From the Terraces to Westminster
Liverpool MP Ian Byrne on how the city's football culture taught him solidarity, why it inspired him to set up Fans Supporting Foodbanks – and how Labour can rebuild in working-class communities.
My politics comes from two places: the trade union movement and the terraces of Anfield.
From the citywide boycott of the reviled S*n newspaper to mass walkouts over unaffordable ticket prices to the thousands of fans who donate to our foodbank on matchdays, class politics lives and breathes in Liverpool’s football culture. If you take on one of us, you take on all of us. That’s just the way it is.
Standing in the Kop in the ’70s and ’80s roaring those great Liverpool teams on to success taught me the power of collectivism. I sang it. I heard it. I felt it. I didn’t know it then, but my political education was well underway.
I grew up on what was then Cantril Farm. The estate was much-maligned, but to me it was just home. A close community of decent working-class people trying to make ends meet against the backdrop of deindustrialisation and Thatcher’s government.
My understanding of politics back then was that it was something done to us; that the decisions that shaped our lives were made far away in Westminster. We fought back when we had to. But ultimately, we were the rule-takers and politicians were the rule-makers – and they viewed us with disdain. That imbalance of power was about to be brought into sharp focus.
I was 17 years old when I attended the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough. What happened that day, the aftermath and the smears against the families, supporters and the people of our city, profoundly shaped my life and my politics. Like so many others impacted by it, Hillsborough left me with deep scars. I lost my way for a while but having a supportive family and the fight for truth and justice kept me going.
It was the labour and trade union movement that lifted me up and gave me a renewed sense of purpose. In 2012, I was one of hundreds of workers involved in an industrial dispute that saw us locked out of our factory for six months. The closure that followed devastated our families and our community, but it taught me the value of solidarity and collective action in the workplace.
I experienced first-hand the casualisation of labour. After my first back-to-work interview I was offered one post: a minimum wage, zero-hour contract. That night I went home fearful for my family’s future.
Then a wonderful opportunity came my way to work as an organiser with Unite the union. For the first time I had a job I loved that made a real difference to peoples’ lives.
Organising sub-contracted workers in our NHS taught me about the damage caused by race-to-the-bottom outsourcing and privatisation.
We were able to bring people together to win better pay and conditions. The trade union movement taught me that working-class people don’t have to accept the cards dealt to us by the powerful. When we stand together, we can change the game.
Fans Supporting Foodbanks
Meanwhile Tory austerity was causing a humanitarian crisis on our streets. In 2015 I teamed up with my Evertonian mates Dave and Robbie to co-found Fans Supporting Foodbanks: a grassroots initiative to fight food poverty.
What started with three fans collecting tins of food in a wheelie bin outside the pub on match days now supplies 25% of all donations to North Liverpool Foodbanks and has become a grassroots organisation that stretches from Glasgow to London to Dublin.
But we do more than just collect food. We educate people on the root causes of poverty and work to promote unity, equality and justice in our communities. It’s not about charity but solidarity.
We have extended our reach too, campaigning with period poverty campaigners to get free sanitary products placed into Liverpool and Everton Football Clubs.
I’m also extremely proud of the strong relationships we’ve built with the Muslim community in Liverpool – with mosques collecting food and holding events to break down barriers between our communities.
These links have been invaluable in combating the threat of the far-right. When working-class communities come together to tackle their shared problems, it closes the space in which the far-right can organise, and their rhetoric can take hold.
We’ve united people of different backgrounds, different faiths, even people who wear different colours at the game.
All my life’s experience has taught me that unity is strength – and that’s the principle that drives me today as I represent my constituents and my class in Westminster.
Where Next for Labour?
Following our bruising general election defeat, the sharks are circling around our socialist programme. I am proud to have supported Jeremy Corbyn. He has transformed Labour into an anti-austerity party and a mass movement. That’s a legacy we must protect.
During a leadership election, it’s tempting to focus on individuals. And leadership is important. I’m backing my Socialist Campaign Group colleagues Rebecca Long-Bailey and Richard Burgon. But whoever wins, our history tells us that it is movements that effect change.
Our collective task now is to show the people of this country that the Labour and trade union movement can win for them – now, not in five years.
We all have our part to play. Rebuilding trust means doing the hard yards of getting out into our communities and making the Labour Party a relevant presence in working-class life once again.
It means not talking to ourselves; looking for reasons to bring people into our movement, not shut them out of it – giving people the space to learn, grow and fulfil potential.
It means putting our socialism into practice in every workplace and community.
None of it will be easy, but nothing worth fighting for ever is.
My time in parliament is dedicated to giving the people of West Derby the opportunities that the labour and trade union movement gave to me.