This article is part of The Athletic’s series celebrating UK Black History Month. You can find the full series here.
Bob Thomas had no idea he was about to take an era-defining photograph.
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.
Everton, as reigning First Division champions, had won the title in two of the previous three seasons; Liverpool had claimed the other, having dominated English football in the 10 years before that.
Thomas liked to arrive early. For a 3pm kick-off, he would be settled two hours before. He considered Everton’s 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.
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.
The Jamaican-born left-winger and England international had become Liverpool’s 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.
This development was worthy of some analysis from the match commentator, John Motson, who in the opening moments of the BBC’s coverage chirped up by suggesting that Barnes looked like the Black boxer, Lloyd Honeyghan.
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 went on throughout the game.
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.
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’ 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.
Liverpool won the game 1-0, thanks largely to Barnes’ 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.
This meant that newspapers did not pick up the image until the middle of the week after the match. 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.
This was Barnes kicking the racists into touch. And as soon as he saw it, Thomas knew what he had in his possession. “I immediately thought it was an important picture,” he tells The Athletic. “And so it has proven.” Bob Thomas’ iconic picture of John Barnes (Bob Thomas Photography/Getty Images)
Thomas’ 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. Unaware of its existence, the next morning the local Liverpool Echo newspaper was preoccupied with skiing stories — 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.
Throughout the week, the focus of the back pages remained entirely on football. The media focused on the football in the aftermath of Everton 0 Liverpool 1 in 1988 (PA Images via Getty Images)
Everton had another important game on Wednesday, a League Cup tie at Arsenal. The sports news cycle, therefore, was moving on from the Merseyside derby by the time Thomas’ photograph was circulated.
The Echo claimed to be “the voice of Merseyside sport” and “the paper that keeps you in the know”. But while crowd disturbances at Luton Town and Millwall 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.
The Echo wasn’t 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.
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. “What a banana shot!” read the caption. “John Barnes not only skinned the Everton defence to lay on Liverpool’s FA Cup 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.”
There was no condemnation of the act, which is now considered a hate crime. And though reporters and their editors were unaware of Thomas’ 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.
Four months earlier, the reaction had been slightly different when Liverpool hosted Everton at Anfield in a League Cup tie.
This was Barnes’ first experience of the Merseyside derby, an occasion where fans in the away end sang, “N*****pool, N*****pool, N*****pool,” as well as “Everton are white!”
London Weekend Television held the rights to the game’s highlights. Though some of this chanting was audible beyond the commentary, it was not mentioned later that night.
There was, however, a response on some radio channels. While BBC Radio 2’s 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.
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.
When Barnes joined Liverpool in 1987, Tyldesley liked his “charismatic and enigmatic” personality. They both lived across the River Mersey in Wirral and would sometimes socialise together. 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. “I sort of needed John to come along to make me realise a lot of things,” he tells The Athletic. Clive Tyldesley spoke out about the abuse of his friend John Barnes (Willie Vass/Pool via Getty Images)
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 “minor incident” happened, but it might have even been after Barnes’ first experience of the Merseyside derby.
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’d heard on the radio what he’d said about Barnes. “You’ve got to decide which side you’re on,” the man concluded.
Tyldesley says he didn’t 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’s In and Around Town show, with some callers expressing their abhorrence at what had happened at Anfield.
The headlines, though, would come from an authority figure in Philip…