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.................from the Daily Mail
"Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher was told that a senior Merseyside Police officer blamed ‘drunken Liverpool fans’ for the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster, according to leaked government papers.
"The documents show that four days after the tragedy, a member of Mrs Thatcher’s No 10 policy unit met senior Merseyside officers who told her large numbers of Liverpool fans turning up without tickets had been a ‘key factor’ in what happened"
This disaster was one of the most harrowing things I have ever witnessed on TV - god only knows what it was like to have witnessed it first hand.
But, was there an element of truth in what he said OR was he just trying to divert the blame away from the real cause i.e Failure of the police to control the crowd?
I recall police officers stopping people trying to escape and even throwing people back into the crowd. I mean how dumb must those coppers have been.
Also, years after the event, I'm sure police officers present on the day received big payouts for the 'distress' they had witnessed but immediate relatives had received zilch!!
"Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher was told that a senior Merseyside Police officer blamed ‘drunken Liverpool fans’ for the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster, according to leaked government papers.
"The documents show that four days after the tragedy, a member of Mrs Thatcher’s No 10 policy unit met senior Merseyside officers who told her large numbers of Liverpool fans turning up without tickets had been a ‘key factor’ in what happened"
This disaster was one of the most harrowing things I have ever witnessed on TV - god only knows what it was like to have witnessed it first hand.
But, was there an element of truth in what he said OR was he just trying to divert the blame away from the real cause i.e Failure of the police to control the crowd?
I recall police officers stopping people trying to escape and even throwing people back into the crowd. I mean how dumb must those coppers have been.
Also, years after the event, I'm sure police officers present on the day received big payouts for the 'distress' they had witnessed but immediate relatives had received zilch!!
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I suppose the issue is were they any worse than a normal football crowd - I mean in terms of fans turning up drunk and/or ticketless.
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a Liverpool fan bragged to me that they also did it that year at the final when they played Everton.
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Absolutely disgusting. Classic manipulation of public opinion - release some inane comments from one idiot at Merseyside police (probably relaying info from South Yorkshire Police) saying fans were drunk, that will set the tone for the media debate so that there will be a lot of confusion and background noise that - they hope - will drown out the truth.
Justice for the 96 |
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The police must be trusted in this tragedy, surely?
I mean, the biggest loss of life in England at a sporting event ever, and they 'lose' all of the CCTV evidence. How unfortunate. |
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What is ironic is that it doesn't matter which newspaper is SELLING this NEWS.
N...orth E...ast W...est S...outh People buy this sensationalism and even worse, every Sunday they get a free holiday/suplement/god knows what, etcetera. Point is, dig deeper. The Internet is your friend. :cool: If only I could have a pound for every person which says they buy a newspaper yet says they don't believe everything they read. LOL |
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Lose all the CCTV evidence?
Source please. Are you calling the various campaigning groups citing CCTV evidence to condemn the police liars? |
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Can't you use google?
One of the links contains this: There are also questions to be answered about the evidence provided to the inquests. Two vital police CCTV tapes mysteriously went missing from the locked control room at Hillsborough and there has never been a satisfactory answer given to the question, what happened to them and was their disappearance ever investigated? |
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I can.
But I can count past two as well! :-) |
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OK. I'll bite.
Who thinks that drunk, ticketless fans en masse *weren't* a key factor in what happened? |
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I don't know and I'm not sure we'll ever know but I hope it gets sorted one day
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The ins and out of what happened on the day will never have a version that is accepted by all those involved so we all make up our minds based on our prejudices.
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i remember at that time my mates who were liverpool fans telling me how they get in for 'nowt' by turning up late en masse leading to police opening up gates to prevent incidents. suddenly hillsborough happens and theyre all innocent.
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The local police weren't prepared or able to cope with thousands of ticketless Liverpool supporters turning up and trying to gatecrash
While you could say that the police should have done this, that or the other the cause was people trying to get in by any means necessary ( other than paying )and acting like a herd of animals in doing so |
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It was a long time ago now.
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It was indeed ... do Scousers still boycott the Sun?
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Yup, Scousers do still boycott the Sun. And to be fair, anyone with a functioning brain should.
For some reason, people are afraid to express any views on what happened other than the 'accepted' version. That being, the Police caused it. |
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saw that mckenzie so and so defending the sun headline the other day - said it came from a reputable liverpudlian news agency. what a coont, hope he rots. is beyond me why anyone would buy that paper, but what can you do. as someone said, you'll never go poor underestimating the intelligence of the (great british) public.
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dexter,
The police were there for one reason only - to control the crowd. In that respect, they failed spectacularly. "The police didn't cause it" if you take the view that the crowd did - but the crowd should have been managed correctly, no? |
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a couple of months before the disaster, i went to Hillsbrough to watch man utd play Wednesday. That day we had a few pints and turned up at Leppings Lane about 2.30. It was chaos. Just two turnstiles open for thousands of fans to get through, police on horseback having no respect whatsoever to the masses of people.
As kick-off approached, there was a collective anxiety to get in to watch the match and just after 3pm we got through the turnstiles and made a dash for the 'tunnel' that lead to directly behind the goal. In that tunnel the crush was terrible and it was a total relief when i got through it and managed to go sideways and stand at the back. Luckily that day the numbers of fans must have been just few enough for disaster to be averted. Its obvious to any thinking person that there were several factors which contributed to the disaster just a few moths later. If some of the fans planned to get there late without tickets then they deerve to be criticised. However, there is no doubt that the main reason was the failure to control the crowd by the police. The fact the the 'tunnel' entranced was not closed off and fans re-directed the to side was to have catastrophic consequences and showed the police's plans to be deeply flawed and inadequate. Not only that, the police's general attitude to football fans back then was despicable and must have emanated from the top. I sincerely hope that the familes of the 96 get some sort of justice |
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Good post Timcaznat.
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What would be "justice" ?
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I was there too tim, we purposely arrived late, still many fans outside, suddenly the double gate to the side of the turnstiles
opened and the barmies pushed through . All the ob seemed to do was hit out with their helmets as the lads went past . The way some were holding their heads i guess those t1t shape ones hurt a bit . Myself and a few friends just waited a while and then wandered in . I did not see if the gates were forced or just opened . |
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I had been to the previous semi final the year before involving the same two teams and from the start things seemed odd that day.
As we approached the ground at about 1:45pm you could look through the corners and see the Liverpool fans in the Leppings Lane end. Even at that time over an hour before the kick off the centre pen was looking full. The area behind the goal always filled up first so this was to be expected but what i remember saying is that the side pens looked almost empty. When we got inside and took our positions on the Kop at around 2:15pm the Leppings End centre pen looked packed and the side pens still almost empty. Infact im sure there were people lying down because there was so much space. To me as a teenager the centre pen looked great fun with all the swaying but the side pens just looked odd as they were so empty. In the quarter final at Old Trafford where Forest took over ten thousand supporters the Manchester police directed you where to stand, you had no choice. This was not done at Hillsborough. I'm sure i have read where in the previous semi final the year before the police put up barricades away from the ground to check that the Liverpool fans had tickets. This was not done in at Hillsborough in 1989. Im my opinion the majority of the blame lies with the South Yorkshire police and the Sheffield Wednesday stewards. They failed to police/steward they event. If the fixture had been held at Old Trafford i'm sure there would of been no incident. Hillsborough was a death trap and a disaster just waiting to happen. Many fans had the same experience as posted by timcaznat. Key Points: 1981, FA Cup Semi Final, Spurs v Wolves:38 Spurs fans sustaining crush injuries. Police helped fans out of the enclosure. So concerned was the FA that it moved such games from Hillsborough for six years. if liverpool fans reputation was so bad back then you can argue even more there should have been better crowd control to protect the innocent fans from these so called scumbags They policed the same fans the year before at the same end - so they knew exactly what to expect - (pity they didnt have same police officer in charge) The year before they filtered seat and standing fans apart on walk up to the turnstiles at lepping lane and they filtered pens and nobody died (some still got crushed as terracing was poor full stop) Same fans, same ground, same end but with crowd control in place Liverpool had 23 turnstiles for 25,000 fans (every single turnstile at Leppings Lane End for the whole of their crowd and no filtering of standing and seated fans like the previous year)!! Forest had 60 turnstiles for 29,000 fans along the length of two stands. the HIGHEST estimate from all three of total number of fans in Leppings Lane terracing at 3.15pm was 10124 against a capacity of 10,100 (24 more than its capacity !). Its just that far too many went to the centre pens |
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The HEYSEL riots were used as a guide to anything following where Liverpudlians were concerned, although the Belgian judiciary found the Liverpudlians were entirely to blame, I witnessed a
Juventas fan swathed in their flag, carrying a pistol, quite clearly in the viewing shown live on BBC TV at the time, the vision was never brought to the courts notice, so much for a stupid defence, who were not worth the money they got, but NEVER earned, BTW I am not a Scouser but a Mancunian. |
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A pistol!! You mean those calm good natured Italians can also be violent? Well i never. Next you will be saying that they also contributed to they riot at that match. Maybe even started it. Why were their fans in the same end as the Liverpool fans anyway?
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The main cause of the disaster was the moronic decision to carry on holding semi-finals at Hillsborough imo.
The loss of CCTV footage makes the police look guilty as sin though. Of course people are going to assume police misconduct if they can't keep their own house in order. There were spectacular f*ck ups by several officers, and the whiff of a cover-up merely compounds the damage. On the other hand, it's all very well to talk about crowd control, but individual fans have to take responsibilty for their actions too. There seems to be a collective block in the minds of Liverpool fans that any individual fan bears any responsibility whatsoever for what happened. In fact, every fan who turned up without a ticket and piled through those gates is just a little bit culpable. |
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History maker how do explain the ticketless fans when the below evidence has been given?
the HIGHEST estimate from all three pens of total number of fans in Leppings Lane terracing at 3.15pm was 10124 against a capacity of 10,100 (24 more than its capacity !). Its just that far too many went to the centre pens |
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Just because the place was only very marginally above capacity does not mean that all the fans had tickets.
Liverpool fans are certainly not the only ones who used to rock up to games like that, but most of the fans who rushed in when the gates were opened did not have tickets, and knew full well what they were doing when they turned up late, en masse and ticketless. I'm not suggesting for a moment that any of them believed that they were endangering anyone - just trying to get a free ride, which they would have got if the police hadn't screwed up. I'm sure that plenty of those fans did have tickets too. It's a case of collective irrationality - what seems like a rational choice to each individual becomes highly irrational and dangerous behaviour as a large group. In my view, the most culpable group are the FA for holding the event there in the first place, given the known problems with the Leppings Lane end. It's the fact that Liverpool fans pin the entire blame on the police that riles me. If they accepted that the behaviour of some fans contributed to the problem, then I'd have a lot more respect for them. Still got more respect for them than the police and stewards involved though - a little shocking behaviour, and a lot of poor decision making involved there. |
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Yes the reluctance to accept one tiny smidgen of contributing to the disaster doesn't reflect well on them IMO.
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