One of England’s oldest football teams was formed in Sheffield in 1857, the legacy of which provided the opportunity for communities to gather and unite behind their local teams in the years that followed. Communities could set themselves apart from the foundries, pits, docks and factories that tied them down to make their ends meet. It’s an unmistakable irony that this resistance to an unsympathetic Establishment met its systematic destruction 132 years later in the same city (just a mere five miles away from where Sheffield Football Club was formed) at the Leppings Lane end of the Hillsborough football ground.
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The arresting officers - PC Robert Hydes and Sgt Robert Ring
Eight years previously, and only two miles away from the Hillsborough ground two South Yorkshire policemen apprehended a man who was acting suspiciously in a parked Rover car. He was with a prostitute who, if it hadn’t have been for the two policemen, would have become the fourteenth murder victim to The Yorkshire Ripper. In capturing Peter Sutcliffe South Yorkshire Police were hailed as heroes, doing the real police work that eluded the overworked and incompetent West Yorkshire police for six wasted years. The common person was now safe to walk the streets again thanks mainly to honest Bobbies on the beat who used their initiative to see that something was not quite right. They did their duty. They caught a nation’s bogeyman.
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| A local friendly police style: the height of the 1984/85 Miner's Strike |
Then suddenly, three years later, the Bobbies on the beat became a force against “an enemy within”. They stood in line at pitch battles with their batons raised and the riot shields drumming to the pounding rhythm of their heartbeats. They were enforcing what the government in London was telling them was “The Rule of Law”. The most televised pitch battle, which persuaded Englanders with the bite-sized proof that the striking miners of England, Wales and Scotland were nothing but savages to be destroyed at any cost, was near Sheffield. Orgreave was a coup for the newly-liberated Thatcher newspapers in a war against the working man that needed to be won so that a free market economy could be just that – free. Free from one of the strongest working men’s union Great Britain had. She and her conspirators won an unsinkable war.
One domino that was difficult for Thatcher to knock down was the one thing that wasn’t associated with the State. There was no clocking in, no threats of redundancy, no stamping down on flying picketing, no threats to cut the dole of the strikers. The government would not be able to cajole and reorganise the unity found on the football terraces as they did with the miners, the steelworkers and the print unions - and it was this that bit hard into Thatcher’s side.
Two months after her propaganda victory over the miner’s union, fighting between bating Juventus fans and Liverpool fans before a big cup final in Europe ended in disgrace for Thatcher’s vision of a “better Britain”. It was called “the English disease” in reactionary circles, and again not all the facts were considered into why the events at Heysel did happen. It was just mindless, drunken Scouse yobs making an almighty scene, screamed the headline writers. The exact scene that, with no reasons for pursued was reported from the football grounds all over Britain for years before. The television broadcasters wouldn’t touch football at any cost.
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| A traditional Saturday afternoon on The Kop circa 1950s |
Liverpool football club were on top of their sport. Winning everything in sight, with players on the pitch brought in from the local streets, scoring goals for fun in front of adoring men and women from the same streets. The Kop would throb to the tribal beat of unity. It was following the same romance that the formation of Sheffield Football Club would have envisioned in the century before. Sister cities of working men, with the same situations week in and week out were supporting similar teams to Liverpool, like in Glasgow. All were union men, no doubt, all men with pride in their work - all standing on the terrace as one.
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| It's The Sun Wot Won It |
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Not satisfied with winning the monopoly of the English news print, Rupert Murdoch was after a bigger windfall in satellite television. This fervour peaked at the end of the 1980s when he was involved in an attempt to launch his Sky TV network. Britain, especially in the 1980s was an important ally to him. In 1981 he won over control of The Times with a lot of help from Margaret Thatcher. He returned the favour with the “Gotcha” headline when Thatcher’s popularity as Prime Minister was at breaking point. In the power game, both were on top of their sport when they helped each other out. They were the Keegan and Souness of the political and corporate world.
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| Sir Terry Wogan |
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Three weeks before a football game in 1989 – the same year that Murdoch was self-promoting his Sky TV bid on Wogan – the main officer in charge of policing was replaced. His replacement had next to no experience in policing football matches. This match was no ordinary match as the prize was a trip to Wembley. It was schoolboy dream stuff, scoring that winning goal for the Reds, knowing that you’d helped your mates get to the Twin Towers overlooking and guarding the nation’s capital. There would be that familiar feeling of euphoria that would make up for the anticipation before the semi-final match. You’d rush down to the front of the terrace, as you did on The Kop to see the winning goal scorer make a beeline to the crowd and appreciate the support you gave him and his ten mates. You couldn’t beat that anticipation.
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| The West Stand on Leppings Lane |
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There were no official stewards to assist the force which had assembled to take charge of the public order on the day. In and out of the ground the Bobbies were lined up – lined up telling supporters which stand was which to go to and lined up against the fence that separated you from them. It probably felt like Orgreave again – even the weather that day was the same. Coppers felt hot under that uniform of authority. Probably everyone in that crowd walking into that ground and the ones already inside must have felt like a collective Peter Sutcliffe yelling at you. What are they up to behind that perimeter fence? Why should we trust them giving what we’ve “seen” and what we’ve “heard”.
After only minutes of a football match and it was suddenly dawning on everyone that something was going wrong. The anticipation wasn’t feeling the way it should have been. It didn’t feel like you were on the terrace feeling the same joy as you did every week. This felt black. To ninety six different people wanting to see a football game it went that way.
The chief executive of the Football Association, just yards away from pens three and four was been talked to and was, it turned out later, lied to by Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield. He said that the reason for what was going on outside his command post was due to Liverpool supporters forcing open the exit gate outside the stand and barging their way onto the terracing overlooking the goal. It was like a boy getting caught putting his hand in the sweetie jar only to be discovered red-handed – a likely story was needed quickly. This was a likely story so unfounded that it had begun to germ and worm its way out of that stadium and into national and international hearsay.
All it needed was reinforcing on a grander scale.
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| Kelvin MacKenzie |
It took a doctored photograph and an A-Level standard pun to work its effect. “Mine Fuhrer” was considered in hindsight to be one of Kelvin MacKenzie’s inspired moments in 1984. Why not? He was a commander at war with an enemy he never would have met, let alone knew. His HQ was at a safe distance from the action. His expensive loafers would probably never have set foot on northern soil, the same as his privileged background would never have gone near to the Falkland Islands. Like in the American-Soviet propaganda battles in the Cold War it was easy to throw buckets of shit from safe distances. So what could he do with this one? In the aftermath of the tragedy a Tory MP was doing the rounds with the journalists congregating around the scene at Hillsborough. He had heard of accusations from the police at the match of what was really going on. Most fans were tanked up. Remember what happened at Heysel? This was spicier: injured fans were pissed on, dead fans were robbed. The unfailing Bobbies were getting beaten up for doing their duty. It was a scandal that just HAD to be published.
The problem was it was all made up. No proof to this date substantiates the claims. Even the police have confirmed its non-existence. But it was a germ, and in a war even the dirtiest of weapons need to be used. What is worse about lying is that fact that the word “truth” is used to make the lie convincing. This happened with such sickening force four days after the disaster when all the victims’ relatives wanted to do was grieve in private and with dignity in their homes. When a nation is faced up to an enforced choice a certain level of panic hits it. What can a nation believe if it isn’t written down for them? They need someone or something to make sense of tragedy. It’s part of the natural order to take the pain away of their own shock. The problem in 1989 for the nation of Britain was that they had to read the headline written by Kelvin Mackenzie and authorised by Rupert Murdoch in Wapping, and be expected to take it as the gospel truth.
This is “The Truth” that forms the backdrop to “Only Peter Sutcliffe Was Caught Red-Handed in Sheffield”.
Two very contrasting stories occurred in the immediate aftermath of that day in 1989. One story was to benefit from the disaster and reach the glittering twilight that it currently holds onto this day. The other has not reached any type of conclusion and still remains in its darkest depths to this day. These two disparate worlds were formed in two reports into the disaster by the same man.
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| Lord Justice Peter Taylor |
The first report, published as an interim report in August 1989, was unrestrained into where the blame lay for the events at Leppings Lane. Firstly in relation to the smear campaign from The Sun drunkenness was dispelled as a major factor in the reason behind the crush. Lord Taylor, the report’s author even quotes the testimony of two police officers: “the more convincing police witnesses, including especially Detective Superintendent McKay and Chief Inspector Creaser as well as a number of responsible civilian witnesses, were in my view right in describing this element as a minority.”
A major factor in the crush was the opening of Gate C on Leppings Lane. This gate was an exit gate, not meant to be opened before kick off. On the day Superintendent Duckenfield claimed to the chairman of the Football Association that this gate was forced open by the surge of Liverpool supporters. It was in fact opened under Duckenfield’s instruction. The Chief Superintendent authorised the funnelling of supporters into the cages of pens 3 and 4 when he would have clearly seen from his position yards away that there was an overpopulation of supporters in these areas of the ground.
Out of this situation came the question of the conduct of the police officers directly facing the cages. In the report it states:
“…there was a period during which the failure to recognise the problem [of opening escape gates to pens 3 & 4] and the inhibition against tackling it caused vital time to be lost.”
That vital time lost more lives than should have been necessary.
When all the people directly in the ground, near to the stand, up on the television gantry were noting that this was an overcrowding incident, Duckenfield, the man who had the finger on the police response that day, was treating the events right in front of his eyes as a pitch invasion. For those fans dying and already dead when this opinion was taking precedent in his mind, a pitch invasion was the last thing that they were capable of doing. Explicitly, Lord Taylor stated: “there was no effective leadership either from control or on the pitch to harness and organise rescue efforts”. This was a critical decision that I believe changed the culture of football and the culture of the working classes of Britain in one grave fell swoop. Like at Orgreave five years earlier, the force on duty that day, under the orders of their superiors, formed an impenetrable blue line on the halfway line of the pitch to stop the Reds from storming the barricades. This storming never happened as the casualties were already dying or dead fifty yards away at their end of the ground.
Duckenfield’s legacy from the disaster that he helped create that day is summed up in Taylor’s conclusion:
“The likeliest explanation of Mr Duckenfield's conduct is that he simply could not face the enormity of the decision to open the gates and all that flowed therefrom. That would explain what he said to Mr Kelly, what he did not say to Mr Jackson, his aversion to addressing the crowd and his failure to take effective control of the disaster situation. He froze.”
A public servant froze on what was no normal, small-scale public event. The consequence of freezing and not acting on a serious situation caused the deaths of 96 innocent people.
Section 257 of the interim report, in response to The Sun’s conduct after the disaster was: “Those who made them (‘The Truth’ story), and those who disseminated them would have done better to hold their peace.”
Parties were, therefore identified and blamed in the interim report. Families and friends to the Hillsborough dead would now be emboldened to find justice in what was a lack of police public duty, and a news organisation not performing its responsibility in reporting an incident correctly.
But thanks to a doctor’s inquest and Lord Taylor’s second report the fate of the enquiry took an almost unbelievable U-turn that has yet to be reversed.
In January 1990 Lord Taylor’s final report was published with much anticipation for the ringing truth to be laid to rest on the Hillsborough disaster and for families to put to bed the ghouls of the previous nine months. But the report is an unusual document. Straight away from the index it is obvious that “hooliganism” came into the foreground on an incident that in the previous report was disregarded as a contributing factor. Also more sinister, which again was a background factor in the interim report, was the state of English football grounds and in particular football terraces. It was almost as if Thatcher herself wrote it.
On hooliganism it said:
“During the 1970s, hooligan behaviour became a scourge at and around football grounds. Rival fans abused and fought with each other on the terraces. The pitch was invaded, sometimes to facilitate the fighting, sometimes in an attempt to abort a match by those whose team was losing and on occasions to display anger and seek to assault a referee or a player who had incurred displeasure. Throwing missiles, either at a player or a policeman or at rival fans, became another violent feature. When the police responded by searching fans for missiles on entry, the practice grew of throwing coins (which could not be confiscated). Sometimes the coins were sharpened in advance to make them more damaging.
It goes on to quote the 1988 annual police report on the drain that policing at football matches had on the financing of the force: “Football continues to be a focus for hooliganism... demands on the police service continued at a high level. Typically, 5000 officers may be engaged on football duties on Saturdays during the football season."
To the victims’ families it would be as if they were reading the report on the Heysel disaster, not the Hillsborough tragedy. The report should have been a damning indictment on the state of policing at Hillsborough and the prosecution of those senior officers in charge of this match. Instead it was a complete blueprint for what was to become the game of football and the cajoling of the British working class for years to come.
No stranger to sickening irony, it was Rupert Murdoch’s business operation that was to benefit singularly and most spectacularly from the words in that report. Crucially Taylor wrote: “It is small wonder that attendances at matches gradually fell off from a peak of 77 million in the season 1949/50 to about 20 million in the late 1980s.” Football, it would appear from what Taylor was driving at, needed a facelift in terms of grounds and in terms of the clientele who attended these grounds. It needed to become “alive and kicking” and not the murky working class subculture that the outsiders looking in held as the consensus opinion for years before.
In a critical part of the report Lord Taylor cites the example led by Rangers Football Club in Scotland, and their “Fortress Ibrox”.
“At some clubs changes have already been made towards realising this new concept of how football should be. For example, at Ibrox Park, scene of the appalling disaster in 1971, there has been a total transformation. The old main stand remains and still has some standing areas in front of it. But three new stands have been built round the rest of the ground. They are colourful, convenient and are all-seating. They are constructed so as to provide a covered concourse at first floor level running the length of the stand. At the rear of that concourse throughout its length are modern lavatories for both sexes. At the front are attractive fast food service points offering a good range of food and drinks (but no alcohol). The walls are clean; the flooring is of studded rubber. Mounted overhead, at regular intervals of a few yards along the whole concourse, are television sets tuned to a sports programme giving information on the day's fixtures, excerpts from previous matches and general sports coverage. These arrangements encourage fans to arrive in good time, to have wholesome refreshments in a clean and pleasant setting, to enjoy on the television the kind of pre-match entertainment which genuinely interests them, to visit a decent toilet, and then to walk up a few steps to take their seats for the match. All of this is under cover and it is enjoyed not just by the affluent but by the ordinary supporter.”
It has long been held that Rangers Football Club have had long established links with the Freemasons. It is also long been held that the British police force have also held onto this Masonic tradition. Fortuitously, in what Taylor describes could be what nearly all the football grounds in the country resemble down to the last detail.
Taylor also bemoans the fact that English football grounds up until 1989 were the same ones that were built originally to house their teams. Mostly were standing-room terracing, most of them were built at the heart of residential areas. And according to Taylor most of them were death traps. This is not wholly true when you consider the major disasters that were to blight football and which Taylor cites. The Ibrox disaster in 1971 happened on a stairwell outside one of the stands, and it was a disaster that was not due to hooliganism or a crumbling structure. The fans that were crushed left the ground early because they thought their team had lost but in fact had scored a late equaliser which they wanted to rejoice in. The Bradford disaster in 1985 occurred due to the main stand’s structure (made entirely out of timber) – it didn’t happen because of violence or overcrowding, it was due to a man unfortunately putting out his cigarette at the wrong time in the wrong place. If anything in these two accidents it was the responsibility of the policing and the owners of the ground respectively to respect their fans’ safety.
Up until 1989 there were no significant disasters in the United Kingdom that were the direct result of football hooliganism. Hooliganism was an easily identified problem relating to specific clubs. The majority of football grounds, set within the residential communities that formed the basis of the support were places that are still fondly remembered by supporters. What isn’t fondly appreciated is the inconvenience of going to all-seater stadiums miles from where they live and that offer very little atmosphere than the terraces once did. Nor is appealing are the over-inflated ticket costs which are in line to the expense football clubs have spent on building out of town all-seater grounds.
With the catchphrase of “Alive and Kicking” Sky TV broadcast its first flagship Premier League game in August 1992. The teams involved? The same teams that were playing at Hillsborough the day of the tragedy: Liverpool vs Nottingham Forest. It seems that Australians do have a sense of irony.
On that day Liverpool lost 1-0 which is exactly the same result that occurred in the coroner’s inquest into the disaster. The inquest was the opportunity in the legal sense for the prosecutions to be brought forward of public negligence for the deaths at Hillsborough. Based on the government’s response in the shape of Taylor’s interim report this seemed like a cakewalk in the prosecutions of senior officers, including the “frozen” Duckenfield.
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| Dr Popper - He so misunderstood |
But again, something odd happened like it did with Taylor’s final report. Its architect in this instance was a coroner named Dr Stefan Popper. The families of the victims have long said that this inquest was bizarrely lop-sided. Crucial witnesses who were in the main at the scene of the carnage that happened in pens 3 and 4 were skimmed over. Two key witnesses were noticeable by their absence at the forefront of what was picked over. The first was an off-duty policeman who rushed from his position on the North Stand at Hillsborough at the time that the tragedy struck to help the injured in front of him. His name was Derek Bruder and he felt that he would be doing a public duty even though he wasn’t wearing the uniform.
Police Constable Bruder took over mouth to mouth duties on a casualty whose name was Kevin Williams. Kevin was only fifteen years old and was an avid supporter of Liverpool Football Club. He didn’t go to this football game tanked up to the eyeballs; he didn’t go to this football game to ruin the atmosphere for the supporters he stood beside. His death broke the hearts of his mother, sister, brother and to all those people he had a positive influence on. PC Bruder found a pulse when he was attending to Kevin and signalled for the only ambulance that was authorised onto the pitch (under the confused auspices of Duckenfield’s management a line of ambulances were static outside the North East part of the ground). He states categorically (which is backed up by images of the ambulance being on the pitch) that this happened at around 3:37pm. Another witness who was skirted over was similarly a police officer. Debra Martin was part of the string of helpers to oversee Kevin’s last moments. She is adamant that Kevin was still alive up until 4 pm and that his last words were “mum”.
The reason to stating these times was because Dr Popper concluded that all the victims were either dead or brain dead by the time of 3.15pm. It was this time that basically allowed culpability of the police and the emergency services to be erased. It meant that the ambulance workers that were stationed outside the ground would be exonerated in their lack of support. It would be convenient to skip over the police response to the disaster that unfurled before them. How could the services react if all the victims were already “dead”? It was a stitch-up and it worked. It immediately spelt the redemption of Chief Superintendent Duckenfield – he would not be called into question let alone be suspended or penalised for his epic ineptitude.
Based on the investigations that Anne Williams (Kevin’s mother) had to do herself the Cook Report broadcast an episode looking into the case. In one resounding scene of the injustice of it all Roger Cook corners Duckenfield in a golf club car park. Wearing a golfing jumper very much of its time Duckenfield sternly avoids any of the questions put to him. He locks the door to his expensive looking car and walks into the clubhouse where he worked as a steward (after being pensioned off by the police force in the aftermath of the tragedy). Mr Duckenfield was a very lucky man. He didn’t have to suffer losing anyone close to him, nor did he have to read a souped-up newspaper headline discrediting the scene of a relative’s death. Nor did he have to live with the heartbreaking knowledge that his relative could have been saved if public servants were placed inside the tunnel at Leppings Lane, or if the public servants were on duty to do their duty and open the crush gates in pens 3 and 4. You could say he is one of the luckiest sons of bitches in the history of this country.
Ask Rupert Murdoch what would be his career saving grace then it would be the buying of the television rights to the newly-formed Premier League. Like India was to the British Empire, and like how the oil-rich Middle East is to the Americans currently, football is the jewel in his crown. Take it away and the seeds of a downfall would not be far from imminent. It worked out nicely: in the vision that Taylor wanted to see football ground concourses to turn into there is the inclusion of televisions showing coverage of Sky Sports.
Overall, after the final Taylor report, football became the whore who cleaned itself up for the major corporations to come in and do whatever it wanted. The fans became the customer and with every customer all that is required are the credit card details. No longer are the eleven men on the park the local lads scoring goals for the friends, family and neighbours in the stands. Footballers run around now for the financial dividend: footballers are easy millionaires thanks in part to the media circus that surrounds them and the shrewdness of their agents. The agents use The Sun or the News of The World and the intermittent talent that their clients use on the pitch is dissected into nothingness on Sky Sports coverage. Football now is a microcosm of the radical social changes that have taken place in the last thirty years. Thatcherism and the free market economy got its wish. The technicality of the plans they put into place worked within a crucial decade of weakening the foundations of a working class that held them back with their unions and their support for their football teams. Hillsborough was a crucial spur in this turnaround.
Like in all instances of tragedy the victims are at the core. In my work I have focused the victims’ tragedy on the light which emanates from the tunnel where they were to be introduced to their death, but also a place where they should have been shielded from their death if the police were mobilised correctly. In the humiliation of the subsequent enquiries and mistrials from April 1989 onwards the actual group to be overlooked is the 96. They were not meant to die in such a safe environment. They were not on battlefields and the agents of the state should have ensured their safety to the very end. They did not, and to make it much worse they got away with not ensuring safety. As the creator of this piece I cannot sufficiently express the hurt and sorrow of losing a relative or loved one at Hillsborough. I can only imagine that it’s a searing feeling of loss, like very much the focus of searing light from the tunnel motif. When there is chaos all around and after the event there has to be a focus in the madness of it all.
This is a work dedicated to the memories of these people who still very much matter.
