Right, I’d promised myself a few days back that I wasn’t going to wade into this thread in any serious way, simply because the various reports, half-truths and agendas pushed during the past 23 years make it an absolute minefield. Having seen some of the obvious pro- and anti-Liverpool biases coming out, however, I just wanted to straighten out a few established facts and also give what (in my personal opinion) is the background to that horrific day.
I remember that day clear as anything. I was far more interested in the Everton-Norwich semi-final that day (for some arbitrary reason, my 7 year old self had a soft spot for Everton) and remember the early reports of the tragedy coming through on the radio. These were the days before real televised football in the UK. It’s hard to imagine now, when there’s sometimes fifteen different games shown live in a week, but then there was one Division One (note, pre-Premier League days) game shown on free-to-air TV and pay TV did not yet exist. The FA cup final was shown live, but no earlier rounds were – not even the semis.
In the years since that day, I’ve been to Hillsborough a couple of times and even sat in the Leppings Lane end. It’s unrecognisable from that day, but it does oddly stick in your mind what happened there…
Anyway, here’s my take on the situation. Some of the basic facts, which have been established as such but are being overlooked in some quarters:
While some supporters were obviously drunk, there was no evidence that alcohol was a major cause of the tragedy.
While there may have been a small number of people turning up without tickets, there was no evidence that these numbers were in any way a cause of the tragedy.
As the advertised kickoff time of 3pm was approaching, crowds outside the game became impatient with trying to get into the stadium on time. Police were fearing a crush outside and made the rushed decision to open the outer gates and allow the crowd into the stadium, bypassing the turnstiles.
The number of supporters entering the ground was not inherently dangerously high. The terrace, however, was sectioned off into three main pens with fencing between them. Entry to each pen was via a long and dark tunnel. The setup was such that people entering the back of any given tunnel could not clearly see the terrace at the end of it, so would be unaware of the exact conditions there. At the time the decision was made to open the outer gates, the central pen was already at, or above, its safe capacity. The two side pens were well below capacity. Given the nature of the tunnels into each pen, supporters entering the tunnel would not realise the overcrowding until a few seconds later, by which time a sufficient number of people would have followed them in, preventing any backing out. Also, critically, the overcrowded central pen was directly in front of the opening in the outer gate, so the first one the rushing and impatient supporters entering would have seen.
The principal police failing, aside from the pathetic act of misinformation and silence over their actions, was that the decisions made regarding the opening of the outer gates were not synched up with actions inside the ground. If, for example, shortly before opening the outer gates, the message had been passed through to close the gates on the central pen so that all supporters entering late would have to go to a side pen, then there would have been no tragedy.
In terms of the background (as much my opinion as indisputable facts, unlike the above):
This tragedy was, sadly, a long time coming. The general attitude towards football in society was pretty negative and supporters were treated very poorly. As much as I, like many others, don’t like a lot of the sterilisation and overpricing of modern football, it’s hard to argue the game’s not a better experience for the past couple of decades of progress. The distain for the typical supporters was part of the problem. Stadiums were barely touched or improved since the pre-war days. Many still had wooden seats or wooden steps which were a fire hazard (see the Valley Parade tragedy in Bradford only a few years before Hillsborough for a clear story of how these held up under a lit cigarette). Added to the thuggery and violence which categorised English football through the 70s and 80s, the game’s solution was to put perimeter fences in place to stop supporters entering the field. While these prevented pitch invasions, they also prevented people getting away from crushes developing behind them.
The other problem was with the FA itself. Its insistence on not televising games (believing that the TV revenue would not compensate for the loss of ticket sales – that’s foresight!) was an issue, and the police’s firm belief that they had to get people into the ground for 3pm to avoid a crush outside certainly contributed. Nowadays, and very reasonably, the police would simply let the FA know that there was an issue with getting all supporters in safely on time and the kickoff would be delayed. This was not an option that day, seemingly.
Don’t let’s cloud this issue with other opinions or situations. The action of Liverpool supporters at Heysel is of minimal significance. The paranoia and victim-complex the club adopted over the Suarez race row last year is of zero significance.
