“It is also a story of deceit and lies, of institutional defensiveness defeating truth and justice. It is evidence of a culture of denial within South Yorkshire Police.”
Anne Burkett, BBC, Apr 27, 2016.
It took 28 years for the tables to turn on the South Yorkshire police regarding the Hillsborough disaster that took the lives of 96 fans. The 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest saw a sporting catastrophe that was portrayed as less a matter of institutional accountability as the consequence of loutish, irresponsible fans.
The finger pointing began instantly, with the police arguing that the bad behaviour of the fans, fuelled by alcohol consumption, was the primary cause. (This, notwithstanding the fact that some of the injured and dead were children.)
There were, in fact, no limits as to what the fans had done wrong. They supposedly arrived too late, they obstructed the police in accomplishing their tasks, they forced open a gate and many were supposedly ticketless. What mattered in the police narrative and technique was not safety but control.
The ground was laid after the finding by inquest jurors in April 2016 that the fans in question had been unlawfully killed. It had been the longest jury case in British legal history, involving the families and supporters of the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG) and Hillsborough Justice Campaign.
Interest naturally turned towards police conduct not merely on the day itself, but subsequently. The latter point was of particular interest to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which was charged with the task of investigating allegations of a cover-up.
On Wednesday, six people, including two former senior police officers, were charged for criminal offences linked to the disaster. Significant here was the alleged cover-up that ensued. Sue Hemming of the Crown Prosecution Service’s head of special crime and counter-terrorism, after reviewing the material, “decided that there is sufficient evidence to charge six individuals with criminal offences.”
Prominently featured is David Duckenfield, the South Yorkshire officer who oversaw policing at the semi-final, charged for the manslaughter of 95 people. The 96th, Tony Bland, would die four years after the incident, making a charge of manslaughter inapplicable. He had eluded the clutches of a private prosecution in 1999 with a stay by the senior judicial officer. For a prosecution to take place, that stay will have to be lifted by application from the prosecutors.
Duckenfield, the grim star of a very grim show, received specific mention from Hemming. During proceedings, the CPS intends to show that Duckenfield’s conduct that day was “extraordinarily bad and contributed substantially to the deaths of each of those 96 people who so tragically and unnecessarily lost their lives.”
The focus on Sir Norman Bettison, former chief constable of Merseyside and West Yorkshire police, an inspector in the South Yorkshire force during the disaster, was one of misconduct. He faces four counts of the offence in public office.
“Given his role as a senior police officer,” stated Hemming, “we will ask the jury to find that this was misconduct of such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder.”
Image: Creative Commons By Linksfuss – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
Donald Denton and Alan Foster, both former police chiefs, were charged with perverting the course of justice in allegedly fiddling witness statements used during the original investigation and inquest into the deaths. Dozens of such statements were allegedly doctored to suggest a picture of police control rather than lethal chaos. The police lawyer, Peter Metcalf, was charged for allegedly assisting the enterprise.
Completing the institutional circle is Graham Mackrell, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club’s company secretary and safety officer that day. His charges are less grave, but no less significant: the alleged contravention of safety rules and failing to take appropriate reasonable care for the health and safety of those on the grounds.
This is the season for a reckoning. The charred ruins of Grenfell Tower have drawn necessary accusations about public safety across London. The cult of the cheap and expedient is being challenged; the wisdom of authorities questioned.
The Hillsborough families proved relentless in seeking accountability for the losses of 1989, showing that doing things by the book in calmly directed rage transformed the alleged responsibility of the victims to accountability of the authorities.
It is with some historical irony, given the state of Brexit, that these efforts would been further hampered but for the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights via the Human Rights Act 1998.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Ken Spacey
Guest
So when did perverting the course of justice become acceptable? FYI the South Yorkshire police are totally in charge of running the show (other than football issues) at Hillsborough on FA Cup semi final days. When did lying and besmirching others become acceptable police actions? Altering statements? Blood alcohol readings on dead minors?
elvis
Guest
I doubt it, if you were smarter you wouldn't be abusive or even trying to claim you are smarter than someone you don't know on the internet.
elvis
Guest
Definitely, the cover up was disgraceful. But that is a separate issue to the system failure of the stadiums.
The Auteur
Guest
I am smarter than you will ever be mate. Go read the Report, then come back to me Princess.
Waz
Roar Rookie
Great post buddy. I was living/working in England at that time and and concur with everything you've said. It was a strange time. I was actually at Hillsborough for this game, a quirk of employment saw me living in a place called Newark-on-Trent so my local team became Forest for 7 good years (I still follow them to this day). It's often forgotten that this was a mirror semi-final of the same fixture the year before when the same two sides met at the same stadium. I attended both games with my friends. The game the year before the disaster was Policed very differently - something you will recognise: fans were given meticulous instructions on how to proceed to the ground, bus, trains, parking were all controlled carefully to avoid opposition fans meeting outside the stadium and inside was carefully segregated and divided into caged pens. No one got near the stadium the first year without a ticket, we drove and parked 2 miles from the stadium but as we got close we walked through two police cordons who checked our tickets. It's almost unbelievable that this was acceptable but back then it was just normal. For the second game, the day of the disaster, it was noticeably different with no Police to be seen and we reached the turnstiles without any ticket checks. With over 50,000 attending and not enough tickets for either side there were plenty of people trying to buy tickets. At the second game we were again standing on the massive Hillsborough Kop with something like 17,000 other forest fans. It was directly opposite the Leppings Lane end. The second year we all stood to one side fearing the crush that occurred in the centre section of the terrace the previous year - we feared for our lives in that wave of people that surged backwards and forwards almost relentlessly. Again something that is unimaginable today but back then, it's just what we did. So the Police plan was all wrong for the second game and it created the situation that killed people in stadiums that were not fit for purpose. And stadium disasters were not new - Britains sporting history is full of them - but it took Hillsborough to really change anything. And the Police and medias response after the event was awful. Sadly the initial statements were believable. The lie that the gate had been pushed open by drunken fans was just a lie, but I'd been at a game in London a year before where that did happen and we all flooded in grateful for the free entry. It was a believable lie. The Police hid behind the stereotype of a football fan or really, of football hooligans, and the public wanted to believe them (and did for decades until the final report) and did not believe the counter arguments of the fans themselves who were viewed in that typical, anti-social/hooligan stereo type. It was wrong even then but again it was accepted as you will recall. Thankfully some good came out of an awful day and change followed but it's a day I'll never forget.
Waz
Roar Rookie
unfortunately things will go wrong, and in the worst of circumstances people will die. But ask yourself this question - if a similar situation occurred here and someone close to you was killed, say a mother, brother, sister, or your child, would you want the police to own up to the mistakes that were made or would you want them to enact a cover up and blame the people that attended?
elvis
Guest
Well maybe that applies to you if you can't understand the theme of what I am saying. Perhaps doubly if all you can do is an insult... happy to debate opposing points of view and learn something in the process, but you haven't put one forth and that makes it hard.
The Auteur
Guest
You're not very intelligent, are you?
Buddy
Guest
Having grown up in the uk at a time when violence and hooliganism was almost institutional and having witnessed appalling behaviour by fans and police alike, the narrative that emanated after Hillsborough came as less of a surprise to me and I was sceptical from day one. I had attended games around the country - rarely with a ticket purchased in advance - well you paid at the turnstiles in those days except for posh seats that were the domain of the season ticket holders. On many occasions, large groups of fans were rounded up by police that often appeared out of nowhere in buses, together with dogs and sometimes some arriving on horseback. Fans would be surrounded, marched to the stadium and put through the turnstiles, often paying, but occasionally, if the numbers were high and the police were required in another location, the large exit gates were opened and you were ushered inside. This was pre-emptive policing and it assumed that fans were going to enter pubs, get drunk and cause havoc, or in some cases load up with grog from a local supermarket all with the same threat. On a number of occasions I found myself squashed into pens inside grounds that were overcrowded and dangerous for fans. There was one ground where I had purchased some good seats but a police cordon met all fans entering the vicinity of the fround and we were required to speak. Upon hearing the accent, we were ushered to one end of the ground in spite of protests about seats. We were simply told you go in there or you get the next train back to London. This was the most dangerous time I encountered inside a ground. It was horribly overcrowded and with similar fences to Hillsborough it was difficult to exit and the crush was bad with my brother having his face squashed against the railings. Believe it or not, the problem was solved by fans pulling down a piece of fencing and then spilling into the next pen. Had it not been for that acrt of vandalism, I am certain there would have been a similar tragedy to Hillsborough and this was 5 years before. The police acted and dealt with some pretty awful incidents throughout this dark period and their methods were often effective. However, it all went wrong in April 1989 and combined with the ineptitude of the senior people in charge led to such a black day in the history of the game in the uk. I often feel that my generation made a contribution to this tragedy, although not directly, it was the reaction to the actions of fans over a long period, combined with the fact that government made lots of noise but did little to nothing to make changes and reform the game and it took a number of terrible incidents to bring about much needed changes that took place post Hillsborough.
lesterlike
Guest
Looks like you've not read report at all then.
elvis
Guest
This may not be the most popular comment, but blaming the poor old coppers is rubbish. It is what happens when you get grieving people trying to assign blame and banging on about a single issue. Like in OHS you eliminate the hazard, not put safety gear on except as a last resort. The stadiums were death traps and if you rely on a chain of people always making the right decisions sooner or later something is going to go terribly wrong. What could have be done at the time in hindsight is irrelevant. You notice that the actual solution was to go to all seated stadiums, not try and get perfect control of the ones they had. Yes the police made a mess and a cover up, but after the fact.
Mark Levy
Guest
I first saw the ESPN/BBC doco entitled 'Hillsborough' two years ago and it enraged me. So I am very pleased to read that charges of perverting the course of justice have been brought against some of the key police. The events of the day in question were bad enough but the behaviour of the police in the days, months and years after was totally disgraceful. The lies and discrediting of the victims and the withholding and doctoring of key evidence are in some ways even worse than the events of the day itself. The doco is on YouTube for anyone interested in watching.
Birdman
Guest
Good to see these public officials finally held to account.
Ken Spacey
Guest
There are quite a few media types in Oz who should reflect on their own actions of compounding the sins of their UK colleagues of repeating the lies about the dubious and now discredited claims against the Liverpool fans. Some have even persisted well after most people accepted that these allegations were generally treated with disdain. You know who you are.
Stuart Thomas
Expert
The most harrowing documentary I have ever seen. Brilliant work. I work with an ex-bobby who knew much of the officers involved. Fascinating insights. Liverpool fans demonised due to Police incompetence and subsequent fraud.
DanMan
Guest
I don't really follow football but i have seen the documentary on this event several times (can't remember the name). It is engrossing and an important piece of history. Well worth a look