Hillsborough: What Really Happened?

[TrippyLondoner]

Me too. Todays memorial was very moving, more so than I thought it would be, my eyes swelled up when YNWA was sang at the end (I wasnt even at Anflield, was watching it in work).

The city centre was at a complete standstill from 2:45 till 4:30pm today.

Justice for the 96, You'll Never Walk Alone.

I was watching that aswell,and I agree it was very moving to watch.

 

[derf]

You're bringing up unpleasant smears that were dealt with nearly 20 years ago. Why should anyone go into that stuff to suit you?

Doesn't suit me either way.
A lot of people died or were injured that day. If these people are making up stories they deserve a smacking. If they are telling the truth they should be listened to as it would make a difference to an enquiry.

The only thing that gets me is you would have to be pretty sick to make up a story like that given what happened.

 

[tarannau]

And you'd be a prick for continually bringing it some shitty secondhand source, taking no responsibility for your choice or lack of discerning research. Any fuckface can find something objectionable and unbalanced on the internet - most have the grace to admit that they've made a mistake and show some contrition.

 

[derf]

And you'd be a prick for continually bringing it some shitty secondhand source, taking no responsibility for your choice or lack of discerning research. Any fuckface can find something objectionable and unbalanced on the internet - most have the grace to admit that they've made a mistake and show some contrition.

I keep getting that but I disagree. These people claim to be eye witnesses and so should be heard.
If they are lying they should get a kicking.

If I could put it another way. There were lots of witnesses to a bloke being pushed over by the cops at G20. They claim to have seen something vital to an investigation into a man's death. Should they be listened to?

If so, why when these people should not be? They claim to have seen events OUTSIDE the stadium that influenced events within.
None of these people are claiming that those who died were guilty of anything but do claim Liverpool fans, drunk as skunks, caused or contributed to the problem.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Thanks. You've made your point several times. Now please leave it as nobody else is interested. Anything further is trolling.

 

[tarannau]

People adding anonymous comments to a tabloid website are not necessarily eye witnesses though, no more than Cheesypoof is a top journalist. It's a cunt's trick and reasoning - people have asked you nicely to desist and now's not the place.

Just cock off now please.

 

[e19896]

I keep getting that but I disagree. These people claim to be eye witnesses and so should be heard.
If they are lying they should get a kicking.

If I could put it another way. There were lots of witnesses to a bloke being pushed over by the cops at G20. They claim to have seen something vital to an investigation into a man's death. Should they be listened to?

If so, why when these people should not be? They claim to have seen events OUTSIDE the stadium that influenced events within.
None of these people are claiming that those who died were guilty of anything but do claim Liverpool fans, drunk as skunks, caused or contributed to the problem.

This is offensive, do you undertsnad this point? read post i was there knew people there, of course people informing us of a truth should be herd, missinformation of which this is should not be.

I spent the whole 15 4 09 with people who was at that game, and was caught up in the crush, one day i shall never forget, walking hand in hand with them down that tunnel onto the pitch, it was deep and moveing, ive no reson not to beleave there truth, plenty to not to beleave the lies you keep spreding is this clear enough for you?

 

[colbhoy]

Drunken football fans at a game - Never?!

I have been to hundreds of football games in my lifetime and as a Celtic fan, many of them have been Old Firm games. I have seen hundreds of drunks at these games who have obviously been drinking for hours. Some have been denied access, some have been allowed in. I have many times had a few drinks before a game. I've squeezed in that last pint before leaving the pub and as a result I've missed kick-off. I've also on a couple of occasions had more than a couple of drinks and been pretty drunk but have never been denied access to the ground. Equally, on many many more ocassions I have attended stone-cold sober.

The fact is, having a drink is part of the British football experience, it always has been and always will be. Just like any gathering of people at a sporting event or a rock concert, drink is part of the agenda. The police are paid to handle these crowds, paid to check for tickets, paid to organise access to the ground in an orderly manner, paid to weed out, deny access to, eject or arrest trouble-makers (whether drunk or not!). I have witnessed mayhem outside a couple of grounds, in one particular occasion gaining access 40 minutes into the game because the police could not cope with the large crowd that turned up and because it wasn't an all-ticket match.

These instances are not the fault of the fans, no matter how late they turn up, how much they have had to drink or whether they have tickets. Fans without tickets should get nowhere near a turnstyle - again this is the responsibility of the police.

I wasn't there but I can be confident that the Liverpool support that day (and there were 25000 of them in a strange city) would be no worse than a similar-sized support from any other major team in Britain. What I do know as fact (and I watched the footage last night) is that the police opened that gate and that fans walked in an orderly fashion through it. They were not directed anywhere when they came though the gate so quite naturally headed for the first access point that they could see which was the main tunnel.

I may well read the Taylor Report that someone else has mentioned earlier.

RIP the 96.

 

[e19896]

JUSTICE FOR THE 96 KILLED 15 4 1989

 

[William of Walworth]

Thanks for those recent posts everybody, some excellent points, and some memories well worth reading.

I didn't see the TV footage of the Anfield memorial service yesterday, but we did watch the repeat of Jimmy McGovern's 'Hillsborough' last night on ITV3.

Really really powerful and moving -- I hadn't seen it before. By the end we were silent and choked and near to tears

Did anyone else steel themselves to watch it again?

 

[JTG]

Jacqui Smith asks South Yorkshire Police to release all documents related to the disaster

Normally these are only released after 30 years

 

[butchersapron]

Meeting is tonight - doors open 7-30, meeting probably start about 8-15, doubt it'll be any later as a number of people have travelled a long way.

Bristol - Mon. 20th April 7:30pm
Hillsborough: What Really Happened?
£/4

Sheila Colman - Hillsborough Justice Campaign
David Goldblatt - Author of the best book about football ever written (not my opinion, but on the blurb)
Daniel Bennett - eye witness and barrister

The Cube. 4 Princess Row
Bristol, BS2 8NQ, United Kingdom
+44 117 907 4190

 

[aylee]

There does seem to be a momentum building for a public inquiry on the back of the anniversary. If the police documents are released and reveal that there was a cover-up, then it could become irresistable.

I confess that I was opposed to the idea of an inquiry on the ground that what needed to be known was known .... that the police fucked up and that attempts to hold individuals to account failed. After all I've seen and read over the last few weeks, I am starting to think that apart from the families' right to closure, there would be a very useful purpose to a public inquiry in that it would offer some valuable lessons in the way the police should react to public disasters of this nature when their actions are implicated.

 

[butchersapron]

*one final bump*

 

[butchersapron]

Good meeting, very good meeting. Sheila C very good. Ran out of time basically.

 

[JTG]

would have gone but work late Mondays. Glad it went well

 

[butchersapron]

Short report:

One of the things I found most interesting was hearing about why the Hillsborough Justice Campaign decided to split from the Trevor Hicks ran Hillsborough Families Support Group - Sheila Coleman put it squarely down to the playing out of class dynamics - in brief Hicks and the professionals in the campaign simply took over the campaign through their greater experience of dealing with authorities and people in power from a position of respect and they began to introduce the needs of these authorities into the campaign, either as objectives or as choices of methods. Basically they wanted a behind-closed doors deal hammered out with people like them in charge and with little input from the mass of the families and survivors. Their greater contact and even role in existing media networks also allowed them to portray themselves not as one face of the disaster but as the only face.

When this was met with resistance by the other families they began to act undemocratically and just doing what they wanted. An example - in 1997 The Sun approached the HFSG and requested a meeting - this was put to the vote with Trevor Hicks arguing in favour of the meeting. The vote was easily won by those opposed, Trevor Hicks then simply went ahead with the meeting. This was actually the catalyst for setting up the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. Sheila C is also firmly convinced that that a “buy off” (her words) of the HFSG is imminent, engineered by those who have ran the group in their own interests for the last 20 years. Interesting (to me anyway) to see class dynamics at work in what seems on the face of it a straightforward case of naming the guilty and bringing them to justice.

Other points discussed: the suggestion by Andy Burnham that the 30 years secrecy rule be dropped to 20 in this case is meaningless PR that allows him and other politicians to pose as demanding this. Those records have been sat in the South Yorkshire Police archive and will have been gone through numerous times to remove anything implicating themselves -on top of that, they were gone through at the time and later by the notorious West Midlands Force. And even more, on top of the undoubted clear out of damning evidence that will have taken place, the decision over what to release lies with…South Yorkshire Police. Meredydd Hughes chief constable of South Yorkshire Police has been posing all over the papers this last week saying they have nothing to hide blah blah knowing full well that he’d already been on the phone to the HJC and flatly told them he didn’t have enough manpower to re-vet the files so it was highly unlikely he’d give permission for anything to be released - he turned down the offer of volunteers to help him go through the files.

The 3.15 cut off point looks worse and worse. I know someone on here has argued that it was in line with all procedures and so on, which may well be the case, but it was only the case because the families were bumped into signing agreements to allow a series of mini-inquests (some of them were told they were signing release forms for the body or other official sounding things) by both the police and their own original legal representatives. (I don’t know enough about this aspect to argue it properly so I’m simply repeating what Sheila C argued).

What else ? People doing PhDs on the disaster facing academic resistance if they choose to be critical of the authorities (Sheila C had to abandon her own PhD on the subject) whilst those who knuckled down are now called on by the media and authorities as the definitive academic voice of what happened. A lot of families not being that happy with the McGovern film, Liverpool FC being totally shit to them (the only club not to help out with signed footballs etc).

Probably more but can’t think of anything now.

 

[_pH_]

that's interesting butchers, ta.

and very sad too

 

[butchersapron]

It could ceratinly be read that way, but tbh i found it inspiring how, despite all these obstacles, people are still fighting for what's right. I wanted to ask what form this suggested "buy off" might take, but there was just no time.

edit: Sheila C also mentioned this which i'd totally forgotten about:

An off-the-cuff remark by the judge recently appointed to look into the Hillsborough football tragedy has angered families of victims. As Michael Streeter finds out, the row has led to doubts over the scope of the inquiry.

Lord Justice Stuart-Smith yesterday apologised for a comment he made during a meeting to discuss his re- examination of the 1989 tragedy.

The 69-year-old Court of Appeal judge , who was appointed in June by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, met families of victims at the Merseyside Maritime Museum yesterday morning. Shaking hands with Phil Hammond, whose teenage son Philip died at Hillsborough, he asked if some of the families were going to be late "like Liverpool fans".

 

[Donna Ferentes]

I'd guess it's possible that SYP will offer an apology for (quite likely unspecified) errors made on the day. Some sort of compensation may be offered. Newly-released documents will fail to reveal anything damning and therefore a public enquiry ill not seem appropriate. That sort of thing.

 

[butchersapron]

One other thing, a pamphlet dealing with all the issues has been put together by people like Phil Scraton and Sheila Coleman - this is a must read for those who find the Interim and full taylor reports a bit daunting.

The Hillsborough Football Disaster Context & Consequences - this really is excellent.

 

[William of Walworth]

Short report:

One of the things I found most interesting was hearing about why the Hillsborough Justice Campaign decided to split from the Trevor Hicks ran Hillsborough Families Support Group - Sheila Coleman put it squarely down to the playing out of class dynamics - in brief Hicks and the professionals in the campaign simply took over the campaign through their greater experience of dealing with authorities and people in power from a position of respect and they began to introduce the needs of these authorities into the campaign, either as objectives or as choices of methods. Basically they wanted a behind-closed doors deal hammered out with people like them in charge and with little input from the mass of the families and survivors. Their greater contact and even role in existing media networks also allowed them to portray themselves not as one face of the disaster but as the only face.

When this was met with resistance by the other families they began to act undemocratically and just doing what they wanted. An example - in 1997 The Sun approached the HFSG and requested a meeting - this was put to the vote with Trevor Hicks arguing in favour of the meeting. The vote was easily won by those opposed, Trevor Hicks then simply went ahead with the meeting. This was actually the catalyst for setting up the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. Sheila C is also firmly convinced that that a “buy off” (her words) of the HFSG is imminent, engineered by those who have ran the group in their own interests for the last 20 years. Interesting (to me anyway) to see class dynamics at work in what seems on the face of it a straightforward case of naming the guilty and bringing them to justice.

Other points discussed: the suggestion by Andy Burnham that the 30 years secrecy rule be dropped to 20 in this case is meaningless PR that allows him and other politicians to pose as demanding this. Those records have been sat in the South Yorkshire Police archive and will have been gone through numerous times to remove anything implicating themselves -on top of that, they were gone through at the time and later by the notorious West Midlands Force. And even more, on top of the undoubted clear out of damning evidence that will have taken place, the decision over what to release lies with…South Yorkshire Police. Meredydd Hughes chief constable of South Yorkshire Police has been posing all over the papers this last week saying they have nothing to hide blah blah knowing full well that he’d already been on the phone to the HJC and flatly told them he didn’t have enough manpower to re-vet the files so it was highly unlikely he’d give permission for anything to be released - he turned down the offer of volunteers to help him go through the files.

The 3.15 cut off point looks worse and worse. I know someone on here has argued that it was in line with all procedures and so on, which may well be the case, but it was only the case because the families were bumped into signing agreements to allow a series of mini-inquests (some of them were told they were signing release forms for the body or other official sounding things) by both the police and their own original legal representatives. (I don’t know enough about this aspect to argue it properly so I’m simply repeating what Sheila C argued).

What else ? People doing PhDs on the disaster facing academic resistance if they choose to be critical of the authorities (Sheila C had to abandon her own PhD on the subject) whilst those who knuckled down are now called on by the media and authorities as the definitive academic voice of what happened. A lot of families not being that happy with the McGovern film, Liverpool FC being totally shit to them (the only club not to help out with signed footballs etc).
Probably more but can’t think of anything now.

Thanks for all that, it all sounds fascinating especially about how any SYP Police files that are released will have been most likely pre-vetted and sanitised long ago.

The sentence I've bolded, was any more said about peoples' opinion of the McGovern film, or was it only a passing mention?

Cheers.

 

[butchersapron]

In line with the fist few paras, it was an example of how they felt crowded out by people like Hicks, even when it involved sympathetic people like Mcgovern. (edit: to answer the question it was really only mentioned in passing)The Liverpool Fc thing is also related to that i think, but to be fair, Sheila was pretty much out of time as we moved onto that. There was a great question about which players had supported the HJC rather than the HFSG, and Jamie Carragher was mentioned as being petty much the only consistent 100% one. Again, we were getting into really interesting areas with this but time ran out. That meeting could have gone on for another 12 hours i think and not covered all that people wanted to talk about.

 

[Biffo]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/04/25/hillsborough-rescuer-tells-how-police-superiors-forced-her-to-lie-about-boy-s-death-115875-21308274/

 

[butchersapron]

Fuck him

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Fuck him

What an appalling little shit. He doesn't get it does he?

 

[revol68]

As much as he is full of shit isn't the response all a bit hysterical and OTT, why get hung up on what a some fuckwit on the west coast of another continent says when that cunt MacKenzie is still swanning around the UK and the West Yorkshire police have been let off the hook.

 

[rosa]

As much as he is full of shit isn't the response all a bit hysterical and OTT, why get hung up on what a some fuckwit on the west coast of another continent says when that cunt MacKenzie is still swanning around the UK and the West Yorkshire police have been let off the hook.

i take your point but there's nothing wrong with fighting on all fronts. Good to hear that a sponsor boycott's having an impact.

 

[sleaterkinney]

Some sample quotes from that Cohen twat:

" Liverpool supporters are directly responsible for causing the two worst disasters in English football history, Heysel and Hillsborough". That "there is a disgusting side of Liverpools history that he would be happy to talk about."

" They have five stars on their shirts but should have 39 coffins."

His show is the only mainstream show on football in the US so it is important that he doesn't get to spread his views.

 

[revol68]

Heysel is fair enough and I think it's rather shameful how that's been forgotten but his shit about Hillsborough is well out of order.