By Arnav Sampigethaya
On 15th April 1989, the much-awaited FA Cup semi-final between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool was to take place at the neutral Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England at 3:00 PM. As is the norm in domestic football matches in England, the fans of the opposing teams were segregated. Although Liverpool had more supporters, Nottingham Forest were given the larger area [1].
Liverpool fans were in no hurry to get into the stadium and a large congregation of them arrived at around 2:20 PM. Access to over 10,000 seats were confined to a mere 7 turnstiles while the Nottingham fans had access to 60 of them. This caused a huge congestion in the entrance. At 2:46 PM, the BBC commentator, John Motson pointed out the disparity between the density of the Liverpool and Nottingham fans in their respective areas.
Outside the stadium, a bottleneck had developed. Rather than establishing crowd safety, local authorities viewed the roles as the ‘combat of hooliganism’. Soon, over 5000 fans had gathered outside the stadium and were trying to get in. The police were doing a terrible job of containing the crowd and to relieve the pressure opened Exit Gate C, this caused a huge influx of people rushing into the stands without even getting their tickets checked. Soon, Exit Gates A and B were also opened a large number of people started entering the stadium.
Soon people started getting pushed into the barrier separating the field from crowd and the Liverpool goalkeeper, Bruce Grobelaar could hear the Liverpool fans pleading for help. The police attempted to prevent people from climbing over the barriers believing this was an act of hooliganism. In the fourth minute, a Liverpool player hit the post and the excitement caused by this on top of the already overstuffed crowd caused a metal barrier within the audience to break.
This is what began the crush as people fell forward and pushed against the large barrier between the field and the crowd. People started climbing over the barrier and getting to the other side. Seeing this, the match was called off and the players were escorted into their locker rooms. The police were still not helping the people cross the barrier and physically restrained many of them. At the same time, more and more people were entering the stadium and people were getting crushed by the sheer weight of human bodies. People couldn’t lift their arms, or even turn around. Most people lost consciousness. Liverpool fans who did manage to esape quickly used advertisement hoardings as stretchers and tried their best to get as many people to safety as possible.
The police tried to relieve the situation by letting people out of a narrow gate in the barrier but it was too little too late as many had lost their lives by now.
By the end of the disaster, 96 people, all Liverpool fans, had lost their lives with over 766 injured. It remains, to this day, the largest sporting tragedy in British history.
Condolences flooded in from all around the world, led by the Queen Elizabeth II. Pope John Paul II, President George HW Bush and the chief executive of Juventus were amongst the many who paid their repsects. The Liverpool home ground of Anfield was filled with flowers in a tribute to the victims who suffered the tragedy. A memorial has been erected at Anfield and two torches have been added to the Liverpool crest in loving memory.
One of the most popular newspaper in England at the time was The Sun. They were known for their sensationalistic and scandalous news. Four days after the tragedy, editor of the Sun, Kevin MacKenzie put out a paper with headline “The Truth”. They proceeded to say in large font “Some fans picked pockets of the victims. Some fans urinated on the brave cops. Some fans beat up Police Constable giving the kiss of life.”
Not only did they put the blame on the fans for the disaster, but also made the Liverpudlians seem like animals. On top of this, they made the police seem like the heroes who were victimized by the ‘rowdy and hooligan’ Liverpool fans. This caused uproar all across Merseyside. The city of Liverpool began to boycott the Sun and to this day, The Sun is banned in Liverpool.
The Sun reporters are not allowed inside Liverpool’s home ground, Anfield. Liverpool managers do not entertain questions from The Sun and the reputation of the newspaper has generally gone down since the incident. In 1991, the verdict was released that the deaths were largely accidental. This did not bode well with the families of the 96 victims who had died.
Lord Taylor’s findings did have a positive outcome. They made all-seater stadiums mandatory in the top two tiers of English football and the rest of the world followed suit.
Why were the media and the police so quick to blame the Liverpool fans? Seven years earlier, hooligans from the Liverpool fanbase were found 100% guilty for perpetrating the Heysel tragedy in Turin. However, after a re-investigation was opened in 2009, the verdict finally came out that the Yorkshire police had been guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence and could have prevented the deaths of over 41 people with better crowd management once the crush began.
The police also said that the Liverpool fans were drunk and disorderly, however when blood alcohol tests were conducted on all the victims, it was found that only 6% were intoxicated. Yet again, this shows the police outright lying to cover-up the truth. Another lie spread by the police is that a large number of Liverpool fans entered the stadium without tickets causing the overcrowding. Thankfully, CCTV footage exists and the investigative team counted the number of people entering frame-by-frame and it shows that the number of people exactly matched with the number of tickets sold and the capacity of the stand. In fact, until this finding was made, this was the prevalent story circulated by the police. To top it all off, the police said that this crush was unprecedented and caused by Liverpool fan behaviour. Just two years before this is another FA Cup semi-final between Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton in Hillsborough, the same thing had happened to Tottenham fans, but the police had acted quickly and allowed people to sit in front of the barrier behind the goal which they failed to do in the Liverpool match.
All three of the official statements released by the police have been proven wrong and it shows how inexperienced and dishonest the police were. They blamed the innocent victims for their own deaths. The supposed urination has been proven to be from the victims who had been squeezed so hard that their bodies ejected all liquids from within posthoumously. There is a large amount of video evidence to show that Liverpool fans did not pick anyone’s pocket, on the other hand, there is overwhelming video evidence showing the supporters doing a majority of the relief effort.
Police were quoted saying “We let the supporters handle the relief effort so that we aren’t blamed if it doesn’t go well”
The fact that The Sun published something so untrue and disgraceful made the entire United Kingdom and especially the football community disgusted by them. The newspaper is shunned by most football clubs to this day and especially in the Merseyside Area there is extreme hatred towards The Sun. They took 23 years to even issue a basic apology and Kevin McKenzie, who was already notorious for fabricating news came out recently saying that although what he said reported was untrue, he is not apologetic and does not feel bad about what he did.
This story is extremely relevant to today for two main reasons. Firstly, our belief in the press and media is extremely dangerous. We have to be vigilant of everything we read as fake news is at an all-time high and it is not helped at all by social media. Another important lesson we can learn is that we shouldn’t trust the police blindly. The Sun crossed the line. The Yorkshire police crossed the line. Liverpool will never forget. Liverpool will never forgive.
Works Cited
[1] BBC, “1989: Football fans crushed at Hillsborough,” 15 April 1989. [Online]. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/15/newsid_2491000/2491195.stm.
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