Hillsborough
My thoughts go out to those who died or lost loved ones in the Hillsborough tragedy.
In my view though, we were very lucky that it didn’t happen earlier at any number of grounds.
In the 1950s and 1960s, I was in some quite bad crushes at various grounds, like Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal, Everton and Hampden Park and my father told me of similar crushes before the Second World War.
In one match, I saw Spurs play Wolves at White Hart Lane and getting away from the ground was dangerous to say the least. At least the steps to White Hart Lane station seem to be better now, but there was a disaster waiting to happen at Tottenham. Luckily it didn’t!
It may be a cop-out and complacent to say that all-seater stadia mean that we can’t get another Hillsborough. But I hope we don’t.
People in Liverpool, talk of conspiracies and dark underlying frces behind Hillsborough.
It was the reluctance of the football authorities to spend any money on grounds and their surroundings, that really caused the problem at Hillsborough.
The Anonymous Widower 
Whilst we did have some nasty moments in the 60’s with crowd surges and crushes, the saving grace was the crowd wasn’t caged in. Additionally there were always uniformed police in the crowd, a police presence in the Hillsborough crush would have at least ensured the gates were opened earlier.
Comment by peter hoskins | October 17, 2011 |
Spoken like the good officer you obviously were.
One point is that in 1968, C collapsed in the crowd at Anfield, probably due to her grmbling appendix at the time. Several uniformed officers appeared from nowhere and the crowd parted like the Red Sea as they carried her out and to the First Aid station.
You say that there may have been no officers in the crowd at Hillsborough. After our experience at Anfield, might Liverpool fans have been expecting that the officers with them would be doing something? But there just weren’t any, so nothing happened until it was too late.
Comment by AnonW | October 17, 2011 |