Justice for the 96

[johnmc]

Funny how when Maggie tried ID cards for football fans everyone was up in arms, but now Blair/Brown are making them compulsary for everyone - nobody seems that bothered...

I think a lot of people are very bothered about them!

 

[foxy]

Sorry in addition to my post, I believe overall it was a number of factors as well as the handling of the police. I will not go into it this isnt the time to. Was just using it to support what i had said.

 

[BornBlueDieBlue]

We've been talking about this, this morning at work and someone raised a very good argument about this. He thinks the whole incident was possibly staged by police and officials, possibly government, to cause scene's of panicked nature so that football grounds could become all seater and make it easier to police.

RIP 96!

Definitely the worst conspiricy theory I have ever heard.

Definitely the worst spelling of conspiracy i have ever seen ;-)

It is pretty bad though to think that the police and the government
would stage this. Killing children as young as 10.
Glad I don't work at your place pal.

 

[bluemanc]

I do believe there is truth in what you are saying there Paul. The government were desperate to quell football hooliganism and the ID scheme had collapsed (remember that?). The conclusion to the Taylor Report suited them.

But I certainly don't believe the police or government went about murdering innocents to acheive that objective.

In the summer of 1989, with Lord Justice Taylor still conducting his inquiry, and the Football Association pushing hard for all-seater stadia, McGinnity, a friend of the FA chairman Sir Bert Millichip, bought Pel, a company which made plastic seats. He then formed Pel Stadium Seating and took on as a director Ted Croker, the recently retired secretary of the FA. Croker's son-in-law, Nick Harrison, was appointed sales director in January 1990, the month Taylor published his report.

Legal aswell,as was the sudden elevation of tory politicians onto the boards of plastic seat making companys.
RIP the 96.

 

[Gazza]

I could never understand why the inquest only focused on events after 3:15 when most of the cause of the problem happened before that.

 

[Paul Lake's Left Knee]

Foxy my point wasnt about the incident itself but what happened afterwards, and how it was used to force through new laws, with little or no debate. It was football fans who paid for the new stadia/stands not the government that made the laws. It was also something they had advocated previously but knew they couldnt/wouldnt get it through like the id cards and no away fans... it stunk then and it still stinks now...

I guess i miss standing up at games more than most...

 

[johnmc]

I could never understand why the inquest only focused on events after 3:15 when most of the cause of the problem happened before that.

Its the other way round mate. Any incidents before that time were included in the inquest but not after - the 3:15 cut off point

 

[Dubai Blue]

RIP the 96

Just to back up Ricster slightly, i dont think the government wanted or encouraged the inicident, but they did use it.

I was working as a cricket steward at the time and the government wanted all seater stadiums prior to this and pushed them though using Hillsborough as the primary reasoning, costing clubs millions to sort it out, even in stadia like Maine Rd or Villa Park where a similar crush would have been impossible. The Taylor report had impact in all stadia in all sports as it wasnt reduced to just football, and the conspiracy comes from another pre-Hillsborough report that said that it would reduce football violence in grounds if there were seats (despite most fans who saw Luton Millwall that seats are an effective weapon), that every fan should be in a member sceme and possibly banning away fans (something that Maggie endorced and Luton did for a time - where the invisible man chant comes from). Sadly the government used the horrific incident to further their own cause, at the cost of every fan in the country... not like we havent seen it before and since - twin towers and the second Iraq war coming to mind, tragic incident, government using it to get its own way...

Absolutely. If the authorities wanted to prevent another Hillsborough, they could have just pulled down the fences. The fact that they went the whole way and enforced all-seater stadiums had everything to do with their desire to wipe out hooliganism and very little to do with Hillsborough. But they used Hillsborough as the "poster boy" and no one could argue when 96 innocent people had died.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

I could never understand why the inquest only focused on events after 3:15 when most of the cause of the problem happened before that.

Its the other way round mate. Any incidents before that time were included in the inquest but not before - the 3:15 cut off point

That's correct. So the police's methods of handling the high numbers of injured were never questioned. At times people trying to stretcher the dying from the stadium were stopped by the police cordon.

 

[Jake The Muss]

R.I.P the 96.
Awfull day for football.