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Hillsborough

MARKakaJIM said:
That may negate my experiences of large crowds but it doesn't absolve the members of the crowd from their behaviour does it?
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No it doesn't and is why I only highlighted the particular part of the post that I was willing to respond to, the rest I felt confident other posters would deal with. I didn't want to get into it tell the truth.
 
Well that's pretty damning.

Football supporters 'as a whole' were treated like scum/cattle but I'm not sure if hooliganism/crowd violence throughout the 70's/80's helped fuel the fire. You go to a football game, have a few beers and some laughs and end up dead - something was very wrong somewhere and it wasn't the Liverpool support. An apology is definitely needed from McKenzie.
 
Papper said:
Well that's pretty damning.

Football supporters 'as a whole' were treated like scum/cattle but I'm not sure if hooliganism/crowd violence throughout the 70's/80's helped fuel the fire. You go to a football game, have a few beers and some laughs and end up dead - something was very wrong somewhere and it wasn't the Liverpool support. An apology is definitely needed from McKenzie.
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McKenzie has issued an apology this afternoon....
Previously hes said he got his info from Liverpool reporters...then took it back.
Quite shocked to hear The Sun still sells 2,500 copies in Liverpool (source: 5 live)
 
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Lord Knows said:
http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/report/Section-1/summary/
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Some scary reading in there describing a completely flawed system first and foremost.

"Chief Superintendent Mole stated that officers on the perimeter track and in the Control Box estimated when full capacity of each pen was reached 'based on experience'."

"Chief Superintendent Mole, stated that the fans' distribution between the Leppings Lane terrace pens was based on an informal practice that allowed fans to 'find their own level'."

Add to this poor/lacking communication between police/officials outside and inside the ground and you have a tragedy.

With a couple of near tragedies years before it's shocking they just kept doing what they were always doing....
 
The Saturday Boy said:
How could people at the back of that crowd be aware of the horror unfolding 50 or more metres away from them - they wouldn't have seen anything. The police had eyes everywhere and failed to act appropriately.

Leaving Loftus Road from the away end is not an entirely voluntary act. The concourseis narrow and you effectively move with the crowd. Had anything untoward happened after the game there would have been no escape for the many Wolves fans.

An individual has very little impact on a crowd in such situations which is why we have people in place to exercise some control.
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I think you're being terrible naive and yes i do know a lot about this 'disaster'. If you think it was or is that easy to control a crowd even if you have 'eyes everywhere' then you are mistaken. The police made mistakes, the media made mistakes, the coroner made mistakes and yes many people in the crowd made mistakes. the Taylor Report was, as always, after the event.
 
EasternWolf said:
I think you're being terrible naive and yes i do know a lot about this 'disaster'. If you think it was or is that easy to control a crowd even if you have 'eyes everywhere' then you are mistaken. The police made mistakes, the media made mistakes, the coroner made mistakes and yes many people in the crowd made mistakes. the Taylor Report was, as always, after the event.
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Mistakes are one thing, the amending of statements by the Police to paint their own picture, are quite another.
 
EasternWolf said:
I think you're being terrible naive and yes i do know a lot about this 'disaster'. If you think it was or is that easy to control a crowd even if you have 'eyes everywhere' then you are mistaken. The police made mistakes, the media made mistakes, the coroner made mistakes and yes many people in the crowd made mistakes. the Taylor Report was, as always, after the event.
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The evidence presented in the report shows "conclusively" that the fans "neither caused nor contributed to the deaths". Seems pretty clear cut to me. What makes you disagree with this?
 
wombourne wolves said:
Mistakes are one thing, the amending of statements by the Police to paint their own picture, are quite another.
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This is surely the point. As anyone who stood on the terraces during those years knows, you sometimes did well to emerge from a goal celebration uninjured, let alone a crowd stampede. Grounds in the 70s and 80s could be war zones with three belligerents: the two sets of fans and the police. I'm not trying to be flippant, but this was simply a tragedy of its time. It was awful that it happened, but the scandal lies not in its occurrence, rather in how it was handled, reported and recorded. That is why we're still discussing Hillsborough but not Bradford, Ibrox or Heysel.
 
sounds good to me - apparantly the police didn't change the statements, the police lawyers did - locking them up sounds pretty ideal to me!
 
I was at the Wolves - Spurs semi at Hillsborough, and remember it vividly.

We could see the Leppings Lane End filling up, and my old man remarked then that there was a serious risk of people dying if something wasn't done. I think the Police/Groundstaff opened some cattlegates that helped to eliviate the crush, but I can't be sure of that. Clearly, whatever lessons could have been learned that day eluded those supposedley in positions of resposnsibility.

 
Premier Quality said:
sounds good to me - apparantly the police didn't change the statements, the police lawyers did - locking them up sounds pretty ideal to me!
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I'm not sure what they hoped to gain by covering up. Negligence is a reality unfortunately - it was all an accident waiting to happen - but some of the things they did were unforgivable. Even the Ambulance service were covering up. We were treated like scum because of a minority of idiots (still to this day) who wish to go to a football game to fight. They should also take some of the blame.
 
EasternWolf said:
I think you're being terrible naive and yes i do know a lot about this 'disaster'. If you think it was or is that easy to control a crowd even if you have 'eyes everywhere' then you are mistaken. The police made mistakes, the media made mistakes, the coroner made mistakes and yes many people in the crowd made mistakes. the Taylor Report was, as always, after the event.
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Then I stand alongside those terribly naive people who have just forensically examined 450000 plus document, produced a 400 page report that does not reach the conclusion that it was the fault of the crowd. They conclude that it was the management of the crowd that was at fault.

The panel explained this afternoon that they visited the control room at Hillsborough and all came to the conclusion that the vantage point in the control room gave plenty a clear enough view of the events that were unfolding and that it should have been noticed that the Leppings Lane end was full. The failure to notice this and the lack of communication between the police on the ground was the cause of additional people being allowed into the ground worsening the over crowding. The crowd were doing as instructed by the police, they were directed to enter the ground and could not have had any idea as to what was unfolding in front of them - that was the police's responsibility and the police's responsibility alone.

I did not say it was easy, it is quite likely a difficult and challenging endeavour but the police were there to undertake that duty and failed miserably leading to the death of 96 innocent people. That they subsequently lied in an attempt to cover up their failings is another matter.
 
If the Police should've been able to see that the stand was full and thus stopped more fans coming in, doesn't that contradict their statement that there was no real problem with un-ticketed fans entering the ground?

How else would you end up with more fans in there than you should have?
 
Without wishing to sound like an old fart, those that aren't old enough to remember football back then cannot judge what it was like by today's standards.

Fans were treated like scum by the police and government alike. However in fairness many behaved like it.

I remember at the time watching it live on Grandstand and the default view was that this was hooliganism rather than a tragedy for a good 10 minutes or so.

Hopefully the 96 can now get justice
 
MARKakaJIM said:
If the Police should've been able to see that the stand was full and thus stopped more fans coming in, doesn't that contradict their statement that there was no real problem with un-ticketed fans entering the ground?

How else would you end up with more fans in there than you should have?
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The stand was split into a series of pens. The stand itself wasn't full but one of the pens was and that's where the tragedy occurred. So in actual fact it does the opposite of contradict, other parts of the stand were empty still.
 
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