What Spirit of Shankly Doesn't Want You To Read

Spirit of Shankly (SOS) is the name taken by Liverpool Supporters Union, a group set-up in early 2008, on the back of issues surrounding the tenure of the two now former American Co-owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, with the ultimate aim of securing fan ownership of Liverpool FC.
 

Some people credit, at least in part, the efforts of Spirit of Shankly to show these two the door of the club at Anfield, and the group has endeared itself to a significant number of Liverpool supporters.

However, at its 2009 end of season party, in a six-minute episode of shame, a performer sang a song on stage encouraging Liverpool fans to chant "Munich", in reference to the 1958 Munich Air Crash, where Manchester United players and staff, as well as other passengers, died.

No one made any attempt to stop it, or pull the plug, and no one remembered that Sir Matt Busby, almost killed by the crash, was a former Liverpool club captain.

The subsequent year saw SOS continue to march and rally, and the almost inevitable leaving of the club by Hicks and Gillett, to virtually everyone's delight. New owners have taken the reigns, but Spirit of Shankly continued to treat them as the enemy, making demands of the new owners right from the off, using much publicised 'bully-boy' tactics and solicitor's letters.

Come 2011 and there is increasingly disturbing activity from Spirit of Shankly. It circumvented its own democratic procedures in order to take part in something that has nothing to do with it. It is misleading people over a financial product that it is a partner in, and uses forums to trawl for new members and put out its propaganda, effectively controlling the official site forums, so that it can jump on dissenters, evoking not the spirit of our legendary former LFC manager, but instead, the Spirit of Stalin!

Are they really interested in the "best interests" of Liverpool Supporters,  or do they have ulterior motives and a hidden agenda, not entirely compatible with their supposedly "constant" aim?

One clue perhaps would be that the offices for Spirit of Shankly are in the Everton Development Trust (EDT), an organisation to help people and projects in the Everton area, adjacent to the Anfield ground.

"The union get involved with loads of things that have no direct link to the club. They run schemes for children from the surrounding area during the summer."

 "MickeyLove" - Active SOS member and LFC.TV forums moderator

Does EDT help worthy causes? Perhaps it does, but when you note that one of Spirit of Shankly's aims is, "To work with any relevant agencies to improve the area of Anfield", you would realise that there is an area of cross-over between SOS and EDT, where what SOS is supposed to be about could easily get blurred, especially by people who take the above aim and change it to something like, "helping the people of Anfield", whilst conveniently forgetting the constant aim about acting in the best interests of Liverpool Supporters.