From 1950s fisticuffs to Premier League protests; Author John Williams discusses how fan culture has evolved in Liverpool in the Post-War era.

Byline: CHRISTOPHER BEESLEY

MISTY-EYED romantics who wax lyrical about the good old days when Merseyside supposedly enjoyed a 'friendly derby' will be shocked to hear about hooliganism at a Liverpool-Everton game way back in 1950.

Far removed from the traditional image of attending matches in football's 'golden age' of Brylcreem, enormous shorts, rattles and Bovril, author John Williams has discovered reports of trouble involving supporters of the two clubs when they clashed in the FA Cup semi-final 59 years ago.

Although he stresses that fans were generally well-behaved at this time, football in the city was not immune to trouble.

Williams said: "In the main, football supporters cared more about each other in the post-war era. In the country as a whole there was an attitude of sharing and rebuilding.

"Considering the huge crowds attending many matches in grounds that were none too impressive it's perhaps surprising there were relatively few football stadium disasters at the time.

"People knew how to behave in the ground as they realised everybody had to get home and that's something we lost a bit in later years.

"There are numerous examples of people leaving games at Liverpool before the match had even started. They realised that the terrace was already packed and concerned about the level of crushing.

"This anxiety came mostly from the fans not the clubs but it wasn't an isolated problem and happened both at Anfield and other grounds."

Despite this kind of 'selfpolicing' by supporters at large, Williams has unearthed evidence of various pockets of trouble involving Merseyside fans in the 1950s.

He said: "There are reports of both Liverpool and Everton supporters causing problems before the 1950 FA Cup semi-final between them at Maine Road.

"This was at a time long before hooliganism was reported nationally but there are accounts of rival fans fighting outside the ground and a Mancunian bus conductor being beaten up."

Immediately before Bill Shankly arrived at Anfield to transform Liverpool into an allconquering powerhouse, the club endured an eight-year spell in the Second Division between 1954-62 and Williams reveals that there were various accounts of fan trouble during this period.

He said: "There is something of a hidden history of hooliganism much earlier than you might expect, particularly with Liverpool during their Second Division days when as a big club they'd be visiting some smaller grounds and there were some quite serious incidents."

The advent of pop/youth culture in 1960s Britain was of course driven from Liverpool by The Beatles and other Merseybeat groups and this had a dramatic effect inside football grounds.

Williams said: "There was a rise in the phenomenon of 'home ends' like the Kop and Gwladys Street where the younger people stood separetly to their older counterparts for the first time.

"While there had been chanting at grounds for many years - Anfield had chants for Elisha Scott in the 1920s - coordinating singing was really coming in for the first time.

"This meant that there was a more carnival-like atmosphere at matches but also led to less selfpolicing, particularly at away matches where there was a rising concern about the groups of young men travelling together away from their elders.

"However, there was a more glamorised image of the game through the media in the 60s and Liverpool was at the very centre of that.

"Bill Shankly was a very charismatic figure who behaved like something of a celebrity within a football context while the players of both Everton and Liverpool enjoyed the glamour of being seen with the city's pop stars."

Darker days lay ahead though in the 1970s & 80s as economic decline coincided with the rise of football hooliganism.

Williams said: "As times became harder, supporting your club in Europe became an 'alternative career' for many young men from Merseyside.

"Lots of bright, sharp, lads felt that the city offered no prospects for them but following their club in Europe - particularly Liverpool who were successful during this period - shaped a certain identity for them.

"They didn't have to work as such but could lay their hands on rail tickets and 'live off the land' as it were."

The two major football disasters involving Liverpool FC during the 1980s brought all this to an abrupt halt though.

Williams said: "The changes came about as a combination of both Heysel and Hillsborough.

"Heysel really shocked the people of Liverpool who had never identified their supporters with that kind of behaviour.

"There had always been plenty of stealing on these trips and it's not like there wasn't any trouble but destroying grounds and fighting in the stadium was seen as the preserve of the likes of Chelsea, West Ham and Leeds, teams whose supporters seemingly had less respect for the image of the game."

He added: "Hillsborough changed the entire football culture in this country.

"We realised what we'd done to try and deal with hooliganism was much more dangerous than hooliganism itself.

"Lord Justice Taylor then produced his report, the style of which nobody really expected.

"Normally the men who conducted these inquiries were just 'poodles' to the Goverment but Taylor's liberal approach ended Mrs Thatcher's plans for a fan ID scheme."

What followed was nothing short of a revolution in terms of how football was viewed and fans viewed football.

Williams said: "The game moved in a new direction towards making attending games a comfortable experience, satellite television was in crisis. Sky and the Premier League fell into each other's arms.

"However, I don't think these changes have really been embraced by the Merseyside clubs who keep looking back to the pre-Premier League era.

"Both Liverpool and Everton were successful in the years just prior to the changes but neither has won the Premier League and global investment has made clubs like Chelsea who had previously been unattractive into major forces."

While their teams have failed to reach the very top of the domestic game, disgruntled supporters on Merseyside have become politically active to a certain extent, forming their own fan pressure groups such as The Spirit of Shankly and Keep Everton In Our City.

Williams said: "There had never previously been much democratic involvement of supporters at Liverpool.

"In the 1950s when the club was struggling it was run by a small group of directors who kept complaints out of the public eye while later on the club were doing so well everyone just assumed it was being run brilliantly.

"Now there is the question of how both clubs in the city are going to compete. Liverpool who have gone down the route of getting international investors but have come unstuck somewhat as they don't seem to be doing what they'd promised to do.

"Across Stanley Park nobody can seriously justify Goodison as a stadium which is still suitable for a club of Everton's ambitions so the spectre of a shared stadium continues to loom.

"Although it would seemingly be a sensible economic decision, it is not part of the British culture."

With fans locked into season tickets and foreign football tourists buying up large chunks of tickets, particularly at Anfield, has left many local fans recreating their matchday rituals away from the stadium.

Williams said: "Football is at a really interesting moment.

"You have groups of men trying to carry on the traditions of the game in the pub rather than at the ground because of their exclusion from attending matches.

"When I was a kid there was only one live game on television each year - the FA Cup final - now the fans can watch every single match on TV somewhere. In some respects people have been forced out but in others they have been opened up."

JOHN WiLLIAMS, a football historian and Liverpool fan based at the University of Leicester, has published more than a dozen books on football and his latest Football Nation: Stories from 60 years of the Game is written alongside Andrew Ward.

A rich portrait of English football from the end of the Second World War to the present, Football Nation traces the story of the game from a time when players travelled to the match with fans to the 21st Century global phenomenon that is the Premier League with its links to satellite television, celebrity lifestyles and extreme wealth.

As its title suggests, Football National deals with these dramatic changes largely from a broader perspective but with chapters on 'The coming of the Kop choirs' in the 1960s and impact of Heysel and Hillsborough in the 1980s, there is plenty of more specific interest for Liverpool fans.

* FOOTBALL NATION is published by Bloomsbury and is on sale now priced at pounds 20.

CAPTION(S):

The huge crowds in the Post-War era who watched Billy Liddell (left) and Dave Hickson (right) were generally self-policed by fans A group of young Everton fans with Muhammad Ali in 1966 Football 'celebrity' Bill Shankly salutes the Kop at Anfield Contrasting modern day protests over stadium plans from 'Spirit of Shankly' (left) and Keep Everton In Our City (right) Everton and Liverpool's European finals of 1985 marked an end of an era for travelling fans after the events of Heysel (right)