RIP Indeed.
I’ve realised that my knowledge of the event has been solely based on what I saw on the TV, what I’ve read in the press and what I’ve concluded from my own presumptions.
Until now, I’ve never read either the interim or final public reports into the disaster written by Lord Justice Taylor. Even now I’ve only read the interim report, which covers the actual disaster and findings into the cause, in detail. The final report deals more with what recommendations were made to ensure something like that never occurred again.
It had always been my opinion that the root cause was primarily the failure on a massive scale to police the situation with a small degree of blame to be placed at the feet of the Liverpool fans themselves for the conduct of some of their numbers in the run up to kick off. Reading the report suggests that, whilst blame is placed there, there are other areas which need to take responsibility for the events.
Police – they were massively unprepared for what was to occur and no ‘major disaster plan’ could be successfully implemented as they simply didn’t exist. This wasn’t only true for the South Yorkshire Police force, it was true the country over. If the disaster had happened at St James Park, the police wouldn’t have had a clue what to do. In their own words “it had never happened before so there was no reason to forsee it” They didn’t help themselves by appointing Duckenfield as Chief Superintendent less than a month before the event occurred. The bloke had no experience of dealing with policing a football match for over 10 years. Their biggest failing though had to be after the event. Duckenfield lied about ordering the gate to be opened and when interviewed by Taylor, several officers exaggerated the drunken element of the crowd perhaps to rationalise their loss of control. The unforgivable acts of the force however was their evident desire to mis-lead what had happened and place the blame for the gate opening elsewhere when it had quite clearly been a police order. They were also, I believe behind the famous articles in the Sun and Star which was intent on placing the blame at the hands of the Liverpool fans.
The FA – The FA made the choice to use Hillsborough for the semi-final. At the time, it was considered one of the better grounds in the country but probably more key to their choice was the fact that it was centrally located. In reality, the ground was fairly run down and whilst it could deal with the capacity within the ground, the facilities were not up to standard and the access – particularly at the Leppings Lane end was totally inadequate. Their argument maybe that there was no cause for concern in the two previous years even though there was crowding issues, but they didn’t award the semi-final to Hillsborough for six years before that due to an incident which occurred at the 1981 semi final – injuries due to crushing in the Leppings Lane terraces!
Fans of Liverpool FC – The main areas of blame placed at the fans of LFC have generally been fans without tickets, drunkeness and late arrival at the turnstiles. Reading into Taylor’s report, the official capacity of the Leppings Lane end was 10,100. There were computer systems in place on the turnstiles and cameras to indentify anyone who’d got in by slipping under the turnstiles. As well as that there was CCTV monitoring gate C that the police opened therefore making it able to reasonable estimate how many went through that gate. As a result of the investigations, the report found that there were no more that 10,124 people within the Leppings Lane end – some 14 people more than there should have been. The results of the crushing inside was hardly that of ticketless fans. As for drunkeness most statements attribute that persons with a high levels of inebriation were few and no more than is expected at a football match. As for late arrival at the turnstiles – well how many of us prior to Hillsborough arrived at turnstiles at 2.50 on a match day? It was common practice and the problems caused by late arrival are surely more attributable to the approach to the ground not being able to cope with the numbers.
Sheffield Wednesday – The safety certificate for Hillsborough was issued in 1979. Whilst the perimeter fences were in place at this time, the leppings lane terrace was one open terrace with no segregation and had the capacity of 10,100. Following the problems in 1981, on the advice of the police, the terrace was split into 3 pens. By 1985 the middle pen was split again and also reduced on one side to form a ‘sterile’ corridor between 2 pens. At no time was the safety certififcate ammended to reflect these changes and even more so, the total capacity of 10,100 remained despite the addition of 4 perpendicular fences and the ‘sterile’ area. What’s more, the structural engineer recommended that the turnstiles were amended so that each pen was served by independant turnstiles rather than all of them serving the entire terrace. In doing so, control of numbers within in pen could be controlled. Without do so would mean that was no control. SWFC rejected his suggestions on the grounds of cost. On top of this, the directional signs once through the turnstiles was abysmal. Fans could either take a long walk around the left or right sides to go to the side pens (those which were sparsely populated) or take the short walk through the tunnel in front of them (which led them to the two pens in which the crowding, and deaths occurred).
I remember the day vividly… I was in the kitchen at home listening on the radio to us playing away at Arsenal when they kept cutting away and going to Hillsborough for updates. I remember thinking at the time it was odd and wondered why they kept doing it and then they announced that there had been fatalities and the enormity of the situation came home. At the time I was a season ticket holder in the paddocks under the Milburn stand at SJP and for those of you who remember, it was segregated into 4 pens – 2 to the north of the players tunnel and 2 to the south. I remember my Mam saying soon afterwards that it was a damned good job they’d pulled those fences down at SJP soon afterwards because if they hadn’t, she’d never let me go again – she was beating herself up that she’d let me go in there for nearly 3 years as it was.
For those of you wanting to read through the official reports, the can be found here:
Interim Report
Final Report
It’s fair to say that my interest in what exactly happened and the causes of it increased when I learned that my lass (who as you know is a Liverpool fan) was supposed to be there standing in the Leppings Lane end. Mercifully, she was supposed to go with her Dad who couldn’t get time off work so in the end they passed the tickets on to people who did come back. She did however lose one of her best mates in the disaster and anytime she reads or sees anything on the TV about Hillsborough, it all comes flooding back and she breaks down.
To the end, the people who died were not just fans of Liverpool, they were football fans who went to a match and some never came home and it could have happened to any of us. For those who did get home, they’ve experienced a living nightmare and horror that I’m grateful I never did.
RIP
