On this day, 27 March 1997, England and Liverpool football player Robbie Fowler was fined for showing support for sacked dockworkers during a European Cup Winners’ Cup match.
Dockers in Liverpool had been engaged in a mammoth dispute against the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company which began in 1995 when all of the workers were sacked for refusing to cross a picket line set up by dockers for Torside Ltd who had been dismissed in a separate dispute.
Fowler, after scoring his second goal in Liverpool’s 3-0 victory, lifted up his shirt to display a T-shirt reading “Support the 500 sacked dockers”. He was fined 2,000 Swiss francs ($1,400) by the European football governing body UEFA.
The dockers’ dispute ended with a redundancy settlement in 1998.
Learn more about sports and social movements in these books: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/sportshttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.294735704044920/2238674832984321/?type=3
