Hillsborough. Police did doctor evidence in a bid to avoid blame.

[Darkesteyeswithflecksofgold]

A report in the Independent about the cover up. RIP to the people who lost their lives on 15th April 1989.
And condolences to the families who are still suffering.

www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/exclusive-hillsborough--police-did-doctor-evidence-in-bid-to-avoid-blame-8126233.html

One the positive side, I feel a shift here.

You know the way that advances in DNA have now started to bring people to justice years and years after they thought they'd got away with their crimes? Well, all this documentary evidence is like the DNA of an event. Now it has been proven that with the right resources to check and cross check it can be used as such.

The net is closing in. If there were other cover ups, and there are hints to this effect, then we may just find out about them.

The Hillsborough families may have lifted the lid on a massive massive can of worms.

With the Leverson Inquiry also taking place this year, I think 2012 may be historically important for the UK for more reasons than the Olympics and the Golden Jubilee.

I really don't think I can watch the Jimmy McGovern drama again... it was devastating, I remember everyone who'd seen it looked a bit shellshocked the morning after.

What must it have been like actually to be there.

Agree Growlithe. Great post.

Growlithe Absolutely. That's brilliantly expressed, thank you.

Jimmy McGovern's docu-drama was shown around the time of the 20th anniversary. I recorded it and then sat my three DCs down to watch it. They were 13, 10 and 7 at the time. As sad and distressing as it was, I told them they need to know what happened that day and understand what the reason for the continuing fight for justice was for. The Seven year old wandered off to play but the older two watched it all. They had many questions afterwards and my ten year old understood why they sang jft96 when he was in the c
Kop.

I said this on another thread but want to repeat on here. Some people have suggested that the families let it lie and that it has been so long... We all need people like the brave families to fight because it makes the Police better, the Courts better and it makes us all safer. Stephen Lawrence's family changed the British Courts. I hope this changes the press, the Police and the feeling that it is better to lie than to admit culpability.

I have spent a lot of the last couple of days thinking about the families. I hope the report gives then some measure of peace.

A while ago DH was watching Coppers on Channel 4. A couple of them spoke directly to camera (it wasnt secret filming) about their contempt towards a certain estate and the people who lived there.
There seems to be an utter contempt shown towards the working classes from the Government and most sections of the media and from some people in the police. Its part of the reason so many were ready to believe the worst of football fans. Like someone said upthread it was working class people attending a "downmarket" event. This is the kind of attitude that is still shown towards the working classes today and the people showing these attitudes need to be weeded out of these professions. It has to stop.

It was a terrible day in football history.
96 people went to a football match and never came home

It makes me angry when I hear/read people still say it was the fans fault

No it bloody hell wasn't.

I was only 3 when it happened so don't remember it but have read a lot about it and being a LFC fan its heartbreaking seeing the flowers on tv at Anfield every year knowing that what happened should NEVER EVER have happened

I am so glad this report has come out now and has blasted so many myths and lies about the behaviour of the fans that day. I hope that those lying bastards are dragged over the coals for this and every detail of their lies are exposed. The police utterly failed to do their job of keeping the public safe and then lied about it. How awful for the families involved, I cannot imagine how scary it would have been being at the front of that crowd that day.

However, what I don't really understand is why zero contempt has been shown for the small but highly significant number of football fans whose animalistic behaviour in the years leading up to hillsborough meant that:

A) innocent football fans were caged in pens (the thinking at the time was that seated stadiums would ruin the atmosphere)
B) the police may have thought that there was a pitch invasion going on and therefore tried to hold back people because they didn't realise what was really going on.
C) the police/govt/media were able to orchestrate an enormous cover up and have many people believe it.

The fans were absolutely not to blame in any way for what happened that day. However, it some football fans (NOT just Liverpool fans) had not behaved so despicably before that day, it is highly likely that the hillsborough disaster would have never happened.

I disagree. There was a crush in the 1981 semi final. There were no pens then, people were able to move width wise, and get out to the perimeter track through the a number of narrow gates.

It sounds as if that situation was better policed, but people were injured and fatalities narrowly avoided.

The lateral fences added later of course did not help, but if they were not there, given all the other factors, it would probably still have happened.

It was not the fault of previous hooligans. It was the fault of the FA, for picking a ground with no valid safety certificate. It was the fault of SWFC, for not installing dedicated turnstiles for each pen which would have limited the amount of people in each. It was the fault of the Ambulance Service and their slow response to the situation. And of course it was the fault of the Police and their catalogue of failures.

Yes there had been football hooliganism in this country, but that is not a reason for there to be an ingrained bad attitude of the police to all passionate football fans.

I was 21 then. I had been going to the see Liverpool at home on the Kop since I was 13. My dad wouldn't let me go to certain games, but I remember going to see them against Notts Forest, so he mustn't have thought there was any issue there.

Families went to that match. Would Trevor Hicks had taken his two teenage daughters there if there was a whiff of trouble?

Why didn't the police have the same attitude as Trevor Hicks and my dad? A sensible attitude to assessing the risk of hooliganism on a match by match basis, and reacting accordingly.

I think perhaps I agree with Growlithe that there is a kind of shift taking place; but, going back to my earlier post, what is most appalling is the way that the government has worked in tandem with the police and the right wing press to suppress truth and propogate lies. This is precisely what happened to the Miners and also at Wapping.

MY friend's dad was a sacked printworker who went to what he thought would be a peaceful , legitimate demonstration with his wife and daughter (my friend who was about 17 at the time). What happened was that the demonstraters, who had been summarily sacked by Rupert Murdoch in his relentless quest for profit, were charged by police on horseback and loads of them ended up in hospital. My friend and her mother ran for their lives. When they went to get the numbers of some of the offending officers they saw that they had all removed their epaulettes so they couldn't be identified. They were also famed for removing their epaulettes during the Miners' strike.

And then they were dragged through the mud by the Murdoch press.

How is it it that these people can get away with it? how can this level of corruption be sustained?

Ian Tomlinson
Hillsborough
Jean Charles de Menezes
Bloody Sunday

So many more.

I am presuming that the parents of the 2 kids who died at heysel didn't think that there would be trouble and that their children would never come back from that match. I am sure that people have inadvertently taken kids to matches where the has been hooligan trouble. Sometimes you never know what might kick off.

I agree that there were multiple people and agencies to blame, many of whom disgustingly lied and placed the blame squarely on those who were not responsible. However, If there hadn't been the need to fence in football supporters because of previous trouble and pitch invasions, then hillsborough would have been different.

So we have another ignorant fuckwit still pissing on the dead. This is how the lie was kept alive for 23 years, because no matter what the truth some prefer to believe the lie.

Which particular lie is it that I am believing here?

You are still trying to shift blame onto the fans. The blame likes squarely and solely with the authorities who mismanaged the event. That has now been proven. Perpetuating the myth that the fans were somehow responsible is an disgrace. Unfuckingbelievable.

I am not suggesting the fans were to blame for hillsborough. I am suggesting that the putting up of fences to pen fans in contributed to the deaths of people that day (and it did, because if the fences had not been there people would have been able to escape) and am discussing the reasons that those pens were installed in the first place. I think they should never have put those fences up in the first place as it was a disaster waiting to happen, but given the opposition from many for seated stadiums, it is hard to see what the alternative was.

I should have known that the suggestion that each and every football fan ever to have walked this earth is not a saint, makes me an 'ignorant fuckwit'

The ground did not have a valid safety certificate. Not before and not after the installation of the lateral fencing. That was not the fault of any fans, hooligans or not.

No, and therefore the match should never have been held there, and whoever made that decision is partly to blame for 96 deaths. However, even withiut a safety certificate, in the exact same stadium, just without the fencing, people would have been able to escape on to the pitch.

Look at the report and what happened in 1981. Its in there, and its important.

saltnpepa I don't know whether you are deliberately blaming the fans but that is what you are doing.

I wasn't even born when this happened. I am so desperately sad about it Im sat here nearly crying. I hope family and friends get the answers they deserve.
Can any one tell me where I can read about it?

There were defiantly pockets of the country in the 1980s that "caused to much trouble" for Thatchers government. The dockers and factory workers of Liverpool, and the mining communities of the north east were constantly vilified as feckless wastes of space, only interested in causing trouble. In reality they just wanted to work and provide for their families. They were not scared to kick up a fuss and fight for their rights. They certainly didn't take things lying down.

Can you imagine taking a group of children to the beach to find that shops would close in fear of these children looting the shop. Being tailed by security guards because they heard your accent. Constant referrals on tv about scousers being thieves and scoundrels. This was my childhood. A young well behaved and polite child being treated like scum for setting foot outside Liverpool.

This was the climate when Hilsborough happened. This is the reason that the city closed ranks around the families and the survivors. We knew the lies to be true, because we had been treated this way for years. The police that day were not worried about football hooligans causing trouble, they were worried about scousers causing trouble. By 1989 they had been drip fed for years that scousers, and therefore Liverpool fans were trouble. I find it hard to believe that the aftermath of the initial tragedy would have had such devastating consequences if it had been a southern team.

I'd watch the YouTube link of Jimmy McGovern's reconstruction posted up the thread: it's based on known facts and testimony. It's not an easy watch though.

I agree that the police and authorities had wholly responded to the perceived problem of hooliganism (which was never a normal feature of most football games, especially 'family' ones like this semi-final) in a way which was only ever likely to exacerbate trouble and would almost inevitably end in tragedy. You simply cannot treat the vast majority of football supporters as though they are animals, and expect crowd safety not to be compromised.

We new the lies to be lies!

Or even we knew the lies to be lies