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'The roots of Liverpool's outsider status is in Irishness' | Tony Evans

Speaking to Off The Ball, Liverpool based journalist Tony Evans spoke extensively about how some ...



'The roots of Liverpool's outs...
Soccer

'The roots of Liverpool's outsider status is in Irishness' | Tony Evans

Speaking to Off The Ball, Liverpool based journalist Tony Evans spoke extensively about how some Scousers developed an anti-English sentiment. 

"The roots of Liverpool's outsider status is in Irishness.  Scouse was an anti-Irish slur originally and people took it as a point of pride.

"You go back and you look at the papers from the mid 19th century forward and you see all the same tropes that are attached to the Irish are attached to Scousers.

"In the 70s everybody was in the same boat, employment was shrinking and the economy was struggling. By the mid-80s sectarianism was on its way out," Evans said.

It's not something that has happened overnight and the Community Shield wasn't the first time fans have booed the English anthem.

"We booed the national anthem in the cup final against Chelsea in 2012 which didn't get any coverage.

"It's probably because we weren't in this toxic Brexit environment where English nationalism is growing and the fetishisation of the anthem, of the flag and the armed forces, is becoming more common," the Liverpool native said.

Liverpool riots 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for being editor of right-wing magazine The Spectator when they published a piece by Simon Heffer which claimed Liverpudlians always play the victim in relation to Hillsborough.

Evans said while this does play a role it goes much deeper than that.

"I grew up without any sense of being English in Liverpool.

"During the riots in the 80s where was the only place where they used teargas against the crowd? Liverpool.

"The place was considered traditionally more violent and wilder than other cities when in fact it wasn't.

"Liverpool thinks of itself differently and it has different issues to the rest of England," he said.

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