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 2000 Swiss francs ($1400) by the European football governing body UEFA.
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