1

LIVERPOOL’S FOOTBALL TEAMS

THE FIRST FOOTBALL CLUB IN LIVERPOOL

Liverpool Football Club is not, in fact, the first football club in the city. This is Everton, originally attached
to the local English Methodist congregation. They built a chapel (St. Domingo Methodist Church) in the
Liverpool area and, concerned that the young men of the congregation had little to occupy their free
time productively, Reverend B.S. Chambers established a cricket team. However, this is only a summer
sport, and so he needed a pastime for other seasons as well. And so St. Domingo FC was formed in 1878.
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This generated a lot of interest from people outside the parish and so a public meeting was held in the
Queen’s Head Hotel in Village Street, close to the old Everton Toffee Shop. The meeting agreed to
change the team name to Everton Football Club, after the surrounding district. Eventually, after playing
in different areas, in 1884 they moved to the site of the present Anfield stadium!

The club’s landlord was John Houlding, a local brewer and owner of the nearby Sandon Hotel, who
decided to put up the rent for the field. There was a serious boardroom row that reached fever pitch at
the start of 1892. This resulted in a split within the board, the team and the supporters.

Everton FC moved to the north of Stanley Park, which was eventually renamed Goodison Park.
Houlding’s breakaway football team took the name Liverpool Football Club.

ANFIELD

The splinter group stayed at the Anfield ground. Before dressing rooms were built at their nearby
playing field, the players would change into their kit at the pub, Houlding’s Sandon, and then walk down
Oakfield Road to play their matches at the team pitch.

In 1904, the first supporter’s terrace was built. The editor of Liverpool’s Echo described it as being like
Spion Kop. This was the Afrikaans name, meaning ‘spy hill’ or ‘look-out’, of a hill near Ladysmith in South
Africa. In 1900, this was the scene of a battle in the Boer War, where many Scousers died in the
engagement. In 1929, the Anfield ground was improved and the Kop was completely rebuilt.

Arguably, the most famous manager of LFC was Bill Shanky (1913-1981), who was with the club from
1959 to 1974. He once said, “We have the two best teams on Merseyside, Liverpool and Liverpool
Reserves”. He also said,
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“Some people believe football is a

matter of life and death. I’m very
disappointed with that attitude. I
can assure you, it is much, much
more important than that!”

The anthem of the club is ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the finale song
from the Rogers’ and Hammerstein musical ‘Carousel’. It tells of
overcoming adversity through the support of others, and of fighting When you walk through a storm
together against the odds. It became the Liverpool FC and Kop Anthem Hold your head up high
in 1963, after local pop group ‘Gerry and the Peacemakers’ gained a And don't be afraid of the dark
No 1 hit with the song. When Liverpool supporters (the ‘Kop Choir’)
sing this in unison, it is a powerful, moving, and poignant experience, At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
especially after the Hillsborough Disaster.
And the sweet silver song of the lark

The Hillsborough disaster was an Walk on through the wind

incident that occurred on 15 April Walk on through the rain
1989 at the Hillsborough Stadium in Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Sheffield, England, during the FA Cup
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
semi-final match between Liverpool
And you'll never walk alone
and Nottingham Forest football clubs.
You'll never walk alone
The crush resulted in the deaths of 96
people and injuries to 766 others. When you walk through a storm
The incident has since been blamed Hold your head up high
primarily on the police. The incident And don't be afraid of the dark
remains the worst stadium-related
disaster in British history and one of At the end of the storm
the world's worst football disasters. Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark
(from wikepedia)

Walk on through the wind

Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on walk on with hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk

You'll never walk

You'll never walk alone.
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A LITERARY INTERLUDE: WHAT IS FOOTBALL ALL ABOUT ACCORDING TO TERRY PRATCHETT IN HIS
NOVEL UNSEEN ACADEMICALS (2010).

True to his style, in this novel Pratchett tries to make sense of football as a group of outsiders (to the
game) find themselves either trapped in ‘the Shove’ (or the crowds that attend football games and the
‘spirit’ that takes over them as they begin to enjoy the game) or are forced to create a football team
following the orders of Ankmorpork’s (a representative of any contemporary British city) tyrant, Lord
Vetinari, who thinks the best way to channel the crowds in times of crisis is to give them some sort of
diversion. In this case, these reluctant team managers are the Wizards (read professors) of UU (Unseen
University), who as ‘nobs’ (posh people out of touch with reality) do not get the gist of what football is
about.

Here come some quotes from the novel:

‘I don’t think you can be a real Morporkian an’ not shout for your team,’ was
the next piece of worn-out folk wisdom from Juliet. (68)

‘In short,’ Vetinari continued, still talking to the air, ‘I am intending to give
my blessing to the game of football, in the hope that its excesses can be
more carefully controlled.’ (75)

‘... And, indeed, the Poor Boys’ Fun has some remarkable traditions of its
own, which some might find it worthwhile exploring. Let me be frank,
Mustrum. I cannot enforce a mere personal dislike against public pressure.
Well, I can, strictly speaking, but not without going to ridiculous and indeed
tyrannical lengths. Over a game? I think not. So ... as things stand, we find
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teams of burly men pushing and shoving and kicking and biting in the faint
hope, it seems to me, of propelling some wretched object at some distant
goal. I have no problem with them trying to kill one another, which has little
in the way of a downside, but it has now become so popular once more than
property is being damaged, and that cannot be tolerated. There have been
comments in the Times. No, what the wise man cannot change he must
channel. ... This afternoon I shall be speaking to the editor of the Times. ...
I’m sure he will welcome the fact that I am asking the university to tame the
demon foot-the-ball, and that you have, after careful thought, agreed to the
task.’ (76-77)

‘Gentlemen,’ [Mustrum Ridcully, the arch-chancellor of UU] said gravely.

‘We must partake of the game of the people – from whom, I might add, we
derive. Has any of us, in the last few decades, even seen the game being
played? I thought not. We should get outside more. Now, I’m not asking to
do this for me, or even for the hundreds of people who work to provide us
with a life in which discomfort so seldom rears its head. ... We are, fellow
wizards, the city’s last line of defence against all the horrors that can be
thrown against it.’ (87)

Nutt looked doubtfully at a long, a very long scarf in pink and green and a
large yellow woolly hat with a pink bobble on it. ... ‘Er ... pink?’ said Nutt
doubtfully, holding up the scarf. ... Well, isn’t football a rough man’s game?
Whereas pink, if you will excuse me, is rather a ... female colour? ... Ah, I
think I have it. The pink proclaims an almost belligerent masculinity, saying
as it does: I am so masculine I can afford to tempt you to question it, giving
me the opportunity to proclaim it anew by doing violence to you in
response.’ (94-95)

People were pouring in from either end and also from a couple of alleyways.
Mostly they were male – extremely so. The women fell into two categories:
those who had been tugged there by the ties of blood or prospective
matrimony (after which they could stop pretending that this bloody mess
was in any way engrossing), and a number of elderly women of a ‘Sweet old
lady’ construction, who bawled indiscriminately, in a raising cloud of
lavender and peppermint, screams of ‘Get ‘im dahn an’ kick ‘im inna nuts!’
and similar exhortations. (105)

They were being pushed! And shoved! But it was not as unpleasant as the
words suggested. There were moderate pressures on all sides as people
poured in behind, as though the wizards were standing chest deep in the
sea, and were swaying and shifting to the slow rhythm of the tide. ... ‘But
however do we see things?’ ‘Depends on the Shove, guv. Usually people
near the action shout out.’ (107)

The day was all a mystery to Nutt, and it stayed a mystery, becoming a little
more mysterious with every passing minute. In the distance a whistle was
blown and somewhere in this moving, jostling, crushing and in most cases
drinking mob of people there was a game going on, apparently. He had to
take Trev’s word for it. There were Oos and Aahs in the distance and the
crowd ebbed and flowed in response. Trev and his chums, who called
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themselves, as far as Nutt could make out over the din, the Dimwell Massive
Pussy, took advantage of every temporary space to move nearer and nearer
to the mysterious game, holding their ground when the press went against
them and pushing hard when the eddy went their way. Push, sway, shove ...
and something in this spoke to Nutt. It came up through the soles of his feet
and the palms of his hands, and slid into his brain with a beguiling subtlety,
warming him, stripping hi away from himself and leaving him no more than
a beating part of the living, moving thing around him. A chant came past. It
had started somewhere at the other end of the game and, whatever it had
been once, it was now just four syllables of roar, from hundreds of people
and many gallons of beer. As it faded, it took the warm, belonging feeling
away with it, leaving a hoe. (114)

‘But you got to see the football, at least. Did you enjoy it?’ Nutt’s face lit up.
‘Yes. It was wonderful. The noise, the crowds, the chanting, oh the chanting!
It becomes a second blood! The unison! To not be alone! To be not just one
but one and all, of one mind and purpose!’ (165)

‘It would be true to say that brawling and mindless violence, such as
occurred yesterday afternoon, is one of the cornerstones of the sport.’ ‘A far
cry from its ancient beginnings, then,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies,
shaking his head. ‘Well, yes. I understand that in those days the losing team
was throttled. However, I suppose this would be called mindful violence that
took place with the enthusiastic consent of the entire community, or at least
that part of it that was still capable of breath.’ (176)

‘The chanting, gentlemen, appears to be another inconsequentiality at first

sight, but I have reasons to believe that it has a certain power, and we will
ignore it at our peril.’ (177)

‘So you support the same team all your life?’ ‘Well, if you move away it’s
okay to change. No one will mind much unless you go to a real enemy.’ She
looked at their puzzled expressions, sighed and went on: ‘Like Naphill United
and the Whoppers, or Dolly sisters and Dimwell Old Pals, or the Pigsty Hill
Pork Packers and the Cockbill Boars. You know?’ (181)

‘The Shove makes up the chants. They just happen. They just, like, come out
of the air. And the pies are pretty awful, that’s true, but when you’re in the
Shove, and it’s mucky weather, and the water’s coming through your coat,
and your shoes are leaking, and then you bite into your pie, and you know
that everyone else is biting into their pie, and the grease slides down your
sleeve, well, sir, I don’t have the words for it, sir, I really don’t, sir. There’s a
feeling I can’t describe, but it’s a bit like being a kid at Hogswatch, and you
can’t just buy it, sir, you can’t write it down or organize it or make it shiny or
make it tame. Sorry to speak out of turn, sirs, but that’s the long and the
short of it. You must have known it, sir. Didn’t your father ever take you to a
game?’ (183-184)

‘Capital,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It seems to me that we have a challenge.

University against university. City, as it were, against city. Warfare, as it
 7

were, without the tedious necessity of picking up all those heads and limbs
afterwards. All things must strive, gentlemen.’ (311)

Glenda looked down the length of the coach. It was half full of the kind of
people who took the overnight bus because it wasn’t very expensive; the
kind of people, in fact, who had brought their own dinner in a paper bag,
and probably not a new paper bag at that. (396)

After reading these quotes, consider the following:

 What is the social function of ‘foot-the-ball’? Consider both its positive (sense of identity,
community and class-pride at a time of globalization, mindless capitalism and urban alienation)
and its negative (herd-mentality, violence, diversion when more serious issues should be dealt
with) associations.

 Do you think football contributes to a sense of tribalism that is mostly masculine?

 Is hooliganism part of (English) youth culture? Are all young males in England drunkard vandals
with a tendency to violence?

ANOTHER LITERARY INTERLUDE: THE ENGLISH CHARACTER AS SEEN IN KAZUO ISHIGURO’S THE
REMAINS OF THE DAY (1989).

Now, consider the following. Traditionally the English character is defined as being calm, polite and
repressed. This is in fact the image that emerges from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day.

This novel is narrated by Stevens, a butler who served in Darlington Hall during the time around the
Second World War. His master, Lord Darlington, unwittingly supported the Nazi cause, a fact which led
to his demise and fall from grace. After his death, the house is sold to an American, Mr. Farraday.
Stevens continues serving as a butler but finds it difficult to understand the manners of the new
American owner, which he finds very ‘un-English’.

At the beginning of the novel, in the 1950s, Stevens is getting ready to undertake a journey for the first
time in his life and to visit Miss Kenton, a former housekeeper who left Darlington Hall when she got
married. The novel focuses on this journey but also narrates Stevens’ memories about Lord Darlington
and the old times, as well as his ideas about his role as a butler and the qualities of Englishness, which,
in his mind, are closely interrelated.

Read the following quotes:

I made the error of declaring that a former housekeeper of Darlington Hall

was resident in that region. I suppose I must have been intending to explain
to Mr Farraday how I would thus be able to explore an option which might
prove the ideal solution to our present small problems here in this house. It
was only after I had mentioned Miss Kenton that I suddenly realized how
entirely inappropriate it would be for me to continue. Not only was I unable
to be certain of Miss Kenton’s desire to rejoin the staff here, I had not, of
course, even discussed the question of additional staff with Mr Farraday
since the first preliminary meeting over a year ago. To have continued
pronouncing aloud my thoughts on the future of Darlington Hall would have
been, to say the very least, presumptuous. I suspect, then, that I paused
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rather abruptly and looked a little awkward. In any case, Mr Farraday seized
the opportunity to grin broadly at me and say without some deliberation.
‘My, my, Stevens. A lady-friend. And at your age.’
This was a most embarrassing situation, one in which Lord Darlington
would never have placed an employee. But then I do not mean to imply
anything derogatory about Mr Farraday; he is, after all, an American
gentleman and his ways are often very different. There is no question at all
that he meant any harm; but you will no doubt appreciate how
uncomfortable a situation this was for me.
‘I’d never have figured you for such a lady’s man, Stevens,’ he went on.
‘Keeps the spirit young, I guess. But then I really don’t know it’s right for me
to be helping you with such dubious assignations.’
Naturally, I felt the temptation to deny immediately and unambiguously
such motivations as my employer was imputing to me, but saw in time that
to do so would be to rise to Mr Farraday’s bait, and the situation would only
become increasingly embarrassing. I therefore continued to stand there
awkwardly, waiting for my employer to give me permission to undertake the
motoring trip.
Embarrassing as those moments were for me, I would not wish to imply
that I in any way blame Mr Farraday, who is no sense an unkind person; he
was, I am sure, merely enjoying the sort of bantering that in the United
States, no doubt, is a sign of a good, friendly understanding between
employer and employee, indulged in as a kind of affectionate sport. Indeed,
to put things into a proper perspective, I should point out that just such
bantering on my new employer’s part has characterized much of our
relationship over these months – though I must confess, I remain rather
unsure as to how I should respond. In fact, during my first days under Mr
Farraday, I was once or twice quite astounded by some of the things he
would say to me. For instance, I once had occasion to ask him if a certain
gentleman expected at the house was likely to be accompanied by his wife.
‘God help us if she does come,’ Mr Farraday replied. ‘Maybe you could
keep her off our hands, Stevens. Maybe you could take her out to one of
those stables around Mr Morgan’s farm. Keep her entertained in all that hay.
She may be just your type.’
For a moment or two, I had not an idea what my employer was saying.
Then I realized he was making some sort of joke and endeavoured to smile
appropriately, though I suspect some residue of my bewilderment, not to say
shock, remained detectable in my expression.
Over the following days, however, I came to learn not to be surprised by
such remarks from my employer, and would smile in the correct manner
whenever I detected the bantering tone in his voice. Nevertheless, I could
never be sure exactly what was required of me on these occasions. Perhaps I
was expected to laugh heartily; or indeed, reciprocate with some remark of
my own. The last possibility is one that has given me concern over these
months, and is something about which I still feel undecided. For it may well
be that in America, it is all part of what is considered good professional
service that an employee provide entertaining bantering. … But I must say
this business of bantering is not a duty I feel I can ever discharge with
enthusiasm. (14-16)
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[With reference to what Stevens describes as ‘the rolling English

countryside’] Now I am quite prepared to believe that other countries can
offer more obviously spectacular scenery. Indeed, I have seen in
encyclopaedias and the National Geographic Magazine breath-taking
photographs of sights from various corners of the globe; magnificent
canyons and waterfalls, raggedly beautiful mountains. It has never, of
course, been my privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will
nevertheless hazard this with some confidence: the English landscape at its
finest – such as I saw it this morning – possesses a quality that the
landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably
fail to possess. It is, I believe, a quality that will mark out the English
landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the
world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term ‘greatness’.
For it is true, when I stood on that high ledge this morning and viewed the
land before me, I distinctly felt that rare, yet unmistakable feeling – the
feeling that one is in the presence of greatness. We call this land of ours
Great Britain, and there may be those who believe this is somewhat
immodest practice. Yet I would venture that the landscape of our country
alone would justify the use of this lofty adjective.
And yet what precisely is this ‘greatness’? Just where, or in what, does it
lie? I am quite aware it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer
such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is
the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land
apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint.
It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and
feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such
places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am
sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly
demonstrativeness. (28-29)

And let me now posit this: ‘dignity’ has to do crucially with a butler’s ability
not to abandon the professional being he inhabits. Lesser butlers will
abandon their professional being for the private one at the least
provocation. For such persons, being a butler is like playing some
pantomime role; a small push, a slight stumble, and the façade will drop off
to reveal the actor underneath. The great butlers are great by virtue of their
ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost; they
will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming or
vexing. They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his
suit; he will not let ruffians or circumstances tear it off him in the public
gaze; he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this is
invariably when he is entirely alone. It is, as I say, a matter of ‘dignity’.
It is sometimes said that butlers only truly exist in England. Other
countries, whatever title is actually used, have only manservants. I tend to
believe this is true. Continentals are unable to be butlers because they are
as a breed incapable of the emotional restraint which only the English race is
capable of. Continentals – and by and large the Celts, as you will no doubt
agree – are as a rule unable to control themselves in moments of strong
emotion, and are thus unable to maintain a professional demeanour other
than in the least challenging of situations. If I may return to my earlier
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metaphor – you will excuse my putting it so coarsely – they are like a man
who will, at the slightest provocation, tear off his suit and his shirt and run
about screaming. In a word, ‘dignity’ is beyond such persons. We English
have an important advantage over foreigners in this respect and it is for this
reason that when you think of a great butler, he is bound, almost by
definition, to be an Englishman. (43-44)

Now you’ve read these quotes, consider the following:

 How does Stevens define the English character? Do you think Stevens’ character is conditioned by
his Englishness?

 Taking into account the next following quote, do you think Stevens’ perspective applies to all
English people?

In the summer of 1998, soccerteams from around the world converged on

France to compete for the Football World Cup. Despite some shambolic
organization by the French authorities, the tournament was judged a great
success, with untold millions sharing the excitement on live television. But
there was, of course, ‘the English problem’. The English problem is the
hooligan problem. Its most tragic expression came at the Heysel stadium, in
May 1985, when a major disturbance between Liverpool and Juventus fans
left nearly forty Italians dead on the pitch. The challenge for the French and
British police was, put crudely, to keep the hooligans from killing somebody
else. That summer, they succeeded, although not before the world had been
treated to scenes of drunken English youths throwing chairs, stones and
anything else unlucky enough to incur their hostility. By contrast, Scottish
fans were capable of drinking vast amounts and merely sleeping off the
after-effects. … In Turin in the late 1980s, the writer Bill Buford watched
with horror as a group of bloated Manchester United football fans staggered
off the aircraft that had brought them from England to watch their team
play the Italian aces, Juventus. It was not even lunchtime, yet many were so
drunk they could scarcely stand. The fans then colonized the town centre,
sitting in their tattoos in sidewalk cafés singing ‘Fuck the Pope’ over and
over again, occasionally getting up to piss in the street. And that was when
they were being well behaved, and not attacking the ‘fuckin’ eyeties’ with
sticks, knives or bottles. … Why does a minority of the English population
think that the only way to have a good time is to get disgustingly drunk –
and I mean disgustingly drunk, drunk to the point where the beer and the
wine and the spirits have saturated their T-shirts and they are heaving their
stomach up into the street – to shout obscenely and to pick a fight? …
Certainly, you don’t expect to find plane-loads of Italians pouring into the
centre of London and behaving in a similar fashion. The only honest answer
that Buford could have given is that that is how part of the English
population has always been. Far from being ashamed of their behaviour,
they see fighting and drunkenness as part of their birthright. It is the way
they proclaim their identity. (Jeremy Paxman. The English: A Portrait of a
People. 244-245)
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 Now, do you think there has been a transformation in the English character or have these
differences in character always existed? Take the following quotes into account:

There is nothing particularly new about the crudity and readiness to

violence of English young people. … The more you look back into English
history, the more you are forced to the conclusion that alongside the civility
and the deeply held convictions about individual rights, the English have a
natural taste for disorder. … [I]f we were to look back only at the last thirty
years in England we could say that the English mobs have rioted against the
Poll Tax, against policing methods, inside and outside football grounds, on
seaside promenades and in cinemas, against fascism and out of racial
prejudice, against employment laws, against the Vietnam War, at collieries
and in Whitehall, against long hair and against short hair, for the right to
celebrate the summer solstice, against the exportation of live animals and
the importation of new technology, for union recognition, for the right to
drive stolen cars, because gangs enjoy fighting, because they ran up against
another gang of football supporters, and so on. Food riots, commonplace in
the eighteenth century, have disappeared, but a continuous thread links the
eighteenth-century attacks on cotton mills, through the ‘Captain Swing’
resistance to machinery and cheap labour in the 1830s, to the protests
against Rupert Murdoch’s introduction of new printing methods at Wapping
in the 1980s. The list puts into perspective the horror and disdain affected
by the English when they look across the Channel and see the way in which
mass disobedience, open flouting of the law and civil insurrection are
 12

condoned by feeble French governments unwilling to take on protesters.

The difference between the two cultures is that while mass protests are an
accepted, expected part of the political process in France, in England, street
insurrection is less often to do with politics and more to do with an innate
readiness to trade punches. … The English passion for alcohol has something
to do with it, of course. In how many other major European cities does the
traveller leave the rail station, as they do in Manchester or Liverpool, to take
a taxi in which the driver is caged off from his passengers for his own safety
and a notice warns that ‘sickness due to alcohol will incur a £20 surcharge?
(Jeremy Paxman. The English: A Portrait of a People. 246-251)

Indeed, crucial to any understanding of British social and cultural history is

the great divide within the working classes between what the Victorians
called the ‘rough’ and the ‘respectable’. The ‘respectables’ cultivated what
have been miscalled ‘middle-class values’ but are in fact merely civilized
values: self-improvement, education, restraint, thrift, good manners. The
‘roughs’ lived a life of immediate gratification, particularly in sex, drink and
violence. This always provided a potential alternative image for Englishness
but it was largely kept underground until the 1960s when a social and
cultural revolution occurred, and a world that had remained in all its
lineaments substantially Victorian was overturned by a range of
fundamental social, cultural and economic changes of seismic significance.
(Jeffrey Richards. Films and British National Identity: From Dickens to Dad’s
Army. 18)

As this quotation clearly explains, there has been more to the English character than meets the eye and
these penchant for rioting, excessive drinking, hedonism and violence is something that has always been
part of the English character – at least of a part of the English population, at least according to these
quotes.

Having said that, there were changes from the 1960s onwards that led to a profound and open
transformation of the English character. Read the following list that provides some reasons that might
account for the transformation in the English character in the last decades.

 Background of affluence, full employment and materialism in the 1950s and 1960s. This released
people from the immediate disciplines of survival and turned their attention to their ‘expressive’
needs – self-discovery, self-assertion, sensation. The rebel and the deviant became heroes. Rules,
restrictions, conventions and traditions were ditched in both life and art. The old structure, old
values and old certainties (notably the doctrine of respectability) were increasingly derided and
rejected. Violence, profanity and sexuality, hitherto rigorously suppressed, became prominent.
 The rigorous social controls applied to society during the Victorian era by the forces of evangelical
religion were scrapped. Capital punishment was abolished, censorship of the arts was greatly
reduced, abortion and homosexuality were legalized, divorce was made easier, the contraceptive
pill became widely available, restrictions on gambling and drinking were relaxed. Freed from the
shackles of restraint, the counterculture flourished:
o Childhood was the goal of life. No responsibility. All play.
o Sex, drugs and obscenity were used as a rejection of the culture of control.
o Rejection of doctrines of control: honour, duty, service, decency, selflessness were rejected
either as outdated bourgeois conceits, or as oppressive patriarchal constructs.
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 Influence of American culture and Hollywood. Today’s young Britons choose as their cinematic role
models the muscle-bound thugs Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. In fact, anti-heroes
have become the order of the day. Culturally and socially there has come to be greater interest in,
and sympathy with, criminals than victims; and the mad have come to be regarded as more sane
than the sane. As the time passes, the cultural heroes of a generation are more likely to be the
cannibals, rapists, psychopaths and sadists celebrated in such films as Silence of the Lambs, Cape
Fear, Taxi Driver and Nightmare on Elm Street than the saints, statesmen, thinkers and writers
revered in previous ages. The British young now go round in baseball caps, eating Macdonalds,
using American slang, watching American films, idolizing macho American stars, and supporting a
culture that advocates the virtues of extreme individualism, violent self-assertion and total sexual
freedom.
 The community structure which had exerted its own unofficial sanctions since the rise of industrial
society collapsed as the misguided redevelopment of the old Victorian cities in the 1960s destroyed
the close-knit inner-city working-class communities and replaced them with bleak and heartless
high-rise estates which rapidly became breeding grounds for alienation, criminality, violence and
drug-abuse.
 The collapse of the factory system and the rise of permanent youth unemployment removed
another important structure of constraint: the discipline of the workplace.
 In education, the school had for a century operated a curriculum aimed at instilling as moral values
hard work, discipline and thrift, and as cultural values decency, duty and gentlemanliness. In the
1960s this was rejected in favour of child-centred learning where the emphasis was on personal
self-expression and the quest for personal fulfillment free from moral and cultural prescription,
which was condemned as elitist, paternalist, patriarchal and hegemonic.
 Protestant religion, which had been in decline since World War One, continued to decline so that
Britain is now one of the most secularized countries in the world.
 The police and the legal system were discredited after a long and continuous series of miscarriages
of justice. Teachers, clergymen, policemen, judges, politicians, once seen as repositories of wisdom
and authority, lost status and came to be regarded with suspicion, even mistrust and hatred.
 Decline in the traditional family. The traditional family and marriage, which have traditionally been
primary agencies for taming young men, have collapsed, undermined by a rocketing divorce rate,
the rise in illegitimacy, single-parent families and living together. This is an ethic of in which
individual emotion and self-gratification rather than duties and responsibilities take first place.
 Violence has spiraled both in reality and in cultural representations. This can be explained taking
two different aspects into account:
o This is a symptom of self-ethic. Te instant resort to violence for the ‘buzz’, for the
demonstration of power, the physical expression of frustrations and angers is a logical
corollary of the gratification of the self in all its moods.
o This also has to do with the victory of consumerism and consumer society, which,
accompanied by affluence, in boomtime, generates hectic spending caused by a desire to
possess. But in recession, it generates disillusionment, debt and the ‘feel bad factor’. In
turn, this also creates a norm in terms of possessions which the underclass cannot attain
and so they steal. This has resulted in burglary, mugging, car theft and shop-lifting on a
grand scale. (take into account that in the 1930s there was recession but not a consumer
ethic; people merely wanted to survive rather than to survive and to possess car,
television, or CDs. Also the family and the community were strong and provided discipline
and structure to people’s lives. This explains why during the great depression of the 1930s
there was nothing like the crime there is now.)
 Thatcherism. Margaret Thatcher’s government was one that promoted self-gratification and
individualism as opposed to selflessness and public service. She let the free market rip and
dismantled all controls, abolished nationalized industries, disparaged and denigrated all ideas of
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public service. In Victorian times, it was believed that capitalist endeavour should be tempered,
moderated and constrained by social need and communal concern. With Margaret Thatcher, there
was no such concern and individuals were left on their own devices without help from the
government. This resulted in aggressive behavior among the discontents and the proliferation of
ghetto blasters, crack addicts and football hooligans.
 The 9/11 terrorist attempts and the London bombings of 2005 further exacerbated racist
fundamentalism in England and recession in contemporary times has done nothing but generate
even more violence among disillusioned youth who cannot access the affluence that television and
cinema still promote. Brexit and Covid have made things even worse.

 Do you agree these aspects may have resulted in a transformation of the national character?

 Read the last quote and consider whether youth culture and national character in general, as you
have observed them during your visit, coincides with the image provided in the quote.

True, one or two of the elements have remained but they are the negative
ones. We are still at war with the French. In 1995 when French seamen
blockaded ports preventing English ferries from leaving, irate English
holidaymakers were interviewed by the BBC. One of them declared: ‘They
are rubbish, the French. They’ve never forgiven us for the Armada.’ This one
sentence encapsulates the insularity, sense of superiority and sheer pig
ignorance which have made the English abroad such an appalling spectacle
for civilized foreigners. The English are still anti-intellectual to the point of
philistinism. They are still insular and feel superior to foreigners, a feeling
which lies at the heart of the knee-jerk anti-Europeanism and the sinister
undercurrent of racism that regularly bursts forth in acts of savagery against
coloured immigrants. There is still a sense of humour too, but it is now all
too often cruel, sour and spiteful …. When a third of young men under thirty
have criminal records it is hard to see the gentleness and law-abidingness
that Orwell so praised. The culture is steeped in violence and images of
violence, and where violence rules, tolerance, fair play and restraint go out
of the window. As an even nastier yob culture swirls around us, the national
character inexorably changes. Britain is currently undergoing a crisis of
national identity as profound as that of the eighteenth century which
produced a new sense of Britishness. … It may be that a historian of the
future … will write that ‘between 1960 and the year 2000, the English
ceased to be one of the most inhibited, polite, orderly, tender-minded,
prudish and hypocritical nations in the world and became once again one of
the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, cruel, and bloodthirsty.’
(Jeffrey Richards. Films and British National Identity: From Dickens to Dad’s
Army. 25)