PhilScraton
29th March 2009, 03:51 PM
Part 2
Hillsborough football stadium disaster: a fight for justice and wounds that never heal
Phil Scraton
In the immediate aftermath Lord Justice Taylor was appointed to 'inquire into the events at Sheffield Wednesday football ground on April 15, 1989, and to make recommendations about the needs of crowd control and safety at sports events.' On May 15, a month after the disaster, at Sheffield's town hall, the Taylor Inquiry hearings opened. The West Midlands police investigation had been gathering evidence since April 24 – 2,666 phone calls were evaluated by West Midlands officers, who eventually took 3,776 statements.
On August 1, 1989, less than four months after the disaster, Taylor published his interim report. For those expecting the South Yorkshire police to be vindicated, his findings were stunning. He established that the immediate cause of the disaster was the police failure to cut off access to the central pens once Gate C had been opened. Effectively, this caused the overcrowding which, in turn, caused the deaths and injuries. Lack of leadership, together with the restricted size and small number of perimeter fence gates, hampered the rescue.
Taylor considered that the dangerous congestion at the turnstiles should have been anticipated. While accepting that there was a minority of fans the worse for drink, Taylor found that 'hooliganism' played no part in the disaster. Yet, the 'fear of hooliganism' led to an undue 'influence on the strategy of the police' creating an 'imbalance between the need to quell a minority of troublemakers and the need to secure the safety and comfort of the majority'. The 'real cause' of the disaster 'was overcrowding'; the 'main reason… was the failure of police control'.
Taylor went on to castigate senior officers. He was emphatic that once Duckenfield acceded to the request to open Gate C, the tunnel should have been closed. Worse still, Duckenfield 'gave Mr Kelly and others to think that there had been an inrush due to fans forcing open a gate.' Taylor continued, 'This was not only untruthful', but 'set off a widely reported allegation against the supporters which caused grave offence and distress.'
Taylor concluded that Duckenfield had failed 'to take effective control of the disaster situation. He froze.' He also recognised that there had been a police-led campaign of vilification against Liverpool fans. Listing the allegations published in the Sun he concluded, 'not a single witness' supported any of them.
At the end of November 1989 the South Yorkshire Chief Constable, Peter Wright, and his Police Authority offered 'to open negotiations with the aim of resolving all bona fide claims against him for compensation arising out of the Hillsborough disaster.'
Eventually, over several years, out-of-court settlements led to compensation payments. By early 1998 there had been 36 settlements for loss of financial dependency, 50 fatal claims (restricted to funeral expenses and/or statutory bereavement payments) and 1,035 personal injury claims.
Yet families sought answers to the specific circumstances of the deaths of their loved ones. The failure to identify and respond to the protracted crush in the pens coupled with the lack of immediate medical aid to the dying raised serious questions over whether more lives could have been saved. That resuscitation was successful in some cases, that some placed with the dead actually recovered, left lingering doubts about the adequacy of much of the spontaneous treatment.
Added to this, cursory examinations, often no more than feeling for a pulse, were conducted in the heat of the moment by inexperienced, non- medical people. With certainty of death often so difficult to establish in asphyxiated victims, the deeply disturbing possibility remained: that some people were taken into the gymnasium, laid out on the floor, their faces covered by clothes and bin-liners, solely on the assumption of death.
There was an expectation within the families' lawyers that specific circumstances, particularly relating to appropriate medical care and attention, would be unveiled and cross-examined at the inquests. Between November 1990 and March 28, 1991, the inquests took place at Sheffield's town hall. Evidence was heard from 230 witnesses, and were the longest inquests in history.
On the evening of the disaster, the coroner, Dr Stefan Popper, took the unprecedented decision to record the blood alcohol levels of all who died, including children. This was portrayed as further confirmation that drunkenness was a primary cause. It implied that fans had contributed to their own deaths and to the deaths of others.
At the inquests Popper announced that while evidence would be extensive, there would be no consideration of events after 3.15pm on April 15. He reflected that the 'damage that caused [each] death was due to crushing', that 'each individual death' was 'in exactly the same situation', that once 'real damage' had occurred, each individual was beyond help or rescue. In other words, all of those who died would have received fatal injuries by 3.15. He concluded: 'The fact that the person may survive an injury for a number of… hours or even days, is not the question which I as a coroner have to consider.'
The only conclusion to be drawn from Popper's ruling was that those who died did so regardless of medical attention received or denied. Equally, by this logic, those who lived did so regardless of medical attention.
Within days a tide of allegations accompanied the inquests. Again the newspapers had a field day, as fans were portrayed as drunk and violent. The police again claimed it had been an orchestrated attempt to create mayhem outside the ground to force mass entry. Officers spoke of the 'unruly' behaviour of fans, their unacceptable and insulting responses, and their wilful rejection of reasonable police requests.
A typical police statement concluded, 'the overall demeanour of the crowd was… quite evil'. One officer had 'never seen [such] a quantity of a crowd in possession of drink'; another considered it was 'as if everyone had delayed the time that they were coming to the ground and all decided to come later.'
Lord Justice Taylor had already rejected these allegations yet his findings were now in question. Survivors were cross-examined at the inquests by multiple lawyers representing different police interests and working as a team, coordinating cross-examination. This was in marked contrast to the cross-examination of police witnesses when one barrister represented the interests of 43 families.
Survivors who gave evidence felt they were blamed for the disaster, that they were 'on trial'. 'They didn't know what I'd been through,' one said. 'I'd lost someone dear to me, fought to survive and others died around me. People died before my eyes and no one helped. It was chaos and I know some could have been saved. They didn't want to know at the inquest. No questions about the first aid on the pitch, about carrying people on hoardings, about the police in the gymnasium. They didn't want to know.'
On March 28, 1991, after a long deliberation the jury reached a majority verdict on all who died at Hillsborough: 'accidental death'. Bereaved families, survivors and witnesses, exhausted from the months of travelling, listening and waiting, broke down and cried.
The optimism following the Taylor Report had evaporated. The Director of Public Prosecutions had already ruled out private prosecutions against the police. Eddie Spearritt, who survived the disaster while his 14-year-old son Adam died, commented, 'It was as if every door was closing on us. To tell the truth I didn't expect anything else. It was too big an issue, too many top people, too much to lose.'
Yet, the families' tenacious campaign for justice continued, individually and collectively. Anne Williams, whose son Kevin died at Hillsborough, has campaigned for two decades following disclosure that a Special Police Constable suggested Kevin was alive at 4pm and had mumbled, 'Mum'. Another officer stated that after 3.15pm, while attempting to resuscitate Kevin on the pitch, he located a pulse and Kevin convulsed. As Anne Williams has argued consistently and tirelessly, the case for due consideration of the evidence and medical opinions concerning Kevin's death was, and remains, compelling. Having exhausted all domestic legal remedies, her case was submitted to the European Court of Human Rights on August 12, 2006. She is still awaiting a response.
After more than a decade, a private prosecution brought by the families against Duckenfield and his assistant, Bernard Murray, finally came to court in 2000. The fact that the trial lasted seven weeks seemed to show there was a case to answer. Yet the trial judge's direction of the jury, the failure to reach a verdict on Duckenfield and the acquittal of Murray brought dismay.
Families felt that, in directing that a guilty verdict would send the 'wrong message… to those who have to act in an emergency of this kind', the judge confused the actual circumstances of the case against the officers with broader policy implications of a guilty verdict.
Given that the jury requested guidance from the judge, Doreen Jones considers his comments 'daunting and seemingly impossible to overcome'. Peter Joynes, whose 27-year-old son Nick died at Hillsborough, remains astounded that, 'given all the evidence, it's impossible to believe or bear' that '20 years on no one is held responsible for one of sport's biggest disasters'.
The campaign on Merseyside against the Sun and its former editor Kelvin MacKenzie continues. In July 2004, after securing an interview with Liverpool-born Wayne Rooney, at the time an Everton player, the Sun published an editorial stating that its coverage of Hillsborough had been the 'most terrible mistake in its history'.
Indeed, soon after the disaster the Press Council described the Sun's front page as 'insensitive, provocative and unwarranted'. The newspaper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, was contrite – the coverage had been 'uncaring and deeply offensive to relatives of the victims'. On radio MacKenzie accepted that 'with hindsight… most of the newspaper coverage of Hillsborough had been a mistake.' It was assumed that MacKenzie had been instructed by Murdoch to make a statement as the Sun had lost nearly 40 per cent of its regional circulation, which has never recovered. In November 2006, speaking at a business lunch in Newcastle, MacKenzie reportedly stated, 'All I did wrong there was tell the truth. There was a surge of Liverpool fans who had been drinking and that is what caused the disaster. I went on World at One the next day and apologised. I only did that because Rupert Murdoch told me to. I wasn't sorry then and I'm not sorry now.'
On January 7, 2007, Liverpool played Arsenal in an FA Cup game at Anfield. The BBC broadcast the game at peak viewing time. Agreed by the club, the Liverpool fans' group Reclaim the Kop organised a protest directed at MacKenzie and the BBC for employing him as a presenter. At the kick-off the entire Kop, approximately 12,000 fans, held a mosaic above their heads in red and white. It spelt the truth. For six minutes, precisely the length of time played at Hillsborough before the match was abandoned, the Kop chanted 'Justice for the 96'.
Jenni Hicks, whose two teenage daughters Sarah and Victoria died, regrets that 'after all that has been established it is that one deceitful article in the Sun that's remembered – that's the myth that's believed.'
It is a myth that was supported by South Yorkshire Police. It is clear that major questions remain about the adequacy of the investigations and inquiries and the accountability of the police at the highest level. On the day of the tragedy, officers were instructed not to make entries in pocketbooks but submit handwritten 'recollections' to a team of senior officers. Working with police solicitors, the team administered a process of 'review and alteration'. Officers were taken for a drink by a chief superintendent who said, 'Unless we get our heads together and straighten this out, there are heads going to roll.' The transformation of officers' recollections into evidential statements, with sentences and passages significantly changed, was known and accepted by the West Midlands Police investigators, the coroner, Lord Justice Taylor and the Home Office.
Experiencing a disaster on the scale of Hillsborough, through bereavement or survival or both, generates mixed, deeply felt emotions of loss, anger, guilt, failure, inadequacy.
Coping should not be confused with recovering. Doreen Jones, 'just a mum who tried desperately to get some kind of justice for Rick and Trace and all the victims of Hillsborough', has 'no desire to be seen as a sad or angry person… I get on with my life'. But 'how are you supposed to feel when it all gets raked up? I have a smouldering anger, we all have it, you only have to scratch the surface and I erupt. It shouldn't be like this, I should be able to mourn.'
As Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James died, states, 'They took away our children and they took away our grandchildren, what they would have become… you can't stop that hurt or that anger.'
Dolores Steele feels that the loss of her 15-year-old son Philip is a constant. Yet 'you learn to live a different life',accommodating but not recovering from grief. She states, 'The authorities all thought we were after money, big claims, but all we wanted was the truth and for someone to say, "We made a terrible mistake, 96 died and we are sorry." And it never came.'
Peter Joynes considers that families are 'pushed towards "getting over it" or "building a new life" while we have been through the pain barrier so many times and we continually hope that one day someone will stand up and admit their mistakes.'
Sue Roberts, whose 24-year-old brother Graham died, also emphasises lack of acknowledgement and its consequences for families: 'Personally, I'm just upset that so many parents and other family members are passing away without ever having had an apology or any other form of justice. The names of our loved ones remain tarnished, with some members of the public still believing it was other fans that caused their deaths. The insight we've had over the past 20 years into the cover-ups that have gone on is appalling and still needs addressing. They say time heals… but in our case, it hasn't.'
Adapted from the new edition of Phil Scraton's book 'Hillsborough: The Truth'
Hillsborough football stadium disaster: a fight for justice and wounds that never heal
Phil Scraton
In the immediate aftermath Lord Justice Taylor was appointed to 'inquire into the events at Sheffield Wednesday football ground on April 15, 1989, and to make recommendations about the needs of crowd control and safety at sports events.' On May 15, a month after the disaster, at Sheffield's town hall, the Taylor Inquiry hearings opened. The West Midlands police investigation had been gathering evidence since April 24 – 2,666 phone calls were evaluated by West Midlands officers, who eventually took 3,776 statements.
On August 1, 1989, less than four months after the disaster, Taylor published his interim report. For those expecting the South Yorkshire police to be vindicated, his findings were stunning. He established that the immediate cause of the disaster was the police failure to cut off access to the central pens once Gate C had been opened. Effectively, this caused the overcrowding which, in turn, caused the deaths and injuries. Lack of leadership, together with the restricted size and small number of perimeter fence gates, hampered the rescue.
Taylor considered that the dangerous congestion at the turnstiles should have been anticipated. While accepting that there was a minority of fans the worse for drink, Taylor found that 'hooliganism' played no part in the disaster. Yet, the 'fear of hooliganism' led to an undue 'influence on the strategy of the police' creating an 'imbalance between the need to quell a minority of troublemakers and the need to secure the safety and comfort of the majority'. The 'real cause' of the disaster 'was overcrowding'; the 'main reason… was the failure of police control'.
Taylor went on to castigate senior officers. He was emphatic that once Duckenfield acceded to the request to open Gate C, the tunnel should have been closed. Worse still, Duckenfield 'gave Mr Kelly and others to think that there had been an inrush due to fans forcing open a gate.' Taylor continued, 'This was not only untruthful', but 'set off a widely reported allegation against the supporters which caused grave offence and distress.'
Taylor concluded that Duckenfield had failed 'to take effective control of the disaster situation. He froze.' He also recognised that there had been a police-led campaign of vilification against Liverpool fans. Listing the allegations published in the Sun he concluded, 'not a single witness' supported any of them.
At the end of November 1989 the South Yorkshire Chief Constable, Peter Wright, and his Police Authority offered 'to open negotiations with the aim of resolving all bona fide claims against him for compensation arising out of the Hillsborough disaster.'
Eventually, over several years, out-of-court settlements led to compensation payments. By early 1998 there had been 36 settlements for loss of financial dependency, 50 fatal claims (restricted to funeral expenses and/or statutory bereavement payments) and 1,035 personal injury claims.
Yet families sought answers to the specific circumstances of the deaths of their loved ones. The failure to identify and respond to the protracted crush in the pens coupled with the lack of immediate medical aid to the dying raised serious questions over whether more lives could have been saved. That resuscitation was successful in some cases, that some placed with the dead actually recovered, left lingering doubts about the adequacy of much of the spontaneous treatment.
Added to this, cursory examinations, often no more than feeling for a pulse, were conducted in the heat of the moment by inexperienced, non- medical people. With certainty of death often so difficult to establish in asphyxiated victims, the deeply disturbing possibility remained: that some people were taken into the gymnasium, laid out on the floor, their faces covered by clothes and bin-liners, solely on the assumption of death.
There was an expectation within the families' lawyers that specific circumstances, particularly relating to appropriate medical care and attention, would be unveiled and cross-examined at the inquests. Between November 1990 and March 28, 1991, the inquests took place at Sheffield's town hall. Evidence was heard from 230 witnesses, and were the longest inquests in history.
On the evening of the disaster, the coroner, Dr Stefan Popper, took the unprecedented decision to record the blood alcohol levels of all who died, including children. This was portrayed as further confirmation that drunkenness was a primary cause. It implied that fans had contributed to their own deaths and to the deaths of others.
At the inquests Popper announced that while evidence would be extensive, there would be no consideration of events after 3.15pm on April 15. He reflected that the 'damage that caused [each] death was due to crushing', that 'each individual death' was 'in exactly the same situation', that once 'real damage' had occurred, each individual was beyond help or rescue. In other words, all of those who died would have received fatal injuries by 3.15. He concluded: 'The fact that the person may survive an injury for a number of… hours or even days, is not the question which I as a coroner have to consider.'
The only conclusion to be drawn from Popper's ruling was that those who died did so regardless of medical attention received or denied. Equally, by this logic, those who lived did so regardless of medical attention.
Within days a tide of allegations accompanied the inquests. Again the newspapers had a field day, as fans were portrayed as drunk and violent. The police again claimed it had been an orchestrated attempt to create mayhem outside the ground to force mass entry. Officers spoke of the 'unruly' behaviour of fans, their unacceptable and insulting responses, and their wilful rejection of reasonable police requests.
A typical police statement concluded, 'the overall demeanour of the crowd was… quite evil'. One officer had 'never seen [such] a quantity of a crowd in possession of drink'; another considered it was 'as if everyone had delayed the time that they were coming to the ground and all decided to come later.'
Lord Justice Taylor had already rejected these allegations yet his findings were now in question. Survivors were cross-examined at the inquests by multiple lawyers representing different police interests and working as a team, coordinating cross-examination. This was in marked contrast to the cross-examination of police witnesses when one barrister represented the interests of 43 families.
Survivors who gave evidence felt they were blamed for the disaster, that they were 'on trial'. 'They didn't know what I'd been through,' one said. 'I'd lost someone dear to me, fought to survive and others died around me. People died before my eyes and no one helped. It was chaos and I know some could have been saved. They didn't want to know at the inquest. No questions about the first aid on the pitch, about carrying people on hoardings, about the police in the gymnasium. They didn't want to know.'
On March 28, 1991, after a long deliberation the jury reached a majority verdict on all who died at Hillsborough: 'accidental death'. Bereaved families, survivors and witnesses, exhausted from the months of travelling, listening and waiting, broke down and cried.
The optimism following the Taylor Report had evaporated. The Director of Public Prosecutions had already ruled out private prosecutions against the police. Eddie Spearritt, who survived the disaster while his 14-year-old son Adam died, commented, 'It was as if every door was closing on us. To tell the truth I didn't expect anything else. It was too big an issue, too many top people, too much to lose.'
Yet, the families' tenacious campaign for justice continued, individually and collectively. Anne Williams, whose son Kevin died at Hillsborough, has campaigned for two decades following disclosure that a Special Police Constable suggested Kevin was alive at 4pm and had mumbled, 'Mum'. Another officer stated that after 3.15pm, while attempting to resuscitate Kevin on the pitch, he located a pulse and Kevin convulsed. As Anne Williams has argued consistently and tirelessly, the case for due consideration of the evidence and medical opinions concerning Kevin's death was, and remains, compelling. Having exhausted all domestic legal remedies, her case was submitted to the European Court of Human Rights on August 12, 2006. She is still awaiting a response.
After more than a decade, a private prosecution brought by the families against Duckenfield and his assistant, Bernard Murray, finally came to court in 2000. The fact that the trial lasted seven weeks seemed to show there was a case to answer. Yet the trial judge's direction of the jury, the failure to reach a verdict on Duckenfield and the acquittal of Murray brought dismay.
Families felt that, in directing that a guilty verdict would send the 'wrong message… to those who have to act in an emergency of this kind', the judge confused the actual circumstances of the case against the officers with broader policy implications of a guilty verdict.
Given that the jury requested guidance from the judge, Doreen Jones considers his comments 'daunting and seemingly impossible to overcome'. Peter Joynes, whose 27-year-old son Nick died at Hillsborough, remains astounded that, 'given all the evidence, it's impossible to believe or bear' that '20 years on no one is held responsible for one of sport's biggest disasters'.
The campaign on Merseyside against the Sun and its former editor Kelvin MacKenzie continues. In July 2004, after securing an interview with Liverpool-born Wayne Rooney, at the time an Everton player, the Sun published an editorial stating that its coverage of Hillsborough had been the 'most terrible mistake in its history'.
Indeed, soon after the disaster the Press Council described the Sun's front page as 'insensitive, provocative and unwarranted'. The newspaper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, was contrite – the coverage had been 'uncaring and deeply offensive to relatives of the victims'. On radio MacKenzie accepted that 'with hindsight… most of the newspaper coverage of Hillsborough had been a mistake.' It was assumed that MacKenzie had been instructed by Murdoch to make a statement as the Sun had lost nearly 40 per cent of its regional circulation, which has never recovered. In November 2006, speaking at a business lunch in Newcastle, MacKenzie reportedly stated, 'All I did wrong there was tell the truth. There was a surge of Liverpool fans who had been drinking and that is what caused the disaster. I went on World at One the next day and apologised. I only did that because Rupert Murdoch told me to. I wasn't sorry then and I'm not sorry now.'
On January 7, 2007, Liverpool played Arsenal in an FA Cup game at Anfield. The BBC broadcast the game at peak viewing time. Agreed by the club, the Liverpool fans' group Reclaim the Kop organised a protest directed at MacKenzie and the BBC for employing him as a presenter. At the kick-off the entire Kop, approximately 12,000 fans, held a mosaic above their heads in red and white. It spelt the truth. For six minutes, precisely the length of time played at Hillsborough before the match was abandoned, the Kop chanted 'Justice for the 96'.
Jenni Hicks, whose two teenage daughters Sarah and Victoria died, regrets that 'after all that has been established it is that one deceitful article in the Sun that's remembered – that's the myth that's believed.'
It is a myth that was supported by South Yorkshire Police. It is clear that major questions remain about the adequacy of the investigations and inquiries and the accountability of the police at the highest level. On the day of the tragedy, officers were instructed not to make entries in pocketbooks but submit handwritten 'recollections' to a team of senior officers. Working with police solicitors, the team administered a process of 'review and alteration'. Officers were taken for a drink by a chief superintendent who said, 'Unless we get our heads together and straighten this out, there are heads going to roll.' The transformation of officers' recollections into evidential statements, with sentences and passages significantly changed, was known and accepted by the West Midlands Police investigators, the coroner, Lord Justice Taylor and the Home Office.
Experiencing a disaster on the scale of Hillsborough, through bereavement or survival or both, generates mixed, deeply felt emotions of loss, anger, guilt, failure, inadequacy.
Coping should not be confused with recovering. Doreen Jones, 'just a mum who tried desperately to get some kind of justice for Rick and Trace and all the victims of Hillsborough', has 'no desire to be seen as a sad or angry person… I get on with my life'. But 'how are you supposed to feel when it all gets raked up? I have a smouldering anger, we all have it, you only have to scratch the surface and I erupt. It shouldn't be like this, I should be able to mourn.'
As Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James died, states, 'They took away our children and they took away our grandchildren, what they would have become… you can't stop that hurt or that anger.'
Dolores Steele feels that the loss of her 15-year-old son Philip is a constant. Yet 'you learn to live a different life',accommodating but not recovering from grief. She states, 'The authorities all thought we were after money, big claims, but all we wanted was the truth and for someone to say, "We made a terrible mistake, 96 died and we are sorry." And it never came.'
Peter Joynes considers that families are 'pushed towards "getting over it" or "building a new life" while we have been through the pain barrier so many times and we continually hope that one day someone will stand up and admit their mistakes.'
Sue Roberts, whose 24-year-old brother Graham died, also emphasises lack of acknowledgement and its consequences for families: 'Personally, I'm just upset that so many parents and other family members are passing away without ever having had an apology or any other form of justice. The names of our loved ones remain tarnished, with some members of the public still believing it was other fans that caused their deaths. The insight we've had over the past 20 years into the cover-ups that have gone on is appalling and still needs addressing. They say time heals… but in our case, it hasn't.'
Adapted from the new edition of Phil Scraton's book 'Hillsborough: The Truth'