of numerous hooligan “firms”
    
    Reply
31. Robert J Salter on 10 November 2021 at 10:35 pm
    @ Schwarzie Long, if you were in a taxi, why would you be asking for directions. Something fishy about your story.
    
    Reply

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International Business Times UK
UK
Heysel and Hillsborough: English football has a selective memory when it comes to tragedy
BY GARETH PLATT ON 5/29/15 AT 11:47 AM
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Every year, the round of Premier League fixtures which falls closest to 15 April is preceded by a minute's silence at every ground, for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster. Each of the main newspapers publishes an interview with someone who survived, along with an op-ed about the quest for justice. The internet is inundated with blogs and forum posts from fans of all clubs, showing solidarity with Liverpool and decrying the gross negligence of South Yorkshire police.

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This is all entirely justified. Hillsborough was a horrific and wholly avoidable tragedy, precipitated by the popular belief that football fans were animals who should be herded into pens like pigs or sheep. The fact that the victims' families had to wait 23 years for justice was abhorrent, proof that the British establishment viewed Liverpudlians in a cruelly pejorative fashion, best summed up in Boris Johnson's 2004 article which claimed Liverpool was a self-pity city, hooked on grief and welfare.

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Refugees welcome in Germany


https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/germany-2-men-charged-in-killing-of-their-sister-1.5720945

 

fancy thinking she could go to another country and assimilate.

I bet her brothers complained that she wasn't trying to change Germany into a ****hole like where they came from.

 

Why did the brothers choose to live in the west?

"The indictment states that the men wanted to punish their sister "for her Western-oriented way of life, which did not correspond to their archaic ideas of honor and morals and their image of women," prosecutors said in a statement."

 

To try to change it into a ****hole

 

Islam is archaic and backwards.