Families’ outrage at echoes of tragedy
by Caroline Innes, Liverpool Daily Post
FAMILIES who lost loved ones in the Hillsborough tragedy last night told of their outrage that fans’ lives were still being put at risk.
They spoke out after thousands of Manchester United fans were caught up in a terrifying crush during their team’s European Champions League match against French club Lille.
Those who witnessed the 1989 tragedy, which claimed 96 lives, said the scare at the Stade Felix-Bollaert – the home ground of another French club, Lens – brought back agonising memories and showed that lessons had still not been learned.
They called on UEFA to ensure safety was improved in stadia in Europe or “another Hillsborough was just waiting to happen.”
The crush started after supporters who had bought tickets for home side's part of the ground were moved into a stand already packed with United fans, even though there were not enough seats.
As they pushed their way in, desperate United fans at the front were forced against metal fencing at pitchside.
Fearing a riot, police fired tear gas and pepper spray into the crowd as scared people rattled fencing and climbed over each other.
As supporters passed out, others lifted them up and tried to move them out of danger.
Some, including a child, were carried away and an elderly woman guided to safety in tears. Supporters attempted to climb over the fence, and at one point they managed to open a gate, but it was quickly slammed in their faces by police officers who hit out with batons.
Jenni Hicks lost daughters Sarah, 15, and Vicki, 19, at Hillsborough. Her ex-husband Trevor was the former chair of Hillsborough Family Support Group.
“This was so frightening. It just shouldn’t have happened,” she said.
“I couldn’t bear to watch as it just brought back such horrific memories.
“It was just like Hillsborough. There was no way out and people were in dire straits. In both cases the crowd were treated like hooligans by police and officials who misjudged their desperation to escape as them trying to invade the pitch.
“It must have been horrendous for those involved.
“There is no place for standing in football stadiums. Anywhere where fans are caged in behind fencing is so dangerous, and I can’t believe UEFA would allow games to take place at stadiums where fans are stood behind fencing.
“There will be another disaster unless something is done as the conditions have not improved in Europe. To do nothing is just outrageous as lives will be lost and all for the sake of a game of football.”
Liverpool fan Brian Farrell, from Old Swan, was at Hillsborough and was one of the organisers of the campaign to stop Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie from appearing on the BBC’s Question Time.
Speaking from Barcelona before Liverpool’s Champions league game, he said: “This is pretty horrific.
“We have had our disaster and in the UK lessons have been learnt, but Europe is 20 years behind us in terms of stadium safety.
"Hillsborough should have been the end of it and it is frightening that this could happen 18 years on. This was exactly the scenario that we all went through in 1989.”
James Entwistle, 36, director of Cheshire-based marketing agency TLC, was in the stand.
He said: “The police were being too heavy-handed. All day, Lille fans were selling tickets outside the stadium so a lot of United fans ended up in the home section.
“The police noticed this, so they started moving them over. There was no trouble, people were climbing fences because they were trying to get out. Then the police starting spraying tear gas, which spread across the stand.
“What seemed like hundreds of riot police turned up. It was bizarre and completely over the top.”
UEFA are now investigating the crush.
UEFA spokesman Rob Faulkner said: “We cannot say now what action the disciplinary committee will take, but if they find against Lille, it could well be severe.”
United fans a whisker away from a Hillsborough repeat
by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post
THE two bitterest memories of April 15, 1989, occurred both outside and inside Sheffield Wednesday’s Leppings Lane stand.
With four minutes to kick-off, while still queuing to get in through the woefully inadequate turnstiles, a calm metallic voice announced through the Tannoy that there was no need to worry as there was plenty of room inside.
Ever since, I’ve always associated that moment with the scene in the classic British horror film, Dead of Night, in which the hearse driver, played by Miles Malleson, looks up at the watcher at the window and announces with a grim smile: “Room for one more.”
By then, the hapless mandarins of the South Yorkshire police had already decided to make the fateful and fatal decision to open the sliding gates that allowed 96 Liverpool fans the opportunity to be crushed to death.
Once inside, the horror was compounded while looking down from the stand’s upper tier as a young supporter, clearly in distress, was thrown back into the crush by a policeman manning a small gate in the merciless metal fencing at the front of the terrace.
The suspicious mind would allow itself to believe that this was one of the officers who later appealed and received massive compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder from the state, while the families of the victims received precisely nothing.
Despite the deep scars that will always remain from that truly dreadful day, though, lessons have been learned and more lives undoubtedly duly saved.
But only in this country.
For years, European football has adopted a cavalier attitude continuing to look on British football fans as animals while ignoring the festering problems on their own doorstep.
This British "wildlife" now enjoys safe modern stadia, meticulous ticketing procedures, and a post-Taylor Report police force more understanding of the delicacies of crowd control. Not so in the likes of Italy and France. The former’s Serie A football season is now in meltdown after the Sicilian derby match riots between Catania and Palermo, in Sicily, when policeman Filippo Raciti was killed.
And now this.
Liverpool fans, of course, have an inherent hatred for Manchester United.
But hatred, within reason, is allowed in football, which is what makes it such a beautiful game to supporters and incomprehensible to the non-believer.
There do come times, however, when British football fans bury their rivalry and unite in a common bond, a universal spirit of understanding, especially against injustice.
Hillsborough was such a time. Tuesday night in Lens, where Manchester United faced Lille, and was perhaps a whisker away from being a repeat, was another.
Our hearts will always remain with those who died in 1989. In other ways, though, time has moved on in this country for the mutual benefit and safety of all supporters.
Not so it appears elsewhere, where time stands still and football fans are treated as the 96 who lost their lives were, nearly 18 years ago.
Like pigs.
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