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Hillsborough - The Pain Lingers 20 Years On
Goal.com's Ewan Macdonald looks back at the Hillsborough disaster, which claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool fans twenty years ago today..
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Apr 15, 2009 12:59:59 PM
Leppings Lane. Open the gates. Hillsborough. Say these words to any British football fan old enough to have viewed television on April 15th 1989 and you will receive in response, at the very least, a brief flinch. For once the images were seen, and seen live, they were never to be forgotten. These words, and these twitchy reactions, are the shibboleths of the worst football disaster of these islands in modern times.
The UK has an unhappy history of such tragedies, but none, perhaps, have haunted the imagination quite as much as that of Hillsborough. Nothing proves this more than the name itself. There is the aforementioned Valley Parade fire; there is the Ibrox disaster; and then there is Hillsborough. To Hillsborough, 'disaster' is an encumbrance. Hillsborough has become a noun to indicate not just a stadium, but a tragedy.
96 dead, 300 hospitalised, hundreds more injured - and countless lives changed forever.
What Happened?
Liverpool were drawn against Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semi-final, a match traditionally held at a neutral venue. Hillsborough, being a vast and (it was said) a relatively well-appointed arena in the north, it seemed to the Football Association to be an ideal venue for the cup semis. 1989 was no exception, as the Reds and Forest prepared to meet on April 15th.
Without going into exhaustive detail - such matters deserve more examination than I can give here, and the existing unofficial literature on the topic is extensive - 'bottlenecking' upon entry to the stadium, high fencing around the pitch, a lack of rescue coordination from ground-level police and the failure of the match commander to act in a manner commensurate with the seriousness of the situation saw overcrowding take place in the Leppings Lane end 'pens'. In essence, those who perished died of injuries borne of being crushed, as well as asphyxiation.
The old style of stadium was roundly criticised in the aftermath for being a factor in the disaster, but it took a while for the handling of the situation to come under similar scrutiny. Indeed, as we'll see, it is perhaps the herding in of fans that was as much to blame as anything else.
Pointing Fingers
The pictures of the disaster, broadcast live on the BBC, not only touched the nation but also shocked it, angered it. People wanted answers. This very human indignation, though, was not always channelled correctly. The Sun, one of the country's most influential and popular tabloids, capitalised on the disaster with one of the two most infamous front pages in its history. Editor Kelvin McKenzie gleefully recounted a litany of crimes committed by 'some' fans: attacking aid workers; robbing the dead and the drying; urinating on the police. The mood of the decade, one of stringent (and often justified) anti-hooliganism, was no doubt the motivation for these populist screams, but McKenzie had sorely misjudged his audience.
In fact, people were - for the most part, at least - far more interested in establishing a cause for the disaster, rather than gleefully rejoicing in alleged misbehaviour of 'some' fans. In any case, it later transpired that the allegations on the front page were perhaps one degree short of being complete and utter fiction, leaving the smirking, amoral figure of McKenzie with no option but to apologise.
(Years later, once the dust had settled, this squalid little coward once again displayed his true colours by sneering that he only apologised under duress, and that he was and is not sorry - he was just going on what he'd been told by a Conservative politician, who had been backed up by South Yorkshire's chief superintendent David Duckenfield, a man whose role in the tragedy will perhaps never be fully established, but whose initial dishonesty certainly has been. As for McKenzie, to this day his old newspaper remains barely circulated in Liverpool.)
Enough of him. He's had the attention that he craves. Anyway, he wasn't the only one to blame the fans.
Asking Questions
Initial police briefings, notes Phil Scraton, an academic who has extensively studied the disaster, were considerably and shamelessly 'revised', with initial statements heavily doctored in what must be assumed to be an attempt to cover tracks. It's easy to see why. Both official documents and a host of off-the-record police statements ran the gamut of fan blame, ranging from accusations of a vast conspiracy of fans to enter without tickets (in fact tickets were, despite officially being sold out on Merseyside, not hard to come by) or to invade the pitch (in fact the fence came down and the fans came streaming on in an attempt to escape death and injury.)
It took a while for these things to be established - in part, that is, for the true facts of the matter are still not 100% clear - and the police seemed to always be second to ascertain the facts... and to change their own. Even the much-lauded Taylor Report knew of these alterations, which slightly takes the shine off its condemning some aspects of the policing for the 'lack of control' on matchday.
The early clamour to blame the supporters, and to see the spectre of hooliganism behind every fan's eyes, was quietly shuffled aside. Instead, the blame went pretty much nowhere. Taylor's muted condemnation aside, individuals were not brought to task for their role in the tragedy, and the (more significant) institutional failures in South Yorkshire were discussed with no small measure of opacity. (The British citizen today may wish to draw comparisons between this incident and the official reactions to the death of a bypasser in the London demonstrations earlier this month.)
Changed Forever
Not just were lives irrevocably altered - and ruined - by the tragedy, but the sport as a whole saw the change, too. The abundance of all-seater stadia that followed the Taylor Report was the first and most obvious departure with the old; numerous more followed. I leave the examination of those to my Goal.com colleague, Zack Wilson, to reflect on in his excellent article here.
In the meantime, football will share a moment today reflecting on the 96 lives lost. It will do so not just in sadness, but also confusion and anger. The beautiful game should not - and, had things gone differently, could not - have been so hideous.
Ewan Macdonald, Goal.com
The UK has an unhappy history of such tragedies, but none, perhaps, have haunted the imagination quite as much as that of Hillsborough. Nothing proves this more than the name itself. There is the aforementioned Valley Parade fire; there is the Ibrox disaster; and then there is Hillsborough. To Hillsborough, 'disaster' is an encumbrance. Hillsborough has become a noun to indicate not just a stadium, but a tragedy.
96 dead, 300 hospitalised, hundreds more injured - and countless lives changed forever.
What Happened?
Liverpool were drawn against Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semi-final, a match traditionally held at a neutral venue. Hillsborough, being a vast and (it was said) a relatively well-appointed arena in the north, it seemed to the Football Association to be an ideal venue for the cup semis. 1989 was no exception, as the Reds and Forest prepared to meet on April 15th.
Without going into exhaustive detail - such matters deserve more examination than I can give here, and the existing unofficial literature on the topic is extensive - 'bottlenecking' upon entry to the stadium, high fencing around the pitch, a lack of rescue coordination from ground-level police and the failure of the match commander to act in a manner commensurate with the seriousness of the situation saw overcrowding take place in the Leppings Lane end 'pens'. In essence, those who perished died of injuries borne of being crushed, as well as asphyxiation.
The old style of stadium was roundly criticised in the aftermath for being a factor in the disaster, but it took a while for the handling of the situation to come under similar scrutiny. Indeed, as we'll see, it is perhaps the herding in of fans that was as much to blame as anything else.
Pointing Fingers
The pictures of the disaster, broadcast live on the BBC, not only touched the nation but also shocked it, angered it. People wanted answers. This very human indignation, though, was not always channelled correctly. The Sun, one of the country's most influential and popular tabloids, capitalised on the disaster with one of the two most infamous front pages in its history. Editor Kelvin McKenzie gleefully recounted a litany of crimes committed by 'some' fans: attacking aid workers; robbing the dead and the drying; urinating on the police. The mood of the decade, one of stringent (and often justified) anti-hooliganism, was no doubt the motivation for these populist screams, but McKenzie had sorely misjudged his audience.
In fact, people were - for the most part, at least - far more interested in establishing a cause for the disaster, rather than gleefully rejoicing in alleged misbehaviour of 'some' fans. In any case, it later transpired that the allegations on the front page were perhaps one degree short of being complete and utter fiction, leaving the smirking, amoral figure of McKenzie with no option but to apologise.
(Years later, once the dust had settled, this squalid little coward once again displayed his true colours by sneering that he only apologised under duress, and that he was and is not sorry - he was just going on what he'd been told by a Conservative politician, who had been backed up by South Yorkshire's chief superintendent David Duckenfield, a man whose role in the tragedy will perhaps never be fully established, but whose initial dishonesty certainly has been. As for McKenzie, to this day his old newspaper remains barely circulated in Liverpool.)
Enough of him. He's had the attention that he craves. Anyway, he wasn't the only one to blame the fans.
Asking Questions
Initial police briefings, notes Phil Scraton, an academic who has extensively studied the disaster, were considerably and shamelessly 'revised', with initial statements heavily doctored in what must be assumed to be an attempt to cover tracks. It's easy to see why. Both official documents and a host of off-the-record police statements ran the gamut of fan blame, ranging from accusations of a vast conspiracy of fans to enter without tickets (in fact tickets were, despite officially being sold out on Merseyside, not hard to come by) or to invade the pitch (in fact the fence came down and the fans came streaming on in an attempt to escape death and injury.)
It took a while for these things to be established - in part, that is, for the true facts of the matter are still not 100% clear - and the police seemed to always be second to ascertain the facts... and to change their own. Even the much-lauded Taylor Report knew of these alterations, which slightly takes the shine off its condemning some aspects of the policing for the 'lack of control' on matchday.
The early clamour to blame the supporters, and to see the spectre of hooliganism behind every fan's eyes, was quietly shuffled aside. Instead, the blame went pretty much nowhere. Taylor's muted condemnation aside, individuals were not brought to task for their role in the tragedy, and the (more significant) institutional failures in South Yorkshire were discussed with no small measure of opacity. (The British citizen today may wish to draw comparisons between this incident and the official reactions to the death of a bypasser in the London demonstrations earlier this month.)
Changed Forever
Not just were lives irrevocably altered - and ruined - by the tragedy, but the sport as a whole saw the change, too. The abundance of all-seater stadia that followed the Taylor Report was the first and most obvious departure with the old; numerous more followed. I leave the examination of those to my Goal.com colleague, Zack Wilson, to reflect on in his excellent article here.
In the meantime, football will share a moment today reflecting on the 96 lives lost. It will do so not just in sadness, but also confusion and anger. The beautiful game should not - and, had things gone differently, could not - have been so hideous.
Ewan Macdonald, Goal.com
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| Sign up with bet365 for a free bet up to £200 |
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| Sign up with Paddy Power for a free bet up to £50 |
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