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hillsborough, the search for truth?

here we go

Think the fans and the police are both partly to blame. What gets me is sniverpool make out there fans were whiter than white that day.

Whoever was to blame, watching this programme is heartbreaking.

Definitely the police's fault. One person in particular.

If there is a crush occurring outside the stadium next to the turnstiles, who in their right mind opens a gate to allow those fans into the stadium carrying through the crush into a stadium with less escape routes?

If anything you close off the gates and turnstiles and the police should have gone through and forced them all back. If they were late to watch the game then so be it but don't just open a gate when the crush is already building outside. Common sense depicts its going to carry on through into the stadium with the rush which is only normal when watching matches because of the way the police channel you like a bunch of sheep.

Absolutely heartbreaking watching that and the families who lost loved ones. No one should ever lose their life going to watch a football match.

Definitely the police's fault. One person in particular.

yeah. the thousands of fans who turned up without tickets are completely blameless

I don't blame the family members of those that died searching for an explanation. I mean, their loved ones didn't come home from that game and that should never happen. The police should never have opened the gates, the fans without tickets shouldn't have rushed up late and I'm sure there are 1001 reasons that contributed to the disaster happening. Blaming one man is not the right thing to do.

Who is to say that if he hadn't opened those gates more people would have died being crushed against them? It's rarely considered that 96 did die that day but many more might have died if the gates hadn't been opened.

Definitely the police's fault. One person in particular.

yeah. the thousands of fans who turned up without tickets are completely blameless

Thousands of fans turn up at Wembley for every cup game without a ticket. That makes no difference. The police's management was the issue. They opened a gate to channel an already crushing crowd into an even smaller place.

Anyone with a brain could see that wouldn't end well. Its like trying to put too much water in a tub. When its full it will overflow. Thats exactly what happened that day and they just kept on letting them which in the end led to them overflowing and getting crushed and people having to climb over the fence or try to.

The year before the same game took place, not as many fans, but it was managed better with 3 ticket stops on the way. That year the police messed up entirely. I feel sorry for the young coppers who were just taking orders and trying to do their jobs. The orders they got from one man in particular were beyond retarded.

Liverpool fans are not to blame at all. If this happened to Cardiff City I'd be fuming. Senior police officers messed up big time, newspapers lied, there is a chance of a cover up. Good on them for fighting this for years.

I don't blame the family members of those that died searching for an explanation. I mean, their loved ones didn't come home from that game and that should never happen. The police should never have opened the gates, the fans without tickets shouldn't have rushed up late and I'm sure there are 1001 reasons that contributed to the disaster happening. Blaming one man is not the right thing to do.

Who is to say that if he hadn't opened those gates more people would have died being crushed against them? It's rarely considered that 96 did die that day but many more might have died if the gates hadn't been opened.

With proper management the crowd could have been filtered out but channelling a crush into a compact area is beyond retarded.

There was no management from the police on the day at all. Ask Duckenfield why. He didn't have a clue.

The same guy saw people spilling onto the pitch and passing out and struggling over to other stands and called back up and dog handlers thinking there was a pitch invasion. The same guy ignored cries for help. HE WAS COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT.

If this had happened to Cardiff City fans then I'd want the man put on trial. His lack of management and neglect in my opinion led to the death of many people.

Read this: http://www.contrast.org/hillsborough/history/cause.shtm

From the Taylor report.

1. The immediate cause of the Disaster was the failure to cut off access to the central pens once gate C had been opened. This caused the overcrowding which led to the Disaster.

An interesting account from a Forest fan on the CCMB.

I shall copy and paste it.


I went to this game with my Forest supporting dad so i feel i am in a position to comment on some of the points that are mentioned here ..... First off to say there was no alcohol involved is naive. Football and alcohol in the 70's and 80's went hand in hand...... the reports that have come out quite rightly point out that the injured and dead didn't have drink or had very little drink in them quite rightly so because they got to the ground early as most people did when terracing was around to get a good view........ but it wasn't these people that created the crush.... throughout the afternoon and the morning on the way up to Sheffield it was a party atmosphere and the pubs were packed and at various times throughout the day i saw numerous Forest and Liverpool fans in various states of drunkenness one Liverpool fan was asleep on a chair about 1pm and his mates had lined the contents of the pool table on him balancing perfectly that's how drunk he was, another forest fan was asleep outside a shop........... many younger lads were walking around carrying full crates of lager noticeable by the amount that were doing it..... so to say drink was not a factor somewhere down the line like i say is naive ...it is a factor but not a cause imo.
To say there was no trouble between the sets of fans again is completely untrue. The pub we were in was massive and had both fans mixing fine until something was said between two Liverpool fans.....typical incident that happens every Friday, Saturday night in every city again i can give this as an eye witness account as this was the first time i had seen a pub "go up" one fan knocks another's table of drinks over while drunk. Drunk man very apologetic. Drink goes all over mans wife/girlfriend and he wouldn't let it go grabs hold of drunk man by the throat forest fan steps in between giving it the " calm down lads we've all had a drink" routine he gets smacked by angry man... Forest fan sees forest fan get hit by scouser and then its every man for himself
Pool balls, chairs, tables, glasses the lot being thrown and smashed on people it was madness.... this may have been an isolated incident in some eyes but to read on here there was no trouble again is naive to say the least.
All the while in the pub before the game we were asked by mostly folk with scouse accents if we had tickets to sell....same on the way to the ground..i say mostly scouse as there was the odd Forest as well and there were reports of trouble at the city ground when tickets were on sale that scousers had travelled down to Nottingham to attempt to get tickets from forest so again for people to say that there was no ticketless fans is false. My cousin and his mates on their first outing on their own to a game as 15 year olds were relieved of their tickets not much after arriving in Sheffield by a scouser asking them "Do you need to buy tickets lads?", "No thanks mate we have ours" "lets see them" as old as "got the time on you wack" but equally as effective.

Liverpool fans have history of this. You only have to watch various programs glorifying "hooliganism" to see the scousers bragging that they would go across europe with out a ticket go to the game and get home with more money than they went with. Not only that Liverpool had previously come to the city ground on two occasions and removed the old West Bridgford stand metal gates off their hinges to gain free access to the ground the first being 1979/80 the next a few years later... They were still doing it in Istanbul when they got to the final recently trying to rush the gates so to say they have learnt their lesson is so far off the mark it is unbelievable.....
The pub we went to ment we had to walk behind the leppings lane end approx 15 mins before kick off to get to the Forest end the fans waiting to get in and it was noticeable by how packed it was there..... the amount of people milling about was unbelievable and the atmosphere was like nothing i had experience before or since it was as if you knew something was going to happen bit random but this stuck in my head as i remember my dad who never swore say "thank **** we aint got to go in there"............ Finally we got into the the ground and the game kicked off Liverpool hit the post and then their fans started milling onto the pitch..... again being a fan in the 80's fans on the pitch usually ment one thing...trouble and more importantly confusion even when the Liverpool fans were grabbing advertising boards from our end no one really knew what was going off cry's of wankers and so on............. until someone with a handheld radio said one dead..... then a silence just descended on our end as we couldn't believe what was happening before our eyes....helpless, scared, worried, angry, confused

..................the sound was unbelievable the only way i can describe it would be to be a few streets away from a riot screams, shouting but silence at the same time.......... and our journey home on the bus was done in silence just with the radio on describing what we had already seen......... i saw men crying that had probably not cried since they were at school..... pre mobile phones me and my dad had to then try and get in touch with my mum who had gone shopping and only found out what had happened when she was trying a skirt on in a shop and it came on the dressing room radio what had happened.....

Were the Police to blame? again they were a factor, they were unprepared with the amount of people in Sheffield that day....... i can only describe it being like recent world cup/European championship matches where you have the fans with the tickets but also fans there to watch on the big screens except there were no big screens in Sheffield that day so they headed for the ground. 80's policing was very much "treat them like the animals they are......" like i said something was going to happen either side of that gate because of the influx of people...... infact my old man said he finally wanted to go back a few years ago and asked me to go with him and that leppings lane end is still as i remember it, still a really weird angle that screams bottle neck...
Were the FA to blame? Should the game have been held at Hillsborough maybe, maybe not.
Somewhere down the line there has been a cover up by the police/government to protect certain people and i do think families like the ones mentioned by Sludge should certainly be compensated from which was a life changing experience for not just the individual but the individual's family as well.
I will say though that no matter whos fault it was there must be people who attended the memorials and discuss the justice for the 96 that went though that gate after the game had kicked off. I agree they would not have known what their actions were doing to the 100% innocent people who had brought a ticket and got to the game early for a good view and they did just want to see the game when they got to that tunnel, but they pushed whether they were at the front in the middle or at the back of that rush ticketless or not, drunk or sober....... they will be there slagging everyone off, the police and government, the FA, spouting justice and then go home and sit with their families without an ounce of guilt for what they were one of a main factor in an appalling waste and loss of life.
There must be people that knew they were outside when the game had kicked off and went in that middle tunnel, There must be mates who together did this.. groups of lads like you and me who go to every game together that did this and they know together that they were a factor that caused this. This wasn't a handful of people, this was a mass of people and i don't think i would be able to look any of my mates in the eyes if i knew i had done this. Very much like the policeman on the gate I really don't know how they can live with themselves.
Anyway i just thought i had to add to this thread as the feeling is still very raw as i witnessed what happened and the tit for tat between the police and the Liverpool fans leaves a bitter taste in my mouth..
Finally a special mention for the Sun newspaper anybody that read and believed what was wrote wants their head looking at.
Vile newspaper.

The police were officially held to blame for this.
the liverpool families are unhappy about the death verdict on their loved ones (accidental)
plus the fact that nobody (even the man held responsible) was prosecuted. ( he left the force with ill health)

The police are a shambles in some areas. west midlands springs to mind.went there a few years back when we met at an RV point, about 1-30pm then they held us there till 2-20pm then drove us in escort at 40mph arriving at the ground 5mins before KO. 13 BUS LOADS of fans trying to get through 4 turnstilles in 5 mins. a big crush developed and they had to open the gates and let us in.

who did they blame..........city fans without tickets.......???????? we were all in the escort from a RV point.

this is what happens week in week out.........poor policing.