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Weve fought wars, pleads Peter Shilton, his voice breaking. People have died to protect our national anthem. Every country has a national anthem and they are very proud of it. And, you know, were one of the best. It’s sad that a small minority feel they have to do this.
Unfortunately, I was overseas over the weekend and thus missed most of the heated coronation debate that many of you have enjoyed. As it happened, I was in Germany: in many ways the spiritual home of the royal family, although reading the history of the Shiltons it launched a failed attempt to attack the national anthem in 1939.
But I watched Liverpool v Brentford, an unremarkable encounter that was immeasurably enlivened by the scenes leading up to it. As God Save the King played over the Anfield sound system and was met with a predictable concerto of scouse disdain, the Liverpool players lined up around the center circle found themselves trapped between two similar and opposite forms of awkwardness.
Different players react differently. Mo Salah, game face on, stares furtively into the middle distance, completely motionless. Fabinho: Confused. Andy Robertson: gaze fixed firmly downward, as if trying to laser burn a hole in the grass through which he might mercifully fall. Trent Alexander-Arnold tries John Redwood style to recite the anthem without singing it.
Why do Liverpool fans sing the anthem? Well, to quote Louis Armstrong when asked to define jazz: Man, if you gotta ask, you never know. All football fans have their enemies. For Liverpool, it’s a British institution and the spectacle that goes with it. For Manchester City, its UEFA and Champions League theme song. For England it is everything that is not England. You may notice a certain double standard in fans who sanctify their own national anthem but reserve the right to boo another 208. But as Shilton so eloquently puts it, it was one of the best.
Shilton spoke to Jacob Rees-Mogg on GB News and, lest anyone accuse the former England goalkeeper of simply being a mindless servant of ceremony, rest assured that his views on public gestures at football matches are actually very nuanced. For example, just nine months ago, Shilton explained to Nigel Farage on the same channel why he didn’t take a knee to protest racial inequality, on the grounds that I don’t think there’s a big problem with race and games. of black players.
Of course, for anyone even remotely familiar with fan culture, the fact that Liverpool fans booed the anthem is not surprising and certainly not interesting. But there is a larger issue at stake here, at a time when the sports arena is increasingly being used as a theater of protest, at a time when the very right to express oneself in public is being questioned, often stifled. Who owns these spaces and who can speak in them? And most importantly, who gets what is being said to the police?
For all the modern obnoxiousness, British sport has long had a rich tradition, from anti-establishment protests from the suffragettes to the anti-apartheid movement. In many ways, Animal Rising’s efforts at the Grand National and Just Stop Oil’s efforts at the World Snooker Championships are simply inheritors of a sacred principle: that these places belong to us all. That in any pluralistic society there must be room for prevailing ideas to be both questioned and defended.
In what context is it worth asking which is the more principled act: the fans chanting the national anthem or the governing body trying to enforce it? The Premier League contacted their clubs before the weekend and strongly suggested they commemorate the royal moment in some way. Like, why? It is hardly relevant here to point out that the Republican share of the British public is 25% and rising. This number could be 100% or 1% and the principle would remain the same: celebrating the monarch is an openly ideological act. Of course, there are people who will argue, quite bluntly, that the state itself is in fact completely apolitical, and can we all just eat cake and respectfully agree?