“It is a depressing and chastening fact that mine is the ninth official report covering crowd safety and control at football grounds. After eight previous reports and three editions of the Green Guide, it seems astounding that 95 people could die from overcrowding before the very eyes of those controlling the event.”
Who knows what would have been Lord Justice Taylor’s response to yet another report, this time on the extent of the cover-up of some of the facts of what happened at Hillsborough, & in its aftermath.
Lord Taylor’s report, while leaving no doubt that the contemptuous attitudes towards football fans which was used by those in authority to justify the lack of care & attention to the state of grounds caused him personal distress, recognised too the scourge that match days had become for those who had no interest in the game but merely had the misfortune to live or have their businesses near to a ground, or were just trying to travel on the same train which was carrying supporters to the game; a scourge.
Add to that the politics of the 1980s, & Neil Kinnock’s 1985 Labour Party Conference attack on the far left, and principally Liverpool City Council, for causing "grotesque chaos", & the widespread, lack sympathy for the 23-years of persistence of the families of those who died becomes, historically, easier to comprehend. Even though mere mention of this is today considered 'distasteful'
But - & this is the important point – even given all that – those feelings were unforgivable.
Even if (some) fans had behaved exactly as the smearers claimed.
We abolished the death penalty for murder twenty years before Hillsborough.
Disgusting, bad or antisocial behaviour does not justify indifference to whether people live or die, does not allow you to tell yourself that even dangerous grounds are too good for people like that.
And it certainly does not justify callous behaviour towards relatives, disrespectful treatment of all those who died, & cowardly lying once you suddenly realise that, after the worst has happened.
But instead of having an orgy of self-congratulation about the fact that now we feel bad about it, we should be asking ourselves who are those whose plight we are ignoring today.
Links
[PDF] The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster 15 April 1989: Inquiry By The Rt Hon Lord Justice Taylor
[PDF] The Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel
