Full Disclosure Of Documents Relating To Hillsbrough Deaths

[Dameerto]

The enquiries say a lot more than that.
The police chief froze.
The ground was allocated the semi on a nod and a wink.
Much safety work wasn't completed.
The police there put more effort into stopping the incoming crowd gibbing into the seats rather than directing them away from the central pens that were full.
The police tried to cover it up.
It could have been us there that day if we'd had a good side.
It's lazy and untrue to blame the scousers. I can't stand them, but it was NOT their fault.
There but for the grace of God.

Would you say that the Liverpool fans are completely blameless? Because that seems to be what they want the next enquiry to show.

It was the LIverpool fans who created the crush outside the turnstiles, it was Liverpool fans - and lots of them - who went into the ground without tickets (why were they even in the crush outside the turnstiles of they didn't have tickets??) and it was the Liverpool fans who continued to pile into the central pen even when it must have been very very obvious that it was already extremely overcrowded!

Liverpool fans are to blame, just as others are.

I just don't see the point in trying to heap all the blame onto one person, or one body of people, when it is bloody obvious that it was caused by a tragic string of events.

The point is, it could AND SHOULD have been predicted. It could also have happened if you substituted Liverpool for another team (I read about a few of our forum members getting into Wembley without tickets last season for example).

[saulman]

Liverpool have amongst their support, the worst scum I've ever encountered in all the years I've been watching football & imo their typically scummy behaviour contributed to the disaster.

There are also plenty of decent fans amongst them & many of them will be amongst the dead. It is the job of the authorities to protect decent people from scum, whether they wear the same colours or not. In those days, the policy of the police, government & that cunt Thatcher was to treat all football fans as scum & treat us like animals. The only surprise about Hillsboro was that it took so long to happen. I've been in crowds where, because of the attitude of the police, something similar could easily have happened.

All fans should support this.

Absolutely spot on. Well said.

[King Kev]

A prime example was on the platform of Lokeren station after the game there. We got there early and by the time the train was due there were far too many people behind us on the platform. Thankfully a few City fans took it upon themselves to direct fans behind us to other parts of the platform whilst myself and a few others linked arms at the front and managed to hold the crowd back whilst the train pulled in. We should never have been put in that position but we sorted it out between us.

For the record, had this ended differently and fans had been pushed into the path of the on-coming train I would have had no qualms whatsoever in saying that City fans were partly to blame.

I was inside the hall of the train station as this happened on the platform. The police locked the doors to the platform whilst people inside the hall were getting crushed and I was genuinely frightened for my safety. We had no idea what was happening on the platform, but suddenly the pressure became too much and the double doors to the platform broke open under the pressure of people pushing from the back, we legged it through the doors to escape the crush, and I admit there were blues on the floor who just got trampled on but I couldnt avoid it as the whole crowd was an immovable force by this time and I went through the door without my feet hardly touching the ground

Fortunately on that occasion as far as I recall either the train had just arrived at the platform or one had just left so it was empty so there were no implications on the platform, but it just goes to show that had that door not held in the main hall just long enough, some people would have been seriously injured on the platform, and if the door had held any longer, people would have been crushed in the hall which is pretty much the dilemma faced by the police at Hillsborough albeit on a larger scale. Whatever the police had done, there is a good chance people could have lost their life that day in Lokeren and it was only by the grace of god that it didn't

So had a disaster occurred on the platform, would it have been my fault for trying to push onto the platform to escape the crush behind me, or would it have been the fault of those at the very rear of the station who did not need to be pushing, as the could clearly see that the place was totally rammed - although would have been unaware of the crush at the front, or the congestion on the platform?

Whose fault would that have been?

I was also frightened mate, as I suspect many others were. As I mentioned, we got there early so were right at the edge of the platform. Had we not been able to get our heads together and decide to link up and collectively try to hold the crowd back it could have been very nasty indeed.

To answer your question about blame, I would have blamed those at the back who could clearly see the crush in front of them but decided to compound the problem by making the crush even bigger. Others such as the police and railway company would also have been to blame.

[Rag_hater]

I think the arguments brought up in this thread only enhance the reason for having seating.
As for whether there should be more disclosure or not is it not standard for more information to be made available as time passes.
As to it leading to people needing to sign a petition or not surely that is surely an individuals choice.

[Ted Hughes]

I think the arguments brought up in this thread only enhance the reason for having seating.
As for whether there should be more disclosure or not is it not standard for more information to be made available as time passes.
As to it leading to people needing to sign a petition or not surely that is surely an individuals choice.

It figures that you would think this is the argument for making everyone sit down as most of the people who get to make the decisions also never go to football matches, know fuck all about anything to do with football, yet sit in fucking armchairs telling the rest of us how it all works.

[Wooders]

I hate to sound like a cunt (suprising, seeing as I do it so much) but turning up to a small ground without a ticket and forcing your way in despite knowing that there was no way out or onto the pitch due to the pitch invasions etc going on at the time, you could see the crush was going on, yet more and more of you tried to force your way in - I feel sorry for those who had bought tickets legitimately but for those who didn't - if you're looking for someone to blame, have a look at yourselves

[Ted Hughes]

I hate to sound like a cunt (suprising, seeing as I do it so much) but turning up to a small ground without a ticket and forcing your way in despite knowing that there was no way out or onto the pitch due to the pitch invasions etc going on at the time, you could see the crush was going on, yet more and more of you tried to force your way in - I feel sorry for those who had bought tickets legitimately but for those who didn't - if you're looking for someone to blame, have a look at yourselves

They should share the blame but if the police had treated the rest of the crowd like humans rather than the enemy & had the slightest regard for their safety when under threat from drunken scum, nobody would even have been injured let alone killed. It could have been solved easily.

[saulman]

Keeping the documents secret suggests that there are secrets to be kept.
That's reason enough for the bereaved to demand full disclosure.

[bluej]

[highlight]I think the arguments brought up in this thread only enhance the reason for having seating.[/highlight]
As for whether there should be more disclosure or not is it not standard for more information to be made available as time passes.
As to it leading to people needing to sign a petition or not surely that is surely an individuals choice.

Absolute fucking bollocks. The only thing that this thread has brought up (as it should have at the time) is that an improvement in crowd control should have been implemented.

[Rag_hater]

[highlight]I think the arguments brought up in this thread only enhance the reason for having seating.[/highlight]
As for whether there should be more disclosure or not is it not standard for more information to be made available as time passes.
As to it leading to people needing to sign a petition or not surely that is surely an individuals choice.

Absolute fucking bollocks. The only thing that this thread has brought up (as it should have at the time) is that an improvement in crowd control should have been implemented.

Better crowd control was implemented with the fact that all the idiots now have to sit down so your concerns hae been addressed.

[Slim]

Liverpool supporters killed 96 of their own, report complete.

[Bluez]

I can understand why the relatives whould want more information. They hope to find "the culprit". The reality is pretty much everyone was to blame. Stadia were a joke, they were designed to make controlling a violent crowd as easy as possible. From what I remember of games those days we were treated like cattle. On the other hand at most games in those days a proportion of the crowd did behave like animals so it's why it ended up that way in the first place. There is a reason why hooliganism is called the English disease.

The police messed up, fans with no tickets forcing their way into a place they knew they shouldn't have been. How many times have we heard stories of jumping the turnstiles? The policeman in charge is an easy target as he had a clearly defined role and a name, but he is not the only one. What about all the ticketless fans pushing in? I doubt there is a list of those names so it can never be full disclosure.

But that was why everything changed. Why not see that as the positive and move on? The main reason it should be dropped is that it would now be judged by today's comfortable PL standards, when in reality considering how things were the true shock is it didnt happen more often.

[Im_Spartacus]

Has anyone ever heard comment from any of the ticketless?

Just like the last CL final they attended where they were attacking their own, stealing tickets, rushing the gates. They have not learned one little bit. The people responsible were the cunts who were there who shouldnt have been.

Like I said above in my post about Lokeren, the dilemma was that there were two gatherings. The people outside the ground did not know about the crush inside the ground after the gates were opened, the people at the front of the melee outside the ground themselves were being crushed so tried to move forwards into the ground, yet had the gates not been opened people outside the ground would have lost their life in the crush in the courtyard.

Simple fact is, that the sheer volume of people converging on that area was not a factor that could not have been avoided or managed by the police, the only thing that could have prevented it was cunts with no tickets not turning up.

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

There were just 23 turnstiles that day to allow 24,000 Liverpool fans into the ground. For the Leppings Lane end just SEVEN turnstiles to admit 10,100 fans. Think about that, 1400 supporters to each entrance, it was always going to cause an overcrowding problem. There had been crushing there at the semi final a year earlier and when Wolves played Spurs in 1981 (Now that really could have been us, we were at Villa park) it resulted in 38 people being treated for broken arms, ribs and legs. (No Liverpool fans there on that day)
Since then the Leppings Lane end had been divided into pens but the capacity hadn't been lowered to take account of this.
The safety certificate hadn't been renewed, crush barriers had been removed, The Green Guide on ground safety had been ignored and even as people were dying, the policeman in charge was refusing to open the gates at the front of each pen and treating a disaster as a hooliganism problem. Incidentally the copper in charge hadn't been involved in policing at Wednesday for ten years and was thrust into the main seat .
Incidentally the tunnel down to the terrace was a 1:6 gradient and there is no way on God's earth that people outside could have known what was happening inside, how could you ever imagine that danger existed just watching football. All it needed was a couple of stewards directing people away from the central pens to the outer ones where ironically there was plenty of space.

The ground was a death trap and the supporters were treated as criminals. These are reasons that caused the deaths, there was no need for it to happen. It doesn't matter which set of fans it was, it would have happened eventually, IT COULD HAVE BEEN US!!!
To say it was just because it was Scousers is infantile, pathetic and wrong.

[Ted Hughes]

Has anyone ever heard comment from any of the ticketless?

Just like the last CL final they attended where they were attacking their own, stealing tickets, rushing the gates. They have not learned one little bit. The people responsible were the cunts who were there who shouldnt have been.

Like I said above in my post about Lokeren, the dilemma was that there were two gatherings. The people outside the ground did not know about the crush inside the ground after the gates were opened, the people at the front of the melee outside the ground themselves were being crushed so tried to move forwards into the ground, yet had the gates not been opened people outside the ground would have lost their life in the crush in the courtyard.

Simple fact is, that the sheer volume of people converging on that area was not a factor that could not have been avoided or managed by the police, the only thing that could have prevented it was cunts with no tickets not turning up.

I once arrived late at Hillsboro & ran straight down the tunnel as I heard the crowd roar & could see the flying pig dive to make a save against City. If that area had been full & a wall of police had directed me left or right I would have had no choice but to go there. That's all they had to do for the Liverpool fans but they were disorganised & fucking shite so they just allowed thousands of fans to go down the middle tunnel rather than forcing them to the half empty areas left or right. Basically because crowd safety was not their main concern. It should be ALWAYS.

[Wooders]

There were just 23 turnstiles that day to allow 24,000 Liverpool fans into the ground. For the Leppings Lane end just SEVEN turnstiles to admit 10,100 fans. Think about that, 1400 supporters to each entrance, it was always going to cause an overcrowding problem. There had been crushing there at the semi final a year earlier and when Wolves played Spurs in 1981 (Now that really could have been us, we were at Villa park) it resulted in 38 people being treated for broken arms, ribs and legs. (No Liverpool fans there on that day)
Since then the Leppings Lane end had been divided into pens but the capacity hadn't been lowered to take account of this.
The safety certificate hadn't been renewed, crush barriers had been removed, The Green Guide on ground safety had been ignored and even as people were dying, the policeman in charge was refusing to open the gates at the front of each pen and treating a disaster as a hooliganism problem. Incidentally the copper in charge hadn't been involved in policing at Wednesday for ten years and was thrust into the main seat .
Incidentally the tunnel down to the terrace was a 1:6 gradient and there is no way on God's earth that people outside could have known what was happening inside, how could you ever imagine that danger existed just watching football. All it needed was a couple of stewards directing people away from the central pens to the outer ones where ironically there was plenty of space.

The ground was a death trap and the supporters were treated as criminals. These are reasons that caused the deaths, there was no need for it to happen. It doesn't matter which set of fans it was, it would have happened eventually, IT COULD HAVE BEEN US!!!
To say it was just because it was Scousers is infantile, pathetic and wrong.

all well and good but there was only 14,600 tickets sold
are we starting to get an idea of the problem here.. ?

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

There were just 23 turnstiles that day to allow 24,000 Liverpool fans into the ground. For the Leppings Lane end just SEVEN turnstiles to admit 10,100 fans. Think about that, 1400 supporters to each entrance, it was always going to cause an overcrowding problem. There had been crushing there at the semi final a year earlier and when Wolves played Spurs in 1981 (Now that really could have been us, we were at Villa park) it resulted in 38 people being treated for broken arms, ribs and legs. (No Liverpool fans there on that day)
Since then the Leppings Lane end had been divided into pens but the capacity hadn't been lowered to take account of this.
The safety certificate hadn't been renewed, crush barriers had been removed, The Green Guide on ground safety had been ignored and even as people were dying, the policeman in charge was refusing to open the gates at the front of each pen and treating a disaster as a hooliganism problem. Incidentally the copper in charge hadn't been involved in policing at Wednesday for ten years and was thrust into the main seat .
Incidentally the tunnel down to the terrace was a 1:6 gradient and there is no way on God's earth that people outside could have known what was happening inside, how could you ever imagine that danger existed just watching football. All it needed was a couple of stewards directing people away from the central pens to the outer ones where ironically there was plenty of space.

The ground was a death trap and the supporters were treated as criminals. These are reasons that caused the deaths, there was no need for it to happen. It doesn't matter which set of fans it was, it would have happened eventually, IT COULD HAVE BEEN US!!!
To say it was just because it was Scousers is infantile, pathetic and wrong.

all well and good but there was only 14,600 tickets sold
are we starting to get an idea of the problem here.. ?

I think you're doing your best to avoid it