On Tuesday of this week, during a parade for the Liverpool football team there was a serious incident with a car. A driver seems to have got caught up in the crowds. People banged on the windows and doors of the car. He drove off hitting people. [1] Early reports of multiple serious injuries have been scaled back. As of today, one person remains in hospital. [Update: as of today 2-6-25 I am seeing reports about 4 people still in hospital. Numbers vary.] Initial claims that the driver was on drugs have not materialised into charges. A 53 year old local man has been charged with 6 charges which include causing GBH intentionally. I suspect that the intentionality of what happened is going to be central to the court case.
The incident highlights a number of aspects of our tightly controlled public discourse. First of all we had Starmer saying: “the whole country stands with Liverpool”. It took a little while for him to say this. About the length of time that it took for some bright young media manager in the Cabinet Office to remember what a disaster the establishment cover-up of the Hillsborough disaster had been, (a tragedy at a football stadium in 1989 involving Liverpool fans, in which bad decisions made by the police contributed to the disaster), and created the message. The idea, of course, is to associate the Prime Minister with ordinary people. The further they get from ordinary people the more loudly they shout that we are with you. It is odd, of course, because “we stand with you” would make sense if Liverpool had been under attack by terrorists, but it doesn’t really make sense in the context of some, yet to be explained, dangerous driving by a local man.
The general narrative is how brave Liverpudlians tried to stop the car by banging on the doors and windows and even opening the car door. This is the only permitted narrative. (Exemplified by this ‘moving’ piece in the Guardian). What follows is therefore heresy. I did read one account in the press in which someone who sounded balanced and reasonable, said that there was a clear problem with the traffic control for the parade. The speaker said he had seen multiple drivers mixed up with large crowds of people. He reported that people were having to jump out of the way of cars, and that many drivers looked “scared out of their wits”. This is important context. So; the alternative narrative is this. The person who has been charged got mixed up in his car in the crowds. He is being described as “middle-class”. Suddenly he finds himself surrounded by football fans. (This will really get me in trouble; but we can speculate that some may have been drinking). These people start banging on his car, aggressively. He panics, drives off, runs into people. More people start banging even more aggressively on his car. He panics even more, puts his foot down again, to try and get away, and runs into more people. A terrible sequence of events which no one planned.
My narrative (hypothetical) may not fit. But it may. There are problems with it; in particular, it is reported that the driver tailgated an ambulance to enter a cordoned off area. If true that would imply a degree of culpability. And, of course, it could yet turn out that he really did have malicious intent. But; I would at first instinct, be willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt. I feel sorry for the man. It is noteworthy how he is being vilified. A lack of compassion and eagerness to condemn is on display, dressed up as (guess what) “standing with the victims”.
I would guess that suggesting that the people who banged on the car may have, (unintentionally), made matters worse, is just so far from the necessary populist narrative, about the brave, ordinary people of Liverpool, that the possibility will never be considered in the mainstream.
Notes