It’s fairly incredible that we live in a time where it can be proven that 96 people were unlawfully killed but nobody spends a second in prison as a consequence especially when a widespread cover up was proven at police and government level.

I don’t know the full ins and outs of the trial but the CPS deserve shooting with shit for it, surely you’d have to be certain of a 75 year mans conviction to put the family’s through more of this? You’d almost think it was a token gesture.

1989, 2019 same government same shit. Please don’t vote for anyone ‘dangerous’ though.

While i know virtually nothing about the ins and outs of the case, i do think we need to take a step back. Was one man alone at fault for 96 deaths? Did he mean to do something that would cause those deaths or had any idea of the consequence of his actions? It's terrible that 96 people died in something that should never have happened, but could it not be that a chain of small events all contributing, that admittedly may have been set off by one man, mean that he alone is responsible? I find it hard to single out one person to carry the can for all of this. Like anything i'm sure it's a number of things that contributed to all of this that had of gone differently there'd be a different outcome and i personally find it uncomfortable sometimes that this one guy is targeted. I get the arguments about the police covering up etc which has been exposed and dealt with and you'd hope it never happens again. I just find it hard to believe that a number of humans are going after another human who is as equally capable of making mistakes and i'm sure feels guilt for it every day. To me it just seems wrong that some people are acting like this, even with the loss they have suffered but moreso from people who have absolutely nothing to do with the disaster.

I'm not sure what your point is about 1989 government though. It's different times and if you're speaking about it's a conservative government and oh look we have one now, that's a fairly tenuous link, i'm sure you can link other disasters and failures in society to a Labour government too if you try. 2007 bombings in London, oh look a Labour govt that invaded Irag etc. Makes absolutely no sense at all and has no bearing on the events or behaviours.

An excellent reply but you know PJ anti police and conservative.

Anti police?

Based on what exactly??

You know me? Do you!?

I wasn’t talking about the specifics of this case what I am saying is nobody has been made accountable for the unlawful death and subsequent police cover up. That is surely wrong?

He was the commander on the day so you could argue that his job was to have a big picture of how events should go, check that is happening smoothly and then react well if things take a turn for the worst. It is now pretty well-established that the policing of the approach to the ground was badly planned, the policing of the entrances was badly planned and that, even when the pens were clearly overcrowded, the police response was based on fear of hooliganism, not protecting the lives of innocent people. An awful lot of that is within the remit of the person in charge on match day.

Of course he still didn't mean to kill anybody which is why the charge was manslaughter through gross negligence rather than murder. My understanding of that charge is that it exists so people who have a duty of care and fail to discharge it can beheld to account if their failure leads to deaths. I can't see how anybody could argue that he shouldn't have been charged on that basis. Obviously the outcome of the trial might not be guilty but when an inquest decides that so many people are unlawfully killed due to the gross negligence manslaughter of the match day commander, which is what the second inquest decided, putting the person in command on the day on trial seems sensible.

If he is living with guilt everyday I'd be interested in knowing when the guilt kicked in. He took part in the cover up, initially by lying to Graham Kelly about how so many people entered the pens - he claimed that Liverpool fans broke the gates when the police actually opened them. He then kept quiet through all the allegations against Liverpool fans, said nothing to clarify why the police seemed to have collaborated on changing their notebooks to fit the fans were to blame narrative and, although he admitted that 'with hindsight' he got things wrong, he never apologised to the families.

The same government point is very pertinent indeed. Back then the government and South Yorkshire Police had just finished lying and covering up the real events that took place at Orgreave. Full of confidence at having got away with it they went to lie and cover up over Hillsborough. The lies kept being repeated until we even saw Boris Johnson using The Spectator to mock the people of Liverpool by claiming that their campaign for the truth about the deaths was motivated by a love of victimhood. He's now become liar in chief for the party that tries to blame firefighters for the deaths in the Grenfell Blaze at the same time as one of its ministers goes even further and blames the victims for being too thick to disobey emergency service instructions.

The only think I've got to say is with reference to the barriers. If those barriers were not there the fans in the Leppings lane end would have had a means of escape by spilling onto the pitch.
If that option had been available a lot of people who were in there would still be alive.

Fenced in pens was a major contributor to the death toll.

The fact that they were ditched later says quite a lot.

Exactly Mr Toulouse.

It’s incredible that someone would think it’s ‘wrong’ to react to it.

The accused and the especially the families should not have been put through this case unless the CPS were 99% certain of a conviction.

I think after the second inquest they were very confident, the inquest judge said not to return an unlawful killing verdict unless they were satisfied that the match day commander was gulty of gross negligence manslaughter. But then you look at the behaviour of the judge in Duckenfield's trials and it makes you wonder. Duckenfield was allowed to sit in the body of the court not the dock, in the first trial summing up the judge said, "he wasn't to blame, poor chap", and the jury were told to ignore the fact that he showed no emotion or regret as he was suffering from PTSD.

Looking at some of the reportage and reports on the second inquests etc, there little argument that Duckinfield, as Match Commander, made serious errors and then lied to cover them up. Whether this was enough for Gross Negligence Manslaughter - well, the jury has said no. There is also a question of whether he should have been Match Commander in the first place, as he had very little experience in the role and was suddenly in charge of one of the biggest games held outside of Wembley at that time.

The problem is that the issues that led to the disaster were systemic and cultural - and that makes it harder to point a finger at any given individual. Fan Safety was paid lip service, and had been for a long time - resulting in things like the Valley Parade Fire as well as Hillsborough. Police and Stewarding strategy was about containment of potentially violent hooligans, regardless of whether that was truly the case - don't forget we were being told at the time that there was going to be a National ID Card System for Football fans, and the narrative was that we were to be corralled into cages like the animals we were supposed to be. Small wonder then that the false narrative presented by the police to the likes of the Sun was swallowed whole.

How though do you deal with the institutions that allowed this to happen? Part of me feels that certain of the authorities of the time would be very happy for it all to fall down on Duckinfield - to let him be the lightning rod. His role on the day and in the cover up is certainly contemptible - but to say that he alone was responsible for what was the result of decades of treating ordinary fans like hooligans, poor stadium design, inadequate safety measures, and contempt and complacency from the authorities is too easy an answer.

Massive cover up and I'm not as astounded by the Judge as I should be.
These legal people always give me the impression of a mummy knows best attitude.
No doubt they are academically sound but sometimes it stops there.
All brains and no common sense.
Their stock answer .................we don't make the laws, we uphold them.
Gimme a break.
All rise.

I stopped reading at i know nothing about the ins n outs

You should really before commenting.

Rome,Hysel,Hillsborough, common denominator Liverpool.

Not sure about Rome or why you've added it, but the common denominators between Hysel and Hillsborough are pretty clear - inadequate old stadiums and poor preparations for the games.

Liverpool fans behaved badly at Heysel and the end result was a collapsed wall that killed people. In that case hooliganism was certainly a factor alongside the others but at Hillsborough it wasn't. The malicious allegations against Liverpool fans at Hillsborough were part of the cover up. The lies were a cruel thing to do to bereaved families and are one of the reasons I have no sympathy for Duckenfield who has admitted that he told the first big lie in the chain when he said fans had forced open gates that he actually gave the order to open.

The charge was gross negligent manslaughter. There is no need to prove that he intended death, or even serious harm. He also did not need to foresee the consequences of his negligence. The questions for the jury were simply:

Did he owe a duty of care to the victims?
Did he breach that duty?
Did the breach cause the death of the victims?
Was the breach so bad, having regard to the risk of death, that the breach of the duty was a 'gross' breach?

That's it; there's no requirement that he foresaw anything, only that the reasonable man would view the negligence as creating a risk of death.

I’m assuming you’re referring to Rome 84? A night when Liverpool fans were viciously attacked by Italian ultras. Which led to Italian newspapers to call it a night of shame for Italian fans. Like this , ‘This could have been an occasion to demonstrate civility. Instead, the usual group of fans with knives, bottles and sticks went on an odious manhunt,’

Those bastard Liverpool fans daring to be stabbed and beaten by their friendly Italian hosts...

As for Heysel the guilty parties who were Liverpool fans , were charged and imprisoned for their crimes.

This is the sort of guff that was getting trotted out for years about Liverpool wasn't it, normally by Tory types who don't seem to be fans of normal working class people. It sort stopped aging well when the unlawful killing verdict was delivered and the cover up uncovered the families who had spent nearly 30 years fighting for justice were proven right. You seem happy to continue with this offensive shite though.

Speaking of Tory types here's our glorious Prime Minister in 2004 on this very subject;

"The extreme reaction to Mr Bigley’s murder is fed by the fact that he was a Liverpudlian. Liverpool is a handsome city with a tribal sense of community. A combination of economic misfortune — its docks were, fundamentally, on the wrong side of England when Britain entered what is now the European Union — and an excessive predilection for welfarism have created a peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche among many Liverpudlians. They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it. Part of this flawed psychological state is that they cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society. The deaths of more than 50 Liverpool football supporters at Hillsborough in 1989 was undeniably a greater tragedy than the single death, however horrible, of Mr Bigley; but that is no excuse for Liverpool’s failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon. The police became a convenient scapegoat, and the Sun newspaper a whipping-boy for daring, albeit in a tasteless fashion, to hint at the wider causes of the incident."

Take that lot in given what we know to be the truth now and then try and tell me that my comments about the same government then and now aren't prevalent. These are sneering, pompous people who have no idea about real life and the real World. Fuck me even Johnson has apologised for this article so you must be quite a piece of work to still hold this view.

delete.


You can't leave a post like this on.

I suspect the planets lined up for Hillsborough disaster. I don’t for one minute imagine anyone went out that morning with the intent of creating this disaster and sometimes shit just happens because it happens and no one could have in reality altered anything.
Did anyone set out with malice aforethought....?

I suspect the planets lined up for Hillsborough disaster. I don’t for one minute imagine anyone went out that morning with the intent of creating this disaster and sometimes shit just happens because it happens and no one could have in reality altered anything.
Did anyone set out with malice aforethought....?

thats the way i,ve always looked at this issue. same with the 1946 bolton disaster at burnden park. ibrox disaster and even the bradford fire. its only luck there hasn,t been many more looking at some of those early post war attendances at most grounds in the country. some were double the capacity of a lot of grounds in later years even before the all seater era.

Malice aforethought is the test for murder. If we only convicted those with with malice aforethought there'd be a good deal of deaths that would receive an inadequate response from the criminal justice process.

I've got a mate who became a copper for South Yorks police about 15 years ago.

Part of his training for covering match days was to watch footage of Hillsborough. The stuff that has never been shown on the telly, basically lots of people getting crushed to death in very graphic detail.

The match day strategy for semi finals at Hillsborough had been the same for many years. It wasn't perfect, but Duckinfield came in and changed a lot for some reason, perhaps known only to himself. Many of these changes created the perfect storm that resulted in the disaster.

The fact he lied about some of the decisions he made says it all to me. I hope he does feel some guilt, but I'm not convinced he does.

Hopefully one day the families of those who died will be given real justice in some shape or form.

You know what quite we’ll what I meant, in general terms, not legal terms and ‘enlightening my ignorance’ with your legal expertise wasn’t necessary.
My whole point was that shit happens, usually by some individual cocking up, but the need for someone to carry the can regardless I find disturbing.

So it’s alright for 96 people to die unlawfully and nobody be made accountable? I find that more disturbing to be honest. Especially when events were covered up by lies and the dead were smeared as the cause for years.

Shit happens but I wouldn’t call altering police statements and feeding the press untruths shit that should be happening.

Whatever, but your turbocharged outrage doesn’t help. Maybe it’s time to retire and join the whatever happened to list.

‘Turbo charged outrage’ not really and a bit harsh but this is injustice just begin to imagine if it was a member of your family. The deaths have been judged to have been unlawful and lies and cover up have been uncovered yet nobody has been held accountable. On what planet is that right?

Lies and cover ups may well have been covered up and investigations into them held, but..... those lies and cover ups didn’t cause the original tragedy, what did?
Lessons have been learnt, caging fans in has long gone, all seater stadium have virtually eliminated the likelihood of it ever happening, but was it all just a huge cock up is what nobody can seem to accept.

Would you accept it if your son was there and died?

No. But I’m not the legal system and the legal system decides, that’s why if I was in that awful position I’d be the last person to be making a decision. The law has to be impartial or justice would be a popularity contest. So what do you think caused it?

I didn't know what you meant (I'm not a mind reader); you used specific legal terminology so I responded to that.

But even so, my point still stands; the 'shit happens' explanation doesn't really cut it for me. There are loads of examples where we do hold people accountable for their mistakes if it results in death, even if they didn't intend or foresee death as a result of what they did. And rightly so, in my opinion. We expect senior police officers to be able to plan an operation, and if they fail spectacularly, then they should be held accountable.

For particular examples of what I'm talking about, lets start with leading case on gross negligence manslaughter; it's a case of an anaesthetist who did such a bad job that he didn't realise a patient was dying (when any competent anaesthetist would have seen the warning signs). I don't think we should ignore that, just because the professional did not intend or realise they may kill someone.

Then there's health and safety at work. Thousands die every year because companies take short cuts and fail to properly oversee that what they do is safe. Again, these are not unfortunate 'accidents', but are avoidable errors. Whether or not the perpetrators have 'malice aforethought' (in the terms you mean it) is irrelevant to me.

Finally, death on the roads. Many more die due to road 'accidents' than due to culpable homicide. The offences of causing death by dangerous driving or causing death by careless driving cover these 'accidents'. If we take your logic, we should abolish these offences, because these drivers rarely want or foresee death (if they did, they'd be guilty of murder or manslaughter). Indeed, this is an area of criminal justice system that routinely fails victims. See this thread; did any of these drivers 'mean' to kill their victims? Does that even matter?

https://twitter.com/ormondroyd/status/1 ... 2755408896

The one constant in my examples is that there are, at times, circumstances where we expect individuals to live up to a certain standard of care. Driving, health and safety at work, medical professionals etc, are all areas where the risks to life are such that failure to perform competently can have catastrophic results. The law, in these cases, serves to remind us that we need to act in ways that recognises the dangers inherent in what we do, and to try and ensure that we minimise these. Whether or not we foresee or want harmful consequences is irrelevant.

Whatever. Mustn’t go against the general consensus.

You know that reads as, given the context of the discussion, ‘people die. Whatever...’

The ‘Whatever’ referred to your patronising attitude.
If your mind came up with that context you disappoint me and I worry about your mindset.
I’m appalled by your comment and after all these years I really think it’s time to call it a day if it’s sank to this.

It’s your comments that led me to that conclusion. Phrases like ‘shit happens’ and the like. You’ve not said anything on this thread to make me think otherwise.

Tumbleweed rolls by..........

It’s ok. I get it.

hundreds of sons and daughters have been killed in football match disasters and plenty more in transport related ones over the years. the problem nowadays seems that there must have to have someone to blame for these things happening.

Yes everyone is aware people die in accidents and suffer tragic loss but the 96 deaths at Hillsborough were unlawful. Surely in those circumstances some accountability has be inevitable in a fair and just World? The families who campaigned for justice for all of those years whilst facing abhorrent criticism from people like Boris Johnson and Kelvin Mackenzie were proven right but it seems they will never actually get justice.

[quote="PJPoolie"]? The families who campaigned for justice for all of those years whilst facing abhorrent criticism from people like Boris Johnson and Kelvin Mackenzie
and thats the other side of the coin we have nowadays. once facts on incidents were published but now you get tools like the above pair having to put their two penneth in about a subject the majority on here know more about and they did not witness it either.

wrong thread

he is certainly not a card among the 52 in the pack. just one of the two jokers and a slightly amusing different from the rest television politician. just shows the depths we have reached when a party thinks someone who,d be better off with ant and dec in the jungle would make a good prime minister. and then corbyn gets knocked. i give up.

So who was responsible? I lay the blame at the feet of the governing authorities. Hillsborough sharp led to the changes we see now, so those changes were needed, such as not caging in fans and all seater stadiums. This whole disaster was the result of fans being treat like shit but it’s also like blaming the Captain of the Titanic when the designers didn’t design it with enough lifeboats. The moral being, when the worst happened, the real loss of life was caused by people nowhere near the scene. The real, shadowy people stay in the shadows and live a full life.

Just out of interest I invite members to google ryhill football Sunderland v Man Untd 1964 FA Cup replay at Roker Park.
It was estimated there were nearly 100,000 supporters in and around the ground and although the official crowd was 47.000 it is believed it was near 80,000.
Outside the ground walls were pulled down, large doors forced open and the queues were six deep. I was in fact in a queue and if it had been possible I would have got out.
You have to remember there were no Police Control Rooms at grounds in those days and police officers didn’t have radios.
By pure luck there were no serous injuries and whenever I see footage of the crowd outside Hillsborough it brings back memories of that game

But you had all of those things in 1989 and the game was all ticket, I’m struggling with the relevance. Football should have been safer in 1989 than it was in 1964. Some of those crowds in those days were I imagine quite scary to have been in (I doubt you saw much of the match!) and it is amazing more serious incidents didn’t occur though.

living in the midlands in the mid 80,s i decided to go to the luton v millwall fa cup replay. it was not all ticket. there was a few thousand millwall fans outside the ground and it was less than 30 minuted to kick off. the turnstiles were still not open so the exit gate was charged down with all fans rushing in. i stood a few rows from the back but ended up a few rows from the front at kick off without moving my feet. i,m over 6ft and 13 stone so if it happened to me how about women and kids who were there. how this game got away with no casualties was beyond me but all you heard about it in the press was the vandal millwall fans and nothing about lutons failure to open turnstles earlier.

I agree things were different in 1989 but health and safety was not taken as seriously even then and it was a case of after the horse has bolted.
Remember Hillsborough had been used for this fixture regularly without problems and obviously wrongly it was a case of just carrying on with the same arrangements.
At the end of the day the main cause was the mistake of opening the gates but then again what would have happened outside.

I’m not so sure about that;


Hillsborough hosted five FA Cup semi-finals in the 1980s. A crush occurred at the Leppings Lane end of the ground during the 1981 semi-final between Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers after hundreds more spectators were permitted to enter the terrace than could safely be accommodated, resulting in 38 injuries, including broken arms, legs and ribs.[19] Police believed there had been a real chance of fatalities had swift action not been taken, and recommended the club reduce its capacity. In a post-match briefing to discuss the incident, Sheffield Wednesday chairman Bert McGee remarked: "Bollocks—no one would have been killed".[20][21] The incident nonetheless prompted Sheffield Wednesday to alter the layout at the Leppings Lane end, dividing the terrace into three separate pens to restrict sideways movement.[9] This 1981 change and other later changes to the stadium invalidated the stadium's safety certificate. The safety certificate was never renewed and the stated capacity of the stadium was never changed.[9][22] The terrace was divided into five pens when the club was promoted to the First Division in 1984, and a crush barrier near the access tunnel was removed in 1986 to improve the flow of fans entering and exiting the central enclosure.

After the crush in 1981, Hillsborough was not chosen to host an FA Cup semi-final for six years until 1987.[9] Serious overcrowding was observed at the 1987 quarter-final between Sheffield Wednesday and Coventry City[23] and again during the semi-final between Coventry City and Leeds United at Hillsborough.[24] Leeds were assigned the Leppings Lane end. A Leeds fan described disorganisation at the turnstiles and no steward or police direction inside the stadium, resulting in the crowd in one enclosure becoming so compressed he was at times unable to raise and clap his hands.[24] Other accounts told of fans having to be pulled to safety from above.[9]

Liverpool and Nottingham Forest met in the semi-final at Hillsborough in 1988, and fans reported crushing at the Leppings Lane end. Liverpool lodged a complaint before the match in 1989. One supporter wrote to the Football Association and Minister for Sport complaining, "The whole area was packed solid to the point where it was impossible to move and where I, and others around me, felt considerable concern for personal safety".[25]

Take it from me they are scary to be in. Football should have been safer, but safer, by design of the stadium .... and to be frank clubs didn’t want to spend the money. Police, stewards etc were coping with grounds that had actually been made worse with the cages. It was the end of ‘owt’ll do for the fans’, who were treat miserably.
Can’t say it couldn’t happen again, but the odds against it are much improved.

As I said health and safety was just not taken seriously in those days. If the doors had not been opened the crowds would presumably gone through the turnstiles to the part of the ground they had been allocated but as happened they all rushed through into the same area and we all know what happened. However we will never know what would have happened if the gates had not been opened.My experience at Sunderland would probably been repeated and I can tell you it was frightening and may well have been repeated.