Right let's get this clear, i'm dubious about this thread....but here goes.. Let's try and keep it civil, and not jump to conclusions. Former PM Margaret Thatcher was told a senior Merseyside police officer blamed "drunken Liverpool fans" for causing the Hillsborough disaster, confidential government documents have revealed. The BBC has seen leaked briefings about Britain's worst sports tragedy. Ninety-six football fans died after a crush on overcrowded terraces at an FA Cup Semi Final in April 1989. The official inquiry said the disaster was caused by the failure in crowd control by South Yorkshire Police. Letters to and from 10 Downing Street and cabinet minutes that show what Mrs, now Lady, Thatcher was discussing and being told behind the scenes have been made public for the first time by BBC Radio 4's The World at One. For years, the families of those who died have been calling for the release of secret government and police papers relating to the disaster. The government has agreed that this will happen. The Hillsborough Independent Panel, set up in 2009, is reviewing hundreds of documents but they are not expected to be made available to the families of those who died or to the wider public until later this year. It is thought there will be thousands of pages to sift through. The most controversial issue in the papers that the BBC has seen relates to what Mrs Thatcher was being told about the views of some senior members of the Merseyside Police Force. 'Deeply ashamed' They are contained in a letter sent to the prime minister from a member of her policy unit in Downing Street. Four days after the disaster, the adviser attended a long planned meeting with the Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, the late Sir Kenneth Oxford, and some of his senior colleagues. It is important to bear in mind that this was written just days after the Hillsborough disaster and the views of the chief constable and those of his senior officers may well have changed over the subsequent weeks. According to the letter, the Merseyside chief constable said: "A key factor in causing the disaster was the fact that large numbers of Liverpool fans had turned up without tickets. "This was getting lost sight of in attempts to blame the police, the football authorities, etc." The prime minister was informed that a senior member of the Merseyside Police directly blamed supporters: "One officer, born and bred in Liverpool, said that he was deeply ashamed to say that it was drunken Liverpool fans who had caused this disaster, just as they had caused the deaths at Heysel." This officer is not named. Hundreds were injured and 39 supporters died when rioting Liverpool fans charged Juventus fans before the 1985 European Cup Final at the Heysel stadium on 29 May 1985. It led to a blanket ban of English clubs from European competition for five years. More of the views of the chief constable are also referred to: "He deplored the press's morbid concentration on pictures of bodies. He was also uneasy about the way in which Anfield was being turned into a shrine." Direct to Downing Street There is nothing in the documents the BBC has seen about any briefings from South Yorkshire Police. It is possible more will become known about that when many other confidential papers are officially released in a few months time. The government has promised to release files relating to Margaret Thatcher and Hillsborough Instead, we have learnt about the controversial views of some of Liverpool's own senior police officers and how, just days after the disaster, they were being passed on directly to 10 Downing Street and to Mrs Thatcher. Other Downing Street papers seen by the BBC provide an insight into what the prime minister was saying and discussing with her cabinet colleagues in the days after Hillsborough. The main issue of discussion contained in these documents was the effect the disaster was going to have on controversial legislation aimed at controlling the behaviour of football fans. The Football Spectators' Bill was already going through Parliament. The government was determined to continue with it, in order to introduce a national membership scheme for the sport. This would have brought in what were dubbed as identity cards for football fans. According to the conclusions of the first cabinet meeting to take place after the disaster, Mrs Thatcher told her ministers that the situation on crowd safety and hooliganism at football matches "cried out for action". The government wanted the legislation to be passed in time for the following year's World Cup finals in Italy - to reduce the prospect of crowd trouble. The meeting also discussed using it to bring in any interim recommendations from the Hillsborough Inquiry. 'Gravest matter' In another meeting with senior cabinet colleagues which took place on the same day, the prime minister said: "To abstain from taking action… would be the gravest possible matter, now that the need for this action had been so conclusively demonstrated." Five days later, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd met the man conducting the official inquiry into Hillsborough, Lord Justice Taylor. A letter written by a civil servant at the Home Office says Mr Hurd told the judge about the government's proposed new timetable to get the football spectators' legislation passed by Parliament. He then asked Lord Justice Taylor what he would say if the government went ahead with this and then asked "…whether he was really quite sure that it was out of the question to form and express a view on the subject of membership cards in the three and a half months… between the start of the inquiry… and the end of August?" According to the letter, Lord Justice Taylor told him that "this was possible, but he was not confident that it could be achieved". He said his priority was establishing the facts of what had happened at Hillsborough and could not promise to come up with any recommendations on membership cards in time to fit in with the government's political schedule. The prime minister was told what had happened in a briefing note from her principal private secretary, who informed her: "Lord Justice Taylor was distinctly unhelpful." In the end, the government did press ahead with its plans and the law was passed. However, the following year, in his report, Lord Justice Taylor said he had "grave doubts" about the feasibility of football membership cards and "serious misgivings" about the scheme's likely impact on safety. As a result of his concerns, the government dropped the scheme and it was never implemented.
This will be worth watching as there has been some misleading information about this event. The Liverpool fans successfully manipulated public opinion against the authorities via the sympathy vote. The Sun ran several reports immediately after the incident based on eye witness accounts and was vilified by Liverpol and was even banned from being sold in the city. When they eventually won the cup at Wembley with the safety fences removed several of the fans ran onto the pitch to celebrate. It was the flattest most morbid cup final in history.
A real can of worms being opened here ! My dislike of South Yorkshire Police has been born out of many visits to Barnsley and Sheffield supporting the lads, but Liverpool fans have always played the victim card and gone for the sympathy vote in this matter despite having been at least partly responsible for the disaster. It irks me that they've never admitted any liability for any of it ! I've no doubt someone will now come on and slag me off for saying that !
To me its like an airline disaster. Its very rare for their to be a death at a football (like its rare a plane crashes) match let alone several. For it to happen many events have to take place to cause the disaster. I don't think 1 person or set of persons is to blame alone. There should be transparancy about what happened on the day so the families of the people that died know the truth.
The authorities or police refused to accept blame. They tried to pin it on the Liverpool fans instead of accepting it was their failure to react under pressure and make decisions in the heat of the moment that killed 96 people. There were senior officers editing statements from younger police officers because they had said that the police were disorganised. If you had read the official report on the disaster, the police are pinned as the official reason 96 people died. For me thats why people are angry, because they refused to accept blame and tried to smear Liverpool supporters with the aid of The S*n Newspaper. The truth is coming out slowly. Plus people peddle myths like "fans turned up ticketless" when the official report has stated that the stand was not even at its full capacity when the disaster happened. These type of myths should not be around 23 years later, people should've educated themselves about the disaster a long time ago, instead of peddling untruths and circulating them so more people can hear and repeat them.
They dont want to mate,they'd sooner follow the myth like lemmings the way the establishment of the day planned it to be. Mission accomplished.
Aye possibly marra but if thousands of you lot hd not turned up without tickets the crush in Leppings Lane would never possibly have happened. So what's the excuse at Hysel?
Its already been established and documented that ticketless fans were'nt to blame(even the South Yorkshire police admit this),no matter what you or i say the Taylor report and the released government and police documents are all that matter. And we cant wait for it to all come out,consider if as you and many others think we(the supporters)were to blame,would we be campaigning to get get the truth if it was going to go against us? As for the OP,the then chief constable of Merseyside(Kenneth Oxford)who was nowhere near Hillsborough on the day and was purely giving his personal opinion blamed Liverpool supporters for it two days after the disaster happened without evidence to back his words up. It took Lord Justice Taylor 9 months of total investigation in all aspects and possibilities as to why it happened and showed Oxford,S Y police,The S*n(amongst others),the Thatcher government all to be wrong in their blanket blame of LFC supporters. Heysel was down to hooliganism and nobody i know tries to say otherwise,but the way you combine the two in your comment shows you only want to believe the hype and not the truth. Report findings In his interim report on 4 August 1989, Lord Justice Taylor wrote that the key element of police control at fault was the failure to close off the tunnel leading to pens 3 and 4 once Gate C had been opened. He went on to criticise police for their failure to handle the build-up of fans outside the ground properly, and their slow reaction to the unfolding disaster. Some of his strongest words were reserved for the police commander, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, for "failing to take effective control", and South Yorkshire police, who attempted to blame supporters for the crush by arriving at the ground "late and drunk". http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7992845.stm Knock yourself out.
The fact remains that if an entrance is full it is full. Supporters kept pushing and pushing. I have had personal experience of the last minute tactic at York City at a previous cup game where visiting supporters actually broke gates down ten minutes before KO so rush was not necessary - if you had a ticket.
So you dont like facts getting in the way of your own pre-ordained opinion about what really happened. On the day of the day of the disaster there was severe congestion on the M62 due to roadworks,a request to South Yorkshire police and the FA to delay the kick off was made by police forces in Lancashire and West Yorkshire which was denied by both parties so a convoy of LFC supporters in cars and coaches got to Sheffield late all at once. Subsequently thousands of supporters arrived at the ground and joined the already large queues to get through a few turnstiles that could'nt cope with the numbers and some supporters were pinned against the wall in the queue by police on horses. A decision by the police officer in charge(David Duckenfield)who could see from his control box inside the ground that the central terrace behind the Leppings Lane goal was full refused his men on the inside of the ground permission to open the gates to the terraces to the left and right which were not full. He then knowing that the only entrance on to the terraces from the turnstiles was a tunnel 8ft wide told his men on the outside of the turnstiles to open the gates,which meant that thousands of supporters entered the tunnel not knowing that the terrace at the other end of it was already full to capacity due to Duckenfield not opening the side terrace gates. Theres plenty of evidence on the web of supporters from other clubs supporters that had played a semi-final at Hillsborough that felt that the South Yorkshire police policy of causing overcrowding the central Leppings Lane terracing pen while leaving the left and right terracing 'undercrowded' could have caused their deaths just as easily because they'd experienced it first hand. 123. As already mentioned, there was crushing at the Cup semi-final in 1981. The match was between Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers. The police debriefing minutes after the incident prophetically refer, âto the late arrival of a large number of spectators who were still waiting to enter the Leppings Lane enclosure when the match started. The flash point occurred when Tottenham scoredâ (at the Kop end) âafter only three minutes. The spectators just entering pushed forward to see what was happening and caused a crush, which resulted in the injuriesâ. but its your right to your opinion that matters mate,shame your wrong but thats life.
