Why Liverpool fans boo the national anthem as Anfield prepares to mark King Charles’ coronation

Liverpool fans have been tipped to boo the national anthem ahead of their Premier League encounter with Brentford.

It was the latest example of Liverpool’s frayed relationship with the British establishment, which is often manifested through the booing of the UK’s national anthem, God Save the King.

However, the Premier League asked all its clubs playing at home to play the national anthem before matches this weekend, to mark King Charles III’s coronation.

“It feels like a movement and a protest and one that’s not always maybe respected — people just jump on it as something that would upset the king or something. It was the same with Prince William at Wembley last season, when Liverpool fans booed the anthem while he was there. It’s not necessarily about him or the royal family necessarily.

“That’s the important point to make: it’s about the establishment as a whole, this conglomerate of things that Liverpool fans disagree with.”

Athletic writer James Pearce, originally from Bath, added: “It all ties in as well to the patriotism that most people from the city don’t associate with.

“You see it when major tournaments come around with the England football team as well, it all feeds into the same thing. That’s not their identity. That’s not who they are.

“There’s a feeling that those people don’t represent them. It’s just a world away from some guy having a crown put on his head in London. What relevance has that got to the lives of people in this city? Especially people who have been treated so badly by the establishment for so long.”

Tony Evans explained how the city’s history informs the fans’ decision to boo the anthem.

He explained: “Really, the historical context is important. The perception of Liverpool in the United Kingdom changed during the Irish potato famine (in 1845-52); after that, Liverpool was swamped by Irish refugees.

“The city’s nickname had been ‘Tory Town’ but after that, the press referred to it repeatedly as the capital of Ireland. And that wasn’t meant to be a positive; it was a sneering thing.

“You’ve got to remember that the word ‘Scouse’ was an insult, too. It was aimed at the poorest Irish people but was reclaimed, around 100 years ago, by those who lived around the Scotland Road area of the city, which was very Irish.

“I grew up around there and I was very, very conscious that we had an Irish nationalist MP (Thomas Power O’Connor) until 1929. Before all this Saint Patrick’s Day nonsense now — the drinking and things — relatives in Ireland would send over a shamrock and we all wore one. That was an assertion of identity.

“This was a city that was outside the body politic of the United Kingdom and was regarded as an outsider, so the roots of being anti-establishment and anti-London go back way deeper than the more recent stuff — at the 1950 and 1965 FA Cup finals, the national anthem wasn’t booed.

“But instead of singing “God save the King” and “God save the Queen”, Liverpool fans sang ‘God save our team’. And that was a pretty big thing.

“I grew up without any consciousness of being English. I was Scouse — and that was really important. There was also a fairly big religious divide in Liverpool, like in Northern Ireland and Glasgow: the Orange Lodge marched and a large (Catholic) proportion of the population were made to feel as if they were outsiders.

“And if you follow the treatment of people in the press, you can see that this Scouse exceptionalism actually does have validity.

“By the time you get to the 1980s, all of this played into the view of (Margaret) Thatcher’s (Conservative) government as Liverpool being a rogue city and the idea of managed decline, when they actually considered withdrawing resources from the city to starve people out and make them move. It’s mind-boggling that was even considered.”

Furthermore, the Hillsborough tragedy and its aftermath further alienated Liverpool from the rest of the country.

Evans continued: “And then we get Hillsborough. I’m sure that if Hillsborough happened to any other city in the country, it would have been handled differently by the media and by the government and the authorities.

“So this all plays into a sense of almost being betrayed by the nation we were born in, and God Save the King is the biggest symbol of that nation.

“We have always wanted to make it clear that we don’t believe we are part of it. And also, we don’t believe that those who are playing the anthem want us.”