1989, when it all changed
Friday, September 14, 2012 at 11:51PM Hillsborough
That era, the 80s, distorting the truth to protect themselves (the police, politicians, news agencies) all deflecting to aid their own agenda and callously avoiding responsibility - it was easy to do. For all of them, not a seconds thought to dissociate and detach blame. Our culture, within football and outside of it has changed. Almost unrecognisable in comparison. But then so much has in the past twenty years.
On the day its self, there was competence, lack of awareness and respect. No planning or organisation. No contingency. Just a blag and panic that led to chaos. How exactly were grounds inspected back then I don't know and hate to guess. You'd think having a clear understanding of what constitutes safety and what is potentially dangerous and life threatening would be imperative to having a handle on things. Then again, football fans were profiled mostly as trouble makers, cattle on the day. Get 'em in, get 'em out.
The police with their panic caused chaos. Crowd control in the way of rushing and searching blindly for a quick fix over actual crowd safety, even at the cost of fans not getting into the ground. The police had no clear idea of how to police it. The catalyst was devastating human error followed by further mistakes then compounded by conspiracy and cover ups by people in power with power to draft an untruth that was perpetuated by the tabloids.
It's staggering just how much manipulation was had. Football has become a safer environment since but again you have to ask why there was such a dismissive attitude towards that potential for disaster. Leppings Lane was notorious for over crowding. As witnessed in 1981 when Spurs played Wolves in the FA Cup semi-final. Thirty eight injured, hundreds climbing over the fencing and sitting on the pitch perimeter. Negligence cost the lives lost at Hillsborough in 1989. Could have been any club, any set of fans. Could have happened to us in 81.
Also, on the subject of one particular tabloid, I think (for very obvious reasons) they are the very public face of the perpetuated lie. They were used as a tool to aid the cover up and asked no questions because all they wanted to do is sell newspapers. Best they are just ignored. Different era, different people involved. If the government wanted to turn a blind eye than a Tory publication was always going to appease them. Make the ones at the heart of the lie accountable and bring them to justice. If there's any of them left.
Sadly, corruption is one human trait we'll never see the back of. It will continue to happen but perhaps, in football terms, it will never have the impact and repercussions that day in 1989 had. Football changed because of it. Shame the authorties perception of football fans didn't change earlier, long before that day.
Reader Comments (35)
Spurs were playing away to Wimbledon on the day of Hillsborough. My first visit to Plough Lane and a great atmosphere, memorable because the away support outnumbered the home. But then the thing that makes it a memory that will always be etched... I remember before half time, the news started buzzing round the spurs end that a wall had collapsed at Hillsborough and someone had been killed. Then rumours that Liverpool fans were on the pitch and were heading over to the Forest fans. No one knew what was really going on or could imagine scale of what was actually happening. The chinese whispers that circulated through the crowd were fanned by the confusing reports being passed on from the few spurs fans relaying what was being reported on their pocket radios. Then something I will never forget... spurs and wimbledon supporters joining together to sing anti-Liverpool songs during half-time, when an announcement came over the PA 'match abandoned due to crowd trouble'. Remember, this is only a few years after Heysel and with that still fresh in our minds everyone blamed Liverpool for getting English clubs banned from european competition. It was only til I got home and watched the pictures on the tv of the horror that the true picture came to light. Solidarity replaced bile and humanity overtook tribalism.
When Liverpool come to the lane this season I would love both teams to come onto the pitch while you'l never walk alone is played.
I think this would be a fitting way to pay respect to the 96.
Many years ago I was at WHL when Spurs hosted Sunderland. For whatever reason thousands of supporters forced their way in. Rumour has it 80,000 were in the ground that day and it was really lucky that no calamity a la Hillsboro occured. It was lucky that I was in front of a crash barrier (standing room only days) as I was a mere slip of a lad. So Hillsboro could have happened lots of times and I still think there is the potential today but it is less likely.
I actually have a lot to say about this subject and very sadly this is one of the few places where I can say what I feel and know. Two years ago, after having been working on miscarriage of justice claims for some time, I saw that there can be no miscarriage of justice without police malfeasance. I use this term, "police malfeasance", because corruption doesn't cover the whole story. As I started to research police malfeasance I was told by 99.9% of people; academics, professionals, ordinary people and known criminals, "This is dangerous work, you really do not want to do this."
All of my subsequent research (yes, I am a stubborn bastard) has shown in detail what Hillsborough has now graphically shown, indeed what many people already know. 164 witness statements doctored so that the evidence fits the story the police want to tell rather than the story of the crime. You will all hear how this is something of the past, something from a time not of our day, something that doesn't happen now. Bolloks. If it doesn't happen now then why has it taken 23 years to uncover? We have people in prison now who are innocent, the system will not release and who lie there rotting because of police malfeasance.
I know it is not exactly protocol to provide a link but here is just one case of a man in prison right now who the system will not release even though is innocence is beyond reasonable doubt. I am hoping Spooky will let this one through.
http://www.humanrightstv.com/innocence-inuk/simon-hall-innocent/simon-is-innocent&vpage=0
There is a more relevant point to this blog which I would make. I was at the 1882 gathering at WHL last night. At half time I went and asked the stewards why they were so insistent on getting the fans to sit down. After all, it was hardly in the spirit of the event etc., etc. They told me that complaints had been made by parents of children that the kids couldn't see because everyone was standing up. I then set about during the half time interval asking everyone I saw with a kid if they had complained and they all said they had not. They didn't just say this because a bizarre man was asking such a question and in the case of Richard, a Polish man with his wife and two young kids, he actually said, "No, this is why we brought them here, to experience a real football match and real fans. They are loving it."
Hillsborough is an absolute disgrace but do not think as football fans this is an exceptional set of circumstances, it absolutely is not, it is the standard approach. The standard approach is also that absolutely no-one will be prosecuted. The Director of Public Prosecutions will announce in time that it is not in the Public Interest to mount prosecutions and even if they do they will throw scapegoats into court.
However, what Hillsborough has shown is that we, the much maligned football fans, can bring the scumbags to account even if it takes 23 years. What it shows is that we are not powerless in the face of massive corruption and what it shows is that if we want to stand up then neither the stewards or the two police officers they brought in will ever stop us.
Sorry but if we start playing other teams songs when the opposition comes to the lane i will boo & i never boo my team.
When we play liverpool away we can pay respect but you'll never walk alone by NOT singing you'll never get a job for once but never ever do i want to hear that song played at White Hart Lane.
I Am Tottenham Till I Die & Tottenham only.
I have to agree,why on earth do we want to hear other teams songs at the Lane.By all means have teams come out fo the tunnel together but no way should we have their song played,it's ridiculous!!
I've got an idea, why don't we just all lube up, pull down our trousers, bend over and let the scousers have their way with us. While You'll Never Walk Alone is playing of course ...
went to semi finals/finals and replays in 81/82.if i remember i had tickets for only 2 of those games,the great ballot system
paid 5 quid at the gate and got in,wolves semi in 81 there would have been at least 5000 more people in there that day(scary but young at the time)
@David - yes, remember that Cup replay v Sunderland well. To make matters worse, they had police horses controlling entrance to old West Stand on the High Rd. Getting wedged under a nag's ringpiece and praying it hadn't had much lunch was longest couple of mins of my life.
The seemingly easy acceptance or unquestioning attitude or complicit response to such outrageous lies, by politicians, the FA, and the media shows how football fans, and by extension in those days, the “working class”, were regarded then. In order to understand how Hillsborough (as a disaster and the subsequent form/slander and content of cover up) could happen, one has to see the bigger political picture of the times. In football terms, Hillsborough could, as Spurs fans know have happened to any club's fans.
It should be remembered that in the 70s and 80s fans of many clubs sang YNWA. Though whether we should sing this at the Lane when LFC come a match day I don't think so, as it is clearly their song now. But some mark of respect for Hillsborough might be an idea.
Man Utd and Everton are taking Glory Glory and It's a grand old team too, which needs nipping in the bud.
Why does everything have to swing from one extreme of lies and distortion to the opposite end of the spectrum, without settling anywhere close to the truth (usually somewhere in the middle)? Anyone who went to games in the 70s and 80s knows that the police had barely disguised contempt for the supporters, but equally a significant element of trouble-makers and general yobs was present among the fans. I've no doubt that some Liverpool supporters behaved as badly as the Sun claimed in 1989, while the police equally certainly showed the incompetence which seems to be their hallmark as much today as in 1989 - why does the whole tragedy have to be slanted to paint all the fans at Hillsborough as martyrs and all the police as fascist pigs? Does anyone care about the truth anymore?
@Cheshuntboy There is some truth in what you say and it is completely wrong to try and say that all police are fascist pigs, such a statement is simply not true. However, you really are on the wrong side of the argument (in my opinion) at this time. You cannot have 96 deaths, a massive cover up with what are clearly criminal actions by some members of the police force and complicity by politicians and media and allow in any way the idea that those deaths were because of a football yob culture.
The fact is that the leadership in three police forces (the leadership not the bobby on the front line) took the decision to smear and dishonour the stone cold dead football fans by employing the stereotype of Liverpool yobs rather than accept responsibility for catastrophic management failure. If you are not outraged by this, if you are not concerned that the leadership at the highest level of the police force feel an impunity from the law then you are actually allowing a move towards the type of fascist police force you are saying is an illegitimate stereotype being applied to the police in this thread.
If any of you think this is a problem, just wait until the privitisation of the police force goes through and your beat booby is employed by a multi-national security firm. Just wait until that beat bobby's bonus is linked, as with parking wardens, to the number of tickets issued a week. What? You didn't know this is happening..... well there's a surprise!
I totally agree that the 'cover-up' was disgraceful, but the actual Hillsborough disaster was a combination of police incompetence and fans stupidity, in my opinion at least. I get sick of the way there can only be one acceptable view of so many events or situations these days (e.g. the 'Arab Spring', which we were all supposed to applaud, but is turning into the catastrophe some of us expected from the beginning), and the hand-wringing over Hillsborough is yet another example. Free speech seems to exist only theoretically in this country today, and that's why the 'Support Levy/AVB or find another club' brigade (to return to the subject of Spurs after my latest rant!) really get up my nose - only one view of the state of things at WHL is allowed apparently. Funny that people who proudly call themselves 'yids' and label other clubs as 'racist' are happy to follow the fascist lead on such a basic issue as free speech!
Everyone who is so anti You'll Never Walk Alone are clearly too young to remember when all fans used to sing it. In the early seventies the Park Lane used to sing it towards the end of a game win or lose with scarves proudly held aloft. We also used to sing I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, although admittedly with altered words ;-)
Good article Spooky. Spurs fans had our own brush with disaster in 1981 at the same end but we were lucky. Could have been us just as easily as it was Liverpool who had the disaster. Could you speak to some of your mates over here please Spooky:
http://www.glory-glory.co.uk/showthread.php?473-What-Is-It-About-Liverpool
Some of the filth in that thread is beyond words and the worst offenders seem to be your mates in the Levy fan club. You might not think it matters but people read that bile blaming Liverpool fans for Hillsborough and some of it rubs off on THFC and Levy and Spurs supporters. The world has moved on. Liverpool fans have been vindicated. Time to put the sharp words away. You did it. Tell your mates to do the same. It is in the best interests of the club.
I'm with you all the way Cheshunt Boy. The black and white "If you are not....then you must be...." is fucked up thinking and is the bedrock of fascism, regardless of whether it comes from right wingers, left wingers, libertarians, nationalists, islamists, zionists, football fans or anyone else for that matter.
i was at plough lane that day, a cracking day, sunny, we played well (Paul Stewart scored?), in a run of 7 wins out of 8 or something like that, masses of spurs and much singing about fashanu's lack of birth certificate. only when got on train afterwards and spoke to fans of other clubs did we begin to put the hillsborough story together, a very sad and chilling day. remember Des on MOTD as well saying "It's been a black day for football".
i wouldnt sing YNWA though, but for once we could lay off the liverpool slums/never get a job songs.
Isn't Jack just full of himself?
I'm getting a little bit sick of the campaign of justice for the 69, what about justice for the 39 Italians the Liverpool fans killed a few years before?
And on this subject the amount of other Spurs fans posting blogs about how it could have been 'us'. It's sickening, trying to cash in on a disaster that happened to other families. spurs' class showing through once again.
Comparing innocents with hooligans?
I'm completely baffled by your 'innocents/hooligans' question - yobbery was the curse of football in the 70s and 80s, as Spurs fans in Rotterdam in '74 and Liverpool fans in Brussels in '85 (among numerous other examples) amply demonstrated. The deaths at Heysel and Hillsborough were tragic, but are the dead automatically to be sanctified as 'innocent', in the same way every squaddie unlucky enough to step on an Afghan mine becomes a 'hero'? When is the epidemic of 'emoting', as publicly and protractedly as possible ever going to end?
Cheshuntboy agree 100%. The media and the culture in this country has reinvented hypocracy, what happened was disagraceful but nothing is 1 or 0, right or wrong it's varying degrees and numbers of attributory factors.
I remember when Diana died - days before everyone was slagging her off and then the same people had a change of heart and decided she was untouchable.
BTW - You'll never walk alone used to be a football anthem and wasn't unique to Liverpool.
Mind the gap lads
Another season, another desperate cry to be seen. Ah bless the broken children of Woolwich, dismissing their bin bangs until the time is right.
Cheshuntboy, what has an incident at Hillsborough got to do with anything else aside from other similar incidents in Leppings Lane where the police and authorities got lucky?
In terms of innocence this is completely to do with the fact back then there was no common sense used in controlling the masses - that's it. Everything else is pretty much redundant. Heysel was something altogether different. What's the relevance to Hillsborough?
BTW - You'll never walk alone used to be a football anthem and wasn't unique to Liverpool.
Sep 15, 2012 at 8:31 PM | DD
Did it start with Celtic?
Worth also noting, I didn't mention Liverpool in the article.
I don't like Liverpool that much, not fond of their supporters either. The point of the article wasn't Liverpool.
DD - there was a fascinating programme on BBC4 recently about British aircraft in the post-war years, including film from the Farnborough Air Show of 1952, in which a prototype fighter crashed, killing 26 spectators and injuring many more. While the injured and dead were being tended to, the next plane took off and the display continued (and 140,000 people attended the next day). What a contrast with today, in which motorways are closed for hours for the police to deal with minor accidents, and football matches are indefinitely suspended rather than remove injured players from the pitch. I'm not saying the stiff upper lip approach of the old days was better (well, I am, to be honest about it), but why swing from one extreme to the other? Common sense has died, killed by political correctness, of which the Hillsborough emote-fest is just the latest example.
If you had lost someone in an accident or incident and were told in no uncertain terms they deserved to die / it was their fault and you knew differently, you'd what? Shrug and whistle 'that's life?'
Yes, Liverpool fans are generally over the top with everything (as witnessed with the recent racism controversy) but in the same way people hate on their emote-fest the same can be said about the constant victims heckling sent back their way.
Spooky - The point I've trying to make, obviously without success, is that branding the Liverpool supporters as drunken yobs, as the Sun did in 1989, was wrong, and labelling them as martyrs 23 years later is equally wrong, but more acceptable in the soft, fluffy, be nice to AVB world we find ourselves in today. Probably at least some of the Hillsborough dead were indeed thoroughly good people, but some equally probably were indeed as yobbish as the Sun painted them - all I'd like is for a bit of simple honesty, but that's about as rare today as a good decision by Daniel Levy.
Whether people were good or bad in terms of their history is hardly relevant to being crushed to death because nobody back then really gave two shits. Just because some football fans were trouble makers didn't mean the way to generally treat all of them like dirt. Did Thatcher want to implement ID cards at the time? Society was just a little backwards going forwards at the time. Ugly.
As for the martyrs - after more than 20 years searching for closure I think it's rich to have a dig at people who lost family and friends in there. Sure, everyone needs to move on once this is finally concluded. If this had happened to Spurs I'm not really sure you'd have the same attitude.
As for this supposedly 'be nice to AVB' thing - are we back to the two groups argument again? Really? I'm bored of the dance and if I dare even consider defending him everyone is going to come out the wood work to tag me as an apologist again. Find it a touch ironic that a fair few people haven't said a word in past week. I guess they're waiting to pounce after tomorrow.
Hillsborough was a long time coming. It was never a question of if, just when,where and how many? Anyone who ever stood on a football terrace between 1970 and 1989 will tell you their" heart in their mouth" and " I thought I had my lot" stories. This is why the tragic events of 23 years ago resonated with all football fans. The authorities that day lost control. At best, it was criminal negligence and several people should have been held accountable for their ineptitude. Now after nearly two and a half decades, we can add intent to pervert the cause of justice to the list of offences. If Mr Cameron's apology has any sincerity. The D.P.P will pursue the appropriate parties to the high court.
We are Tottenham Hotspur, we walk out onto the pitch to our own songs as we write our own history.
P.S A gooner calling themselves "brilliant". What next? "intelligent ?" "human ?" "bi-ped ?" You gotta laugh !!!
Spooky - My comments were based on half remembered conversations from the pub ten years ago. I think you'll never walk alone was first sung at LIverpool but they were sung but other teams at varying times such as Celtic, Spurs (50's or 60's) and the one I am not sure I believe was that Everton fans sung them too for a while! So I quite ironic that people say they will boo a piece of music that was once sung by the fans.
PS I listened to the Spurs Show last night and apparently the reason McNamara's Band was no longer played out when the players first came because they lost the record or the last stadium announcer had knicked it. Both McNamara's Band and You;ll never walk alone were written or composed in 1945...
Spooky - we've both got better things to do but I really have to respond to your last post. I am not 'having a dig' at the Hillsborough dead, but reacting to the OTT coverage the events of more than 20 years ago are currently receiving. The police cover-up was disgusting, but the actual events were entirely predictable, as anyone who attended matches in that era can testify. Pushing and shoving to get in and out of grounds were everyday occurences, and many 'fans' clearly enjoyed the chance for a bit of low level yobbery, our own Shelf being a prime location for that sort of anti-social and downright dangerous behaviour, as I can testify. The 96 who died may not have been guilty of pushing and shoving (which even I concede are not capital offences) but hundreds behind them were, and though police incompetence was a major factor in the disaster, some personal responsibility on the part of the fans is also required. We don't die anymore, we 'pass away' and then we're 'laid to rest', instead of being buried - can't anyone face the truth about people and events anymore?
Re @ Peregrine St Clair and @ Cheshuntboy. I see what your are saying and can see the perspective you bring. Maybe it all just shows at the end of the day that this is a really complex issue but at least we are all putting our views in and maybe even listening to each other.
@ledders Well spotted mate, maybe I am too full of myself, we all have our cross to bear. Will try to let it out a bit.
Cheshuntboy - that's fine. Liverpool fans turning up with no tickets, chaos outside because of the sheer number of fans. I see that.
The media thing is part of the process surely? Because what else do people have to hold onto when they're not getting answers? The blame was firmly placed on the fans. You're probably entitled to be emotive about it in defending what you believe to be the truth - which is what they did. And sure, if there is responsibility to be had with the fans - thanks to the authorities they've lost any chance of that because they lied and side stepped accountability.
I see where you're coming from, I do.
Supporters got away with a lot back in those days, more so in the years before.