One of the organisers of the Nottingham Forest banner calling for the end of tragedy chanting hopes to educate fans about the personal implications in order to end the problem.
A 30ft banner will be held aloft in the away end at Anfield on Saturday when Liverpool host Steve Cooper's side, calling for the end of tragedy chanting following a spike of abuse from the terraces aimed at Reds fans following the events of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.
It will read "Respect the 97" with Forest’s club badge in one corner and the Hillsborough memorial symbol in the other along with the words, "Solidarity with Survivors. No to Tragedy Chanting". The idea has been orchestrated by a group of fans, originating from the City Ground, under the Twitter account @NoHateChants.
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The visitors will lay a wreath at Anfield in the build-up to the match which gets underway on Saturday at 3pm as mark of respect from the incidents that unravelled in 1989. Leeds United did so on Monday as they joined Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson in paying their respects.
Chelsea and Manchester City have been forced to release statements condemning the chants towards Liverpool fans in recent meetings with City supporters previously having disrupted a period of silence prior to the FA Cup semi-final last season around the anniversary of the tragedy that claimed the lives of 97 supporters.
Pete Hillier, part of the Nottingham Forest supporters behind the banner in the away end on Saturday, said that following a Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance meeting where concerns were voiced, they felt compelled to spark the need for change for opposition fans.
"The idea came out from a meeting of the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance. Once they had done the business of the meeting, there was a lot of talk about what people were struggling with and got around to how many people in the Liverpool end were struggling with tragedy chanting at the minute, how it seemed to getting worse and how social media seemed to stoke it," he told the ECHO.
"Chelsea had been there and not covered themselves in glory, I know Leicester had been vocal about it, Manchester City and Chelsea again at Stamford Bridge and there was about of talk about the real horrible impact that has and triggering people’s anxiety and memories.
"It would be nice to go football match 34 years on and watch your team without getting that sort of thing thrown at you, the conversation turned to ‘well the FA don’t seem to be doing much about it’ perhaps it ought to be fan-led and the Forest contingent [at the meeting] thought it ought to be us, supporters of another club.
"What other club should it be to get the ball rolling than the team who was there on that day and also who have a number of fans who are profoundly affected by it. Liverpool FC have been very good with us, their supporter liaison and comms team have been excellent, really positive. It’s good that it’s being marked."
The victims of the families and survivors campaigned tirelessly to reveal the truth surrounding the events in the build-up to the semi-final in April 1989. It took 27 years of campaigning for it to be confirmed that Liverpool fans bore no responsibility for the deaths and were unlawfully killed after a series of failures.
Forest were the opponents on the day vying for a place in the FA Cup final but the impact of the tragedy on their supporters has largely been "buried and shied away" from the people of Nottingham.
Hillier added: "It’s a thing that collectively as a city and fan base we’ve buried and shied away from. A lot of time has passed, we haven’t been having to campaign, clear our name and get justice so what a lot of us, who were there, have done is bury it.
"The number of people you speak to who were there but no one knows they were there, or their kids don’t know. People have hidden it away and got on with it. I know people who’ve not been to a match since, people who were going home and away up until that day, or (haven't even attended) a major sporting event.
"I know Forest supporters in the HSA group who are seriously traumatised by it, still have panic attacks, struggle to cope in crowds, flashbacks, a lot of survivor guilt. Everyone saw horrible things, I was on the Kop at Hillsborough and I saw things I would never have expected to see.
"You don’t go to a football match and see 97 people die, I struggled with that but I’m meeting Forest fans who were sat down by the corner flag seeing things they can’t get out of their head, heard things [at the game], people who tried to get onto the pitch were beaten back by the police with truncheons and still can’t get over that," he continued.
"People say it’s not our tragedy - it would’ve been our tragedy if we were in that end but for a toss of a coin. The inquest proved it would’ve happened and it wasn’t fan behaviour, it was the stadium and the police, (so) it would’ve been us.
"There’s a younger generation now who don’t know what it's about, it’s getting the message across that it’s a terrible thing and there’s people around who are affected by it and what the truth is because there were a lot of lies around it."
Hillier has labelled tragedy chanting as a whole as "unacceptable" pointing to other tragedies such as the Munich Air Disaster and the death of two Leeds United fans in Istanbul plus the recent spate of chants in relation to food poverty.
He further issued a call to learn and move on by putting 'whataboutery' to end. He said: "We’re opposing, any right-minded person, would oppose to tragedy chanting. All this what about; ‘what about when you sang about Munich?' It doesn’t mean we all can’t learn and move on, what’s important is that it doesn’t happen now.
"People chanting about Leeds fans dying in Istanbul, it’s not acceptable, I can’t think of any spear of life other than football where that would happen. I’m not going to go marching around West London abusing people about being victims or survivors of the Grenfell Tower disaster, why is it okay to do at football? The answer is it isn’t.
"There was also talk about poverty mocking but we decided that was a battle for another day, those of us who are involved in the group are opposed to that because it doesn’t fit our values, you shouldn’t be mocking unemployment and you shouldn’t be mocking poverty. When you come from Nottingham, which is by any measure one of most deprived regions in the UK, but we decided to focus on the tragedy chanting.
The response to the news that a banner will be unfurled in the away end from Liverpool fans has been described as heartening. Forest supporters behind the idea are aware of the prospect that it won't be wholly accepted by their fellow supporters but see it is an opportunity to educate them as well as the rest of the football pyramid.
"We’re also very aware there might be people among Forest support for whatever reason they’ve got don’t agree with it and might kick off about it," he added. "But it’s about shouting them down or educating them and making them realise they haven’t got all the power in this situation.
"It’s been absolutely fantastic, we’ve had the Twitter group running for over a month now. It’s been picked up mostly in Liverpool and by Liverpool supporters," Hillier said on the support from Liverpool fans, but insists the fight to end tragedy chanting is only beginning as they look to target their intended audience.
"The big thing this week was hit the demographic we want to hit and preaching to the converted, trying to hit the Nottingham Forest section and supporters of other clubs, there’s been supporters from other clubs saying they completely agree. The response has been heartening and through this we’ve made good friends up there [in Liverpool].
"There’s an interesting group of people involved in all this, without naming names, there’s everyone from Hillsborough survivor groups, we’ve had support from the 97 family members, we’ve taken advice from them and Spirit of Shankly, they’ve been really supportive - Peter Hooton and Joe Blott - have helped us out with this, the wording and financing of the banner, that’s been absolutely great. The rest are a loose amalgamation of Forest fans of all sorts of types, a big Forest fan group, a big social media podcast, the rest of us are a bunch of individuals of a certain age with different histories. We’ve all realised we’ve moved on in that sense."
While there is unity in the stands, there is still a desire to win on the pitch as both sides look to further their aspirations for the Premier League campaign. And Hillier still hopes a rivalry can be forged with appropriate chants without the unpleasantness.
"I’d still like to beat Liverpool, it would be lovely if there was a proper rivalry again but Liverpool are in a different stratosphere football-wise, we’d like to be rivals without real hatred," he said.
"We would expect Liverpool to sing ‘We hate Nottingham Forest’, it’s traditional, doesn’t harm anybody, nothing to do with protected characteristics or unpleasantness, it’s a football song and we’ll sing back ‘Nottingham Forest hate you, you b*******’ that’s traditional football banter. It’s not about death, poverty, or unpleasantness, chant that and we’ll go for a pint after."
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