Yes, I know what you say is real, but if the institutions and authorities couldn't stop themselves from typecasting people groups then what chance has the open minded individual? This was an authority pre-judging a class group. When they found themselves in error they then compounded the error by trying to evade responsibility because they knew nobody would believe this group of victims. And they were so nearly right, unfortunately. This is one of the reasons why they were pursued for over 23 years.
A very good point well made. Before the days of all-seater stadia the vast majority of football fans put up with being treated like cattle because of our love of the game, just as we put up with the tiny minority of our number who insisted on behaving like mindless idiots. But that tiny minority, including the tiny minority of Liverpool and Juventus fans at Heysel, were directly responsible for the erection of the pens in which the 96 died at Hillsborough. The incompetence of the police and others on 15 April 1989 were to blame for the deaths, and for the subsequent cover-up, and for the misdirection of public anger back at the fans themselves, that has now finally been proven in the courts. But a portion of the blame has to rest with those who chose violence as a recreational activity back in the dark days of football.
I know where your coming from in that football fans were dehumanised and I suspect you're correct that class would have been a part of that thought process. Anyway, football fans had essentially 23 years of being blamed for this, so I won't drag it back on them. Thankfully football didn't wait around for the inquest before it acted and i'm sure we now all enjoy the relative luxury and safety of attending matches today. As has been expressed already, it's a shame that it took this event for attitudes to change.
I've said it before on here - quite often i sit in my comfortable seat at St Mary's, with a great view and think how different it was 25 odd years ago. As a half Italian, half Indian, English man, I often wonder what the heck my dad was doing taking me to matches in the late 70s/early 80s. There is no way I would take my kids to football if it was like that now. The 96 died for all of us. Every one of us that turns up on an Saturday/Sunday for a game of football. BECAUSE of them we have a good chance of coming home in the evening. The football people sat up, and realised that we are humans. Treat us like animals and guess what...some behave like them. Treat us 'well' and 30/40/50/60,000 people can go to a stadium with their loved ones and enjoy a game of football. I'm glad that there may be some closure for the families of the 96. Those responsible should be brought to justice. Rant over.
If you only read/watch/listen to one piece of coverage of the events on that day, and the cover-up that followed, make it this. Incredible, shocking and heartbreaking. A 10-minute mini-documentary of what happened, why it happened and how it was covered up. Contains fresh admissions and recently-released footage. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...lsborough-inquiry-anatomy-of-a-disaster-video
Not defending the authorities who hid this for one moment, but you can't blame the general public distanced from the event for believing what we were fed....this was only 4 years after the Heysel disaster which was the fault of Liverpool fans (and poor ground construction again). It was easy to believe that Liverpool fans rioted (or at least started pushing and shoving). Football hooliganism was dreadful....troublemakers will always get drawn to places where there is a chance of a fight. Thankfully (thanks to the aftermath of Hillsborough) that place isn't football any more.
Not at matches we attend, it's true. I prefer to be out of the way of a Chester-Wrexham match! Heysel was not just about Liverpool fans. A mate of mine who was there described it as a "hooligans wet dream". Juventus have their Ultras and, yes, Liverpool attracted its share of the low life who used footie for their skirmishes and policing was awful. It should have provided the catalyst to change the way the game is managed, but we have needed to wait for Hillsborough. Tragic.
please log in to view this image Absolutely disgraceful really that The Sun & The Times haven't had it as front page.
For the dead and the injured and those who have suffered in so many ways this is hopefully peace at last. But absolving the Liverpool fans of all responsibility is the one thing that still bothers me. I have only ever heard one Liverpool fan on the radio speak of his feelings of guilt and remorse as he was one of the ones at the back doing the pushing. Of course he/they were not to know the damage they were doing and they should have been ushered elsewhere but back then you couldn't expect to arrive late and stand exactly where you want to. I guess thats just how it was in those days and they were only doing what they always did. I don't know, its complicated, proper stewarding would have prevented it but that would have meant forcing people to stand where they didn't want to and lots of people above have moaned about how fans were herded around back in the day with all its negative implications. As for the police, I've always thought that their biggest crime was the cover-up and that was disgraceful. Their actions on the day though were obviously misguided in hindsight but surely done with the best of intentions. They would not have deliberately put in motion the events that led to the tragedy. I suspect that if they'd been honest from the outset a different judgement would have been made. Its so sad that regular supporters, who actually arrived early to get a good view of the game, have to pay the price for the mistakes and mindless actions of others.
Sorry to pick out a small part of your post but that's not true. A decent amount (can't remember exact) of the 96 were still outside at the ground at 10 to 3. The police have to take the most of the responsibilty. Even closing the tunnel (written procedure and used in previous games at Hillsborough) when they opened the gate would of saved lives. The subsequent cover up was horrendous and the fact this happened 2 years before I was born but I'm now almost 25 before the truth has come out is a disgrace. I have no doubt that the cover up was authorised at the HIGHEST possible level. Hope Duckenfield (among others) gets prosecuted.
I don't know how old you are, mate (sorry I really don't mean that to sound as patronising as it does) but turning up early at the terraces meant you stood a great chance of being shoved out of the way. In the 50's and 60's, just before 3.00 for home games at The Dell the dockers would arrive and seek out their space. If my snotty nosed mate and me had taken up residency at 2.00 we were shoved. It was not a place for the faint hearted. I can well imagine that there were Forest fans still shoving and pushing their way into the other end that day. It's what happened. It's why we've changed how we watch football. Don't confuse victims and perpetrators.
No, you are right. I've been pushed and I've done my share of pushing and would be really upset inside if I'd thought that any of my actions had led to someone being hurt in any way.
Of course the police have to take responsibility. They did their jobs badly and made bad decisions and as you say the cover-up was horrendous. I must admit I hadn't known that many of the victims were still outside the ground at 10 to 3. I don't know what difference that makes really.
No difference at all really. I was just responding to your post that seemed to assume it was all fans who got their early who lost their lives, which clearly wasn't the case. Apologies if I got that wrong though.
The difference is, that those fans shouldn't have had access to the tunnel leading to pens 3 & 4 where the deaths all happened. The tunnel should have been closed and the fans made to go to the pens at either side of the goal, as had happened at every other match up until Duckenfield took over as match day commander. The failure to close the entrance to the tunnel, along with the decision to open the exit gate, were the 2 crucial mistakes made by Duckenfield.
Absolutely. Big errors made and then the normal football culture took over. Any other day and without those errors, nothing untoward would have happened. "There but for the grace of God go I".
As an 11 year old boy i was involved in a crushing incident at the dell, it was in the final few minutes but luckily myself and quite a few others were able to get over the small 3foot wall that seperated the fans and the pitch. it was in the Archers road end, i later found out that the main gates had been opened early to let fans out, unfortunatly they also did this in the away stand which saw the away fans coming into our stand and causing the problem. The match was in 1989 and saw Saints beat Liverpool 4-1.
This is an interesting comment for I was at that game too but was in the West Stand albeit I had previously always gone to the Archers Road end before the proximity of away fans made it both unlikely and undesirable to go to this end of the ground. It is fascinating to think what football was like then and the fact that cram-packed terraces did generate frequent and unpleasant surges where you were often crunched against the stanchions or fencing. As far as Hillsborough is concerned, there is a genuine grievance and I think that the behaviour of the South York's police in covering up the debacle is a disgrace. The period of time taken to arrive at the facts is shocking yet I feel the media has been guilty of concentrating on this one incident whereas , in my opinion, the picture is far broader with the main culprit effectively getting off extremely lightly. Granted that the police and ambulance services do have so serious questions to answer as due a lot of the Conservative political establishment and quick-to-react press at the time. However, I do think that Sheffield Wednesday should have been held far more culpable. No one is calling for the blood of their executives yet a lack of investment and the contempt for which football clubs held their customers in the 1980's is a massive factor in this which the media has been reluctant to pick up. There seems to be a paucity of coverage in relation to the disaster at Bradford which was no less tragic and whilst there was no police misconduct in that case, Hillsborough is only one of a multitude of tragic incidents where football fans have lost their lives due to the unsafe nature of football grounds at that time. Bradford is no less deserving than Hillsborough in this respect nor any other stadium disaster that has taken the lives of football fans. As someone who followed football since the mid-70's, I can well appreciate just how unpleasant being a spectator could be and the cages that were once erected around The Dell fortunately did not cause a similar disaster although they had the potential to do so. The improvement of stadia is probably the ultimate legacy of Hillsborough and , whilst there are elements associated with this disaster which go well beyond failure to adequately carry out crowd management, I feel that the culture of football clubs in the 1980s and their inability to adequately respect fans is the elephant in the room which, had the Hillsborough campaigners mobilised along with similar, grieving relatives from Bradford, might have seem successful actions brought against the football club owners whose stadia were unable to manage issues like safe ingress and egress as well as fire safety. Luckily many of today's stadiums no longer face these issues due to the lessons learned at Hillsborough yet I can't help feeling that the former directors of Sheffield Wednesday got off extremely lightly. They should have faced similar questions to those being faced by the police now. I feel the issues are much broader than the conclusions publicised today.
Just heard about the 97th victim Stephen Whittle. He sold his ticket to a friend as he had work. His friend ended up one of the 96 dead. Troubled by guilt in 2012 he jumped infront of the train. Leaving £60k to the hillsborough fund.
