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The Hillsborough inquest


BOF

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FFS. Liverpool fans did not cause the tragedy. Whatever a copper told the witch is neither here nor there, other than it's yet another in a long line of ill informed opinions. There was an enquiry by Lord justice Taylor. That inquiry did NOT lay the blame on the football fans.

It's a shame that so many people are so ignorant of the events that occurred and the causes that were determined, preferring instead to lazily leap to conclusions or to go with prejudices.

In other circumstances it could have been us. Maybe people who were very young or not born back then, or not into football back then might think "Oh it was bound to be the scourers fault" but it wasn't. It really could have been us. Policing of fans was aggressive, distrustful and disgraceful generally. Grounds were often dangerous, PA announcements no existent, stewarding often utterly inadequate. The attitude of clubs to fans and their comfort and safety was dire.

Yes people drank, as they do now, yes some people are impatient or aggressive or try to get in for free. That's not what caused the disaster though.

Some Police inspector telling Thatcher something, whilst himself being at best unaware of all the details, and at worst covering for his colleagues, or sharing general police attitudes to fans "animals" basically shows nothing other than (yet again) bad judgement and ignorance.

Agree with this.

Call me a cynic, but if you are the chief of police, and the Prime Minister wants to know who caused the disaster, you're not going to turn round and blame your police force.

The reputation, or past actions of Liverpool supporters, or any football supporters for that matter, should have no bearing in investigating the incident.

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I'm not saying Liverpool fans were to blame, far from it, but the fans who turned up ticketless and stormed through the gates and turnstiles have a proportion of the blame, do they not?

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Some Police inspector telling Thatcher something, whilst himself being at best unaware of all the details, and at worst covering for his colleagues, or sharing general police attitudes to fans "animals" basically shows nothing other than (yet again) bad judgement and ignorance.

Any suggestion why it has been kept quiet for so long then? Or why it came from South Yorks and Merseyside police?

And do you not think the coppers in question will get death threats from scouse words removed if their identities are ever revealed? Like everyone who says anything remotely negative about them?

Didn't Sheffield Wednesday played at the ground every home game without incident?

I'm not getting into conspiracy theory country here but if those police reports had come out at the time; bad shit, created by Liverpool fans, would have gone down...

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FFS. Liverpool fans did not cause the tragedy. Whatever a copper told the witch is neither here nor there, other than it's yet another in a long line of ill informed opinions. There was an enquiry by Lord justice Taylor. That inquiry did NOT lay the blame on the football fans.

It's a shame that so many people are so ignorant of the events that occurred and the causes that were determined, preferring instead to lazily leap to conclusions or to go with prejudices.

In other circumstances it could have been us. Maybe people who were very young or not born back then, or not into football back then might think "Oh it was bound to be the scourers fault" but it wasn't. It really could have been us. Policing of fans was aggressive, distrustful and disgraceful generally. Grounds were often dangerous, PA announcements no existent, stewarding often utterly inadequate. The attitude of clubs to fans and their comfort and safety was dire.

Yes people drank, as they do now, yes some people are impatient or aggressive or try to get in for free. That's not what caused the disaster though.

Some Police inspector telling Thatcher something, whilst himself being at best unaware of all the details, and at worst covering for his colleagues, or sharing general police attitudes to fans "animals" basically shows nothing other than (yet again) bad judgement and ignorance.

Agree with this :thumb:

Here is a link to the (interim) Taylor Report.

The main cause of the tragedy was the failure, by the police, to cut off access to the central pen when gate C was opened. (in previous games this was done by stationing police horses at the entrance to the central pen allowing the crowd to funnel into the adjacent pens).

The report also highlights that there were only 7 turnstiles made available to admit 10,100 Liverpool fans to the terraces. At the normal rate of 750 people per turnstile per hour, it would have taken two hours to admit all these fans into the stadium. It was inevitable that there would have been a crush outside of the ground with this lack of foresight. Contrast this to the other end where 60 turnstiles were made available to admit 29000 fans.

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That's utter gibberish, MMFy. will get death threats from scouse words removed...like everyone remotely negative about them? - think about it. It's just rubbish, that.

Will the policemen get death threats? - I have no idea. Even if they do, it makes not a jot of difference to who was found by an official enquiry to have caused the tragedy, will it?. And Official enquiries, bear in mind, are not exactly renowned for putting the authorities and establishment at the forefront of blame. The evidence was so overwhelming that it couldn't have been whitewashed.

Didn't wednesday play without incident? Not entirely no, but even so, I'd say that a drunk driver may have driven his car 10 times without crashing, but it doesn't make him a safe driver. Each game, each journey is a different set of circs. Undoubtedly the police were faced with a difficult situation, but they were found to have frozen, made bad decisions, reacted to the crushing as though it was a (hooligan) pitch invasion, and then lied about it. It looks like this plod was at best very misinformed. And finally, Liverpool fans had been to Hillsborough many times before without deaths and tragedy. Like I said, different circa, and the police dealt with them badly and lied about it, changed witness staments they gave, tried to steal the cctv recordings that showed they were lying...

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That's utter gibberish, MMFy. will get death threats from scouse words removed...like everyone remotely negative about them? - think about it. It's just rubbish, that.

Except it's not rubbish though. It's the Salman Rushdie scenario.

Gerrard received death threats from Liverpool fans when he was on the verge of moving to Chelsea.

Torres received death threats from Liverpool fans after his move to Chelsea.

Former owners Hicks & Gillett received death threats from Liverpool fans during the latter stages of their ownership.

Even Stanley Victor Collymore got death threats on twitter (on the day of the black country derby) for commenting on the Suarez racist row a few weeks ago.

****, eeeeeven the 'teenage fan responsible for Sunderland's infamous beach ball goal' received death threats from Liverpool fans.

These are all recent incidents. But you're probably right. I'm talking utter gibberish.

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Problem is this was era when scousers could do no wrong. Every time they were on tv you got 30 minutes coverage of the kop doing youll never walk alone , at half time Ian St John would telling us how all the liverpool players came up through the ranks - and were all loveable scousers.

i think some (well a lot) of liverpool fans beleived there own propaganda and were above the law - they were the loveable scousers - who broke all the rules - but were really just good lads at heat.

If there were two many fans in that terrace that afternoon, either two many tickets were printed, a good whack got in without tickets.

Yes the grounds are safer now, but the atmosphere is tepid compared to real football matches of 70, 80's

I remember when we played liverpool recently loads of em - were in the home end wearing colours - one in front of me. I very politley told him if we wanted to sit there take his f**n colours off - and shut the **** up ....

he asked a steward to be moved.

I loathe the **** with a passion

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There was an enquiry by Lord justice Taylor. That inquiry did NOT lay the blame on the football fans.

So really that should be the end of any argument(as opposed to discussion). But...surely there remain some 'difficult' questions. Why was it when Liverpool played at Hillsboro' this happened? I have only been there twice; once when we were promoted back to the First and I think there were more Villa fans than Sheffield fans that night (OWLS 0 - VILLA 4); it was not packed but a good boisterous atmosphere. The other time was in a League Cup replay v. Everton when it was rammed but no trouble. I only went to Anfield once c.1976 when we lost 2 -0 and was horrified at the way the Kop charged down onto the supporters below them; yet TV used to show it regularly - seemingly as evidence of Liverpool's wonderful support. So two of the worst tragedies relating to crowds involved Liverpool; surely there might be some correlation.

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I think the only correlation Veloman is that Liverpool were the biggest club at the time so had the most fans.

It could have been any large crowd from any team. Putting on a Liverpool kit doesn't make you want to crush your fellow supporters to death.

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Crowd control to PC Tom

Commencing kick off

TVs on

checking tickets

no dont bother just go through

this is crowd control

to pc tom

you've gone and closed the gates

and the chief just wants to know

what you're goin do

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Until Liverpool fans accept some blame then this will rumble on. There is clearly more than 1 party at fault. Problem is LFC supporters seem to think that none of the blame should come their way and this is why after all this time there is no closure to the issue.

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Until Liverpool fans accept some blame then this will rumble on. There is clearly more than 1 party at fault. Problem is LFC supporters seem to think that none of the blame should come their way and this is why after all this time there is no closure to the issue.

Fully agree

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They say they want justice, yet they aren't so interested in justice for the Juventus fans who died in Belgium. What they want is someone to blame, someone to point the finger at rather than accept their own hand in events that day. Yes the police made mistakes, no question. Would they have made those mistakes though if not for the actions of some Liverpool fans? No.

Liverpool fans had a history of doing what they did at Hillsborough that day and were reported to have done similar at the CL final a few years ago. Yet they continue to act like their actions that day had no impact on events when I think just about everyone else is capable of seeing the truth.

Sadly we saw only recently with the Evra incidents that Liverpool fans are incapable of independent thought, unable or unwilling to depart from the party line and incapable of admitting that anyone associated with their club could ever be at fault.

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Yes people drank, as they do now, yes some people are impatient or aggressive or try to get in for free. That's not what caused the disaster though.

usually ia gree with you but how can you say some of those liverpool fans are blamless? you cant blame the whole police on everything. if you have some idiots climbing gates without tickets how can you police such a huge number of people? yes police were to blame but some of teh liverpool fans are to blame too.

in addition i can confirm that about liverpool fans in istanbal. my friend worked as a steward that day and there was tonnes of liverpool fans trying to get in by climbing over barriers. lots got arrested but it wasnt highlighted in the news as they did not want it to effect liverpools amazing win. you think these idiots would ahve learnt from what happened on that tragic day? guess not

so i blame some of their fans as well as the police

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A few years back Villa played Liverpool at VP on the opening day of the season, I'm sure there were fans reports of the Liverpool fans without tickets forcing their way into the ground.

They've been doing it for years

Many of their fans are vermin

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