Tear down the fences - a warning before the Hillsborough disaster

Earlier this year a jury finally confirmed what many had been arguing for years - that the 96 Liverpool FC fans who died in the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster were 'unlawfully killed' as a result of action and inaction by the police and football authorities. I wrote about this in a previous post, looking at how the events were viewed by fans at the time.

The following article is also from that period, but what makes it particularly significant is that it was written in the year before Hillsborough. Its warning that fences around pitches prevented spectators escaping from crushes, fires and other dangers was sadly proved all too correct. It is doubtful if anyone would have died in Sheffield if they hadn't been penned in behind fences.

 

The article was written by later BBC radio journalist Adrian Goldberg for the football fanzine Off the Ball in February 1988, and was reprinted in Reclaim the Game, newsletter of the  Football Supporters Association in May 1989, immediately after Hillsborough (Goldberg was the West Midlands Chair of the FSA).

Monstrous Erections

The 1971 Ibrox disaster was the fourth serious incident in ten years on the stadium's Stairway 13. Only the deaths of 66 people could prod the authorities into action, leading to the 1975 Safety of Sports Grounds Act.

The effectiveness of that legislation can be measured by the 56 deaths at Valley Parade just ten years later; as at Ibrox, warnings about the state of the ground were ignored until it was too late.

Further regulations have followed, promoting the multitude of metal detectors, hooligans, video cameras, dogs, horses, escorts, iron gates, pans, grilles,  lock-ins and lock-outs that now characterise that special matchday experience.

But the lessons of the past leave no room for complacency. Common sense and the evidence of previous tragedies tells us that at least one element of modern safety measures - the increasingly prevalent fencing-off of crowds from pitches - actually puts supporters at considerable risk.

This dangerous practice could have been fatal once already this season, at Grimsby's Blundell Park. During the home side's Cup tie against Halifax a fire warning was announced in the Osmond Stand (part seats, part terrace). Supporters evacuated in an orderly way, but squeezing them all through the gates in the ‘safety' fence took about eight minutes.

Survivors of the Bradford fire commented that if there had been fences in front of their burning stand fatalities would have been even higher; so it's hardly scaremongering to suggest that another disaster could have occurred at Grimsby. Fortunately, on this occasion, the fire was not serious; but if a tragedy had taken place, ignorance would have been no defence. In the “Green Guide' which accompanied the 1975 Safety of Sports Grounds Act, it clearly states that the best place to evacuate everyone is the pitch, so there should be no security fences in front of seats.

The good sense of that advice was amply proved again at this seasons Notts County v Preston match where a generator overheated behind the main stand. Fearing fire, fans streamed quickly onto the fence-free pitch and were immediately safe.

Indeed, the only mystery is why the authorities' advice about fences should be restricted to seats; for the dangers of entrapment are just as great for terrace fans.

In the 1984 League Cup semi between Walsall and Liverpool, for example, a safety barrier collapsed in the Liverpool end. As the terrace was so packed, fans had only one way to fall- forward. Fortunately,  there were no fences and they spilled harmlessly onto the playing area. Without that safety valve fans would have either been crushed or pushed into other areas of the crowd, leading to undue pressure on the remaining barriers. If, in turn, one of these had collapsed, a deadly domino effect could have been set in motion; just as happened at lbrox.

More recently the debacle at the QPR v West Ham Cup tie emphasised the value of unobstructed access from standing areas.

Heysel's Block Z

Much of the problem lies in the authorities' refusal to act on the evidence before them. The Popplewell report of ’86 noted that when Liverpool followers charged Heysel's Block Z “it resulted in the ltalian supporters...who were seeking to escape towards the perimeter being squashed and suffocated by the press of large numbers."

Many of these deaths may have been avoided had the perimeter fence not caused such a formidable obstacle - wire mesh over six feet high, which could only be opened from the pitch side,  with a brick wall beyond that. Psychologically as well as physically fans were being warned off entering the playing area.from recommending the complete abolition of such fences.

Fortunately, most English and Scottish League grounds are sturdier than Heysel and many have been improved since 1985. One of the more logical recent innovations has been ‘penning' whereby relatively large areas of terracing are divided into smaller sections. This ensures that if a stanchion collapses or violence occurs its effects are limited.

Small wonder that supporters panicked, and brought the wall down; yet Popplewell shyed away

So far so good; but the actual practice of penning, especially at grounds with cages, only exacerbates the problems fans face. Take the example of Stoke City. Their allocation to standing away fans is an enclosure in two sections running hall the length of the pitch. Each of these caged-in pens holds about

1,200 fans, but normally only one is open. Thus when West Brom. took about 1,500 terrace followers to the Victoria Ground this season, there was a period of potentially dangerous overcrowding. Under fence-free conditions, Albion fans could have escaped onto the pitch; at Stoke they just got crushed until the second section was opened.

'Safety'

Many clubs ape these tactics, utterly defeating the ‘safety' aspect of penning which is meant to prevent a dangerous concentration of fans in any one area. In these circumstances fences make a bad situation worse.

The nature of their construction also contributes to the danger. Stoke, like many other grounds, has fencing which obstructs the game to such an extent that fans straining to catch a glimpse of the action can’t help but push the person in front of them.

Oxford United, realising the dangers inherent in allowing fans half a glimpse of the game, have taken 'safety' fencing to its logical limit, obscuring all parts of the field for many customers for the full 90 minutes.

A Portsmouth fan who'd brought four £10 tickets had the cheek to think he and his family were entitled to a decent sight of the match - so he took Oxford to court. He was completely outwitted by the brilliant defence put forward by Oxford's Managing Director, Bernard Dalton who explained. “If I did not sell seats which have a difficult view, 8,000 would have to be withdrawn.”

In other words a rip-off is alright, so long as it's a big rip-off. The argument found favour with the judge, who accepted that the Pompey fans' view had been substantially impaired, but awarded the case to Oxford on the grounds that fences were a necessary safety precaution. (An opinion obviously shared by the local authority, since they had insisted on these monstrous erections in the first place).

CS Gas

But whose safety? When some idiot let off a CS gas canister at Easter Road this season,  were fleeing Celtic fans endangered by being able to run on the pitch? Would they have been safer panicking i n a space confined by fences? Of course not. Yet the FA’s choice of Villa Park(rather than Highbury) for last season's Spurs v Watford Cup semi-final was justified thus by Ted Croker: "Villa Park has exceptionally good facilities....Highbury has no fencing.”

But that should be no surprise; the FA's own family section for Wembley internationals is obscured by mesh. Taking their lead from the top, clubs such as Chelsea and Millwall are busily educating the next generation of armchair supporters by placing similar blights in front of their junior members’ areas.

And for what? Certainly not supporters’ safety as we have seen. Nor can it really be for crowd control. Many grounds at the highest level - Arsenal, West Ham,  and virtually all of Scotland’s Premier Division - are fence-free. Yet the clubs concerned don‘t find that assaults on players or pitched battles are a weekly occurrence.

Barriers

Indeed, many of the worst incidents of recent times at English grounds have taken place in spite of perimeter fencing: Millwall at Luton, Birmingham v Leeds, Chelsea v Sunderland. Fences which are formidable barriers at times of panic and confusion proved to be little deterrent to the determined hooligan.

To be sure, pulling down the fences might lead to more pitch invasions, and even fighting - which is bad publicity for football. But at least the aggro usually involves only those who want to be involved. The mania for fencing, on the other hand, is most dangerous of all to those whom it is presumably meant to protect; the innocent, peaceful football fan.

Tear them down now, before another club has to echo the words of Bradford‘s Stafford Heginbotham: “There are a number of things we all wish had been done prior to this terrible tragedy."

 

Ireland 1 Italy 0... 1994

Ireland 1 Italy 0... no not last night, in June 1994 I was in Paros, Greece watching the same result in a bar - celebrations all round after Ray Houghton's 11th minute goal. With no England, Scotland, Wales or NI in the World Cup, Jack Charlton's Ireland were the team of choice even for many Brits. I went so far as to have a Jack Charlton 'Tiocfaidh ar la' t-shirt from my then local, the George Canning in Brixton (now Hootananny) - probably a little over enthusiastic! I might add that while my mum was born a Kelly, my Irish ancestors on her side of the family left County Cork for the Forest of Dean in the 19th century so I could not really claim to be entitled to support the team, but as a third claim for me after England or Scotland (who I could represent in sports if I was any good) I felt it was OK.

Loughinisland Massacre 1994

On what was a night of joyous celebrations for Ireland supporters around the world there was also an infamous massacre. At the Heights Bar in Loughinisland, County Down, people were watching the match on TV when Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen walked in and opened fire with assault rifles, killing six people. The dead were Adrian Rogan (34), Malcolm Jenkinson (52), Barney Greene (87), Daniel McCreanor (59), Patrick O'Hare (35) and Eamon Byrne (39) - pictured below. A report published by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland earlier this month concluded that there had been collusion between police officers and the killers.  

There were many terrible killings on all sides during that period, but the slaughter of people just enjoying a football match in a bar has not been forgotten. When Ireland played Italy at Euro 2012, 18 years to the day since the massacre, Ireland players wore black armbands. And on the night of this week's Ireland v Italy match, relatives gathered once again in the Heights Bar.

How to get in the football team - just run!

The more I have got into running the more I have come to appreciate its critical role in so many other sports. In some ways it is the ur-sport, the original contest that underlies all the rest. Humans have always run, and the game of who can run furthest or fastest must have existed long before most other sports were codified. More than that the ability to run fast, and sustain that speed over a long game (even if only in short bursts) is a key skill in everything from football to tennis: the ability to run after a ball or away from an opponent. In cricket points are even labelled 'runs' and a 'home run' is a high point of baseball. That is one of the reasons why many suspect that doping is probably as widespread in some of these sports as in track & field, it just hasn't been tested for so extensively.

Anyway in  'A Death in the Family' by Karl Ove Knausgaard, the first volume of his epic fictionalised autobiography 'My Struggle', the Norwegian author recalls how his recognition of all this helped him impress his school football coach and get promoted to the senior team:

'Many people could not understand why I was playing with them. I was no good, after all. There were at least six, perhaps even seven or eight players in the junior team who were better than me... I understood why...

All that autumn I had run a lot and was in such good shape that I had been selected to represent the school in the 1500 meters even though I had never done any track or field events before. So when it was my turn to train with the seniors on the snow-covered shale pitch near Kjota, I knew I had to run. It was my only chance. I ran and ran. In every sprint up the pitch I came first. I gave everything I had every time. When we started to play it was the same: I ran and ran, ran for everything all the time. I ran like someone possessed, and after three sessions of that I knew that I was promoted and I was not surprised. But the others in the junior team were. Whenever I failed to control the ball, whenever I made a bad pass, they let me know, what the hell are you doing in the seniors? Why did they pick you?

I knew why, it because I ran. You just had to run'.

More running related literature:

Jack Kerouac running down a mountain

'These forms who hasten by' - runners on the Pilgrims Way, 1920s

'You just had to run' - Karl Ove Knausgaard

Morrissey - List of the Lost

Burns Night Running Thoughts

Running in the Railway Children

A Midsummer Night's Running

Running to Paradise - W B Yeats

The Sky of a Saturday Morning - John Updike

The Road is a Strange Country - Rebecca Solnit

The Runner - W H Auden

Once a Runner - John L Parker jr

Louisa May Alcott - 'A Joy to Run'

Hillsborough 1989 (& Football Fans not Criminals 2016)

Earlier this month the BBC broadcast Daniel Gordon's moving documentary 'Hillsborough' about the terrible events of 15 April 1989  at the Liverpool vs. Nottingham Forest FA Cup semi-final which led to the death of 96 people. The film - minus its updated conclusion - was actually made a couple of years ago, and had been shown in the US, but could not be shown on British TV because of new inquests into the deaths after the High Court quashed the original verdicts in 2012.

In April 2016  the jury in the new inquest ruled that the 96 Liverpool fans had been 'unlawfully killed' in Sheffield, in effect confirming the verdict of the documentary that the police and the stadium's owners were responsible for the tragedy, not the actions of the fans.

This is what the Hillsborough Justice campaign has been arguing since day one, and in that respect the documentary was not surprizing.  That senior police officers, the Police Federation, and much of the press seem to have deliberately mis-represented what happened on that day to try and shift the blame on to the victims is nothing new either.  Out of respect for the dead some of the footage had been pixrlated so viewers were not exposed to the full horror of some of the images I recall from the time. But still I was shocked by details of the level of callous treatment meted out to relatives of the dead on the weekend of the disaster and for many years afterwards.

 The focus was very much on specific decisions made by senior local officers on the day, but it is also important to consider the broader picture. It is quite right that individuals should be held accountable for their actions, but the simple fact is that however clueless these decisions may have been, 96 people wouldn't have died if they hadn't have been penned in by fences at the side and in front that made it impossible for people to move away from overcrowded areas. It was the punitive official culture of treating football fans as dangerous animals that helped created this danger, and this was fed into by senior politicians and sports administrators. 

In the lead up to the disaster, for instance, a major focus of Margaret Thatcher's government was on trying to bring in a compulsory Football Membership Scheme ('football ID cards' to opponents) despite warnings about the risks of bottlenecks of fans building up around entry points to grounds (Hansard, 25 January 1989). Sports minister Colin Moynihan was widely criticised by fans for spearheading this policy (he went on to be a key figure in the athletics establishment, chairing the British Olympic Association from 2005 to 2012).  

Prime Mnister Margaret Thatcher at Hillsborough immediately after the tragedy
with Home Secretary Douglas Hurd and Sports Minister Colin Moynihan

I went to Hillsborough in that fateful season, to see Luton Town play away at  Sheffield Wednesday in August 1988 - an uneventful match, with only 16,000 present.  Like most football fans in the aftermath of the disaster I found it both unbelievable that something so terrible could happen in such a place, but also not entirely surprizing in a period when people's safety seemed to be a low priority. This was the era of the Bradford City stadium fire (56 dead in 1985), the Kings Cross station fire (31 dead in 1987), the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster (131 people unlawfully killed in 1987) and the Clapham Rail crash (35 deaths in 1988), among others.

When Saturday Comes 1989

I write this not with the benefit of nearly 30 years of hindsight. While it might have taken the BBC and much of the press many years to catch up, football fans were making these same points at the time of the Hillsborough disaster. Here's a few extracts of an article from football zine 'When Saturday Comes' in June 1989:

The Football Association, police and Prime Minister all agree 'it wasn't our fault'.
The fans respond 'Oh well it must be our fault again'

'Like you, we have read a hell of a lot about Hillsborough over the last couple of weeks. We quickly reached saturation point, partly because there are a limited number of ways in which the same points can be made without becoming repetitious and partly because so many stupid things have been said. One thing deserves to be re-iterated, however. The deaths of ninety people at a football ground in Sheffield were not just another tragic accident. Instead, they were a predictable consequence of the fact that the people who run English football have stumbled from one crisis to another without evolving a coherent, consistent, policy to deal with any specific problem.

...the attitudes are as entrenched as ever. The same policemen adopt the same aggressive attitude to football, insisting that it should be treated as a public order problem rather than a form of entertainment. The same prejudice is attached to all football fans, deemed to be passive accomplices to the sociopathic minority. The police see us as a mass entity, fuelled by drink and a single-minded resolve to wreak havoc by destroying property and attacking one another with murderous intent. Containment and damage limitation is at the core of the police strategy. Fans are treated with the utmost disrespect. We are herded, cajoled, pushed, and corralled into cramped spaces, and expected to submit passively to every new indignity.

The implication is that 'normal' people need to be protected from the football fan. But we are normal people. The Football Fan' is not an easily defined social stereotype, whatever the tabloid cartoonists may choose to believe. All manner of people go to football matches. A few of them are intent on unleashing aggressive instincts which are also manifested in wine bars on a Saturday night or in tourist hotels on the Costa Del Sol. Thuggish behaviour is rarely reported in any detail when it can't be directly linked to a football match. Football is being made the scapegoat for a society brutalised over the last decade...

Complaints about safety and comfort were ignored because they were being made by supporters. Official action will be taken now, because the same points previously raised by fans are now being made by the government and the media. Their stupidity and cowardice over a long period of time allowed Hillsborough to happen. Symptomatic of their paralysis is the frequency with which a certain phrase crops up in their public pronouncements. We are informed, with wearying regularity, that football needs to 'put its house in order'. This is, of course, a laughably imprecise phrase, intended to imply a commitment to resolute action. Needless to say, it means absolutely nothing. Clubs have to accept a proportion of the blame. They own the fences and turnstiles that helped to cause the disaster. Sheffield Wednesday officials seemed to believe that, in an emergency, it would be possible to evacuate a large number of people thorough a tiny gate in the perimeter fencing. They and their colleagues at other League grounds across the country insult loyal, put-upon customers with the pathetic standard of amenities on offer. They have failed to develop long term strategies that rely on anything beyond glib slogans about families and the importance of sponsors. The executive box holders get central heating and smoked glass but the huddled majority don't deserve even an unobstructed view and a roof. 

There is very little commonsense applied to football. In no other area of life is the victim treated with as much disrespect as the perpetrator, nor the majority held to be guilty of the crimes perpetrated by a minority. But, ultimately, what happens to us doesn't matter. It is our own fault for being football fans. That is why MPs always ignored pleas from supporters' organisations seeking to prevent the sort of disaster which has become a reality. Whatever they may say, few politicians gave any indication that they cared about football fans before Hillsborough happened. Suddenly everyone knows the answer. A fortnight ago, they didn't even hear the question. It didn't take very long for Hillsborough to become our fault. Indeed, initial reports pinned blame on supporters who were believed to have broken down a gate. Later, as the analysts set to work, blame was heaped upon the large number of fans who arrived without tickets. Then the police's press department piped up, revealing that many were drunk and generally doing all the things that fans are famous for. Had the television cameras not been present to record the disaster as it unfolded, many people would have unquestioningly accepted the garbage that has been pumped out by some of the tabloid hacks. Fans have been both the prophesiers and the victims of Hillsborough, but who believes that they will be invited to play an active part in solving the problems which it highlighted? We will be obliged to meekly accept the remedy offered.

....Identification of the real culprits is lost amid desperate, scurrying attempts to avoid blame. The same people who indignantly call for the fences to be torn down now are the same ones who demanded that they should be put up in the first place. Thanks were duly said for there not having been any perimeter fences at Bradford, but no long-term lessons were learned from that fire' ('Surveying the Damage', When Saturday Comes, June 1989)

Football Fans not Criminals 2016

Football has changed so much since 1989, but many argue that one thing that hasn't changed is how fans can be treated. In fact this week a new campaign 'Football Fans not Criminals' is being launched which argues:

'ordinary law-abiding football fans are being treated like criminals. For merely attending a match and supporting their team, fans are subject to a series of special controls and restrictions which do not apply to supporters of other sports. There are 11 laws which apply only to football fans, creating offences which would not be an offence in a rugby or cricket stadium.

It is an offence to carry alcohol into a football stadium, to drink in view of the pitch, to sell or give away tickets, or to throw any item in the air, however innocuous. Football fans are also subject to special powers. Under Football Banning Orders, they can be banned from attending matches or asked to surrender their passports when club and country play abroad. Police forces can control fans’ travel to away matches, in some cases creating ‘bubble’ match restrictions, which ban independent travel on public transport or in cars. This regulation exists at a time when football-related violence and disruption is at an all-time low'.

The new campaign will be launched on Thursday 2 June 2016  from 7 pm upstairs at the Yorkshire Grey, 2 Theobalds Road, London WC1X 8PN. Speakers will include Ken Meech (Grimsby fan ludicrously prosecuted for assault with an inflatable shark), Martin Cloake (Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust), Amanda Jacks (Football Supporters Federation), Duleep Allirajah (Palace-loving Spiked columnist), Peter Lloyd (author of 'Criminalising Football Fans') and solicitor Sarah Ricca.