RE: Hillsborough

I think some people forget the background conditions of the time which contributed to the Hillsborough disaster.

Prior to the Hillsborough tragedy, football was predominantly a working-class sport. Kids at many private schools didn't even get to play football during PE. The Tories wanted to introduce ID cards for all football supporters.

The Conservative government hated football and they hated the city of Liverpool. Thatcher was secretly advised to abandon Liverpool to a "managed decline".

The general perception was that all football fans were unruly low-life. Hooliganism was viewed as a normal event at a football match. Perimeter fencing was used to try to prevent rival fans from fighting. Police often treated fans badly even if you were not a hooligan.

Liverpool fans had an even worse reputation because of Heysel in 1985 where 39 people were killed. This resulted in all English football clubs being placed under an indefinite ban by UEFA from all European competitions. The ban was still in place when the Hillsborough tragedy happened.

It was against this background that when the Hillsborough disaster happened the largely right-wing media very quickly jumped to conclusions that suited their right-wing agenda.

In truth, a huge number of people should take some responsibility for the 96 deaths. That goes from football hooligans who misbehaved for years forcing clubs to introduce perimeter fencing, those Liverpool fans who misbehaved at Heysel giving Liverpool a bad name, Liverpool fans pushing to get into Hillsborough, crowd control failures, health and safety failures, policing failures, emergency service failures and numerous others.

In proceeding years, there seems to have been attempts to cover-up some failures by various authorities and of course there should be a criminal investigation into that.

Thankfully, British football has had a radical overhaul (not all of it for the better) but there is still no room for complacency.

Posted By: Larry Hagman, Apr 15, 12:23:07