@puroandson
Hillsborough – 96 Liverpool fans dead after catastrophic overcrowding on terraces. 15-4-89
Nutshell: due to an accident on the motorway delaying a lot of fans, and appalling police planning, the woefully inadequate turnstiles at Hillsborough (a neutral ground for the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest) were overwhelmed, causing a 5,000 person crush outside the ground, through sheer weight of numbers (not misbehaviour).
As kick-off approached an officer outside first asked for kick-off to be delayed, and when this was refused, fearing that people would be killed requested that an exit gate – Gate C – be opened to let the fans in about 8 mins before kick-off. Around 2,000 came in at a steady walk (as in unavoidable in such situations) and, quite reasonably, headed down 1-in-6 the tunnel towards the pitch side terraces. But the pens at the end of that tunnel were already overcrowded. In the same fixture in 1988 (with the same teams, by coincidence) access to this tunnel was blocked to push fans to the side entrances and the nearly empty pens there.
The match kicked off at 3.00pm. At 3:02pm, Liverpool hit the crossbar and the crowd surged forward – probably killing many people at that point and also sucking more into the crush. Fences around the pitch prevented escape onto the pitch. By about 3:04pm it was obvious to all except one person that a disaster was unfolding and at 3:06pm the match was stopped.
At 3:15pm, that one person, Match Commander David Duckenfield told Graham Kelly, chairman of the Football Association, that fans had forced open that gate. In fact it was opened on his order.
That is when the cover up started. At that time, probably about 40-50 of the fatalities could have been saved, but the response from police and emergency services was slow and uncoordinated and for too long predicted on the assumption that is was a public order problem, rather than a public safety disaster.
Over the next few days police started filtering lies about supporters assaulting police, robbing casualties, and urinating on the dead (many of the dead had, of course, involuntarily evacuated).
On 19-4-89 the Sun published the front page shown upthread. Other papers ran the story but all presented as “police claims” not “The Truth”. Only Murdoch’s The Sun did that.
26 years later, at the second inquest, Duckenfield finally apologised for the lie he told and his incompetence on the day.
This second inquest, in turn, was prompted by the findings of the 2012 Hillsborough Independent Panel, which identified that that at least 164 police statements had been tampered with to remove criticism of police conduct.
It was described as the biggest cover up in the history of UK policing.
Sports journalist David Conn has done a magnificent summary in the Guardian.
Yesterday the second inquest, after two year hearings, returned a verdict of Unlawful Killing, the original inquest’s verdict of Accidental Death having been quashed.
This morning Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun did not put the story on its front page, preferring some celebs sex life. Nor did The Times in its first edition. Every other paper led with it.
