Hillsborough
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<p>Isn't this irrelevant?</p>
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<p>As didn't the whole issue happen as the turnstiles weren't quick enough to deal with all the late comers arriving at once, and subsequently they opened up an exit allowing a free-for all push? Thus, many people without tickets may or may not have pushed in?</p>
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<p>Rotated asked a question about ticket holders and I thought I'd found an answer to his question in the BBC Doco - that's all the post was about Major Rage.</p>
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<p>Yeah I remember taking on the "hooligans" explanation. Had no reason to doubt it at the time either </p> -
<p>Watched the BBC documentary last night and would make the following comments. I'm not going to address the reprehensible behavior of the police afterwards:</p>
<p>1) Clearly the 96 were not at fault</p>
<p>2) The ground was very poorly designed to act as a neutral venue. 44% of the supporters had to go through 28% of the turnstiles. And once through the turnstiles the only obvious entry point to the standing area was Gate C (which only led to the central pens) which was directly in front of the entering fans.</p>
<p>3) Duckenfield was out of his depth and didn't know how to deal with the situation. He clearly froze and paralyzed an effective police response.</p>
<p>4) The crowd outside the gate were clearly angry and frustrated but the game should have been delayed to calm them down (wrong police decision). No evidence of unticketed supporters however.</p>
<p>5) When the outer gate was opened by the police the central pens were already overcrowded. The critical error by the police was not closing Gate C to the central pens sooner.</p>
<p>6) There had been no planning from or training for the police or emergency services on how to handle the situation which made it far worse. They clearly had no idea what to do.</p>
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<p>One more general comment which the doco did not address. Despite the above errors, looking at that footage it was an accident waiting to happen. With hindsight, it's hard to believe that anyone thought that having standing only pens behind the goal (without exits) was ever a good idea. All it needed was the right combination of ingredients (eg. an FA cup semi final and policing error). The interviewed fans said that being a bit crushed was normal. They even had crush barriers in place so they knew crushes could/did happen. Also, getting into those pens and being part of a swaying mass of people was part of being a fan. People were swapping their seated tickets to get into the standing area. Basically, if there had been a fire, bombing, shooting or anything else to induce panic, exactly the same thing would have happened. Mental. While police incompetence pulled the trigger, the lasse faire approach of Hillsborough and the FA to crowd safety was probably the major factor that caused this. </p> -
<p>I was lucky enough to go on a press trip to the 94 World Cup in the US. The opening game was at Soldier Field n Chicago between Germany (holders) and Bolivia.</p>
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<p>It was crazy hot and even as I walked from the press tent to the stadium I was dripping. Then the queue started. I couldn't figure out what the holdup was until I was really close, but basically Bill Clinton had showed up and the secret service had cordoned off one whole side of the stadium. Even worse, they'd decided to channel everyone through one entrance under the stands where they'd fitted a metal detector gate. Outside was hot, under the stadium was unbearable and the crush was terrific. One woman - a pregnant wife of one of the players - started to faint and the crowd was getting hostile. Then there was a loud cheer from inside the stadium which everyone crowded in underneath assumed was the start of the match. Cue anger and panic, The secret service guys manning the detector quickly became swamped an inevitably the whole contraption got torn down to let people in. It was pandemonium.</p>
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<p>Ultimately, I got out into the sunshine only to realise the big cheer was for the opening ceremony, not the start of the match. I walked up the aisle to my row and saw Clinton about 20 yards away. I wanted to give him a bollocking for ruining my day and nearly causing a disaster, but I took one look at the freaked out suits all around me and thought better of it. They must have been bricking it that they'd put their man in front of a hostile crowd with any one of them possibly holding a gun.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MajorRage" data-cid="578285" data-time="1462769532">
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<p>As didn't the whole issue happen as the turnstiles weren't quick enough to deal with all the late comers arriving at once, and subsequently they opened up an exit allowing a free-for all push? Thus, many people without tickets may or may not have pushed in?</p>
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<p>After watching the ESPN doco (hat tip gt12) one of the first interviews is with a patron who pretty glibly explains he went there on a whim expecting to try and just sneak in due to the sheer numbers of people. Doesn't seem particularly perturbed by the fact that additional unticketed people likely played into the issue - surely? </p>
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<p>It seems like the cops (and media) should be raked over the coals for the cover up and slanderous accusations after the fact. But the event itself seems like a combination of circumstances - none with particular malice that ended in a complete tragedy. I feel pretty uncomfortable with the verdict of guilty for unlawfully killed based on what I've seen (for comparison the London bombings victims were also ruled to be unlawfully killed).</p> -
<p>I would say there were many factors that contributed to the tragedy but those factors had been present in previous semi-finals at Hillsborough - in fact the same 2 teams had played there in the semi the previous year. There was crushing at that game which should have been a warning as to what could happen in a ground as shitty as Hillsborough was back then.</p>
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<p>The cause of the tragedy was the perimeter gate being opened and the gate to the tunnel being left open - that single act condemned people to die. If the tunnel gate had been closed then the fans coming in would have gone to either side and filled the ends of the terraces where there was still space.The police knew this from the very start - and that is why they immediately went into overdrive to shift the blame to the fans.</p> -
<p>This is an interesting read on the backdrop to the disaster.</p>
<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/27/the-hillsborough-verdict-shatters-the-fantasty-that-class-war-doesnt-exist'>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/27/the-hillsborough-verdict-shatters-the-fantasty-that-class-war-doesnt-exist</a></p>
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<p> </p>The Hillsborough verdict shatters the fantasy that class war doesn’t exist
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<span><span><a class="" href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/suzannemoore"><span>Suzanne Moore</span></a></span></span>
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<p>The ‘unlawful killing’ of the 96 football fans was a crime, committed in a very real conflict. The police, the establishment, parts of the press, they were all in it together<br>
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<div><a class="" href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/27/the-hillsborough-verdict-shatters-the-fantasty-that-class-war-doesnt-exist#img-1"></a><span><span>F</span></span>inally, 27 long years later, the cold class contempt that Hillsborough came to signify is laid out for all to see. Those who died did not die because they were “<a class="" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-29897240">animals</a>†or drinking too much or behaving badly. They were <a class="" href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/hillsborough-disaster">unlawfully killed</a>. Their families did not grieve too much because they were from Liverpool and therefore emotionally incontinent or full of working-class mawkishness; they grieved because they lost their loved ones in absolutely horrific circumstances. Still, to read the details of how these people died tightens my stomach. Of the 96 who died, 37 were teenagers. The reality is that the dead were all sorts of people from different backgrounds. But very quickly they became no longer individuals but part of a mob who somehow deserved this awful fate. As life was squeezed out of them, then too their humanity was taken from them by the police, by politicians and parts of the press.<br><br>
The marathon campaign by the bereaved families and their supporters has been one class act. In the face of despair, there has been dignity. Yet we have to ask why it has taken so long for the truth to be acknowledged. It is surely to do with the way we do not like to talk about out-and-out class conflict. Instead, we are told that class hardly exists, except as an anthropological display to gawp at disdainfully on reality TV. The refusal of the establishment to countenance the level of police “coverup†is because “they†were indeed all in it together. This was more than a coverup. The police lied – they smeared the victims as some of them lay dying, <a class="" href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades">testing even a 10-year-old’s blood for alcohol</a>.<br><br>
All of this was relayed in the press so that the dead were reduced to the kind of rabble who urinated on and stole from each other. One of the extraordinary revelations is that it was the South Yorkshire police themselves who had a drinking problem, with bars in many of the stations .But no one who remembers that time thought that the police were on “our†side to begin with. In the 80s, sides were demarcated explicitly. If the miners’ strike was our last civil war, then the police were clearly lined up against us. They did Thatcher’s dirty work, waving their overtime payslips in the face of striking miners. That symbolic violence was accompanied by real violence. Andy Burnham is absolutely right to ask about the <a class="" href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/apr/12/hillsborough-battle-orgreave">links between Orgreave and Hillsborough</a>. The South Yorkshire police, Burnham said “used the same underhand tactics against its own people in the aftermath of the miners’ strike that it would later use, to more deadly effect, against the people of Liverpoolâ€.<br>
</div> <p>In all this it must be said there were individual police officers who behaved decently, but the complicity between the police and parts of the conservative establishment remain horrifying. The confidence of Kelvin MacKenzie, Boris Johnson and Bernard Ingham (who spoke of “<a class="" href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sir-bernard-ingham-who-labelled-7837120">tanked-up yobs</a>â€) still persists. Their apologies are a joke, still exhibiting the same contempt. Are we to accept MacKenzie was merely duped?<br><br>
Liverpool never forgot or forgave Johnson and his ilk because it didn’t simply imagine itself under attack – it <em>was</em> under attack. As always the culture it produced understood this and laughed in the face of such demonisation. Johnson’s editorial accused Liverpool of <a class="" href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/sep/13/boris-johnson-apologises-hillsborough-article">wallowing in its victim status</a>. As crushed economically as that city was in the 80s, it sensed its own power. Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirts read: “Frankie says arm the unemployed<br>
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<p>It must be somewhat galling for those in power now to have to accept this ruling, for they do not hide their class contempt either. They have elevated it to actual policy: all schools must be modelled on the schools they went to, but with fewer resources. All hospitals must be run to make a profit. Taxes are for the little people. Those who don’t “get on†have only themselves to blame. An increasing range of theories come into play about why poor people are poor, which is never to do with lack of money but lack of civility. Or perhaps there is something wrong with their actual brains! Imagery of working-class people invariably invokes moral deprivation by showing a tendency to excess.<br>
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<p>Social mobility, the supposed solution to all this, only allows the odd person to slip through the net. The middle class must simply hold on. Once there, one is required to be grateful (I am not) or merely chippy (I am). As I strain my ears to hear someone who talks like me on Radio 4 that isn’t in a drama about child abuse, I never know who I am to be grateful to.<br>
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<p>Sure, class contempt works both ways, though it is impolite to show it except by gentle humour. Rage is so 1980s. We must not discriminate against the posh apparently, though class doesn’t really exist any more. As more and more people tell us it no longer matters, we see more and more of our creative stars were privately educated, that our leaders come from the same tiny enclave. Retro-feudalism.<br>
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<p>This fantasy should be well and truly shattered by the <a class="" href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/26/the-guardian-view-on-the-hillsborough-verdicts-a-triumph-for-truth-and-solidarity">Hillsborough verdict</a>. This was a war crime committed in a war that was not then, nor is now, a figment of our imagination. Class war.</p>
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<p>Being 10 000 km away, in country with very different class dynamics I find it hard to relate to the above article, but on a more "mechanical" level it is clear that class did play a role.</p>
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<p>One has to wonder if the people like the safety officer, the club chairman or police have ever attended a game in the terraces. I am sure the ground appeared perfectly safe when it was empty, but when full it was a disaster waiting to happen as evidenced by 81 through 88. I am convinced that with some experiential wisdom on the part of the club and the police this tragedy would never have happened.</p>
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<p>Obviously this takes me back to my earlier point about football culture being part of the issue. The cultural divide cut both ways - I am sure that unless you were part of "passionate" group or couldn't afford anything else, terraces were pretty avoided in those days by anyone who had a choice. </p> -
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<p>Being 10 000 km away, in country with very different class dynamics I find it hard to relate to the above article, but on a more "mechanical" level it is clear that class did play a role.</p>
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<p>One has to wonder if the people like the safety officer, the club chairman or police have ever attended a game in the terraces. I am sure the ground appeared perfectly safe when it was empty, but when full it was a disaster waiting to happen as evidenced by 81 through 88. I am convinced that with some experiential wisdom on the part of the club and the police this tragedy would never have happened.</p>
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<p>Obviously this takes me back to my earlier point about football culture being part of the issue. The cultural divide cut both ways -<strong> I am sure that unless you were part of "passionate" group or couldn't afford anything else, terraces were pretty avoided in those days by anyone who had a choice. </strong></p>
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<p>I'm not sure that was totally the case Sid. The terraces were THE place to be at a soccer match. Sitting in an uncomfortable plastic seat up in the Gods had nothing on being with the crowd, chanting, swaying, jumping up and down, soaking in the atmosphere. Money for most people didn't come into it. The "passionate" group was the vast majority of soccer fans at that time. I have to say that even now, at my local premiership rugby side, I much prefer the standing area to the (mostly corporate) seating area. Of course there are nothing like the numbers involved and the facilities are hugely better than at a 1980s soccer ground, but you still get the better atmosphere in the standing area.</p> -
<p>Lui, I have to say that is an awful piece of journalism. Totally biased and hugely over-emotive - even for an emotive subject. When a journalist dishes out tripe like this:-</p>
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<p>It must be somewhat galling for those in power now to have to accept this ruling, for they do not hide their class contempt either. They have elevated it to actual policy: all schools must be modelled on the schools they went to, but with fewer resources. All hospitals must be run to make a profit. Taxes are for the little people. Those who don’t “get on†have only themselves to blame. An increasing range of theories come into play about why poor people are poor, which is never to do with lack of money but lack of civility. Or perhaps there is something wrong with their actual brains! Imagery of working-class people invariably invokes moral deprivation by showing a tendency to excess.</p>
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<p>The you know they have the largest of axes to grind.</p> -
<p>Cato, you've highlighted the bit I had an issue with too - not necessarily because of the journo's pov - but the stretch to link it to Hillsborough.</p>
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<p>However, I do think that football fandom in the 80s was a them and us situation between broadly working class and the establishment, even though Liverpool fans at Hillsborough came from all walks of society and all over the country. But fans <em>were</em> seen as a collective 'mob' and treated as something to confront and control at all costs rather than to protect. I really think the attitude was "you were stupid to put yourself in that situation, so you have to bear the consequences," even if it meant death.</p>
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<p>In terms of the police force in the 80s, others (including former senior officers) have described it as an 'army of occupation', used by Thatcher's government to suppress the miners strike, with Orgreave a particularly brutal low point. The fact that Hillsborough also happened on South Yorkshire's watch proves the prevailing attitude to what the establishment considered northern working class. Specifically, South Yorkshire Police has a terrible reputation: from failing to catch the Ripper earlier, through the miners strike, Hillsborough, Saville and Rotherham. It should be broken up and absorbed.</p> -
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<p>Being 10 000 km away, in country with very different class dynamics I find it hard to relate to the above article, but on a more "mechanical" level it is clear that class did play a role.</p>
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<p>One has to wonder if the people like the safety officer, the club chairman or police have ever attended a game in the terraces. I am sure the ground appeared perfectly safe when it was empty, but when full it was a disaster waiting to happen as evidenced by 81 through 88. I am convinced that with some experiential wisdom on the part of the club and the police this tragedy would never have happened.</p>
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<p>Obviously this takes me back to my earlier point about football culture being part of the issue. The cultural divide cut both ways - I am sure that unless you were part of "passionate" group or couldn't afford anything else, terraces were pretty avoided in those days by anyone who had a choice. </p>
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<p>Standing at Hillsborough at that game cost £6, which is one of the reasons there were so many teenagers in the crowd.</p>
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<p>David Conn's excellent overview, also in the Guardian, will give you chapter and verse on the police failings including the removal just before the match of the experienced officer who had been overseeing big games at Hillsborough for years beforehand. It is quite a long read, but well worth it, even if you do spend most of the time shaking your head in dismay.</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades'>https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades</a></p>
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<p>The FA also has a case to answer for selecting Hillsborough in the first place.</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/may/10/hillsborough-disaster-fa-serious-questions-ground-safety'>https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/may/10/hillsborough-disaster-fa-serious-questions-ground-safety</a></p> -
Thatcher wasn't anti-working class. Many who bought their council houses and later sold for huge profit would credit her for improving their lot. <br><br>
Thatcher was anti-socialism - heavily unionised printers, miners etc were there to be smashed (in her view). Liverpool very much fitted in with this. The entire city was seen as a socialist hotbed that would never vote Tory. Recently available cabinet papers from that time show that Mrs T was actually serious about cutting off all funding/support to Liverpool region and running it into the ground. <br><br>
Therefore a narrative from the Sun and Police that the Liverpool fans here drunken, feckless and violent was never going to be challenged by the government. Indeed they were happy to propagate that myth. As the Levy report highlighted - they were all too cosy with media and police at the time. -
<p>The council house thing is a bit of a red herring imo. Sure, council tenants benefited through buying their discounted homes and selling them on. But mostly it created a feelgood factor for Thatcher among a part of the electorate that should never traditionally supported a Tory government. It was a cynical move that ultimately led to the loss of affordable homes all over the country, which were never replaced. The resulting lending and property boom also helped instigate the recession at the end of the 80s.</p>
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<p>Liverpool was not alone in being run into the ground either. Any Labour controlled city council from that time - Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds etc - was starved of central government funding for essential services as punishment. It's one of the reasons why those cities, often with big student populations, responded by relaxing licensing laws and let people drink into the early hours of the morning. It was the only way to divert attention from the crumbling infrastructure.</p> -
Sure a lot of Thetcher era policies were self serving, but to suggest in the article above does that they were anti-working class is bollocks. She had a massive following of Sun readers that contributed to ongoing success. It's just that she didn't support the Grauniad's version of working class.
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<p>Well, this is now getting very much into a political discussion. Lui's article to me is just the other extremist viewpoint to the Sun's abominable coverage of the Hillsborough disaster at the time (and subsequently quite often too). Both very emotive, not based on factual reporting and stretching a point to ludicrous lengths.</p>
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<p>Your point Lui, about football fandom in the 80s being a them and us thing has grounds. However I cannot for the life of me see how this was ever about the working class and the establishment. Soccer has been the working man's game for generations and this had never been an issue. By and large footy fans were just straightforward normal people but there was a perception of a significant minority that were socially disruptive and socially divisive. A couple of other guys on this thread have alluded to the view of some form of culpability of the fans, purely by association and as it happens I was talking to a mate of mine over the weekend who is a former policeman. Now he is one of the most genuine, caring blokes I know but his view was sort of that it was no wonder the policing was shite as the police expectations of the fans was so low. Now I do not subscribe to that viewpoint but you can easily see how this could gain traction.</p>
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<p>In broader UK political terms the 1980s were really divisive and it was completely a reaction to the 1970s. During the 70s we had over unionisation in virtually any area of industry you care to name. Stifling productivity, reducing any competitive advantage we may have had. There was an abundance of hard left socialism taking over inner city control with the concurrent undermining of services, increasing costs, empire building, gerrymandering (see Corbyn's record on this). Liverpool was one such socialist empire - anyone remember Derek (call me Degsy) Hatton? The GLC with Ken Livingstone? People often forget how these establishments were failing people hugely during this time. Thatcherism and the 1980s was an antidote to all this and similar to a lot of cures (not necessarily vaccines - back in your box Winger) it was almost as painful as the disease. Council house sales - was this a good thing or not? A split decision for me, as Luigi says it removed a lot of affordable housing form the councils' lists but it also stopped the blatant mis-use of public held property, it also allowed people to get on the housing ladder that might never have been able to. Yes, it did help to cause a housing bubble but this was in conjunction with much lower interest rates and more affordable mortgages. People rushing to buy houses because, well, because now they could. When interest rates had fallen to the unimaginable low of 10%pa. (10% FFS!). Heady times indeed. Was it all a success? No, but it got Britain out of the mire that we were in during the 1970s. Our Government of the time could not afford to borrow money on the bond markets anymore, we had to ask the IMF for a special mates-rates loan to pay our public service wage bill and service our existing interest payments. We were in absolutely dire straits. Socialism had failed the UK totally but still retained an institutionalised grip. Thatcherism and the 1980s was the natural antidote to this. It was still a fucking horrible time but IMO a necessary time.</p>
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<p>What I do find distasteful in the journalism that is coming out now is the dreadful use of the Hillsborough disaster to further tenuous at best political points - on both sides of the political spectrum.</p> -
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<p>I'm not sure that was totally the case Sid. The terraces were THE place to be at a soccer match. Sitting in an uncomfortable plastic seat up in the Gods had nothing on being with the crowd, chanting, swaying, jumping up and down, soaking in the atmosphere. Money for most people didn't come into it. The "passionate" group was the vast majority of soccer fans at that time. I have to say that even now, at my local premiership rugby side, I much prefer the standing area to the (mostly corporate) seating area. Of course there are nothing like the numbers involved and the facilities are hugely better than at a 1980s soccer ground, but you still get the better atmosphere in the standing area.</p>
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<p>Maybe I made my point poorly, but I'd bet my left nut that the none of the club chairman, safety officer or senior police officers that attended the safety briefings had watched a game at the lepping lane end in the twenty years leading up to the disaster. The point being that there is disconnect between the people making the decisions and the people living with the consequences. Part of this disconnect was caused by class issues I feel. </p> -
<p>Good arguments Cato. Please don't think I'm a class warrior or closet socialist. I'm fairly ambivalent, but politics (including class politics) was fought from both sides with ordinary people as piggy in the middle. It was a bitter struggle. The 80s were my youth (that dates me aye?) and I remember a time of great anger interspersed by a lot of great music. I really felt it was every man for himself though.</p>
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<p>I also drink with a copper who was actually at Hillsborough and has had a career in sports crowd management ever since - even being sent to tournaments around the world as part of the UK team liaising with other forces to minimise fan disturbance at major events like the Euros and World Cup. On Hillsborough he's said it was mostly a whole load of factors that caused a perfect storm, including police incompetence and things like traffic delays and the fine weather having an impact, great or small. And yes, some fans did the usual thing and waited til the last minute to down their pints and rush to the stadium entrance just in time for kick off. But this was normal and lets face it, most of us have done it, so it's nowhere near the sole factor for the disaster. He maintains that the 'missing' video from one of the cameras has never been missing at all and has in fact been used as a police training aid for the last 20 years. He also talks of the 'irony' of the pens being installed as a reaction to the Heysel disaster. I don't think it's ironic, I think it's tragic.</p>
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<p>Overall though, we both agree that the biggest problem with Hillsborough is the fucking length of time it has taken to get to a 'truth' that is the closest thing we can get to being right. Heysel was done and dusted in a few years: fans and officials brought to book and teams banned from European competition. Job done, move on. In contrast the open sore of Hillsborough has been left to fester due to institutional indifference and obfuscation. If it had been dealt with fairly and efficiently it wouldn't have become the god awful travesty of justice it is now.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="SidBarret" data-cid="578859" data-time="1462976340">
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<p>Maybe I made my point poorly, but I'd bet my left nut that the none of the club chairman, safety officer or senior police officers that attended the safety briefings had watched a game at the lepping lane end in the twenty years leading up to the disaster. The point being that there is disconnect between the people making the decisions and the people living with the consequences. Part of this disconnect was caused by class issues I feel. </p>
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<p> Sid, read this link and then you can see what went wrong.</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades'>https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades</a></p>
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<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote">Wright’s high-handed rule was at the root of the disaster, the inquests heard. Just 19 days before the semi-final, he abruptly moved his seasoned, expert, popular commander at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium, Ch Supt Brian Mole. In Mole’s place, Wright promoted Duckenfield, who had never commanded a match at Hillsborough before, nor even been on duty there for 10 years.<br>
A trail of former officers bleakly confirmed the farce behind the switch: a bullying prank played on a probationary constable by officers in Mole’s division the previous October. Reportedly to teach him a lesson because they felt he was making radio distress calls too readily, the officers put on balaclavas and terrified the probationer with a mock armed holdup. On 20 February 1989, Wright personally sacked four officers and disciplined four more for this excessive internal prank. But Wright’s disastrous decision to move Mole was never questioned by senior officers.<br><br>
Peter Hayes, deputy chief constable in 1989, and Stuart Anderson, assistant chief constable in charge of personnel, came as old men to these inquests, and denied Mole was moved because of the prank, saying it was for “career developmentâ€. Anderson said Mole needed experience outside Sheffield and the force was having problems policing Barnsley, which could be “extremely hostile†after the miners’ strike, in a climate of “social disintegration†and the impending closure of 14 pits.<br>
Walter Jackson, assistant chief constable for operations, however, told the inquests that he did believe Mole was moved for not having dealt with the indiscipline firmly.<br>
Within F division’s base at Hammerton Road station, the Guardian has been told, rank-and-file officers believed that Mole, their popular “gafferâ€, was moved because of the prank. If it had been career development, there was no explanation as to why it had to be so sudden or so close to the semi-final, the force’s biggest operation of the year, nor why Mole was said by several witnesses, including Duckenfield, to have been disappointed. Nor was it clear why the force organised no professional handover: Mole cleared his desk and left. A dispute still rattles down the years about whether he offered to help Duckenfield with the match, which, in his evidence, Duckenfield denied.<br>
Jackson and Anderson still stood by their belief that Duckenfield could handle the semi-final, given experienced officers and the operational plan in place from the previous year when, under Mole’s command, an identical match between the same two clubs was played at Hillsborough.<br>
It was revelatory to hear F division officers recount Duckenfield’s heavy-handed manner on his arrival, how unpopular he made himself. William West, a constable, remembered Duckenfield telling officers “we were useless, we were no good, we had been doing it all wrong … He got us into the briefing room and he basically spoke at us for 20 minutes, telling us how the district was a disgrace, it had been badly run, it was going to be his way now.†Duckenfield, said West, “wasn’t a pleasant manâ€. He imagined he would be a bully, and “look for scapegoatsâ€.<br>
Duckenfield told the inquests that he did inherit disciplinary problems from Mole, that he believed this was a reason why Mole was moved, and that he himself was from the force’s “disciplinarian†wing. After taking over on 27 March 1989, Duckenfield found time to lay down the law to his officers, but he admitted to Christina Lambert QC, for the coroner, Sir John Goldring, that he failed to do basic preparation for the semi-final. He did not study relevant paperwork, including the force’s major incident procedure, and signed off the operational plan two days after taking over, before he had even visited the ground.<br>
He turned up to command the semi-final, he admitted, knowing very little about Hillsborough’s safety history: about the crushes at the 1981 and 1988 semi-finals, or that the approach to the Leppings Lane end was a “natural geographical bottleneck†to which Mole had carefully managed supporters’ entry.<br>
Duckenfield admitted he had not familiarised himself in any detail with the ground’s layout or capacities of its different sections. He did not know the seven turnstiles, through which 10,100 Liverpool supporters with standing tickets had to be funnelled to gain access to the Leppings Lane terrace, opened opposite a large tunnel leading straight to the central pens, three and four. He did not even know that the police were responsible for monitoring overcrowding, nor that the police had a tactic, named after a superintendent, John Freeman, of closing the tunnel when the central pens were full, and directing supporters to the sides. He admitted his focus before the match had been on dealing with misbehaviour, and he had not considered the need to protect people from overcrowding or crushing.<br>
The families of the people who were ushered into that terrifyingly unsafe situation and died read shattering personal statements, many remembering their loved ones’ casual goodbyes. Irene McGlone recalled her husband, Alan, 24, skipping with their daughters, Amy, then five, and two-year-old Claire, before driving to Hillsborough with three friends including Joseph Clark, 29, another father of two, who also died. That night, Amy asked if her dad could wake them up when he came home.<br>
“I am still waiting to wake my girls up from this nightmare, and send their daddy in to them,†McGlone wrote.<br>
The control room at Hillsborough in 1989. Photograph: Inquest handout<br>
Having failed to prepare, Duckenfield admitted 26 years later that he also failed profoundly at the match itself. He did not know what he was doing. While Mole used to be driven all over Sheffield before a big match to check on traffic flows, then, closer to the 3pm kickoff, patrol around the ground, Duckenfield said he still could not remember at all what he did in more than two hours between concluding his briefing of officers and arriving in the control box at 2pm. Once in the small control room, he stayed there.<br>
Supt Roger Marshall, put in charge outside, was new to the role. In his evidence, he accepted the police had no plan to filter people’s entry into the Leppings Lane bottleneck, using police horses or cordons, beyond “some random ticket checking and … some checks for drunkennessâ€. Repeatedly played footage of the mass congestion that developed, Marshall admitted that it was a problem starting at 2.15pm, with thousands more people still arriving, and by 2.35pm, police had “completely lost controlâ€.<br>
Marshall conceded he did not make any decisions of his own to alleviate the developing crisis, or give orders to his officers, who he agreed became “inoperative†and “ineffective†at the turnstiles, despite doing their best. He was seen forlornly asking people in his sight, with thousands behind them, to move back. Challenged that he failed to deal with the situation, Marshall said: “Well not really, because I was active in the middle of the crowd … waving my arms about.â€<br>
Asked if he should have called for a delay to the 3pm kickoff, to relieve the pressure of people anxious to be in for the start, Marshall said: “That is one of the most profound regrets … that I did not do so.â€<br>
By 2.48pm, the crowd at the turnstiles had compacted into a dangerous crush, and Marshall radioed the control room, asking if the large exit gate C could be opened. Duckenfield did not respond until Marshall said somebody would die outside if he did not open the gate. At 2.52pm, Duckenfield ordered it open.<br>
Reaching this notorious moment on his second day in the witness box, Duckenfield made more landmark admissions that went far beyond what he had confessed previously, to Lord Justice Taylor’s official 1989 inquiry, the first 1990-91 inquest in Sheffield, and the families’ private prosecutions of him and Supt Bernard Murray in 2000, when Duckenfield exercised his right to stay silent.<br>
At these inquests, he admitted he had given “no thought†to where the people would go if he opened the gate. He had not considered the risk of overcrowding. He had not foreseen that people would naturally go down the tunnel to the central pens right in front of them. He had not realised he should do anything to close off that tunnel. The majority of the 2,000 people allowed in through gate C went straight down the tunnel to the central pens, and gross overcrowding there caused the terrible crush. Of the 96 people who died, 30 were still outside the turnstiles at 2.52pm. They went in through gate C when invited by police, and were crushed in the central pens barely 10 minutes later.<br>
Paul Greaney QC, representing the Police Federation – who on behalf of the rank and file principally sought to emphasise senior officers’ lack of leadership – took his turn on Duckenfield’s sixth day. Standing three rows of lawyers back, he elicited from Duckenfield admissions that he lacked competence and experience, that his knowledge of the ground was “wholly inadequateâ€.<br>
In tense, charged exchanges, Greaney asked Duckenfield if he had frozen in the crucial minutes when making the decision to open the gate. Duckenfield denied this four times. Then Greaney asked again: “Mr Duckenfield, you know what was in your mind. I will ask you just one last time. Will you accept that, in fact, you froze?â€<br>
Slumped in his seat, “Yes, sir,†Duckenfield replied.<br>
Then Greaney put to him: “That failure [to close off the tunnel] was the direct cause of the deaths of 96 persons in the Hillsborough tragedy?â€<br>
“Yes, sir,†Duckenfield said.</blockquote> -
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<p>Maybe I made my point poorly, but I'd bet my left nut that the <strong>none of the club chairman, safety officer or senior police officers that attended the safety briefings had watched a game at the lepping lane end in the twenty years leading up to the disaster</strong>. The point being that there is disconnect between the people making the decisions and the people living with the consequences. Part of this disconnect was caused by class issues I feel. </p>
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<p>Almost certainly true, the bold bit Sid but not relevant IMO. The examples had already been seen of how unfit for purpose many stadia were and definitely in the case of Hillsborough. The decisions made to both hold the tie there and the policing of the game had no bearing laid on them by lack of experience of such events. The experience was already far to obvious to anyone that had anything to do with crowd safety or the putting on of a public event. Sod all to do with class and all to do with greed, incompetence and lack of care.</p>