Hillsborough

[Incognito]

As awful as this was and should never have happened I always find it so odd that its in the media so often. It was a tragedy dont get me wrong but so were alot of things. It gets so much press its unreal. I am not a heartless b****** alot of people died that day but there are other tragedies that occurred in the past. Remember them on the anniversary but its over the top.

I'm baffled about them always talking about it and it always being in the media. Also what's up with the "Justice for the 96" instead of "R.I.P to the 96"?, particularly around the anniversary.

 

It's because the people of Liverpool have been campaigning for justice, in light of the injustice carried out by South Yorkshire police that day. It's in the media a lot, because 96 fans of the most successful club in English football, from one of the main cultural heartlands of the country died in a terrible crush. A crush which could have happened to any club at any time, and many fans around the time can tell story's of near misses. It has defined and shaped the culture of a major city and perhaps the rest of the country. An entire city no longer buys the largest selling newspaper. It's a campaign that has been backed by celebrities. On top of the large scale of death a light has been shown on to terrible police standards, corruption and collusion between the police, media and possibly even the government of the time.

There is a time and place for the justice part, at a time when you should be remembering them at an anniversary shouldn't it be time to reflect on the fact that 96 people lost their lives and not the circumstances around it?

 

How often do you see families of the Valley parade disaster asking for justice? There was just as many mistakes and different authorities to blame there for the people who died then as there is for Hillsbrough.

 

Was there bollocks. Hillsborough and the injustice of it all will be traced right up to Thatcher's door. To think for a good 20 years it was pushed about that the whole disaster was down to Liverpool's supporters because of the Government of the day,  South Yorkshire police and that Tory MP whose name I cannot recall is frankly disgusting.

There was a cover up, no one can deny that but to say it went all the way up to Thatchers door and the whole of South Yorkshire police were involved, and also that it was the only reason why the disaster happened is wrong. Only a hand few of police officers will know what was happening at the time, other police officers around the ground will not know exactly what went on and will only being going by the accounts of those who were initially close to the Leppings end who were forced by those above them to alter their initial accounts. Anyone outside of these police officers will only know what happened by 'official' (I use the term official loosely) accounts, this includes MP's and Thatcher, what Irvine Patnick said to Thatcher and the press was wrong, no one can deny that.

 

Even though cover up of the police's role in the disaster is disgusting there was other factors that equally contributed to it happening, this often gets forgotten about.

 

My initial post was trying to get the point across that Liverpool fans seem to spent a lot of time focused on why 96 people died and not the actual fact that 96 people died.

 

I used the Valley Parade disaster as comparison because although there was no cover up to explain why the disaster happened like Hillsborough a lot of things in the build up happened that should have happened which led to the disaster. For one the stand had already been condemned as unsafe (Bradford were actually pulling the stand down at the end of the season). There was no fire extinguishers around when there should have been. The rubbish beneath the stand should not have been allowed to build up and there had been reportedly been concerns of it being a fire risk raised previously. Lastly the turnstile exits had been locked shut, meaning fans had to go onto the pitch to escape when in a lot of cases using the exits would have been quicker.

 

You can argue that the Bradford fans have also never found justice (I don't think you can ever really find justice in these types of circumstances) as no one has actually been held acceptable for these failings which lead to the disaster.

 

 

 

Thatcher's prints are all over it ffs.

 

 

EDIT:The South Yorkshire police's failure to regulate the ground properly was covered up by Thatcher as a thank you to South Yorkshire police and their "henchman" role in the Miner's strike. The Sheffield Hallam MP, Sir Irving Patnick "informed" The Sun of lies including looting of dead people's possessions, urinating on dead fans etc to put the Liverpool supporters in a terrible light. Where did his instructions come from? Not hard to work out is it?

 

I would go with this but there's a reason i don't. We had a Labour Government for 13 years and if they knew that (and they would have), they wouldn't have hesitated to reveal it. I'm still trying to work why Labour kept refusing to have a fresh enquiry, nothing makes sense on that.

 

It's a bit weird it's Cameron who started the new enquiry off, seems if what you said was true he would have held off so not to embarrass the Tories. Whatever it is something is definitely not right with it all.

 

Cameron was PM but it was Andy Burnham who prompted the action. Labour actually did hold a fresh inquiry as one of the first acts of Tony Blair entering Downing St. Unfortunately it agreed with the original findings.

 

Widely agreed that was a fudge though, not the proper enquiry this has been.

 

They probably did it too soon into their term. Andy Burnham thinks that their inexperience at dealing with civil servants tainted the enquiry as the Justice Stuart Smith seems to have continued the duplicity shown in Justice Taylor's original enquiry. Labour should certainly have not let it lie there though and credit to Andy Burnham,  Steve Rotherham and the rest of the Liverpool MPs for their continued plight to get to where we are now.

 

Aye they have done well tbf. I think my point really is, that say Thatcher did have some thing do with a cover up, Labour would have said so by now. The police involved certainly did cover things up and i hope they get what's coming tothem, and hope that coming is long sentences.

 

Im fairly sure Jack Straw did say it. But the Tory MP for Sheffield Hallam certainly was a major player in the cover-up and Thatcher certainly ruled her minions with a rod of iron so personally I believe she was involved.

[Mick]

Some staggering views expressed here re "why are we still banging on about this?".

Before posting such s****, people should properly acquaint themselves with the huge array of evidence now available of not just astonishingly incompetent, insensitive and criminally negligent policing but the full extent of the cover-up (which DID extend to rank and file coppers) and ask themselves what the f*** THEY THEMSELVES would be doing - 25 years after the event - other than ask for justice for the son/husband/father/daughter who died (at a f***ing football match) as a result, and were subsequently smeared as drunken yobs who more or less had it coming.

People answered for Heysel in the criminal courts. The negligence which caused the Bradford fire was addressed in the courts. Hillsborough? There hasn't even been a proper inquest until now, let alone a single individual answer a criminal charge.

What the f*** are the "why bang on about it" brigade on?

 

I must admit that I thought that Hillsborough was caused by pissed up fans because that's what most of the media were telling us and I didn't think a cover-up on such a scale was possible in this country.

 

I was wrong and the Liverpool fans must go on and on and on until justice has been handed out, good luck to the families.

[Tiresias]

Who cares if she was directly involved, when you're a cunt, in charge of a government full of cunts overseeing an establisment of cunts, who's surprised when they act like cunts?

[TheHoob]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2612727/Hillsborough-slurs-sent-Whitehall-computers-Inquiry-launched-anonymous-Wikipedia-modifications.html

[Tooj]

Heysel anniversary today.

 

http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/163716-29-years-on-heysel-remembered

 

Not one bit of acknowledgement for their part in it.

[Neil]

Heysel anniversary today.

 

http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/163716-29-years-on-heysel-remembered

 

Not one bit of acknowledgement for their part in it.

 

Course not. Never is.

[midds]

"collapse of a wall" makes it sound like an accident. Walls don't just collapse, there was a reason why it collapsed....

[maybe_next_year]

No offence, but this seams like the wrong place to post that no? Just because they ignore their fans part in Heysel doesn't mean there should be a comparison drawn between ignorance over their own actions and their quest for 'justice' over the actions of the police etc. at Hillsborough.

[LFEE]

With cup final upon us I noticed this footage come of the Merseyside Cup Final 1986. Remember seeing it at the time live on TV and it being joked about and it has always stuck with me. 
 

Alway have been of the opinion that the fans would’ve played a small part in the disaster as this thing went on on all the time and still does to this day as recently as the Wembley Euro England v Italy final. The fact they never except even 1% of the blame I always feel goes against them amongst general opposing fanbases who are being fed the entirely blameless narrative which has continued at similar high profile finals involving them when similar incidents of ticketless barging into games at Istanbul and in particular Athens.

 

The press were a disgrace and so were some of the police force on the day and even worse subsequently with their cover up for the mistakes they made. However there will always be some fans who I wonder if are able to sleep at night who turned up without tickets that fateful day…

 

 

 

 

 

[80]

The thing most notable about that clip? The lack of faux dismay and moralising on the commentary.

[enthusiast]

On 07/02/2023 at 14:50, LFEE said:

However there will always be some fans who I wonder if are able to sleep at night who turned up without tickets that fateful day…

 

not a significant factor, according to the Taylor Report:

 

Quote

Liverpool Supporters at Away Matches

205. The South Yorkshire police prepared a dossier of reports on the behaviour of Liverpool fans at away matches with the object of showing a pattern of troublesome behaviour by large numbers either without tickets or with forged tickets. Without setting out the whole history, it can be summarised as follows.


206. On three occasions Liverpool fans without tickets were allowed into all-ticket matches upon payment. (At Watford on 13 February 1988, 1,500 were admitted; at Southampton on 24 September 1988, 150 were admitted; at Southampton again on 12 December 1988, 750 were admitted.) At Norwich on 1 April 1989, Liverpool supporters arrived without tickets but 1,272 tickets had been returned and fans from both Liverpool and Norwich were allowed to buy them for cash. A similar situation occurred at Wimbledon on 13 May 1989. There were six other occasions from 1986 to date, including the Cup finals of 1986 and 1989, when numbers of Liverpool supporters turned up without tickets or otherwise behaved badly.


207. Four points must be noted, however. On none of the occasions when ticketless fans were admitted for payment was the match a sell-out. There was therefore room in the ground on each occasion. At a sell-out fans might not expect to be allowed in, even for payment. Secondly, no trouble of the kind alleged was encountered at the 1988 semi-final when Liverpool visited Hillsborough. Thirdly, Liverpool visited Hillsborough again in January 1989 without any trouble. Finally, no forged tickets were in use on 15 April apart from three crude photocopies.


No Conspiracy
208. I have already found that there was not an abnormally large number of fans without tickets on this occasion. With one or two exceptions, the police witnesses themselves did not subscribe to the "conspiracy" theory. I am satisfied that the large concentration at Leppings Lane from 2.30 pm to 2.50 pm did not arrive as a result of any concerted plan. There were, I accept, small groups without tickets who were willing to exploit any adventitious chance of getting into the ground. They, together with the minority who had drunk too much, certainly aggravated the problem faced by the police. But that main problem was simply one of large numbers packed into the small area outside the turnstiles.

 

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by enthusiast

[TheDimpleboy]

1 minute ago, enthusiast said:

 

not a significant factor, according to the Taylor Report:

 

 

 

 

 

Spot on.

 

I reckon I'd be indignant as a Liverpool fan, if over 30 years after the incident had happened, people were still trying to apportion some blame to our supporters, despite a wealth of independent reports/investigations showing that wasn't the case.

 

There was no mass of ticketless fans

[Tiresias]

Taylor report really is a must read.

 

Also see i just got a message saying a post from 9 years ago just got liked in here, don't remember making it, and boy it's maybe my sweariest post ever

[LFEE]

2 hours ago, TheDimpleboy said:

 

Spot on.

 

I reckon I'd be indignant as a Liverpool fan, if over 30 years after the incident had happened, people were still trying to apportion some blame to our supporters, despite a wealth of independent reports/investigations showing that wasn't the case.

 

There was no mass of ticketless fans

1% isn’t significant but it’s a factor hence why I said “if” there would be some fans who had sleepless nights over it. If I was one of them I’d struggle regardless what a report said exonerating me as a report is only as good as the information give to it.
 

No one knows how many ticketless fans were there on the day or how much some had to drink. It’s impossible to. It would require people coming forward voluntarily to make any report 100% accurate. I think you have misunderstood my point I was making that I wonder if there were people out there who didn’t. As my starting point was we’ve always been told this sort of thing was a myth but you can see it with your own eyes on this occasion alone. It’s not the one or two climbing the walls you need to watch as much it’s the last few seconds ground level of people trying to get in.

 

It actually happened to me at the SOL 2014 when the turnstiles went off so a steward panicked and opened a fire exit to let our fans in however due to selfish drunken behaviour of our fans along with some that won’t of had tickets instead of walking slowly and calmly through the doors and up the stairs the surge cause one half of the fire doors to be wedged closed with wheelie bin on its side no one could see from the back of the crush with my leg/knee trapped between said bin and door. Despite my screams for help it’s amazing how many selfish people there are in the moment who just want to get into a game regardless probably due to the levels they have drunk beforehand. A report no doubt would’ve blamed the failure of the turnstiles working and the poor stewardship trying to get both doors open to let people flow in more comfortably. Not the impatient that caused one side of the doors to swing shut and trap me against it and a wheelie bin other side of me crushing me as people refused to retreat.