Hillsborough verdicts reached

FanchesterCity said:
Crowd behaviour was what it was - it's was a known quantity and that is what the authorities were tasked with controlling.
If you host a Take That concert, you can expect a lot of screaming women, so you might like to consider reallocating some of the men's loos to women etc - i.e. there's a pattern of behaviour.
If you host a cup final at Wembley between two North West teams, you can predict that the M6 will be full of supporters.

In the same way, they KNEW 25K Liverpool fans would be arriving. Yes, some would have had a drink in a pub before the match (like many of our fans do today). Maybe a few would be drunk, maybe some would be aggressive - that's 'normal' for a crowd of 25K. It would almost certainly have been the same amongst the Forest fans. The whole drinking thing was a red herring used by SYP. Look at how many have a drink at City at half time - loads! - but if anything happened and the police then started to say 'they'd had a drink' - you'd be fuming at the implication that was a factor.
If City scored a goal and there was a crush, someone might say 'it's the fans fault for celebrating too enthusiastically'. That's why there are measures put in place to mitigate known behaviours in crowds.


There were traffic delays en-route the the stadium, and there also a football wide tendency for crowds to arrive later then they probably should (still happens today). The police had in the past put out cordons to stop congregation at the Leppings Lane end, but that year, they cut back on the policing, and didn't bother with the cordons. The inevitable happened, and crowds started to congest. This STILL happens today, even at City's modern day turnstiles - you will find the queue congesting at the front then people being a little more spread out towards the back of a queue.
On top of that, the turnstiles did not have the ability to process the numbers of fans in the available time - i.e. they were a bottleneck, and a dangerous one at that.
These were all PREDICTABLE and PREVENTABLE issues that were overlooked or ignored. There had been previous incidents at the Leppings Lane end, but no fatalities, so they had 'gotten away with it' before, so to speak.

When the question is asked 'did the crowd behaviour contribute to the disaster' - the word 'the' is important... i.e. did THE (that) crowd behaviour contribute in a way that another crowd wouldn't, and the answer is no.
Crowds increase danger - and that's where I think some are making the leap to 'crowds increase danger therefore the crowd contributed to the disaster'.
It's like asking 'did the racing car contribute to the death of Ayrton Senna'. It's not asking if racing cars are dangerous (they are), but asking if there was some specific flaw in that specific racing car above and beyond that normal expectation of racing car danger.

And that's what the question really is - 'Did the fans behave in a way that was outside the normal expectations of a crowd of that size' and the answer was no.

The Liverpool fans didn't do anything differently - the police did - they cut back on numbers, didn't implement cordons and didn't delay the kickoff - something they'd done previously when necessary.
On top of that, they then failed to close the tunnel (something which they had done on previous occasions). The crowd did what crowds do - and headed for the tunnel (which is precisely why it had been closed in the past). A surge of fans at the back of a queue has very little understanding of the deadly crush they are causing ahead of them, and by the time they realised it, they couldn't get out because yet more fans were coming in.
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Fucking brilliant post, mate and on the money.

Quite simply, anyone who persists in blaming the fans is an irredeemably thick ****.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
Fucking brilliant post, mate and on the money.

Quite simply, anyone who persists in blaming the fans is an irredeemably thick ****.
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One of the contributing factors to the disaster was the fencing around the pitch - that was installed at all grounds because of a few isolated pitch invasions. an over reaction in hindsight. Those fences should never have been installed, increased security would have been a much better solution. And probably cheaper in the long run as they have all been dismantled now.
 
FanchesterCity said:
Abso


Absolutely wrong

Yes, they had all the normal attributes of a set of fans, and that, you're correct.
But it was not the sheer number of fans anxious to gain entry that caused the disaster - it was the normal number of fans for a semi final, exhibiting all the same behaviours as previous matches, however the policing changed and the the allocation of ends was highly dubious.
The turnstiles could not cope - even if there were 23K nuns - the throughput was insufficient and it was inevitable that queues would (and did) form. The congestion was not managed and the wedge shape of Leppings Lane made it all the more dangerous.
You're assigning common attributes of fans in those days to the cause of the disaster. They weren't.
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If you were being malicious you could make an argument that drink was a cause of deaths in the Valley Parade fire. Many of the fans in the stand would have had a drink beforehand, might not have passed a breathalyser test. Drink slows you down, makes you make wrong decisions. Ergo, if the fans hadn't been drinking most of them would have escaped.

Complete nonsense of course.
 
Mick_Bootle said:
Sorry if this has already been posted but below article by the excellent Salford born Manchester City fan David Conn is an absolute must read. It could of been anyone.....

http://www.theguardian.com/football...and-lies-that-lasted-decades?CMP=share_btn_tw
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David Conn along with the likes of Brian Reade always stood by the families.
A very interesting radio5 special- 1 hr in is the interview with Phil Scraton

BBC Radio 5 live - 5 live Sport Specials, Hillsborough: The truth
 
shackattack said:
David Conn along with the likes of Brian Reade always stood by the families.
A very interesting radio5 special- 1 hr in is the interview with Phil Scraton

BBC Radio 5 live - 5 live Sport Specials, Hillsborough: The truth
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Painful reading it really is.

As football fans we all need to remember that could have been any of us there that day.

Pleased for the families but sadly it wont ever bring back their loved ones so cruelly taken from them that day.

RIP 96
 
I see Aaronovitch is in the Times today apparently questioning the verdict. FFS

Anyway, BBC reporting that 'Lawyers for Hillsborough families pursue High Court misconduct action against South Yorkshire and West Midlands police forces'.
 
coleridge said:
I see Aaronovitch is in the Times today apparently questioning the verdict. FFS

Anyway, BBC reporting that 'Lawyers for Hillsborough families pursue High Court misconduct action against South Yorkshire and West Midlands police forces'.
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Could you print the article as I dont get The Times.
 
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