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Hillsborough disaster
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The Hillsborough Disaster was a deadly human crush that occurred on 15 April 1989, at Hillsborough, a football stadium home to Sheffield Wednesday in Sheffield, England, resulting in the deaths of 96 people (all fans of Liverpool Football Club).
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The Hillsborough Disaster was a deadly human crush that occurred on 15 April 1989, at Hillsborough, a football stadium home to Sheffield Wednesday in Sheffield, England, resulting in the deaths of 96 people (all fans of Liverpool Football Club). It remains the deadliest stadium-related disaster in British history.
The match was an FA Cup semi-finals clash between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. It was abandoned six minutes into the first half.
The inquiry into the disaster, the Taylor Report, named the cause as failure of police control, and resulted in the conversion of many football stadiums in the United Kingdom to all-seater and the removal of barriers at the front of stands.
Before the disaster
At the time, most United Kingdom football stadiums had placed high steel fencing and even barbed wire between the spectators and the pitch, in response to hooliganism which had plagued the sport for years. Hooliganism was particularly virulent in England, where it often involved pitch invasions, the throwing of missiles, or both pre and post-match violence. British stadiums had a history of crushes occurring since the 1960s.
Hillsborough Stadium was a regular venue for FA Cup semi-finals during the 1980s, hosting a total of five. A previous crush had occurred in the same stand during the 1981 semi-final between Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers, causing a total of 38 injuries. This prompted Sheffield Wednesday to alter the design of the Leppings Lane end, dividing it into three separate pens. This was further divided into five pens when Wednesday were promoted to the First Division in 1984. Liverpool and Nottingham Forest had also met at the semi-final stage of the same competition at the same ground the previous year with many Liverpool fans reporting crushing in the Leppings Lane end, leading to Liverpool FC lodging a complaint prior to the 1989 FA Cup Semi-Final.
The disaster
Build up
Hillsborough Stadium was segregated between the opposing fans as was customary at all large matches, the Liverpool supporters being assigned to the Leppings Lane End of the stadium. Kick-off was scheduled for 3:00 pm, with fans advised to take up their positions fifteen minutes beforehand. On the day of the match both radio and television advised that supporters without tickets should not attend.
It was reported that many fans arriving from Lancashire and around had been delayed by unannounced roadworks on the M62 motorway over the Pennines.
Between 2:30 pm and 2:40 pm, there was a considerable build-up of fans in the small area outside the turnstile entrances to the Leppings Lane End, all eager to enter the stadium quickly before the match started. A bottleneck developed with more fans arriving than could enter the two cages set in the middle of the Leppings Lane stand. People who had been refused entry could not leave the area because of the crush behind them but remained as an obstruction. The fans outside could hear the cheering from inside as the teams came on the pitch ten minutes before the match started, and then the cheering from inside as the match started, but could not get in; the start was not delayed while the fans got in. An agile teenage boy got in by climbing a kiosk built against the wall. Security opened a side gate to eject someone, and 20 people rushed in through it. With an estimated 5,000 fans trying to get through the turnstiles, and increasing security concerns over crushing outside the turnstiles, the police, to avoid deaths outside the ground, opened a set of gates, intended as an exit, which did not have turnstiles (Gate C). This caused a rush of supporters through the gate into the stadium.
The crush
The result was that an influx of many thousands of fans through a narrow tunnel at the rear of the terrace, and into the two already-overcrowded central pens, caused a huge crush at the front of the terrace, where people were being pressed up against the fencing by the weight of the crowd behind them. The people entering were unaware of the problems at the fence— police or stewards would normally have stood at the entrance to the tunnel if the central pens had reached capacity, and would have directed fans to the side pens, but on this occasion they did not, for reasons which have never been fully explained.
For some time, the problem at the front was not noticed by anybody other than those affected; the attention of most people was absorbed by the match, which had already begun. It was not until 3:06 pm that the referee, after being advised by the police, stopped the match several minutes after fans had started climbing the fence to escape the crush. By this time, a small gate in the fencing had been forced open and some fans escaped via this route; others continued to climb over the fencing, and still other fans were pulled to safety by fellow fans in the West Stand directly above the Leppings Lane terrace. Finally the fence broke under pressure of people.
Fans were packed so tightly in the pens that many died standing up of compressive asphyxia. The pitch quickly started to fill with people sweating and gasping for breath and injured by crushing, and with the bodies of the dead. The police, stewards and ambulance service present at the stadium were overwhelmed. Uninjured fans helped as best they could, many attempting CPR and some tearing down advertising hoardings to act as makeshift stretchers.
As these events unfolded, some police officers were still being deployed to make a cordon three-quarters of the way down the pitch, with the aim of preventing Liverpool supporters reaching the Nottingham Forest supporters at the opposite end of the stadium. Some fans tried to break through the police cordon to ferry injured supporters to waiting ambulances, and were forcibly turned back.
Aftermath
A total of 94 people died on the day, with 766 other fans being injured and around 300 being taken to hospital. Four days later, the death toll reached 95 when 14-year-old Lee Nicol died in hospital from his injuries. The final death toll became 96 in March 1993, when Tony Bland died after remaining in a coma for nearly four years.
BBC Television's cameras were at the ground to record the match for their Match of the Day programme, but as the disaster unfolded the events were then relayed to their live sports show, Grandstand, resulting in an extreme emotional impact on the general British population.
There was comment afterwards on television about lack of administratable oxygen, and of metal-cutting tools, and that there was no way to get ambulances onto the pitch.
It was remarked that the Bradford City stadium fire would have caused many more casualties if there had been pitch-edge fences there like there were at Hillsborough and indeed many other stadiums at the time.
There are these permanent memorials to the victims:
- Alongside the Shankly Gates at Anfield, home stadium of Liverpool F.C.
- At Hillsborough stadium, set up in 1999.
- A memorial stone in the pavement on the south side of Liverpool Cathedral.
- A headstone at the junction of Middlewood Road, Leppings Lane and Wadsley Lane, near the ground and by the Sheffield Supertram route.
- Flames were added either side of the Liverpool F.C. crest in memory of the 96 who lost their lives.
- In the grounds of Crosby Library, to the memory of the 18 football fans from Sefton who lost their lives in the Hillsborough disaster. The memorial, sited in a raised rose bed containing the Liverpool Remembers red rose, is made of black granite. It is inscribed "In loving memory of the 95 football supporters who died tragically at Hillsborough, Sheffield on April 15th, 1989. Of those who lost their lives the following young men were from Sefton families:"
The memorial was unveiled on 4 October 1991 (before the final death toll reached 96 on the death of Tony Bland) by the Mayor of Sefton, Councillor Syd Whitby. The project was carried out by the Council after consultation with the Sefton Survivors Group.
The Taylor Inquiry
Following the disaster, Lord Justice Taylor was appointed to conduct an inquiry into the disaster. Taylor's inquiry sat for 31 days and published two reports, one interim report that laid out the events of the day and immediate conclusions and one final report that made general recommendations on football ground safety. This became known as the Taylor Report. As a result of the report, fences in front of fans were removed and many of the top stadiums were converted to become all-seated.
Police control
There was considerable debate over some aspects of the disaster; in particular, attention was focused on the decision to open the secondary gates. It was suggested that it would have been better to delay the start of the match as had often been done at other venues and matches. In defence, the police pointed out that the crush outside the stadium was getting out of control.
Stadium design
Although it was noted that Hillsborough stadium was considered "one of the best in the country", Sheffield Wednesday were criticised for the low number of turnstiles at the Leppings Lane end and the poor quality of the crush barriers on the terraces there. However, the Taylor Report stated that the official cause of the disaster was the failure of police control. Due to the low number of turnstiles, it has been estimated that it would have taken until 3:40 pm to get all ticket holders into the Leppings Lane end had an exit gate not been opened. Gate C was opened to let more fans in, but the total number of fans entering the terrace is not thought to have been more than the capacity of the standing area.
The disaster happened because most of the fans entering the terraces headed for the central pens 3 and 4. Normally a police officer or steward would direct fans away from full pens, but on that day this did not happen. The official capacity of these pens was around 2000, but the Health and Safety Executive later found that this should have been reduced to around 1600 as the crush barriers did not conform to the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds 1986. It is estimated that over 3000 people were in these pens shortly after kick off at 3:00 pm. This overcrowding caused the fatal crush.
Other aggravating factors
There were accusations that the behaviour of the Liverpool fans contributed to the disaster. These centred around consumption of alcohol before the game and attempts to enter the ground without a ticket. Although Lord Taylor acknowledged that these aggravated the situation, they were only minor factors.
Witness estimates of the number of fans that were drunk varied from a minority to a large proportion of the crowd. Although it was clear that many fans had been drinking, Lord Taylor stated that most of them "were not drunk nor even the worse for drink". He concluded that they only formed an exacerbating factor.
The possibility of fans attempting to gain entry without tickets or with forgeries contributing to the disaster was also suggested. South Yorkshire police also suggested that the late arrival of fans amounted to a conspiracy in order to gain entry without tickets. However, analysis of the electronic monitoring system, Health and Safety Executive Analysis and eye witness accounts showed that there was not an excessively large number of ticketless fans. The report dismissed the conspiracy theory.
Prosecution
A private prosecution was brought against David Duckenfield and another officer on duty, Bernard Murray. Prosecutor Alun Jones QC told the court that Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield gave the order to open gates that allowed hundreds of fans to flood on to the already crowded terraces at the Sheffield Wednesday stadium. Mr Jones then stated that minutes after the disaster, [Duckenfield] "deceitfully and dishonestly" told senior FA officials that the supporters had forced the gate open themselves. Duckenfield admitted that he had lied about certain statements regarding the causes of the disaster. Several other officers, including Norman Bettison, were accused of manipulating evidence. Bettison was later to be appointed Chief Constable of Merseyside in controversial circumstances. The prosecution was abandoned when Duckenfield's doctor declared him unfit to stand trial due to illness. Because he was unavailable, it was decided that it would be unfair to proceed with the charges against Bernard Murray. Duckenfield took medical retirement on a full police pension.
Steven Gerrard of Liverpool F.C. lost his cousin Jon-Paul in the crush and one of Liverpool F.C.'s reserve goalkeepers lost his father.
The Sun newspaper controversy
On the Wednesday following the disaster, Kelvin MacKenzie, then-editor of The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper with national distribution owned by Rupert Murdoch, used the front page headline "THE TRUTH", with three sub-headlines: "Some fans picked pockets of victims"; "Some fans urinated on the brave cops"; "Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life".
The story accompanying these headlines claimed that "drunken Liverpool fans viciously attacked rescue workers as they tried to revive victims" and "police officers, firemen and ambulance crew were punched, kicked and urinated upon". A quote, attributed to an unnamed policeman, claimed that "a dead girl had been abused" and that Liverpool fans "were openly urinating on us and the bodies of the dead". These allegations openly contradicted the reported behaviour of many Liverpool fans, who actively helped the security personnel to stretcher away a large number of victims and gave first aid to many injured.
In their history of The Sun, Peter Chippendale and Chris Horrie wrote:
- As MacKenzie's layout was seen by more and more people, a collective shudder ran through the office [but] MacKenzie's dominance was so total there was nobody left in the organisation who could rein him in except Murdoch. [Everyone in the office] seemed paralysed, "looking like rabbits in the headlights", as one hack described them. The error staring them in the face was too glaring. It obviously wasn't a silly mistake; nor was it a simple oversight. Nobody really had any comment on it—they just took one look and went away shaking their heads in wonder at the enormity of it. It was a "classic smear".
Following The Sun's report, the newspaper was boycotted by most newsagents in Liverpool, with many refusing to stock the tabloid and large numbers of readers cancelling orders and refusing to buy from shops which did stock the newspaper. The Hillsborough Justice Campaign also organised a less-successful national boycott that still impacted the paper's sales, which some commentators have given as a cause for a constant drop in price, introduction of free magazines, videos and free DVD offers.
MacKenzie explained his reporting in 1993. Talking to a House of Commons National Heritage Select Committee, he said "I regret Hillsborough. It was a fundamental mistake. The mistake was I believed what an MP said. It was a Tory MP. (This MP has subsequently been identified as Irvine Patnick). If he had not said it and the chief superintendent [David Duckenfield] had not agreed with it, we would not have gone with it." MacKenzie would repudiate this apology in November 2006, saying that he only apologised because the newspaper's owner Rupert Murdoch ordered him to do so. He said, "I was not sorry then and I'm not sorry now" for the paper's coverage. MacKenzie refused again to apologise when appearing on the BBC's topical Question Time on 11 January 2007.
The Sun issued an apology "without reservation" in a full page opinion piece on 7 July 2004, saying that it had "committed the most terrible mistake in its history". The Sun was responding to the intense criticism of Wayne Rooney, a Liverpool-born football star who still played in the city (for Everton, now for Manchester United) who had sold his life story to the newspaper. Rooney's actions had incensed Liverpudlians still angry at The Sun. The Sun's apology was somewhat bullish, saying that the "campaign of hate" against Rooney was organised in part by the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo, owned by Trinity Mirror, who also own the Daily Mirror, arch-rivals of The Sun. Thus the apology actually served to anger some Liverpudlians further. The Liverpool Echo itself did not accept the apology, calling it "shabby" and "an attempt, once again, to exploit the Hillsborough dead."
Some other newspapers also detailed the same allegations on the same day, which apparently originated from a source within South Yorkshire Police attempting to divert blame, but The Sun attracted particular opprobrium for its use of the huge "THE TRUTH" headline and its subsequent refusal to issue an apology, something the other newspapers were quick to do.
On 6 January 2007, during their team's FA Cup defeat to Arsenal at Anfield, Liverpool fans in The Kop held up coloured cards spelling out "The Truth" and chanted "Justice for the 96" for six minutes at the start of the game. The protest was directed at Kelvin MacKenzie and the The Sun, and at the BBC for employing MacKenzie as a presenter.
To this day, many people in the Liverpool area refuse to buy The Sun as a matter of principle, and the paper's sales figures within Merseyside have been very poor since the day the original story was printed. As of 2004, the average circulation in Liverpool was still just 12,000 copies a day, 200,000 fewer than before the controversial article was published.
Reaction of other clubs
The Hillsborough disaster touched not only clubs in England but clubs around the world as well. For example, on 19 April 1989 (the Wednesday after the disaster), a European Cup semi final between AC Milan and Real Madrid was played. The referee blew his whistle 6 minutes into the game to stop play and hold a minute's silence for those who lost their lives tragically at Hillsborough. Half way through the minute's silence, the A.C. Milan fans sang Liverpool's "You'll Never Walk Alone" as a sign of respect.
As a result of the disaster, Liverpool's game against Arsenal was delayed to the end of the season and eventually decided the league title. The Arsenal players brought flowers onto the pitch and presented them to the Liverpool fans around the stadium before the game.
"Hillsborough" television drama
In 1994 the acclaimed Liverpudlian scriptwriter Jimmy McGovern used the disaster as a motivation for a serial killer (played by actor Robert Carlyle) in the plot of To Be A Somebody, the opening story of the second series of the crime drama Cracker. This led to complaints from victims' families. In response McGovern agreed to write a television drama about the disaster, which was screened in 1996 on the ITV television network in the United Kingdom. The 90-minute one-off drama-documentary recounted the events of the disaster.
Produced for the network by Granada Television and titled Hillsborough, the drama starred Christopher Eccleston as Trevor Hicks, whose story formed the focus of the script. Hicks lost two teenage daughters in the disaster and went on to campaign for safer stadiums, as well as helping form the Hillsborough Families Support Group. It drew much praise for its sensitive handling of the subject matter, paying homage to those killed and not exploiting them. The programme has not been repeated or released on video or DVD.
In 1997, it was awarded both the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the Royal Television Society awards for Best Single Drama (TV) and was listed by the British Film Institute as #54 in its 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, published in 2000. The programme inspired the Manic Street Preachers song "S.Y.M.M. (South Yorkshire Mass Murderer)" on the album This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours.
Psychiatric injury claims
Various negligence cases were brought against the police by spectators who had been at the ground on the day, but had not been in the pens, and by people who had watched the incident unfolding on television (or heard about it on the radio). A case, Alcock and others v Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 A.C. 310, was eventually appealed to the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords and was an important milestone in the law of claims of secondary victims for negligently inflicted psychiatric injury.
Another psychiatric injury claim was also brought to the House of Lords, White v Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police [1999] 2 A.C. 455. It was brought by the police officers on duty on that day against the Chief Constable who was said to have been vicariously liable for the disaster. Their claims were dismissed and the Alcock decision was upheld. It affirmed the position of the courts once again towards claims of psychiatric injuries of secondary victims.
EastEnders controversy
In November 2007, BBC soap opera EastEnders caused controversy when the character Minty Peterson (played by Cliff Parisi) made a reference to the disaster, which many claimed was unnecessary. During the show car mechanic Minty said: "Five years out of Europe because of Heysel, because they penned you lot in to stop you fighting on the pitch and then what did we end up with? Hillsborough." This prompted 380 complaints and the BBC apologised, saying that the character was simply reminding another character, former football hooligan Jase Dyer, that the actions of hooligans at Heysel led to the fencing-in of football fans (which was untrue, as the fences had been erected before 1985). Ofcom also received 177 complaints.
First new all seater stadium
Millwall's The New Den stadium which opened in 1993, was the first new all-seater stadium to be completed after the Taylor Report. All new stadium built in the Premier League and most Football League teams since then have been all-seater.
See also
- Charity record - "Ferry Cross the Mersey" was released to raise funds for the Liverpool Supporter's Club
- The Pogues dedicated the release of their album Peace and Love to "the 96 people who died at the Hillsborough Football Ground."
- The Lightning Seeds, whose vocalist Ian Broudie supports Liverpool, dedicated their first Greatest Hits album Like You Do to the '96' that died.
- Luzhniki Disaster - a similar crush which happened in Moscow in October 1982, but news of which was suppressed for 7 years; 66 fans are officially recorded as having died, but unofficial estimates are as high as 340.
Further reading
- Ground safety and public order: Hillsborough Stadium Disaster, report of Joint Working Party on Ground Safety and Public Order (Report/Joint Executive on Football Safety); Joint Working Party on Ground Safety and Public Order; ISBN 0-901783-73-0
- No Last Rights: The Denial of Justice and the Promotion of Myth in the Aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster; Phil Scraton, Ann Jemphrey and Sheila Coleman ISBN O-904517-30-6
- Hillsborough: The Truth; Phil Scraton; ISBN 1-84018-156-7
- 'Death on the Terraces: The Contexts and Injustices of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster' Phil Scraton in P. Darby eta al (eds) Soccer and Disaster: International Perspectives ISBN 0-7146-8289-6
- Scrutiny of Evidence Relating to the Hillsborough Football Stadium Disaster (Command Paper); Home Office; ISBN 0-10-138782-2
- Sports Stadia After Hillsborough: Seminar Papers; RIBA, Sports Council, Owen Luder (Ed.); ISBN 0-947877-72-X
- The Day of the Hillsborough Disaster; Rogan Taylor (Ed.), Andrew Ward (Ed.), Tim Newburn (Ed.); ISBN 0-85323-199-0
- The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster, 15 April 1989: Inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor (Cm.: 765); Peter Taylor; ISBN 0-10-107652-5
- The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster: Inquiry Final Report (Command Paper); Home Office; ISBN 0-10-109622-4
- Words of tribute: An anthology of 95 poems written after the Hillsborough tragedy, 15 April 1989; ISBN 1-871474-18-3
External links
- Under Construction (flash required)
- (official Liverpool FC website) including list of victims (accessibility page, not normal page)
- at BFI Screenonline
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