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ABSTRACT
In July 1974, Bill Shankly, the charismatic manager of Liverpool FC, surprised the football world by announcing his retirement. During fifteen years in charge, Shankly revolutionised LFC, transforming a second-tier outfit into one of Europe's best teams. His impact on the city of Liverpool was equally profound. At times in the 1960s, Shankly's popularity eclipsed even that of the Beatles. His retirement, wrote one supporter, felt like ‘the end of the world’. It triggered a public outpouring of grief, well wishes, and reminiscences. Based on previously unpublished material from the Shankly Family Archive, this essay examines the history, or histories, of the correspondence sent to Bill Shankly in the summer of 1974. Using three approaches – gender history, the history of emotions, and transnational history – it highlights under-explored aspects of football's rootedness in everyday life: female fandom, male sentimentality, and the first stirrings of Liverpool's international popularity. In Bill Shankly's football republic, collective identity was rooted in civic pride, but crossed age, class, gender, and national lines.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Bill Shankly, Shankly (London: Book Club Associates, 1977), 137.
2 David Lacey, ‘Liverpool's Wings of Victory’, The Guardian, May 5, 1974.
3 Shankly Family Archive (hereafter SFA), Letter from Jean Tyrrell to Bill Shankly, n.d.
4 SFA, Letter from a group of thirty women to Bill Shankly, 12 July 1964.
5 SFA, Letter from Peter Elliott to Bill Shankly, n.d.
6 SFA, Letter from John Coyle to Bill Shankly, n.d.
7 David Peace, Red or Dead (London: Faber & Faber, 2013), 509.
8 Adrian Killen Archive (hereafter AKA), Letter from Bill Shankly to the parents of Bobby Graham, 1 December 1960; Letter from Bill Shankly to Mr. Gostelow, 2 September 1964; Letter from Bill Shankly to Mrs. J. Longstaff, 12 March 1974.
9 SFA, Letter from J. Easton to Bill Shankly, n.d.
10 Andrew Anthony, ‘David Peace: “Bill Shankly Was a Good Man, As Close to a Saint as You Could Get”’, The Guardian, August 11, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2013/aug/11/david-peace-interview-bill-shankly.
11 Dave Bowler, Shanks: The Authorised Biography of Bill Shankly (London: Orion, 1996).
12 ‘Why Mr Shankly Starts at a Great Advantage’, Liverpool Echo, December 2, 1959, 14.
13 Neil Carter, The Football Manager: A History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 88.
14 Eric Todd, ‘The Fighting Philosophy of Bill Shankly’, The Guardian, July 27, 2008 (originally published December 17, 1968), https://www.theguardian.com/football/2008/jul/28/liverpool.
15 Shankly, Shankly, 145.
16 ‘Shankly on the Kop’, LFC History, https://www.lfchistory.net/Articles/Article/2513.
17 Letter from Bill Shankly to unnamed correspondent, n.d., Official Liverpool FC Monthly Magazine Issue 41, January 2016, 79.
18 Quoted in Stephen F. Kelly, Bill Shankly: It's Much More Important Than That – A Biography (London: Virgin, 1996), 124.
19 Shankly, Shankly, 87.
20 ‘Hundreds Hurt in Fantastic Scenes’, Liverpool Daily Post, May 3, 1965.
21 SFA, Letter from Maria Welsh to Bill Shankly, n.d.
22 Shankly, Shankly, 32.
23 Kelly, Bill Shankly, 250.
24 AKA, Letter from Bill Shankly to The Chairman, Liverpool FC, 18 June 1974.
25 Quoted in Jonathan Wilson, The Anatomy of Liverpool: A History in Ten Matches (London: Orion, 2014), 147.
26 Quoted in Karen Gill, The Real Bill Shankly (Liverpool: Trinity Sport Media, 2007), 91.
27 Shankly, Shankly, 141.
28 Quoted in Kelly, Bill Shankly, 255–6.
29 Quoted in Wilson, The Anatomy of Liverpool, 151.
30 Ibid., 147.
31 Merseyside comprises five metropolitan boroughs: the city of Liverpool, Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, and Wirral. Greater Merseyside includes the towns of Skelmersdale, Ormskirk, Warrington, Runcorn, Widnes and Ellesmere Port (all officially in either Cheshire or Lancashire).
32 Carrie Dunn, Female Football Fans: Community, Identity and Sexism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 7.
33 Quoted in Stacey Pope, ‘Female Fan Experiences and Interpretations of the 1958 Munich Air Disaster, the 1966 World Cup Finals and the Rise of Footballers as Sexualized National Celebrities’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51, no. 7 (2016): 850.
34 James Walvin, The People's Game: The History of Football Revisited (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1994), 166.
35 SFA, Letter from Karen Rutherford to Bill Shankly, 12 July 1974.
36 Rob Lewis, ‘“Our Lady Specialists at Pikes Lane”: Female Spectators in Early English Professional Football, 1880–1914’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 26, no. 15 (2009): 2167.
37 Adrian Killen, interview by the author. Liverpool, January 24, 2017.
38 Pope, ‘Female Fan Experiences’: 856–9.
39 Arthur Hopcraft, The Football Man (1968; repr., London: Aurum Press, 2006), 191, 194.
40 ‘The Line-Up for Miss Kop’, KOP no. 10, January 18, 1967, 4–5; ‘Now Meet MISS KOP of 1967’, KOP no. 11, February 1, 1967, 7.
41 ‘Looking at Sport with Leslie Edwards’, Liverpool Echo, April 27, 1962, 22.
42 Stephen F. Kelly, The Kop: The End of an Era (London: Mandarin, 1993), 190–1.
43 Dominic Sandbrook, White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (London: Abacus, 2006), 307–8.
44 ‘For Daphne's Sake’, KOP no. 40, March 13, 1968, 3.
45 Kelly, The Kop, 189.
46 SFA, Letter from Hilda Pyke to Liverpool FC, 23 November 1974.
47 SFA, Letter from ‘a follower of footballer – a housewife’ to Ness Shankly, 14 July 1974.
48 SFA, Letter from Alice Hayden and Janet Beaven to Bill Shankly, 21 July 1974; Letter from Alison Walton and Carol Campbell to Bill Shankly, n.d.
49 SFA, Letter from Karen to Bill Shankly, 14 July 1974.
50 SFA, Letter from Hilda Pyke, 23 November 1974; Letter from Pam Benson to Bill Shankly, 2 August 1974.
51 SFA, Letter from Sheila Pomfret to Bill Shankly, 12 July 1974; Letter from Linda Meredith to Bill Shankly, n.d.
52 SFA, Letter from Linda Meredith, n.d.; Letter from Margaret Ward to Bill Shankly, 2 August 1974.
53 SFA, Letter from Doris Parker to Bill Shankly, 16 July 1974; Letter from Maria Welsh, n.d.
54 Letter from Bill Shankly to unnamed correspondent, n.d., 79.
55 Gill, The Real Bill Shankly, 22.
56 Alan Bennett, Writing Home (London: Faber & Faber, 1994), 289.
57 Quoted in John Belchem, Merseypride: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), 57.
58 Quoted in Tony Lane, Liverpool: City of the Sea, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997), 101.
59 SFA, Letter from Johnny McGill to Bill Shankly, n.d.
60 Quoted in Gavin Mellor, ‘“We Hate the Manchester Club Like Poison”: The Munich Disaster and the Socio-Historical Development of Manchester United as a Loathed Football Club’, in Manchester United: A Thematic Study, ed. David L. Andrews (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), 37.
61 Heather J. MacArthur and Stephanie A. Shields, ‘There's No Crying in Baseball, Or Is There? Male Athletes, Tears, and Masculinity in North America’, Emotion Review 7, no. 1 (2015): 39–46; Ulla-Britt Lilleaas, ‘Masculinities, Sport, and Emotions’, Men and Masculinities 10, no. 1 (2007): 39–53.
62 SFA, Letter from Steve Kent to Bill Shankly, n.d.
63 Alan Bairner, ‘Emotional Grounds: Stories of Football, Memories, and Emotions’, Emotion, Space and Society 12 (2014): 18.
64 Eric Anderson, Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities (New York: Routledge, 2009).
65 Raphael Honigstein, Klopp: Bring the Noise (London: Yellow Jersey Press, 2017), 268–9, 294.
66 John Williams, Red Men: Liverpool Football Club – The Biography (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2011), 348.
67 This Is Anfield, ‘“You’re Having Us On” – Bill Shankly's Resignation Sends Shockwaves Through Liverpool’, April 14, 2020, https://www.thisisanfield.com/2020/04/bill-shankly-resigns-liverpool-manager/.
68 SFA, Letter from Terry Lynch to Bill Shankly, 13 July 1974; Letter from Ron Byrne to Bill Shankly, 2 August 1974.
69 SFA, Letter from Jack Penwill to Bill Shankly, 21 July 1974; Letter from Howard Hill to Bill Shankly, 17 July 1974.
70 SFA, Letter from J.D. Burry to Bill Shankly, n.d.
71 SFA, Letter from John Penwill to Bill Shankly, 15 July 1974; Letter from Steve Kent; Letter from George Rice to Bill Shankly, 12 July 1974.
72 SFA, Letter from Rosemary Mitchell to Bill Shankly, n.d.; Letter from John Wilkinson to Bill Shankly, 14 July 1974.
73 SFA, Letter from Margaret Bloxam to Bill Shankly, 13 July 1974.
74 SFA, Letter from C. Gunasegaram to Bill Shankly, 14 July 1974.
75 Quoted in Belchem, Merseypride, 9.
76 Footage from the 10 May 1964 show can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITkWRdkZXNg.
77 ‘The Kop “Attack” Heroes’, Liverpool Echo, September 14, 1964.
78 Arnie Baldursson, telephone interview by the author. September 20, 2016.
79 Quoted in Stephen Hopkins and John Williams, ‘Gérard Houllier and the New Liverpool “Imaginary”’, in Passing Rhythms: Liverpool FC and the Transformation of Football, eds. John Williams, Stephen Hopkins, and Cathy Long (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 184–5.
80 ‘Goal Post’, KOP no. 19, May 17, 1967, 2.
81 ‘In a Word, You’re Just Fan-tastic!’ Anfield Review, December 13, 1972, 2; ‘Anfield Fans Get Set for Trip to Dresden’, Anfield Review, February 24, 1973, 11.
82 Gavin Mellor, ‘The Genesis of Manchester United as a National and International “Super-Club”, 1958–1968’, Soccer & Society 1, no. 2 (2000): 156.
83 Kelly, Bill Shankly, 76.
84 ‘Bill Shankly Brings Out the Best of His Players’, Anfield Review, November 6, 1973, 8.
85 Quoted in Wilson, Anatomy of Liverpool, 144.
86 Matthew Taylor, ‘Sport, Transnationalism, and Global History’, Journal of Global History 8, no. 2 (2013): 200.
87 See e.g. Peter Millward, The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), especially chaps. 5 and 7; Anthony K. Kerr and Paul R. Emery, ‘Beyond Tippekampen: The Origins and Maintenance of Scandinavian Support for the Liverpool FC’, Soccer & Society 17, no. 4 (2016): 512–26; Hans Hognestad, ‘Transnational Passions: A Statistical Study of Norwegian Football Supporters’, Soccer & Society 7, no. 4 (2006): 439–62.
88 Anthony Clavane, ‘Liverpool: A City Deeply Connected with Europe’, The New European, May 25, 2018, https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/liverpool-the-city-of-the-culture-football-and-europeanness-1-5532860.
89 James Wyllie, Kath Woodward, and David Goldblatt, ‘Tuning in to Football on the BBC World Service’, Soccer & Society 12, no. 1 (2011): 15–18.
90 Shankly, Shankly, 20–1.
91 Stephen Wagg, ‘The Team That Wouldn't Die: On the Mystique of Matt Busby and Manchester United’, in Andrews ed., Manchester United, 17.
92 SFA, Letter from Jean Bradford to Bill Shankly, 14 July 1974; Letter from J. MacMillan to Bill Shankly, 14 July 1974; Letter from Sheila and Deborah to Bill Shankly, n.d.
93 On Scott's close relationship with the Kop and departure from LFC, see Williams, Red Men, 195–7, 201–6.
94 SFA, Letter from Thomas Nulty to Bill Shankly, n.d.; Letter from Paul Kelly to Bill Shankly, 15 July 1974.
95 SFA, Letter from Tommy Carney to Bill Shankly, 13 July 1974; Letter from Drew Dinsmore to Bill Shankly, n.d.
96 ‘Invitation from the Editor’, KOP no. 6, November 30, 1966, 11.
97 SFA, Letter from John O’Neill to Bill Shankly, 13 July 1974; Letter from Stan Sheppard to Bill Shankly, 15 July 1974.
98 ‘Goal Post’, KOP no. 7, December 14, 1966, 2.
99 SFA, Letter from D.P. O'Sullivan to Bill Shankly, n.d.; Letter from Geoffrey Hyde to Bill Shankly, 20 July 1974.
100 SFA, Letter from Mike Brown to Bill Shankly, 13 July 1974.
101 Quoted in Gill, The Real Bill Shankly, 201.
102 Quoted in Kelly, Bill Shankly, 269.
103 ‘Match Details: Liverpool 7 Oulu Palloseura 0’, LFC History, https://www.lfchistory.net/SeasonArchive/Game/1227.
104 Quoted in Kelly, Bill Shankly, 270.
105 Quoted in Gill, The Real Bill Shankly, 181.
106 Peace, Red or Dead, 714.