Hillsborough: What Really Happened?

[butchersapron]

Should be of interst to some here:

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

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
Nearest tube: gtf

 

[5t3IIa]

There was an interesting aricle in the Observer a few weeks ago. I couldn't read it over Sunday Lunch as I was about to burst into tears

 

[butchersapron]

There was an interesting aricle in the Observer a few weeks ago. I couldn't read it over Sunday Lunch as I was about to burst into tears

I read that yesterday - great piece(s). Truly heart wrenching. Here

 

[5t3IIa]

There's also a QoTW on b3ta about 'Nice things people have done for you' and someone told a story of how him and his mate came up the road to their car after everything and some bloke came out of his house and offered them his phone to call their mums.

 

[Rollem]

i read that article

Fifty yards on stood another senior (police) officer. He stopped me before I got within five yards of him. "I've just seen you," he said. "You've already spoken to four of my men and I know what they've told you." He pointed at the entrance to the Leppings Lane stand. "Now get to that turnstile right on the end. The fella there is letting in fans with Forest tickets."

 

[butchersapron]

It was then that I caught the eye of a policeman just the other side of the fence. It was an unmistakable, meaningful moment: because for four or five seconds, across the heads of scores of people, we looked each other in the eye.

I lost him when I mouthed the words, "Help us." He smiled to himself and shook his head at me, and walked on, a little uncertainly.

.

 

[5t3IIa]

i read that article

I stopped at the bit where his ear is folded against his head because everyone is packed in so tight and people have died standing up.

Fuck! This still really freaks me out. I always remember some woman in a pink hairy jumper with big pink nails squashed against the railings at the front and her picture was all over the papers. I feel quite fucking sick about the whole thing. This, Kings X and The Herald of Free Enterprise: proper tragedies of my formative years

 

[tom_craggs]

Absolutely chilling.

 

[bluestreak]

I read that yesterday - great piece(s). Truly heart wrenching. Here

I'm half way through that article and I've had to pause because I'm actually crying with horror and rage. The fucking pigs refusing to allow ambulances in whilst people were dying for no reason at all. The motherfuckers, the murdering lying motherfuckers.

 

[bluestreak]

There were 44 ambulances waiting outside the stadium - that means 80-odd staff could have been inside the ground. But they weren't allowed in. There was no fighting!

.

No-one ever got prosecuted.

The pigs lie, people die.

 

[editor]

Fuck, that article hits home. I remember getting caught in a terrifying crush at the old Highbury once back in the early 80s, but I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like at Hillsborough.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

I'm quite thick skinned but I found that really uncomfortable reading.

Fucking police scum.

 

[_pH_]

I read that yesterday - great piece(s). Truly heart wrenching. Here

Thanks for putting that up butch.

Fuck that's hard to read. Crying my eyes out now

At the inquest in March 1991, the coroner ruled that everyone who'd been killed at Hillsborough had died of traumatic asphyxia, and that they were all dead or brain dead by 3.15pm. This ruling was crucial, because it meant there could be no investigation into the actions of the South Yorkshire police after this time. Questions like why were over 40 ambulances not allowed into the ground, and why did the police not activate the major accident plan until 3.55pm couldn't be examined because everyone was meant to be dead at 3.15pm. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

A tracheotomy (a quick incision into the windpipe), or even the insertion of a rubber tube down the throat, would've reopened Kevin's airways. An ambulance attendant would have known how to perform a tracheotomy. But the police wouldn't let the ambulances on to the pitch.

 

[_pH_]

Fuck, that article hits home. I remember getting caught in a terrifying crush at the old Highbury once back in the early 80s, but I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like at Hillsborough.

Yeah, i remember feeling a bit crushed at Highbury (North Bank) before it was rebuilt, and in the Shed at Stamford Bridge, when i was probably 12-13? Makes you wonder how close we came to another Hillsborough at times.

 

[_pH_]

fuckin hell, it's taken me 15 minutes to regain my composure after reading that article

and i'm not even directly affected by it. those poor people

 

[sleaterkinney]

.

No-one ever got prosecuted.

Not only that but they tried to smear Liverpool fans afterwards. Even today they won't do an inquest into it.

 

[Fedayn]

Not only that but they tried to smear Liverpool fans afterwards. Even today they won't do an inquest into it.

The smears being utterly fucking despicable and without a jot of evidence.

 

[JTG]

I've just re-read Phil Scraton's excellent book Hillsborough - The Truth. It's difficult to read at times but if you can, you should. Busts just about every myth you've ever heard about that day and the aftermath into tiny pieces.

 

[bigbry]

Just read the article - just stunned by that - so fucking terrifying.

Forwarded the link to my sons to read.

 

[Brixton Hatter]

the police were cunts, but we also mustn't forget how the Sun and the News of the World treated the Liverpool fans afterwards. That's the reason I'll never buy those shitrags - and thousands of others agree. But it was the actions of the police that led to the disaster, and also their failure to act to avert it.

 

[Brixton Hatter]

fuck, i've just read that article

it still makes me so angry.

 

[big eejit]

I might go along to this, tho it sounds like it could be an emotional evening.

 

[rosa]

There's also a QoTW on b3ta about 'Nice things people have done for you' and someone told a story of how him and his mate came up the road to their car after everything and some bloke came out of his house and offered them his phone to call their mums.

Loads of people round the ground did that - my brother phoned us from the Halfords. Like most disasters,it showed the lows that people can stoop to,but it brought out the best in people as well. people let complete strangers into their homes to use their phones and toilets, staff at the hospitals rushed into work on their day off (the hospitals never officially called staff in because the major incident plan was never put into action), people came to the ground and to the gyms where the bodies were being held to help out and sit with the families.

The article in the observer made my blood run cold. i know that anyone can make mistakes but i don't understand how any human can respond to dying people screaming at them for help in the way that the police did at Hillsborough. it was so preventable,at every stage, there was no need or reason for so many people to die. Even after the crush had built up, lives could have been saved. So many people died so needlessly and no-one has ever been held accountable for it.

 

[JTG]

Should be said that there were cops who worked hard to pull people out etc but plenty of evidence to suggest that many others ignored what was going on under their noses. Duckenfield & Murray were incompetent and froze so those who were trying to save lives were doing so in isolation and with no back up.

I see Phil Scraton's book has been re-released for the anniversary. Anyone who goes to football has to read it, especially given that for years afterwards I encountered some of the situations that led up to the disaster myself. A trip to Barnsley in 1999 saw SYP pushing alot of us into a very confined space with the exits blocked and led to a few scary moments. They didn't learn.

 

[purplex]

The sun lies on the monday were utterly sickening.

 

[Blagsta]

That article is very upsetting.

 

[mattie]

I find it hard to completely comdemn the junior police, for every story of one frozen into inaction (or simply uncaring, depending how you see it) there is another of one giving CPR or trying to drag the fans out of the pens.

The more senior officers were incompetent, hopelessly so in many cases, which is in itself a human failing but one for which they must be accountable - they accepted that responsibility, they signally failed to meet it.

The real, utter outrage, however, is in the means they - the broader police and associated services - employed to cover up said police incompetence. Trying to get relatives to admit their loved one may have gone to a pub before the game so they could accuse them of being drunk (and thus architects of thier own injuries), blaming fans with no tickets, ignoring testimony, ignoring contrary but valid medical opinion, the list goes on. It's utterly disgraceful. And, as JTG points out, it means not all lessons were learnt.

The comments in the Sun were beneath contempt.

 

[Pingu]

I am not a football fan

however we wont buy the sun. I remember an alexi sayle programme where he showed the feeling in liverpool about the sun by trying to give away free copies. People refused to take them.

I talk to people who live in the south etc who just dont seem to get the depth of feeling there is in liverpool about what the sun did. When one of my dogs was up for a national award the other year we refused to let the sun do an article on her depsite being offered a reasonable sum of money to do so.

I have no personal connection with what happened at Hillsborough but know people who did. The actions on that day that caused the incident and by the press in the aftermath are unforgiveable

 

[editor]

A reminder:

The author remains unrepentant too [Dec 2006]:

Mr MacKenzie apologised publicly when the Press Complaints Commission condemned his paper's descriptions of Liverpool fans urinating on the Hillsborough dead and stealing from their bodies, in an edition headlined "The Truth". But judging by his comments to a business lunch staged by the law firm Mincoffs in Newcastle upon Tyne, he did not mean a word of it. "I was not sorry then and I'm not sorry now," Mr MacKenzie told his audience. "All I did wrong there was [to] tell the truth." Unrepentant barely defines what followed next from Mr MacKenzie. Responding to a seemingly innocuous question about how often he visited Liverpool, he launched into a general attack on Liverpudlians - possibly unaware that a journalist from The Journal newspaper was present.

He said of Hillsborough: "There was a surge of Liverpool fans who had been drinking and that is what caused the disaster. The only thing different we did was put it under the headline 'The Truth'. I went on [BBC Radio 4's] World at One the next day and apologised. I only did that because Rupert Murdoch told me to. I wasn't sorry then and I'm not sorry now because we told the truth."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/mackenzies-hillsborough--the-sun-told-the-truth-426674.html

 

[Voley]

Oh man, it's a harrowing read, that article. I've just had to take a break from it like bluestreak, too.