‘We are Not English, We Are Scouse’ – Why Liverpool boo the anthem

Paul Amann felt relaxed as he sat in Anfield waiting for a meeting with Jürgen Klopp. Balmy late August, not long after the opening game of the 2021-2022 Premier League season away to Norwich.

Liverpool had ransacked their hosts at Carrow Road, winning 3-0. But the headlines focused on a chant sung by a vocal minority of visiting supporters at Norwich’s Billy Gilmour, who, because he was on loan from Chelsea and was derided as a “rent boy”.

Since Amann established Kop Outs – an LGBT support group for Liverpool supporters – in 2016 contact with the community wing of the football club was regular and progressive. The club arranged a meeting to discuss the troubling chant.

As an activist, Amann is practiced in meeting senior figures. So he was clear in his mind about what he wanted to say to the Liverpool manager. The door opened.

“I was thrown out of my stride because up pops Virgil van Dijk to pass on his and the team’s solidarity and respect,” he laughs. “And Jürgen himself came in then and was lovely and really listening and asked pertinent questions to test his own understanding.

“He clearly got why we wanted people to stop chanting that chant. But it gets better! After that, Jordan ‘Hendo’ came in – my absolute hero. That’s when I turned into a fanboy.”

Behind the mirth is a deeply solemn message of the ties between club and people. Liverpool edged Chelsea out of a FA Cup final in Wembley last Saturday after a gripping penalty shootout, repeating the manner of their League Cup win over the same opposition.

But it was the chorus of sustained boos during the ceremonial teams meet-and-greet with England’s prince William and through the rendition of God Save The Queen which was the source of chattering and scolding afterwards, in the house of commons in London and in the newspaper columns.

Klopp, when asked about the issue, offered a measured response, pointing out that there must be a reason for the protest.

Those chanting it may not be conscious of the history but the driving forces for their behaviour can be traced back down many decades

“I know our people that well that they wouldn’t do it if there was no reason for it. And I’m not here surely not long enough to understand the reason for it, is for sure something historical and that’s a question you could answer better than I could ever.”

The Telegraph then reported that British prime minster Boris Johnson “slaps down” Klopp for defending the booing. In a livid piece published in the London Independent this week, the writer Tony Evans outlined the rationale and energy behind the crowd hostility towards the anthem and an anti-monarchical stance: that it was the latest in Liverpool’s on-going protest against England’s prevailing class system and the establishment indifference.

Insult

“What does this have to do with football?” he wrote in the piece. “A lot. The word “Scouse” is an insult that was reappropriated by those it was used against. In the poorest areas of Liverpool, a century ago, the malnourished residents – who were children of immigrants and who mainly identified as Irish – relied on soup kitchens and cheap street vendors for food. What they were served was ‘Scouse’, a watery stew.

“Scouser was a pejorative term used to mock the poorest. When “Feed the Scousers” echoes around stadiums it is expressing a deep folk memory that is imbued with anti-migrant and anti-Irish sentiment. Those chanting it may not be conscious of the history but the driving forces for their behaviour can be traced back down many decades.

Nowhere else is poverty sneered at in this way by outsiders. No one sings “Feed the Geordies” or “Feed the Mancs” even though other places have much more deprived areas.”

There’s a bleakness behind the chant- nothing new in football. But the escalating inflation and economic crisis that is slowly strangling Brexit Britain, with food costs lurching into unprecedented territory, has sharpened its relevance.

John Grant, who lectures in history and politics at Liverpool Hope is a regular at Anfield and feels the atmosphere at games this season has been redolent of the early 1980s.

That intensity of emotion, combined with the fabled pursuit of the quadruple (the Premier League, the FA Cup, the Champions League and the League Cup), is what has made this season indelible in his mind. Irrespective of whether his team adds to their haul, 2022 is a season to remember.

“And I’ll tell you why. I have never known the Liverpool crowd to be as political as they have been over the past few seasons,” he says. “There is a beautiful banner that only comes out now and then. It goes near enough end to end in the Kop and it reads We are Not English, We Are Scouse. And that sensibility is tied in with booing the monarchy and the national anthem.

“You can hear them booing the monarchy in 1986 when Liverpool played Everton in the Cup final. It is the sense of entitlement they are booing. And it ties in with social and injustice and the cost-of-living crisis that is going on across the country right now. Liverpool is just more vocal than other cities.

“I’m not the most high-octane political person but I do have a strong sense of injustice. And when you hear some of the conversations about, if you don’t have enough money, go get another job. The chancellor of the exchequer (Rishi Sunak) is a nigh on millionaire and his wife doesn’t declare all her taxes. It stinks, really.”

Humour

Grant is a Hope boy; there’s a photo of him somewhere in his pram waiting with his mother in the line for tickets to see the team play Real Madrid in the 1965 European Cup. He is currently researching a fanzine published in the early 1980s called The End.