London Calling is weekly column covering football in the English capital
High store clothing chain Top Man was forced to withdraw a shirt from sale this week after an outcry from Liverpool fans.
The red shirt had the number 96 emblazoned on the back with the slogan “what goes round comes around”.
At first instance, the marketing would seem to be nothing more than a somewhat all too clever by half double entendre, which reverses 96 into 69 and includes the word ‘come’, somewhat close to the more successful FCUK range.
Not so on Merseyside, where the number 96 has another connotation. 96 was the number of Liverpool FC fans who died in the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989 when fans perished at an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest, at the Hillsborough ground of Sheffield Wednesday.
On a London call-in show on LBC radio the day the story broke, many callers admitted that their first thought was indeed of the sexual reference. However an additional piece of information suggested it was a little more.
The slogan “what goes round comes around”. had apparently been sung by fans of other clubs about the Hillsborough disaster.
In 1985, 39 Juventus fans had died at the Heysel Stadium in Belgium after repeated violent charges into their area of the ground by Liverpool hooligans in the hours before the match kicked off. That Juventus area was populated mostly by families, fathers and their sons, and women rather than the Juventus Ultras who may have been capable of fighting back. A wall collapsed under the pressure of bodies and many were crushed to death and suffocated.
As a result, English clubs were banned from European Competition for five years.
This in turn angered the fans of many clubs banned from competing in Europe through no fault of their own. These included Merseyside neighbours Everton who had won the league that year and later on Wimbledon, Manchester United, Coventry, Arsenal, West Ham, Sheffield United, Oxford, Norwich, Luton and Derby, some of whom never got another chance.
The shirt’s slogan offended many in Liverpool and was quickly withdrawn
After Hillsborough, Liverpool fans mounted a well organised campaign to get justice for those who had died, known as “the 96”. They felt they had been unfairly maligned both by the South Yorkshire Police and especially the Sun Newspaper, which had printed some foul and false allegations about Reds fan’s behaviour on the day.
While almost all fans of other clubs were sympathetic to the Campaign (including this website), the lack of apparent remorse for Heysel and those Italians killed by Liverpool fans, as well as the media focusing purely on the incident where Liverpool fans were victims irked some people, and the sick chant began. It was no surprise therefore the slogan on the shirts fairly understandably suggested to most on Merseyside a direct reference to those killed at Hillsborough and an ugly recycling of the offensive chant.
Topman reacted quickly and issued a hasty apology removing the item from its website. They maintained that the shirt design referenced the title of a 1996 remix of a Bob Marley song also called “What Goes Around Comes Around” which also contains the line ‘It’s called Karma baby and it goes around’.
A statement said: “Topman apologises unreservedly for any offence caused by this T-shirt. The design was inspired by a Bob Marley track with the number referring to the year of re-release. The garment has been removed from sale online and in stores.”
Relatives of the victims were sceptical:
Margaret Aspinall of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose 18-year-old son, James, died in the disaster, told the Guardian.
“If they’ve made a mistake they should apologise and say they didn’t realise the implications. Anything with 96 on it and a rose running through it and karma on the sleeve and the wording on it, people will think is a dig at Hillsborough.
Everybody should be aware of Hillsborough and the fact that 96 people died. And understand that the rose means a lot to the families. We place 96 roses at the memorial every year.”
“I think there are too many coincidences,” added Louise Brookes the relative of another victim, referring to the rose on the sleeve of the shirt and the tradition of placing 96 roses on the anniversary of the incident.
But it was her final conclusion to BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show that may reveal the extent of the anguish caused when she referred to the use of the word ‘karma’ on the shirt:
“Us families and survivors, all we have heard for 29 years is Hillsborough is God’s way of punishing the Liverpool fans for Heysel. That’s what hurts so much. And that’s why I believe this T-shirt is definitely connected and referenced to Hillsborough.”
Topman were unwilling to tell the media how many of the shirts had been sold.
London Calling
