This article is part of <\/i>The Athletic\u2019s series celebrating UK Black History Month. You can\u00a0<\/i>find the full series here<\/a><\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n Bob Thomas had no idea he was about to take an era-defining photograph.<\/p>\n When he set off from his home in Northamptonshire bound for the Merseyside derby in February 1988, his focus was simply on capturing an almighty sporting tussle between the two most successful football clubs of the decade.<\/p>\n Everton<\/a>, as reigning First Division champions, had won the title in two of the previous three seasons; Liverpool<\/a> had claimed the other, having dominated English football in the 10 years before that.<\/p>\n Thomas liked to arrive early. For a 3pm kick-off, he would be settled two hours before. He considered Everton\u2019s Goodison Park an awkward venue for angles, depending on the light. His favourite position was along the Bullens Road touchline, level with the Park End penalty area.<\/p>\n He does not remember why, but for the second half, he decided to switch, taking up residence in front of the Park End, as Liverpool kicked towards it. Close to the corner flag, it offered a perfect view of John Barnes.<\/p>\n The Jamaican-born left-winger and England international had become Liverpool\u2019s first Black signing the previous summer and at Goodison, he was the only Black player on the pitch. The focus on him became sharper that day because of a new shaven haircut, administered in the hours before kick-off by room-mate Peter Beardsley.\u00a0<\/p>\n This development was worthy of some analysis from the match commentator, John Motson, who in the opening moments of the BBC\u2019s coverage chirped up by suggesting that Barnes looked like the Black boxer, Lloyd Honeyghan.<\/p>\n Motson, however, said nothing seconds later when Barnes received the ball and was loudly booed, a reaction that could be heard clearly in the front rooms of millions of homes across the United Kingdom. And it\u00a0went on throughout the game.<\/p>\n Thomas says it was impossible to hear exactly what was being said about Barnes on the terraces. He could, however, see some things that the television cameras, mainly following the ball, could not pick up. He recalls a banana being chucked from the Bullens Road stand at Barnes, just missing him. Thomas was about 30 yards away but he decided to watch him for the next few minutes.<\/p>\n Then, it happened again: another banana flying towards him. This time, Barnes saw it, glancing just behind him. Thomas started pressing into his camera. He could see the studs of Barnes\u2019 right boot connecting with the banana with a degree of force that sent it into the air, before it landed on the dead side of the touchline.<\/p>\n Liverpool won the game 1-0, thanks largely to Barnes\u2019 arcing cross delivered from the same area of the pitch. Thomas, however, was not sure exactly what he had on his film until he returned home. Shooting in colour transparency, the photographs would not be processed until the next day at his studio in Northampton, and they were syndicated to the worldwide press the day after that.<\/p>\n This meant that newspapers did not pick up the image until the middle of the week after the match.\u00a0<\/p>\n For 48 hours or so, only Thomas, Barnes and the person who threw the banana, as well as those nearby who had witnessed it, knew what had happened.<\/p>\n This was Barnes kicking the racists into touch. And as soon as he saw it, Thomas knew what he had in his possession.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI immediately thought it was an important picture,\u201d he tells The Athletic<\/em>. \u201cAnd so it has proven.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas\u2019 photograph from 35 years ago has become one of the most famous in sport but in the days and weeks that followed, media coverage was minimal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unaware of its existence, the next morning the local Liverpool Echo newspaper was preoccupied with skiing stories \u2014 Britons escaping a fire at a Bulgarian resort and the Duchess of York going on a third Alpine holiday since announcing she was pregnant with her third child.<\/p>\n Throughout the week, the focus of the back pages remained entirely on football.<\/p>\n Everton had another important game on Wednesday, a League Cup<\/a> tie at Arsenal<\/a>. The sports news cycle, therefore, was moving on from the Merseyside derby by the time Thomas\u2019 photograph was circulated.<\/p>\n The Echo claimed to be \u201cthe voice of Merseyside sport\u201d and \u201cthe paper that keeps you in the know\u201d. But while crowd disturbances at Luton Town<\/a> and Millwall<\/a> earned coverage across their pages, as well as an incident in Argentina, where goalkeeper Ubaldo Fillol had projectiles including a guitar thrown at him, there was no mention of what had happened to Barnes.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Echo wasn\u2019t alone. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, racist incidents were common in football and barely made the news. Only one British newspaper initially published the photograph of Barnes, and that was part of a tabloid picture special.<\/p>\n The caption in The Sun, which a year later came to be reviled on Merseyside due to its lies about the Hillsborough disaster, made a joke of it. \u201cWhat a banana shot!\u201d read the caption. \u201cJohn Barnes not only skinned the Everton defence to lay on Liverpool\u2019s FA Cup<\/a> winner on Sunday. He also made sure there would be no slip-up when he neatly backheeled this banana into touch when it was thrown at him by a Goodison fan.\u201d<\/p>\n There was no condemnation of the act, which is now considered a hate crime. And though reporters and their editors were unaware of Thomas\u2019 photograph when match reports were published, there was no mention across nine national newspapers of the verbal abuse that Barnes was subjected to either. The coverage largely focused on his haircut.\u00a0<\/p>\n Four months earlier, the reaction had been slightly different when Liverpool hosted Everton at Anfield in a League Cup tie.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was Barnes\u2019 first experience of the Merseyside derby, an occasion where fans in the away end sang, \u201cN*****pool, N*****pool, N*****pool,\u201d as well as \u201cEverton are white!\u201d<\/p>\n London Weekend Television held the rights to the game\u2019s highlights. Though some of this chanting was audible beyond the commentary, it was not mentioned later that night.<\/p>\n There was, however, a response on some radio channels. While BBC Radio 2\u2019s Alan Green, backed by summariser Denis Law, highlighted what was happening in front of them, Clive Tyldesley, representing the local station, Radio City, condemned it live on air.<\/p>\n Tyldesley would become one of the most famous commentators in Britain, later working for the BBC and ITV. He says his reaction was instinctive because he considered Barnes a friend.<\/p>\n When Barnes joined Liverpool in 1987, Tyldesley liked his \u201ccharismatic and enigmatic\u201d personality. They both lived across the River Mersey in Wirral and would sometimes socialise together.\u00a0<\/p>\n Until the start of that friendship, Tyldesley says there were not many black or brown faces in his professional or social circle. It was only through coming into contact with Barnes due to his high-profile move to Liverpool that he came to understand him as a person, and appreciate the difficulties he faced. \u201cI sort of needed John to come along to make me realise a lot of things,\u201d he tells The Athletic<\/em>.<\/p>\n The post-match routine of the Liverpool and Everton players involved drinks at the Continental Club on Wolstenholme Square in the city centre. He cannot remember exactly when the following \u201cminor incident\u201d happened, but it might have even been after Barnes\u2019 first experience of the Merseyside derby.<\/p>\n Tyldesley says he was one of the first into the club that night, waiting at the bar for others to join him. From behind, two men he did not know approached him and asked whether he was Clive Tyldesley. He turned around, expecting to sign an autograph, only for one of them to tell him he\u2019d heard on the radio what he\u2019d said about Barnes. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to decide which side you\u2019re on,\u201d the man concluded.<\/p>\n Tyldesley says he didn\u2019t lose any sleep over it, but it did unsettle him. Though there was coverage in the local papers in the days that followed, the conversation was mainly amplified through phone-ins like the BBC\u2019s In and Around Town show, with some callers expressing their abhorrence at what had happened at Anfield.<\/p>\n The headlines, though, would come from an authority figure in Philip Carter, Everton\u2019s chairman, who was also the president of the Football League. Freakishly, the fixture list pitted Liverpool against Everton again in the league just four days later in a broadcast beamed live by the BBC, not only in England but to millions of viewers across the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carter called the perpetrators of the songs aimed at Barnes \u201cscum\u201d, but Barnes felt Carter\u2019s interjection helped no one. He was booed when he touched the ball in the early stages of the subsequent match, with Barnes later recalling that some away fans sported badges reading \u201cEverton Are White \u2013 Defend the Race\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n GO DEEPER<\/p>\n This is racism in English football. This is not a short piece. But it\u2019s an important one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWell, the crowd have always got something to sing about,\u201d enthused Barry Davies, the BBC commentator as the cameras panned in on a knot of Liverpool fans near the away end exchanging gestures and taunts. Davies said nothing, however, as play restarted and the racists howled \u201cN*****pool.\u201d<\/p>\n Two moments of brilliance from Barnes helped Liverpool to a comfortable enough victory and much of the talk afterwards focused on Barnes\u2019 contribution to the outcome, rather than the attention he had received.\u00a0<\/p>\n Four months later, in the bowels of the main stand at Goodison Park after the clubs had been pitted against each other yet again in the FA Cup, Barnes says he was not questioned about the racial abuse. Instead, the first time he spoke publicly about the incident was in an interview with the Daily Mail two months later for a feature about racism, which involved his wife. Barnes laughed off what had happened, saying that \u201cfruit and vegetable dealers did well that day\u201d.<\/p>\n Barnes suggested that if he was short and fat, he\u2019d be targeted for a different reason and when he insisted \u201cit doesn\u2019t hurt\u201d, he was believable. His positive body language in the photograph revealed that.<\/p>\n Barnes had signed for Liverpool in the summer of 1987, but newspaper reports had linked him instead with a move to Arsenal, who did not end up making an offer. It meant he was not exactly welcomed with open arms at Anfield, where racist slogans promoting the National Front were daubed on the walls of the stadium\u2019s car park to greet him.<\/p>\n In his 1999 autobiography, Barnes remembers other messages like \u201cWhite Power\u201d, \u201cNo Wogs Allowed\u201d and \u201cLiverpool are White.\u201d He says he expected it, partly because some people thought Liverpool was his second choice, but also because of the history of the city, which had grown powerful through the slave trade. It was a place where segregation still existed, and the six per cent Black population was rarely reflected at Anfield or Goodison.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n GO DEEPER<\/p>\n The city of Liverpool, football and an awkward conversation about racism<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The race divide had been highlighted in Liverpool during the riots of 1981, an event that Black locals in the inner-city area of Toxteth still refer to as the \u201cuprising\u201d. Six years later, Barnes describes a \u201cbad aura clinging to me\u2026 had I played badly, it would have been hell for me\u201d.<\/p>\n Barnes thought the solution was simple \u2014 deliver on the pitch and make the fans love him.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Kop would have slaughtered me with racial abuse if I had faltered on the field,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I had been playing for Everton, and doing well, their fans would not have been throwing bananas and spitting at me. Liverpool\u2019s would.\u201d<\/p>\n Barnes was fortunate because the stadium\u2019s famous Kop grandstand was closed for the first three games of the season because of a sewage problem. Liverpool had to play away. Had his debut instead been at Anfield, Barnes believes he\u2019d have been booed, \u201cand that could have affected me\u201d.<\/p>\n In his last season as a Watford<\/a> player, Barnes was jeered at Anfield. Nigel Spackman, a recently signed midfielder in the Liverpool team, tells The Athletic that he remembers it clearly, although he believed it was \u201cbecause of his links to Arsenal\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Barnes ultimately joined Liverpool, where he initially moved into the Moat House hotel in Liverpool\u2019s city centre, living just down the hallway from Spackman, just signed from Chelsea.<\/p>\n The Moat House was not the Ritz but it was popular among footballers because it had a restaurant attached to it. Barnes and Spackman regularly ate together and Spackman remembers thinking how relaxed Barnes was about the social barriers he was encountering. Certainly, it seemed as though Barnes wasn\u2019t going to change his ways just because he\u2019d signed for one of the most famous clubs in the world. Barnes had a tremendous appetite, for example, and would sometimes order the Chateaubriand or the rack of lamb. \u201cBut that\u2019s for two people, Mr Barnes,\u201d a waiter would warn. It didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n His manager, Kenny Dalglish, was adamant that he did not once consider the colour of Barnes\u2019 skin: he just saw a talented player. Others saw it differently. Immediately after signing, Barnes received hate mail at the Moat House, and he\u2019d sometimes spend his evenings reading the letters. One read: \u201cYou are c**p, go back to Africa and swing from the trees.\u201d<\/p>\n Barnes\u2019 response was to laugh at the grammar and pass the letters around to his team-mates, \u201cimagining the pathetic types of people who\u2019d written them\u201d.<\/p>\n He would learn later that these were only a small percentage of the racist letters written about him. His new club received many more but opted not to make him aware of them, worrying they would upset him.\u00a0<\/p>\n The squad had not changed that much from the one that involved Howard Gayle six years earlier. Gayle became Liverpool\u2019s first Black player, having been picked up as a teenager from local football. He had grown up as one of only a few Black kids in a white area of the city and was used to challenging the racism he encountered, but Barnes was raised around other Black people in a middle-class military family in Jamaica.<\/p>\n Gayle was conditioned not to ignore the barbs that came his way, including from his notoriously sharp-tongued team-mates. Barnes, by comparison, had a different way of dealing with things. As an expensive signing going straight into the starting XI, his entry point was different to Gayle\u2019s, who had the additional challenge of fighting his way past team-mates if he wanted to take their place.\u00a0<\/p>\n Barnes saw racism not as football\u2019s problem but as society\u2019s. His team-mates laughed when, before one of his earliest training sessions, a dinner lady forgot to serve him a cup of tea having given one to each of one of his white colleagues. \u201cIs it because I\u2019m Black?\u201d Barnes asked.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n GO DEEPER<\/p>\n Comment: John Barnes asks for society to be educated before we address racism in football, but who is educating him?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Over the months that followed, Barnes would hear team-mates calling opponents \u201cBlack b*******\u201d. He says he would call them out on it, only to be told that they got called \u201cwhite b*******\u201d. He concluded that \u201cdressing rooms were not the best place for heavy debates\u201d.<\/p>\n Barnes changed the style of the Liverpool team, from one that passed opponents off the pitch to one that dribbled past them. His 15 league goals in 38 games helped Liverpool win the title by nine points.\u00a0<\/p>\n In one game in which he did not feature, at Norwich, he heard Liverpool fans booing Ruel Fox, the Black winger. Even with his success, Barnes thought the reaction was \u201chardly surprising\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n GO DEEPER<\/p>\n The different faces of racism<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Jimi Jagni, a half-Gambian, half-Chinese social activist, grew up in Toxteth, segregated from the rest of the city. He wasn\u2019t into football but remembers Barnes signing for Liverpool as really \u201cbig news\u201d.<\/p>\n There were lots of talented footballers in Toxteth but only Cliff Marshall at Everton, then Gayle at Liverpool, who were both born in the area, had made it into the first team at either club.\u00a0<\/p>\n Barnes came to represent L8, Toxteth\u2019s postcode, in a different way. He would socialise in its nightclubs, bringing along Liverpool team-mates such as\u00a0 John Aldridge. Barnes became a physical and visible link between a district that felt separated from the rest of the city.<\/p>\n Yet Barnes\u2019 experiences, especially in his first season at Liverpool, reminded L8 that if he couldn\u2019t get the media to speak up about the injustices of\u00a0 the world, then they had no chance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t know for certain whether a banana had been thrown at him (in February 1988) because it didn\u2019t receive the attention it should have,\u201d Jagni says. \u201cHe was a superstar and very few people said a word about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Emy Onuora, the author of Pitch Black: The Story of Black British Footballers, was one of what he thinks was just two Black Evertonians who followed his team home and away. Joe Farrag, who now happens to be Jagni\u2019s next-door neighbour, was the other, though Onuora was only ever accompanied by white people and occasionally would bump into Farrag at away matches.<\/p>\n As a season ticket holder, Onuora decided that he did not want to attend Merseyside derbies during this period. He describes the abuse towards Black players as \u201cregular\u201d, but with the addition of Barnes, \u201cit was one game where it was going to be too much. I couldn\u2019t bring myself to go\u201d.<\/p>\n Onuora\u2019s matchday experience usually went something like this if a Black player was involved: the abuse would happen, he would challenge it, and the fan or the fans would respond by saying, \u201cI don\u2019t mean you, mate\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Onuora says he became the target of racist abuse on one occasion. He was in the Bullens Road stand and he responded by punching the abuser. \u201cThere were fewer stewards and more police officers. An officer was on the edge of the pitch, pointing at me, saying he was going to arrest me. But he couldn\u2019t get his radio to work.\u201d<\/p>\n The environment was not exclusive to Merseyside. Pat Nevin, who signed for Everton in 1988, after Barnes backheeled the banana, had joined from Chelsea<\/a>. He had notoriously confronted racist fans \u2014 including some from his own club \u2014 abusing Paul Canoville, a Black Chelsea player, at Crystal Palace.<\/p>\n Nevin says racism across Britain was \u201cnormalised. There were pockets at every ground. Some of them were more sizeable than others. But they were always loud. You\u2019d have to stick your fingers in your ears not to hear them\u201d.<\/p>\n Nevin had been a social justice campaigner since his student days, marching against Apartheid. He became involved in the Merseyside Against Racism (MAR) campaign that followed the 1987-88 season, though he stresses the organisation for this came from like-minded colleagues involved in the players\u2019 union rather than the clubs, their representatives or the authorities.<\/p>\n Nevin had concerns about signing for Everton, asking the manager Colin Harvey whether the club had an apartheid policy of no Blacks. He was reassured when Harvey told him he was only the club\u2019s second-choice signing: the first had been Mark Walters, the Black Aston Villa winger, who later moved to Liverpool.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n GO DEEPER<\/p>\n Windrush generation footballers: Pride of the pioneers that starred despite suffering<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The image of Barnes was not a \u2018big bang\u2019 moment. It would take time to germinate as a powerful image, with campaigns like Kick It Out later adopting it.<\/p>\n Onuora identified a pattern across football terraces after a team signed a Black player. Fans tended to cease the booing of their own Black players, if they were successful, but those from opposing teams would still get it.\u00a0<\/p>\n At Liverpool, Onuora says Barnes\u2019 impact on the pitch \u201cchanged the mood\u201d but Everton did not have any Black players at that time and this dynamic had long-term consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBecause Liverpool had one Black player, and because of the rivalry, a section of fans revelled in having a white team,\u201d Onuora says. \u201cThe racist abuse at Everton cranked right up. This section wanted to distinguish themselves by being more abusive, more racist and celebrating Everton\u2019s whiteness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n Bob Thomas\u2019 iconic picture of John Barnes (Bob Thomas Photography\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/cdn.theathletic.com\/app\/uploads\/2023\/10\/13164729\/GettyImages-808136678-scaled.jpg\")
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\n The media focused on the football in the aftermath of Everton 0 Liverpool 1 in 1988 (PA Images via Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/cdn.theathletic.com\/app\/uploads\/2023\/10\/13165320\/GettyImages-1264854101-e1697230419293.jpg\")
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\n Clive Tyldesley spoke out about the abuse of his friend John Barnes (Willie Vass\/Pool via Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"go-deeper\"\/](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/cdn.theathletic.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto\/app\/uploads\/2019\/10\/25145009\/GettyImages-1067614520-1-e1572029467354-1024x507.jpg\")
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\n The Toxteth riots in 1981 scarred the city (Keystone\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.theathletic.com\/app\/uploads\/2023\/10\/13165610\/GettyImages-1636868-scaled-e1697230587596.jpg\")
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\n John Barnes was key to Liverpool\u2019s success in the late 1980s (Allsport UK)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"go-deeper\"\/](\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/cdn.theathletic.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto\/app\/uploads\/2019\/09\/26140502\/Screenshot-2019-09-26-at-19.03.36-1024x581.png\")
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\n Pat Nevin called out racism at Chelsea before his move to Everton (Allsport UK)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"go-deeper\"\/](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/cdn.theathletic.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto\/app\/uploads\/2023\/10\/02125722\/Windrush-Footballers-Premier-League-Anderson-Batson-1024x512.png\")
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