Anfield, of all places, was not only the setting for the final Everton game of Bill Kenwright’s time on earth but where he represented the values of his beloved club and city magnificently 10 years earlier. A divisive figure as Everton chairman, no doubt, but what Kenwright epitomised on that clear April day has been lost to the Premier League, Everton included, and both are poorer for it.
Kenwright, who has died after a long illness aged 78, was addressing the Kop at the 24th Hillsborough Memorial Service on 15 April 2013. That an Everton chairman had been invited to give the keynote speech showed the esteem in which Kenwright was held by the bereaved families of those who died at Hillsborough. He enjoyed a lasting friendship with Margaret Aspinall, the tireless campaigner who lost her son James in the 1989 disaster and who would become a regular guest of Kenwright’s at Goodison Park.
An actor since childhood in Liverpool – he never could live down playing a Liverpool fan in one episode of The Liver Birds – and eloquent speaker, Kenwright should have been comfortable on that Anfield stage. But he was nervous, worried that the emotion of losing his mum 10 months earlier would rise up and affect the speech at what he considered the key moments – when stressing Everton’s eternal support for their neighbours in respect of Hillsborough, the importance of family and the defiant spirit of the people of Liverpool. One group in particular.
“I saw your banner at Reading the other day saying: ‘You’ve taken on the wrong city,’” said Kenwright, inevitably rising to the occasion. “Well you’ve taken on the wrong mums too, because we all know about Liverpool mums and the way they fight for their kids and their families.” He added, after receiving another standing ovation: “I hope by next year, the 25th anniversary, you’ll be celebrating the greatest victory that any team in this country has ever had, not just in football but in life. [From] Everton Football Club, we salute you and if you ever want to come and have a service for them over at our place with some blues, the door is always open to you.”
Kenwright’s emotional speech perfectly captured the mood of the city because he remained deeply connected to it, despite living and working in London as a successful theatre producer. The “greatest victory” he wished for that day came shortly after the 27th anniversary of Hillsborough, when a new inquest determined the 97 football fans were unlawfully killed and failings by police and the ambulances services had contributed to their deaths.
Kenwright was acutely aware of his responsibilities as an Everton figurehead, proud of them too, and involved from the outset in the club’s groundbreaking work in the local community. When a junior football league on Stanley Park was under threat after its changing rooms and equipment had been vandalised, it was saved by a private donation from the Everton chairman. Numerous ex‑players, finding themselves struggling outside the game, were given employment back at Everton by Kenwright. He was loyal and expected loyalty in return. Anyone who fell short could find themselves cut adrift. The Guardian ceased to be his favourite read after reporting on a protest march by The Blue Union, an Everton supporters group angered at the club’s stagnation and the lack of investment under Kenwright, back in 2011.
Kenwright’s devotion to Everton was unquestionable. It prompted him to form the True Blue Holdings consortium that bought out the former owner Peter Johnson when Everton were in financial peril in 1999, a situation it finds itself in today, albeit with considerably more debts to pay. His appointment in 2002 of Preston’s young up-and-coming manager, David Moyes, was inspired and provided the platform for 11 years of stability on the pitch while Everton struggled financially off it. More could have been achieved but for the sale of Wayne Rooney. Kenwright attempted to bring Moyes back as Everton manager when Marco Silva was sacked in 2019. At that point his influence over appointments had waned under Farhad Moshiri, the British-Iranian billionaire to whom Kenwright sold most of his shareholding in 2016. It would return following several calamitous decisions by the current Everton owner.
There is no dressing up Kenwright’s time as Everton owner or chairman as a success with the club enduring the longest trophy drought in its history and in serious financial danger. That the final months of his life were spent away from Goodison Park, where he last attended a game on 3 January, says enough about the broken relationship between Kenwright and his fellow Evertonians.
But as a working class boy from Botanic Road in Edge Hill to chairman of the club he adored for 19 years, with 34 years spent on the board in total, Kenwright represented a link to Everton’s past that cannot be replicated and values that are being squeezed out of the Premier League in its present form of state ownership and distant, opaque investment. Kenwright was part of Everton’s identity and knew what the club should stand for, as he articulated so beautifully at Anfield a decade ago.
