Peter Carney makes the banners on the Kop at Anfield. These aren’t a St George’s cross with a town’s name in the middle or a lewd message scrawled on a bedsheet. These are rippling oceans of red and white that are unveiled every fortnight and take in life, death, politics, protest, celebration and unity. Peter is not just some bloke who makes banners. He is an artist.

The first thing you need to know about Peter is that he’s busy. He’s not leave me alone busy; he’s just driving a minibus, conducting a sold-out matchday tour, caring for an autistic lad a few days a week, setting up before the match and making an intricate banner every fortnight busy. But somehow he can still fit you in. The second thing you need to know about Peter is that he always has an idea for a banner.

Peter made his first banner exactly how you or I would make a banner. In 1974, on the day Liverpool beat Leicester in an FA Cup semi-final replay, he painted “LFC” in massive square letters on a yellow bedsheet. He’s nearly 60 now, but still likes to point out that he made two banners that day: one on the sheet and, because the paint seeped straight through the material, one on the pavement. He would only make three more in the following decade, but the third would be one of the most significant in British football history.

Peter Carney with his Hillsborough banners. Photo by Jack Finnigan

“You know what? I don’t like to see them on the floor because I don’t like to look down at the names. People should look up at the names,” says Peter as we stand in the hall of a community centre in Walton with two banners spread out in front of us. He gestures to the one closest. “This banner I made the week after the Hillsborough disaster. I had the cloth in the house. It was window dressing material. I was working on designing a banner that celebrated Liverpool’s centenary in 1992. I’d only started on it, working out the scale and stuff and then the disaster happened.”

On 15 April 1989, Liverpool went to Hillsborough for an FA Cup semi-final and 96 of their fans never came home. Peter survived the disaster, but the catastrophic scenes he witnessed had a lasting effect on him. He would become a crucial campaigner in the fight for justice and his original Hillsborough Memorial banner would act as a sign of respect and a symbol to unite around.

“I went to the ground the following day. My mate Fred lived seven doors from the Shankly Gates. I went to his for a cup of tea and I said: ‘Fred, we’ve got to make a banner.’ So, between Tuesday and Thursday we made the banner and on Friday we displayed it as part of a tribute at the ground. I think it’s the only tribute that was taken to the ground with the intention of bringing it back. Everything else was left, but I never left mine. I’ve lived, so the banner lives. It was my tribute to these people and the purpose is to keep alive the names and memories of those who were killed.”

The banner itself is a relic. Faded but instantly recognisable, small trinkets attached to its surface coincide with the names of the lives lost. Peter says people from the People’s History Museum came out in 2011 to put together an estimate for its conservation, a testament to its cultural significance. A representative from the museum called it “unique and irreplaceable”.

The other banner spread out on the floor is his second memorial banner. “I tried to trigger all the senses with that banner,” he says. “First of all, everything changes on it. The new one says ‘We Never Walk Alone,’ meaning to say that’s us and the families, and included are the names of some survivors to put that in its place. The names on the new banner are the first names of those who were killed, in order to bring it closer.

“Different materials have been used to try and carry the message through the touch of it. The names are all embroidered on black cloth so that they stand proud. There’s piping around each trophy, so you get a sense of the touch of the trophy. The flames are in silk so they shine. The lettering on the top is also in silk so it’s smooth and nice to touch. The bird is padded out and it has a smaller head to make it look young.”

He looks down at his work. “It stands proud and has a depth to it. The ‘Hillsborough’ wording at the bottom is written in a material that has knots; it’s quite rough to the touch. ‘April 15th 1989’ and ‘Sheffield’ have been put on because it always surprised me how many people didn’t know the date of the disaster or where Hillsborough actually was.” It even has pockets on it to hold flowers, triggering the sense of smell.

Liverpool fans gather at Anfield for a memorial service to mark the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

The sky is perfectly blue when I meet Peter at the Cornerhouse Community Centre in Walton to have his banners photographed. As well as serving as a community hub and foodbank, the centre provides space and facilities for small businesses: ideal for a man who deals in massive pieces of fabric. Peter talks us through his collection, attaching flags to a fence with the knot skills of a man who has spent his life at sea. Goodison Park is only a short walk down the road. “We better hurry up before the bluenoses start throwing eggs,” jokes Peter.

Peter has made more than 20 banners in the last 12 months alone – which he believes is some sort of record. He spent his birthday last year making one for Sean Cox, which the players posed with before their Champions League semi-final at Roma last season. “Sean got attacked and a mate of mine from Spirit of Shankly asked me to make a banner. It has ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ on it in Gaelic and Italian. I was trying to do the Gaelic to speak to Sean because I knew he was into Gaelic football, but the bottom line is: it feels the same whatever language it’s in.

“I put loads of time into it. It’s worth it because it’s one of those things that could have happened to any one of us. One of the things I said that night was: ‘I pray he gets to see it and hope he gets to hold it.’ That still stands. It felt great that so many people were thinking of Sean when we’d just got through to the European Cup final. I thought that’s fucking brilliant, that.”

Liverpool players celebrate reaching the Champions League final with the banner for Sean Cox. Photograph: Steven Paston/PA

Peter’s banners are about football – with slogans such as “Welcome To Wonderland” (“What’s the keeper called? Think about it lad!”) and “Robertson: Sweeter Than Jam” – but they are also about unity and empathy. He made a banner for the victims of the Christchurch mosque attacks that said “stay strong” in Maori and he made one for the victims of the Chapecoense plane crash.

Central to all of Peter’s work is craft. He knows he could buy something online that has been made in a factory, but where’s the fun in that? He would miss out on battering with fabric merchants in Manchester, opening tins of acrylic paint, stencilling with the ends of vinyl car wraps, and roping in fellow Hillsborough survivors to help paint the odd bit here and there. He would miss the cramped attic workspace and, most of all, the chance to perfect a personal style. “For me, it’s about being able to express my support for the team,” he says. “It’s about expressing my belonging to the club, my vision for what’s going on and my ideas.”

Show him a blank page and his banner senses will start tingling. He’ll lock on to a font, size it up using his vape as a guide and tell you that it would look fantastic in four-by-six on a banner. He’ll tell you about how his dad did wedding invitations on old postcards in a particular gothic font he has recreated on the “Jürgener Believers” banner and that he doesn’t care if you think he’s “a quilt” for enjoying the Great British Sewing Bee. He’ll tell you that the proper creativity will begin when he retires and can start mastering his own font, like what the Green Brigade have at Celtic Park. He loves their banners and what German fans do too.

With craft in mind, Peter strings up his most impressive work to date: Destiny Delivered. “This is my masterpiece,” he says. “My Istanbul banner. Every technique you can use on a banner is on here: appliqué, reverse appliqué, painting, embroidery, silk screen printing, you name it, it’s on this banner. Not many banners have a municipal logo on them, do they?” Pride radiates from his smile. The banner even features the passport stamps from entering and departing Istanbul airport, a needle in a haystack level of detail most people would miss. Peter knows it’s there, though. That’s what matters.

Peter Carney with his masterpiece. Photo by Jack Finnigan

Peter’s work isn’t free of protest. Rooting through his archives – a collection of rucksacks, drawstring bags and plastic carriers crammed full – there’s what might be referred to as Peter’s paper period. “I made loads of paper banners for Gillett and Hicks when they were in charge at Anfield because they weren’t worth the cloth that my other banners are made from,” says Peter, pointing to a favourite.

“Foster, one of their sons, was trying to make friends with the supporters in the local pub. When he turned up, they threw him out. So I made a banner, and it said: ‘Flea Forth With Foster & Friends For Thine Fettered Finances Have Floundered’. Really, I just wanted to say ‘Fuck off!’ But if I had made a banner saying ‘Fuck off, Foster, ya fuckin’ knob’ it wouldn’t have got in many papers, would it? I think it got in the Independent. They were made up with it.”

Peter Hooton, a lifelong Liverpool fan and member of the Spirit of Shankly fangroup that was set up in the Gillett and Hicks era, is full of praise for Peter. “He’s an artist, isn’t he? The Hillsborough one is the best one for me,” says Hooton. “Brilliant. Every name was embroidered on to it. He’s recording history in a way. It’s so stunning. It’s the Scouse Bayeux Tapestry.

“Peter will go down in posterity. If I wanted someone to make a banner for my funeral, it’d be Peter Carney. He did one for Tommy Lawrence and Peter Thompson recently and the families were made up with them. They’re magnificent. He takes his time. He knows what he’s doing.”

Peter Carney shows off a collection of his banners in Liverpool. Photo by Jack Finnigan

Banner culture has changed dramatically on the Kop over the years. As Hooton points out, the Union Flags of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s have become taboo. Whether it’s due to politics or a heightened sense of creativity, he’s not sure. Fans looked at football differently after Heysel and Hillsborough, with politics and an anti-establishment vigour rising to the fore.

“In the past it, would have been frogs legs and Swiss rolls [a reference to the famous ‘Joey Ate The Frogs Legs, Made The Swiss Roll, Now He’s Munching Gladbach’ banner] then it became justice flags and names of people who passed away,” says Peter.

“A lot of people are brought up Catholic and that’s part of Liverpool’s DNA as well. Right-wingers called it ‘mawkish sentimentality’ but I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s what Thatcher was saying didn’t exist. I think it’s community. It’s the opposite of sentimentality; it’s about community and support.”

Liverpool fans before the Champions League quarter-final against Porto in April 2019. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

A few weeks later Peter is in Homebaked, a community bakery opposite Anfield where he is greeted like a celebrity by the staff. He’s here to hang a banner outside the ground to commemorate the late Tommy Smith. Between mouthfuls of the Shankly pie, he tells me that wind caught the banner while it was drying on the line and flicked white scabs of paint across its surface. Peter, a perfectionist, delicately picked each one off by hand until it looked brand new again.

In biting cold and blustery wind, he takes utmost care to hang the banner as straight as possible around a pillar next to Anfield’s Hillsborough memorial. It must comfort Smith’s family to know their loved one played for a club that is followed so loyally and passionately. A passion so strong it leads people to use their spare time to honour a life with such craftsmanship and care.

Shortly after, Peter gives me a glimpse of his tour. When he was made redundant from his job at the council, he cashed in some of the money and bought a minibus. Inspired by the city’s Magical Mystery Tour – a massive yellow coach that ferries tourists between Beatles sights – Peter started Soccer in the City, a matchday tour that takes in the city’s footballing history and landmarks. It’s fantastic. Few people know their stuff like Peter.

That evening, before a Friday night match against Huddersfield, I meet up with Joe Connolly from the Spion Kop 1906 fangroup. Joe, who is in his late 20s, says Peter helps and supports the next generation of banner makers. “Our mate died around the time of the League Cup final in 2012 and we painted a flag for him at The Black-E in Liverpool,” says Joe.

“It said: ‘RIP Alex, We Won It For You.’ Because Peter knew all the context and that, he helped us get the location to make it and helped us paint it. He texted us after saying: ‘You lot make me proud of the youth of this city.’ He’s definitely well respected by us and really well known. We see him as one of the forefathers of what we do.”

That night Liverpool thump Huddersfield 5-0. The game starts the way it always does, with 50,000 people singing a rousing chorus amid a rippling ocean of red and white: a choreographed display of life, death, politics, protest, celebration and unity. Among it all are works of art by Peter Carney. After taking a long break, Peter’s next exhibition will be on a Friday night in early August. All you need to see it is a matchday ticket.

• This article appeared first in Issue 18 of MUNDIAL

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