I'm sorry, "Forced their way in"? Though an open gate, as directed by the Police?
"Especially with Liverpool fans" really? You really don't get this do you?
Hillsborough inquest verdict.
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I'm sorry, "Forced their way in"? Though an open gate, as directed by the Police?
"Especially with Liverpool fans" really? You really don't get this do you?
Soldato
Regardless of who was at fault. RIP. Horrible way to go ! Remember watching it on TV.
if you're going to quote people then do it properly - if you're unaware that there were hooligan problems with some of the Liverpool fan base then perhaps read about this incident 3 years earlier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heysel_Stadium_disaster
39 people killed and Liverpool banned from Europe for 6 years... yes they did have a problem with some of their fan base
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Soldato
Staggering levels of ignorance in this thread.
Some people seem to think that negligence is somehow just "one of those things". In some cases, it can be - but in this case their negligence amounted to negligence so bad it was criminal. This isn't just "yeah there was some negligence but **** happens" but is a much graver situation that rightly deserves to be called out as such and punished appropriately.
As for the fans being to blame or not... Well, turning up ticketless was much more of a thing back then than it is today. Huge crowds had gathered and were not being properly managed. I don't know how many of those pouring blame on the fans have been in huge crowds but generally you don't get much choice about where you're going once a huge crowd starts to move. You're pretty much a passenger. In the case of Hillsborough, these crowds should never have been able to move into the stadium but they were and it wasn't the crowd to blame for that - they should simply have never been physically able to get inside. The fault for that lies squarely with the person who gave the order to open the gate.
Some people seem to think that negligence is somehow just "one of those things". In some cases, it can be - but in this case their negligence amounted to negligence so bad it was criminal. This isn't just "yeah there was some negligence but **** happens" but is a much graver situation that rightly deserves to be called out as such and punished appropriately.
As for the fans being to blame or not... Well, turning up ticketless was much more of a thing back then than it is today. Huge crowds had gathered and were not being properly managed. I don't know how many of those pouring blame on the fans have been in huge crowds but generally you don't get much choice about where you're going once a huge crowd starts to move. You're pretty much a passenger. In the case of Hillsborough, these crowds should never have been able to move into the stadium but they were and it wasn't the crowd to blame for that - they should simply have never been physically able to get inside. The fault for that lies squarely with the person who gave the order to open the gate.
Hooliganism was endemic across the whole of football, Liverpool weren't special in that regard.
And again, all of the subsequent reports and inquiries into Hillsborough have said that there was nothing extraordinary about fans behaviour that day.
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Well said. And because that behaviour was 'normal' doesn't make it right. Before Hillsborough there were probably loads of close calls of crushing etc. There certainly were issues with violence, nobody can deny that.
Caporegime
I don't understand how the question "Were the actions of the supporters in any way to blame for the outcome?" or whatever it was came back as a No.
That is obviously not the case... No matter how you look at it, their actions played a massive part in the incident.
That is obviously not the case... No matter how you look at it, their actions played a massive part in the incident.
Man of Honour
You're right.. but there were lots of things wrong at the time, problems with society wasn't exclusive to football, which people thought it was at the time.
100% right.. no way should that gate have been opened but the problem was that then there wasn't the understanding of crowd controlled and stadium safety like we do now. We are comparing standard that exists today that didn't then.. we have these standard because incidents like this happened.. sadly. but we have learned from them.
I have to add, that attending football in the 80's was quite a terrifying experience. It took Hillsborough, and bradford to change everything, so our children will never have to see some of the things or experience such atrocity again.
This is where I was coming from. Don’t get me wrong the police handled it extremely poorly and should shoulder some of the blame.
However some supporters need to accept that they played their part… people just don’t get crushed, or stampeded over just because someone (in the case the police) opens another entrance.
I have been to many things where thousands of people are trying to get into a certain space, majority of them virtually unpoliced/ stewarded. At least from a sheer ratio point of view. Some of these events were even time sensitive… no one was crushed, stamped on, suffocated at these events.
Why? Probably because people were respectful of everyone. Yes these was some barging and people getting stressed/ angry. Little pockets of bundling. For something like Hillsborough to happen, where people are being crushed and stamped on, means there must have been a large number of people who just didn’t care about the welfare of others. Well beyond just the police opening a gate…
Because the actions of the supporters were not abnormal. They went to a football match and acted as normally, as football fans did and do. Any actions of theirs and their result on the disaster were predictable and ordinary and therefore not a cause of the extraordinary events that followed.
Soldato
Call me completely heartless and I really don't mean to offend, but I don't understand why this has been kicking around for so long. As far as I can tell there was a crush, mistakes were made by all involved (stadium staff,fans, police, ambulance services etc.) and because of this a lot more people died than should have. But at the end of the day it was a terrible accident and should we not have all moved and got on with our lives about 25yrs ago? I don't understand this big drive to blame the police?
Because it wasn't an accident. Quite simple really.
If thats your reasoning football violence is normal and expected behavior of football fans and therefor they do nothing wrong when they kick somones head in
I think the problem is in such a situation the people at the back of the 'queue' cant see what's going on at the front and just continue on. (They had to make there way through a tunnel and the stands were unsighted from this if i remember correctly?) Then when they get there they cant turn back as more of the same is happening behind them... Plus no one was monitoring the amount of people going to these locations so in effect it becomes a free for all.
Its just a shame its taken this long for it to finally be sorted out.
Its just a shame its taken this long for it to finally be sorted out.
Soldato
This is just a case of you not understanding the dynamics of any large crowd and how those dynamics played out on that day.
Thousands of people going into a space, yes. A space where thousands of people can fit. If you made the space for 100 people, those thousands of people would still try and get in.
Look at something as simple as a gig. Thousands of people all trying to get as close to the front as possible. People have been very seriously injured at the front just by virtue of the rows upon rows of people all shuffling forward behind them. The force of a crowd really is staggering.
As a really, really simple example I've been stood up on a train in an area where you could only stand single file. A loud-mouthed woman at the back of the line was cold and kept on shouting at people ahead to move forward, resulting in a massive crush at the other end as people shuffled forward only a tiny amount.
A person is only a few inches deep - it really does not take much movement at all once people are in very close proximity to cause enough pressure to suffocate someone. It isn't like people at the back had their shoulders to the people in front of them trying to force people in - it probably felt just like the usual argey bargey you get in any large group of people moving through a confined space. The difference is that these days there are stewards everywhere and things are designed from the get-go to slow down crowd movements in safe ways as they approach pinch points so that there isn't the opportunity to generate the conditions for a crush to happen.
To apportion blame, there would have needed to be some amount of either deliberate action, action despite knowing that it would (or could reasonably) lead to harm or deliberate inaction knowing that it would (or could reasonably) come to harm. Fans filing into a stadium designed to hold thousands of people, through a gate opened by the people there to get them in safely could not possibly be held to blame for what happened in the circumstances as they prevailed.
Sure, they were physically there and if none of them had been physically there then there wouldn't have been a crush - but that's a ludicrously unreasonable position to hold given the context that they are attending an organised event. Its like being to blame for getting in the way of someone's fist if you've been punched in the face - you've got it all backwards.
Soldato
Panic.
It's not "my reasoning", it's the reasoning of (all) the inquest(s).
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