15th April 1989, 22 years on and still no justice

[Stoat Boy]

So the Taylor report backs up your moral drivel about the gate storming does it? I need an answer to that as it's the only point that you've brought to the table.

Yes because my point is that there was no single person to 'blame' for it.

All sorts of factors came into play including a general footballing culture of which I have been involved with myself that seems to encourage a form of mob-rule.

Liverpool, and many other clubs of the time including on occassion my own CPFC have had groups of fans who have stormed turnstiles and so on to gain entry without tickets. Even Dalglish in his autobiography says that ticketless fans were a factor abliet one that should have been controled by the Police but it is something that occurs at football grounds all over the world. The numbers involved might have been small but it did happen and the actions of a small group in such a larger crush can have a magnified affect. To try and deny that things like this would not have contributed to events at Hillsborough is in my opinion sticking your head in the ground.

It was a shocking event and a terrible waste of life. But there is no 'justice' available. It happend. And things changed afterwards.

Nobody emerges from what happened with any real credit beyond the individual acts of heroism but collectively, as a footballing culture, we need to accept that we all need to share a little bit of guilt.

Liverpool fans, collectively, were not blameless.

 

[embree]

Same old unsubstantiated lies, directly contradicted by every single credible source of evidence from the day. This is very, very easily countered and yet still the ignorance continues

 

[butchersapron]

Yes because my point is that there was no single person to 'blame' for it.

All sorts of factors came into play including a general footballing culture of which I have been involved with myself that seems to encourage a form of mob-rule.

Liverpool, and many other clubs of the time including on occassion my own CPFC have had groups of fans who have stormed turnstiles and so on to gain entry without tickets. Even Dalglish in his autobiography says that ticketless fans were a factor abliet one that should have been controled by the Police but it is something that occurs at football grounds all over the world. The numbers involved might have been small but it did happen and the actions of a small group in such a larger crush can have a magnified affect. To try and deny that things like this would not have contributed to events at Hillsborough is in my opinion sticking your head in the ground.

Connect this to your point and the repated findings. You doing a turnstile on a different date somewhere else is not good enough. Connect the dots.

 

[embree]

Were any alleged ticketless fans a significant factor in the face of:

1) delays on the Snake Pass causing many fans from Merseyside to arrive late
2) lack of adequate controls on the known bottle neck leading to the Leppings Lane turnstiles
3) lack of adequate sign posting outside and inside the ground directing fans unfamiliar with the stadium to the correct areas
4) inadequate numbers of turnstiles and many of those in poor working order
5) poor communication from police officers outside the ground as the turnstile crush developed
6) failure to close the entrance to the central pens as they filled up and direct fans to the near empty side pens
7) slow response from officers inside the ground as the crush in the pens developed, ignoring warnings from fans in the adjoining pens who could see what was happening
8) a matchday commander who had never taken charge of a game at Hillsborough and hadn't bothered to familiarise himself with the ground layout or the reports from the incident free game between the same two teams at the ground a year earlier, with each club being given the same parts of the stadium they had occupied that day

This leaving aside the competence of the response to the disaster and prioritising of self preservation rather than an honest appraisal of the failure of all the relevant authorities to ensure safety at the match.

These were ALL known factors in the disaster, backed up by solid evidence provided to the Taylor Enquiry. Uncorroborated talk of ticketless fans which may or may not have happened seems to be given far greater precedence by a lot of people over and above these established facts. I get sick of having to say this every bloody year - let's stick to the facts not supposition based on things that happened in other places, at other grounds at different times.

 

[embree]

The role the ticketless fans played. A surge with the amount of force to kill someone blows the mind, especially as plenty of Liverpool fans would be conveying back the message that there was room in other pens.

Disregarding the ticketless fans part, substantially wrong on two counts:

a) The fans were not killed by a 'surge'. They were killed by crush asphyxia rather than traumatic asphyxia. The difference is important. Traumatic asphyxia occurs when, for example, a heavy object - or the crowd surge you talk about - falls on someone's chest suddenly. Crush asphyxia occurs when pressure builds up over a period of time, when the victim slowly has the life crushed out of them. The fact that most of the victims were killed by crush asphyxia shows that the pressure built up over a period of minutes. There was no surge, simply a very large number of people, allowed into the ground via the exit gates ordered to be opened by Chief Superintendent Duckenfield (the matchday commander who had never been involved in policing a game at Hillsborough before that day), who were shown by CCTV footage to have walked (not run, surged or anything else) into the ground and straight down the tunnel leading to the already full central pens - with nobody attempting to close this tunnel or direct fans to the near empty side pens.
b) given that the central pens were reached via a tunnel, well away from the entrances to the side pens, the idea that Liverpool fans would have been conveying any sort of messages to those entering the ground about the relative available capacity of the pens behind the goal is ludicrous and unsupported by any eyewitness accounts of the day. Those Liverpool fans entering the central pens after the exit gates outside the ground were opened would have been completely unable to retreat given that there were hundreds following them down that tunnel.

There is another idea that a surge, caused by Peter Beardsley hitting the bar in the opening moments of the game, played some part in the unfolding disaster. Again, there was no surge in those pens. Eyewitness accounts from people standing in the neighbouring side pens and pictures from CCTV show that those pens were already overfull that there was no movement possible. Fans standing in side pens recall commenting on how unnaturally still the crowd in the centre pens were, there was no 'sway' nothing. They could not move and were being slowly crushed to death.

These details are important. They debunk the idea that a disorderly, unruly mass of fans caused death by running, surging into the terrace. They simply didn't and there is no credible evidence to suggest they did.

ETA: the difference between 'crush' and 'traumatic' asphyxia was glossed over at the inquest, the pathologist saying there was no difference. But there was, and the fact that it was crush asphyxia which caused the deaths is vital not only in characterising the events leading up to the tragedy but also in assessing the immediate response to it and whether more could have been done to save lives if an adequate disaster plan had been initiated

 

[goldenecitrone]

These details are important. They debunk the idea that a disorderly, unruly mass of fans caused death by running, surging into the terrace. They simply didn't and there is no credible evidence to suggest they did.

But surely that can't be true. Who would have passed such information onto such an honest newspaper as the Sun? Are you seriously suggesting that the police and the Murdoch newspapers were hand in glove? Crazy talk.

 

[embree]

But surely that can't be true. Who would have passed such information onto such an honest newspaper as the Sun? Are you seriously suggesting that the police and the Murdoch newspapers were hand in glove? Crazy talk.

I've tried to think of any other reasonable explanation, I really have...

 

[embree]

Come off of it. The Taylor report, whilst saying that the Police had lost control of the situation, admits that the actions of the fans were a contributing factor abliet a secondary one.

Taylor accepted that there was a drunken minority of fans. What he did not accept was that these fans caused the congestion at the turnstiles, laying the blame squarely at the door of Sheffield Wednesday FC and the South Yorks police. He said that neither the Club nor the police recognised that the turnstiles would not be able to cope with a build up of fans close to kick off (and some of these late arrivals were due to delays crossing the Pennines) and that the problems were exacerbated by inadequate signs and ticketing. Hooliganism played no part in the disaster the 'real cause was overcrowding... the main reason... was failure of police control'

'It is a matter of regret that at the hearing and in their submissions [senior officers] were not prepared to concede they were in any way at fault for what occurred'. He went on to entirely reject the South Yorkshire police's version of events and criticise them for the way in which they tried to discredit fans and shift blame onto them for what happened.

He also went on to criticise SWFC for breaches of national guidelines, lack of sign posting and the confusing format of their tickets, recognising the confusion and difficulties faced by fans arriving at an unfamiliar ground. He concluded that the build up and crush outside the turnstiles were NOT the fault of the fans and were entirely foreseeable by SWFC and the South Yorkshire police.

It is a matter of record that police officers around the ground noted that coaches were arriving steadily in the hour before kick off, having been delayed on the journey. The police knew that large numbers of supporters who had arrived by train would be arriving at the ground at around 2:30pm as they were being escorted there by police officers. Account after account from Liverpool fans has them parking up in Sheffield around 2:30pm, again having experienced severe delays in reaching the city. Nothing was done to manage this expected build up, no attempt was made to organise queues for turnstiles or even delay the kick off. These fans arriving late because of traffic or because the train arriving at 2pm was the only one they could get on did not 'stay in the pub and leave at the last minute' they had got there as quickly as they could, headed straight for the ground and trusted that somebody knew what was going on and what the fuck they were doing. As it transpired, their lives were in the hands of an incompetent match commander who had zero experience of the ground he was managing and hadn't bothered to find out how exactly the same fixture the previous year had been managed by his predecessor.

For me the real tragedy of Hillsborough was that those who got killed had generally heeded the advice to turn up in plenty of time

Many who died were caught in the crush outside the ground, entered through the exit gate opened by the police and ended up crushed to death in the pens. Graham Roberts was one of those, there were many others who, hanging back from the crush at the turnstiles, were amongst the first through the exit gate when it was opened. Survivors who were at the ground in plenty of time remember that an hour before kick off the central pens were uncomfortably full - the management of the crowd entering the Leppings Lane terrace was non existent, no attempt being made to close the central pens and direct fans to the side. Even at this early stage, there were far too many people in pens 2 & 3 immediately behind the goal and nothing was being done to halt this dangerous build up. Once inside the turnstiles, the tunnel to these pens was the only obvious way to go so that's where they went, ignorant of the other pens to the side.

So - delays in reaching Sheffield, evidence of police officers directing fans in the wrong direction outside the ground, unfamiliar streets and ground lay out, barely existing crowd management outside and inside the ground. Continuing to cling to this myth of fans pissing it up in the pub before legging it to the ground is unhelpful, irrelevant and simply doesn't bear any relation to the many, many eyewitness accounts of what actually happened.

 

[butchersapron]

Great work embers

 

[embree]

Liverpool, and many other clubs of the time including on occassion my own CPFC have had groups of fans who have stormed turnstiles and so on to gain entry without tickets. Even Dalglish in his autobiography says that ticketless fans were a factor abliet one that should have been controled by the Police but it is something that occurs at football grounds all over the world. The numbers involved might have been small but it did happen and the actions of a small group in such a larger crush can have a magnified affect. To try and deny that things like this would not have contributed to events at Hillsborough is in my opinion sticking your head in the ground.

What the opinion of Kenny Dalglish, a man who - so far as I am aware - played no role in the organisation of the Semi Final, is actually worth is a little beyond me I'm afraid.

Again, this statement that ticketless fans stormed turnstiles and 'magnified' the effect of the turnstile crush. Credible evidence please - from witness accounts, the Taylor Report, wherever. Everything I have posted above comes from the Taylor Report, survivor testimony, and Phil Scraton's excellent comprehensive analysis of the day and its aftermath. Where do your assertions come from, other than vague supposition, experience of different games in different places and god knows what else?

Liverpool fans, collectively, were blameless. They trusted that someone would know what they were doing and that there was a plan in place. They were wrong and 96 of them paid with their lives. Any other narrative is simply wrong, unsupported by the established facts from numerous sources and is a prime reason why 22 years on there is still a burning necessity for closure and, yes, justice.

 

[rosa]

Thanks for posting much of what i was going to say embree.

Every year i hear the 'Liverpool fans must have stormed the gates to get in without tickets, because that's what happened at every game at the time' argument. The obvious question is, if this happened at every game, then why weren't the police prepared to deal with it? doesn't this suggest that putting an inexperienced superintendent in charge of policing the game, and failing to implement the ticket checks and streaming before the Leppings Lane bottleneck that took place the year before, might have been more of a factor? But it's also wrong, because it suggests that the crush outside the ground which led to the gate being opened happened suddenly and unexpectedly, forcing the police to open the gate to relieve it. I know this is bollocks because my brother got to the ground at 2pm, an hour before kick off, and had to queue for 20 minutes to get in because it was already heavily congested then. Him and his mates thought it was a bit odd at the time, cos they were used to strolling up to Anfield at ten to three and being in the ground well in time for kick off, and had only got there early because it was a big game. People who'd been there the year before noted that it hadn't been like that in 1988, when the police were checking tickets and streaming people on Leppings Lane.

I'd also take issue with the argument (again, one that i hear a lot) that the tragedy was that the people who died were the ones who got there good and early, killed by the late surge of people coming in late. I'd have to check the exact figures but i think somewhere in the region of 20 people died in the tunnel, having gone through the gate. The problem wasn't a late surge, the crush had been building for well over an hour, and anyone going into the Leppings Lane end - through the turnstile or through the tunnel - would go straight ahead to the already overcrowded central pens if they didn't know the layout of the ground, because there were no signs to make people aware that there were pens either side of the central tunnel. The police failed to direct people to the other pens (reasoning that fans - many of whom were unfamiliar with the layout of the ground, and may well have been unaware that it was in pens rather than the open terracing at Anfield - would "find their own level") and they didn't close the tunnel to the already full central pens when they opened the gate.

As for the argument that the families of the victims should let it go after all these years and that repeated calls for justice won't achieve anything: try putting yourself in their position. Read Trevor Hicks' account of how he was told to "shut your fucking prattle" when he pleaded with a police officer to open the gate in the perimeter fencing;how he sucked vomit out of his daughter's mouth in a vain attempt to resuscitate her, while the police officers who were supposed to ensure her safety formed a line across the pitch because their priority, even at that point, was to contain the two sets of fans;how he had to choose between travelling in the ambulance with one of his dying daughters to the hospital, or staying on the pitch with the other one, and he chose to go to the hospital in the mistaken belief that his other daughter would be following in one of the dozens of ambulances that ended up waiting in vain outside the ground and were prevented from entering the ground.Ask if, even after 22 years, you'd be prepared to accept the fact that the word 'accidental' appeared on your child's/brother's/father's death certificate, when you knew there was overwhelming evidence that it was the result of criminal negligence, and no-one had ever been held accountable. Some lessons have been learnt, but there's no room for complacency. For all those who have never seen anyone brought to account for the death of their loved ones, and for all those who were there and have had to contend with 22 years of slander insinuating that they were to blame compounding the inevitable survivor guilt, it's vital that the fight for the truth to be told continues.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Thanks for posting much of what i was going to say embree.

Every year i hear the 'Liverpool fans must have stormed the gates to get in without tickets, because that's what happened at every game at the time' argument. The obvious question is, if this happened at every game, then why weren't the police prepared to deal with it? doesn't this suggest that putting an inexperienced superintendent in charge of policing the game, and failing to implement the ticket checks and streaming before the Leppings Lane bottleneck that took place the year before, might have been more of a factor? But it's also wrong, because it suggests that the crush outside the ground which led to the gate being opened happened suddenly and unexpectedly, forcing the police to open the gate to relieve it. I know this is bollocks because my brother got to the ground at 2pm, an hour before kick off, and had to queue for 20 minutes to get in because it was already heavily congested then. Him and his mates thought it was a bit odd at the time, cos they were used to strolling up to Anfield at ten to three and being in the ground well in time for kick off, and had only got there early because it was a big game. People who'd been there the year before noted that it hadn't been like that in 1988, when the police were checking tickets and streaming people on Leppings Lane.

I'd also take issue with the argument (again, one that i hear a lot) that the tragedy was that the people who died were the ones who got there good and early, killed by the late surge of people coming in late. I'd have to check the exact figures but i think somewhere in the region of 20 people died in the tunnel, having gone through the gate. The problem wasn't a late surge, the crush had been building for well over an hour, and anyone going into the Leppings Lane end - through the turnstile or through the tunnel - would go straight ahead to the already overcrowded central pens if they didn't know the layout of the ground, because there were no signs to make people aware that there were pens either side of the central tunnel. The police failed to direct people to the other pens (reasoning that fans - many of whom were unfamiliar with the layout of the ground, and may well have been unaware that it was in pens rather than the open terracing at Anfield - would "find their own level") and they didn't close the tunnel to the already full central pens when they opened the gate.

As for the argument that the families of the victims should let it go after all these years and that repeated calls for justice won't achieve anything: try putting yourself in their position. Read Trevor Hicks' account of how he was told to "shut your fucking prattle" when he pleaded with a police officer to open the gate in the perimeter fencing;how he sucked vomit out of his daughter's mouth in a vain attempt to resuscitate her, while the police officers who were supposed to ensure her safety formed a line across the pitch because their priority, even at that point, was to contain the two sets of fans;how he had to choose between travelling in the ambulance with one of his dying daughters to the hospital, or staying on the pitch with the other one, and he chose to go to the hospital in the mistaken belief that his other daughter would be following in one of the dozens of ambulances that ended up waiting in vain outside the ground and were prevented from entering the ground.Ask if, even after 22 years, you'd be prepared to accept the fact that the word 'accidental' appeared on your child's/brother's/father's death certificate, when you knew there was overwhelming evidence that it was the result of criminal negligence, and no-one had ever been held accountable. Some lessons have been learnt, but there's no room for complacency. For all those who have never seen anyone brought to account for the death of their loved ones, and for all those who were there and have had to contend with 22 years of slander insinuating that they were to blame compounding the inevitable survivor guilt, it's vital that the fight for the truth to be told continues.

Try telling that to a sub-human cunt like stoat boy, or a piece of dogshit like bromley, and they'll still pipe up with the same refrain. Shame on them.

 

[butchersapron]

Thanks for posting much of what i was going to say embree.

Every year i hear the 'Liverpool fans must have stormed the gates to get in without tickets, because that's what happened at every game at the time' argument. The obvious question is, if this happened at every game, then why weren't the police prepared to deal with it? doesn't this suggest that putting an inexperienced superintendent in charge of policing the game, and failing to implement the ticket checks and streaming before the Leppings Lane bottleneck that took place the year before, might have been more of a factor? But it's also wrong, because it suggests that the crush outside the ground which led to the gate being opened happened suddenly and unexpectedly, forcing the police to open the gate to relieve it. I know this is bollocks because my brother got to the ground at 2pm, an hour before kick off, and had to queue for 20 minutes to get in because it was already heavily congested then. Him and his mates thought it was a bit odd at the time, cos they were used to strolling up to Anfield at ten to three and being in the ground well in time for kick off, and had only got there early because it was a big game. People who'd been there the year before noted that it hadn't been like that in 1988, when the police were checking tickets and streaming people on Leppings Lane.

I'd also take issue with the argument (again, one that i hear a lot) that the tragedy was that the people who died were the ones who got there good and early, killed by the late surge of people coming in late. I'd have to check the exact figures but i think somewhere in the region of 20 people died in the tunnel, having gone through the gate. The problem wasn't a late surge, the crush had been building for well over an hour, and anyone going into the Leppings Lane end - through the turnstile or through the tunnel - would go straight ahead to the already overcrowded central pens if they didn't know the layout of the ground, because there were no signs to make people aware that there were pens either side of the central tunnel. The police failed to direct people to the other pens (reasoning that fans - many of whom were unfamiliar with the layout of the ground, and may well have been unaware that it was in pens rather than the open terracing at Anfield - would "find their own level") and they didn't close the tunnel to the already full central pens when they opened the gate.

As for the argument that the families of the victims should let it go after all these years and that repeated calls for justice won't achieve anything: try putting yourself in their position. Read Trevor Hicks' account of how he was told to "shut your fucking prattle" when he pleaded with a police officer to open the gate in the perimeter fencing;how he sucked vomit out of his daughter's mouth in a vain attempt to resuscitate her, while the police officers who were supposed to ensure her safety formed a line across the pitch because their priority, even at that point, was to contain the two sets of fans;how he had to choose between travelling in the ambulance with one of his dying daughters to the hospital, or staying on the pitch with the other one, and he chose to go to the hospital in the mistaken belief that his other daughter would be following in one of the dozens of ambulances that ended up waiting in vain outside the ground and were prevented from entering the ground.Ask if, even after 22 years, you'd be prepared to accept the fact that the word 'accidental' appeared on your child's/brother's/father's death certificate, when you knew there was overwhelming evidence that it was the result of criminal negligence, and no-one had ever been held accountable. Some lessons have been learnt, but there's no room for complacency. For all those who have never seen anyone brought to account for the death of their loved ones, and for all those who were there and have had to contend with 22 years of slander insinuating that they were to blame compounding the inevitable survivor guilt, it's vital that the fight for the truth to be told continues.

Fantastic post. Thank you

 

[temper_tantrum]

... And for anyone who ever goes to a mass-crowd event, of any kind, and comes out at the other end having had an enjoyable and safe experience, you can be sure that your safety is at least partly as a result of lessons learned the hard way on that terrible day, even though that fact hasn't ever been fully officially acknowledged.

 

[tar1984]

i thought that was a really good post too rosa.

 

[rosa]

Fantastic post. Thank you

And thank you for your beautifully succinct kelvin mckenzie/lamppost comment.

 

[embree]

BBC admits Heysel and Hillsborough ‘inaccuracies’

Mr Burns then went on to say that the deaths of 96 Liverpools fans in the Hillsborough disaster was caused by “a late influx of ticketless” fans, in contradiction of the findings of the inquiry led by Lord Taylor.

The BBC’s investigation concluded that the Hillsborough claim was not correct, and upheld that complaint, too.

Taylor Interim Report, Paragraph 208:

I have already found that there was not an abnormally large number of ticketless fans on this occasion... There were, I accept, small groups [my emphasis] without tickets... They... certainly aggravated the problem faced by police. But that main problem was simply one of large numbers packed into the small area outside the turnstiles.

In other words, there would have been a problem anyway without any ticketless fans. Taylor also notes the large gaps in the stands and terraces suggesting that those yet to enter were largely in possession of tickets, that tickets only asked fans to be in place 15 minutes before kick off, that turnstile records and HSE estimates based on CCTV showed no overfilling of any area beyond the ticketed capacity including the Leppings Lane terrace after exit gate C had been opened, that there was no criticism of the behaviour of fans in the time after 2:30pm, that the labeling of the Leppings Lane turnstiles (A, C, B) was confusing and led to delays in entry, that the 'great majority' of the Liverpool fans outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles were 'not drunk or even the worse for drink'.

So, allegations of widespread drunkenness - not true. Allegations of an army of ticketless fans - unsubstantiated even by expert analysis of the numbers who passed into the ground after the exit gate had been opened.

 

[embree]

Just skim reading Taylor's Interim Report provides paragraph after paragraph exonerating Liverpool fans, criticising the standard of police evidence (and effectively accusing them of fabricating much of it) and castigating the state of the ground being used for one of the biggest games of the season. Just fucking read it ffs

 

[rosa]

BBC admits Heysel and Hillsborough ‘inaccuracies’
In other words, there would have been a problem anyway without any ticketless fans. Taylor also notes the large gaps in the stands and terraces suggesting that those yet to enter were largely in possession of tickets, that tickets only asked fans to be in place 15 minutes before kick off, that turnstile records and HSE estimates based on CCTV showed no overfilling of any area beyond the ticketed capacity including the Leppings Lane terrace after exit gate C had been opened, that there was no criticism of the behaviour of fans in the time after 2:30pm, that the labeling of the Leppings Lane turnstiles (A, C, B) was confusing and led to delays in entry, that the 'great majority' of the Liverpool fans outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles were 'not drunk or even the worse for drink'.

It's worth noting that the CCTV footage of the Leppings Lane end wasn't available at the official inquest into the deaths. The tapes went mysteriously missing, and turned up (equally mysteriously) at the offices of Yorkshire TV in 1997, 8 years later. It's not for me to speculate how this happened, or why anyone would want this footage to be concealed.

 

[embree]

Yes of course - I believe they were the tapes from cameras trained on the terrace itself. The CCTV footage used by the HSE in estimating numbers inside the Leppings Lane Terrace once the gate had been opened was that of the cameras outside the ground trained on the turnstile area.

Funny how those other tapes disappeared from a locked room at the ground shortly after the disaster eh

 

[scifisam]

Yes because my point is that there was no single person to 'blame' for it.

All sorts of factors came into play including a general footballing culture of which I have been involved with myself that seems to encourage a form of mob-rule.

Liverpool, and many other clubs of the time including on occassion my own CPFC have had groups of fans who have stormed turnstiles and so on to gain entry without tickets. Even Dalglish in his autobiography says that ticketless fans were a factor abliet one that should have been controled by the Police but it is something that occurs at football grounds all over the world. The numbers involved might have been small but it did happen and the actions of a small group in such a larger crush can have a magnified affect. To try and deny that things like this would not have contributed to events at Hillsborough is in my opinion sticking your head in the ground.

It was a shocking event and a terrible waste of life. But there is no 'justice' available. It happend. And things changed afterwards.

Nobody emerges from what happened with any real credit beyond the individual acts of heroism but collectively, as a footballing culture, we need to accept that we all need to share a little bit of guilt.

Liverpool fans, collectively, were not blameless.

I bet £100million that you haven't read the Taylor report. Because before I did I thought 'unticketed fans must have been part of the reason for the crush, surely.' But they weren't. And the Taylor report was hardly biased towards the fans.

 

[embree]

I bet £100million that you haven't read the Taylor report. Because before I did I thought 'unticketed fans must have been part of the reason for the crush, surely.' But they weren't. And the Taylor report was hardly biased towards the fans.

Paragraphs 200-208, Taylor's Interim Report

 

[rosa]

The conclusion of an article in When Saturday Comes in July 1988, where they surveyed stewards at several clubs and found widespread lack of compliance with the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds, a voluntary code that was heavily amended after Bradford and that was widely seen as the basis for ground safety policy:

When you start looking for possible lapses, they appear by the dozen. The question is, how many of these are due to a layman's misunderstanding of how clubs would respond to a crisis, and to what extent are they in control, and how many are genuine and potentially fatal hazards? The chances are that we'll find out the hard way.

As i said in my first post, i dread repeating myself every year, but every year it's worth saying again: anyone who went to football in the 80s (not speaking from personal experience, it was before my time) could see Hillsborough coming a mile off. It was totally preventable and lives could have been saved at every point from the earliest planning right up to the emergency response after the crush occurred and it became apparent that people were dying, and at every single stage the authorities failed. It's both depressing and infuriating.

 

[Stoat Boy]

Well I am big and ugly enough to admit that from reading many of the posts on here it is obvious that my own perceptions of what happened that day have been largely wrong. I guess I bought into this idea that ticketless fans were far more of a contributing factor than they were.

Actually fuck it. I had written a load more stuff about how we should all still take a little of the blame ourselves because of how, and to some extent still, footballing culture is but the truth is that I was wrong with what I had been implying and my apologies for that.

 

[butchersapron]

Well I am big and ugly enough to admit that from reading many of the posts on here it is obvious that my own perceptions of what happened that day have been largely wrong. I guess I bought into this idea that ticketless fans were far more of a contributing factor than they were.

Actually fuck it. I had written a load more stuff about how we should all still take a little of the blame ourselves because of how, and to some extent still, footballing culture is but the truth is that I was wrong with what I had been implying and my apologies for that.

Good lad.

 

[embree]

As i said in my first post, i dread repeating myself every year, but every year it's worth saying again: anyone who went to football in the 80s (not speaking from personal experience, it was before my time) could see Hillsborough coming a mile off. It was totally preventable and lives could have been saved at every point from the earliest planning right up to the emergency response after the crush occurred and it became apparent that people were dying, and at every single stage the authorities failed. It's both depressing and infuriating.

The same thing very nearly happened, in exactly the same part of the ground at the 1981 semi final between Tottenham and Wolves. 1981. Yet in 1989 Hillsborough was still regarded as one of the best equipped stadiums in England to host these matches. As Hornby notes in Fever Pitch, Highbury was no longer being used for semi finals by this stage because Arsenal refused to put up perimeter fences.

And yeah - this thread has barely even touched on the response to the disaster once the crush became apparent and there are so many questions about that too.

I had experiences in the late 90s of being on overfull terraces - at Oxford and Blackpool - which were terrifying, even if only momentarily. They were old terraces, completely obsolete in design, being managed poorly on the day for larger than expected numbers of supporters. I'm pretty much convinced that Oxford lied about the numbers inside the terrace that day, not so much to avoid tax but to avoid repercussions for breaching their safety certificate. The fact that these things still went on, albeit less frequently than before, 10 years after Hillsborough was depressing tbh

 

[embree]

Well I am big and ugly enough to admit that from reading many of the posts on here it is obvious that my own perceptions of what happened that day have been largely wrong. I guess I bought into this idea that ticketless fans were far more of a contributing factor than they were.

Actually fuck it. I had written a load more stuff about how we should all still take a little of the blame ourselves because of how, and to some extent still, footballing culture is but the truth is that I was wrong with what I had been implying and my apologies for that.

Wow, nice one. Hats off.

I think the fact that I do this argument every year on boards around the net shows just how effective those initial police and media lies were. Duckenfield froze, reacted poorly, then lied about it - telling Graham Kelly that an exit gate had been forced open by fans when he himself had ordered it to be opened. Kelly told the media this same version of events. The seed had been planted that fans were somehow responsible and off the lie went, before the truth had even begun to get its boots on.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

...and as for the Sun. Well, lets not go there as no words can express the depths of their mendacity.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Well I am big and ugly enough to admit that from reading many of the posts on here it is obvious that my own perceptions of what happened that day have been largely wrong. I guess I bought into this idea that ticketless fans were far more of a contributing factor than they were.

Actually fuck it. I had written a load more stuff about how we should all still take a little of the blame ourselves because of how, and to some extent still, footballing culture is but the truth is that I was wrong with what I had been implying and my apologies for that.

Respect due for this post. It's a touchy subject, still fucking raw for a lot of people, and I nearly called you a foul name, but I'm glad I didn't now.

 

[sleaterkinney]

Wow, nice one. Hats off.

I think the fact that I do this argument every year on boards around the net shows just how effective those initial police and media lies were. Duckenfield froze, reacted poorly, then lied about it - telling Graham Kelly that an exit gate had been forced open by fans when he himself had ordered it to be opened. Kelly told the media this same version of events. The seed had been planted that fans were somehow responsible and off the lie went, before the truth had even begun to get its boots on.

it was just the establishment covering up for themselves. JFT96.