Hillsborough. The amazing bending of the truth.

[Hermit]

Yes more bias from the mod's I regularly insult people (well Seth whose species is quite suspect) yet I never get a warning

We are saving it all up for a year's suspension...

So, where is mine, huh? I've been sitting on four warnings for three years now without anything else happening. Now, that's bias!

[pErvinalia]

And I'm one of the most bannable people on the internet! Why aren't I banned?!!

[HomerJay]

But there have been other tragedies, most notable the Bradford Fire disaster (1985) when a stand holding football fans caught fire and 56 people perished, live on TV. This didn't have a tenth of the emotional overload that Hillsborough has generated.

I think it might have had had the victims of the fire been blamed en masse for setting it.

I don't think the whole mawkishness is set to a backdrop of who blamed the supporters is it?

It's more to do with the squeaky scouse wheel getting the grease, like I said, not all scousers are in favour of the current blub.

But back to the issue at hand, the simplistic blame game of the police is limited in it's scope and there is no reason to believe the behaviour of the fans has some inevitability to do with fluid dynamics.

The reason the gate was opened was due to the large number of fans still trying to get in, opening the side gate had worked before but didn't cause issues because if the central pens were full, club stewards directed people away from them. Those stewards were (mysteriously, AFAIK) absent at this game.

An alternative would be to delay the kickoff, estimates were that even delaying the game by half an hour wouldn't have given all those crowding to get in time to get in (it was a heavily overloaded crowd).

If announcing to the throng that the game would be delayed would have stopped the initial crush OUTSIDE the ground (as was mooted at the inquiries), then it shows that the behaviour of the crowd could be modified, but that the crowd would only respond to particular messages, ie saying you still get to see the game would work, but saying stop pushing people are suffering, would not have been sufficient to modify the behaviour of the crowd.

[Hermit]

Thanks for your take, HomerJay. Makes more sense to see the disaster as the result of a number of factors than simplistic explanations like "It was the crowd, the fucking crowd." or "It was the cops, the fucking cops."

[Strontium Dog]

Nobody ever said it was just the fault of the police.

The police cop most of the blame, for organising the event on a criminally negligent level, and then doctoring evidence after the fact and spreading lies in the press.
The city council cop some blame, for allowing the ground to operate without a valid safety certificate.
The FA cop some blame, for allowing the match to go ahead at a ground with no valid safety certificate and at which similar crushing disasters had only been narrowly averted on several previous occasions.

[FBM]

And I'm one of the most bannable people on the internet! Why aren't I banned?!!

We like your avatars and want to see what you come up with next.

[mistermack]

Thanks for your take, HomerJay. Makes more sense to see the disaster as the result of a number of factors than simplistic explanations like "It was the crowd, the fucking crowd." or "It was the cops, the fucking cops."

It was the crowd. The fucking crowd. It's the only different ingredient.

It's the same ground, that had hosted matches week in, week out.
It's the same police force, who had policed matches there, week in, week out.

Every other club that played there came away with the same number of fans as they arrived with.
The police had no problem on the Nottingham Forest side, on the same day.

The only different ingredient was the pig-ignorant Liverpool fans, who acted like crazy cattle on the day.

Maybe it was the first signs of mad cow disease in the country. They should have been tested.

[Hermit]

Nobody ever said it was just the fault of the police.

Actually, in his first contribution to this thread Hackenslash said: "The police were entirely responsible for this." On the other extreme, Mistermack sheets the entire blame home to the Liverpool fans. Those two extremes are what I am replying to.

In my opinion the disaster was a confluence of quite a number of unfortunate factors, and some of them were of greater import than others. Yes, the police was grossly incompetent. Also, the decision to play the game at a woefully substandard stadium when at least two others were suitable and available at the time, defies explanation. But in my view it's the stadium's management that bears most of the responsibility for what happened for two reasons. Firstly, the standing-only section was already filled to almost twice its designed capacity when the latecomers were sluiced into it. There were no stewards present to divert the latecomers into the adjacent sections which were not overcrowded. That's what happened in other games, but for some reason not this one. Secondly, a request was made by the police to management to postpone the start of the game. This was refused, although there are precedents for such postponements. I don't know why the request was refused. It just doesn't make sense. If either of those factors had been handled competently the fatal crush would not have happened, and certainly not if both had been managed correctly.

Now to the crowd. I doubt that a single latecomer intended to not miss the kick-off even if it meant inconveniencing, let alone killing other fans. Individual intentions or lack thereof play no role in crowd dynamics. I very much agree with Hackenslash here. In conditions such as the ones pertaining to that game crowds behave according to fluid dynamics. Fatal stampedes and crushes happen with depressing regularity, be they at religious pilgrimages, rock concerts, cinemas, food distributions, or whatever other occasion where crowds assemble. Once a certain state of the dynamism in the movement of a crowd is reached, individuals within it have no say in what happens next.

[mistermack]

If you were being crushed in a crowd, would you be calling for better policing? Or how about calling for a more modern stadium? Or for a study in crowd dynamics?

Personally, I would want the fuckers to stop pushing. I think the victims would have agreed, if they had had the chance.

[JimC]

Hermit wrote:

Individual intentions or lack thereof play no role in crowd dynamics. I very much agree with Hackenslash here.

I would disagree. Not so much individual intentions, but the mood (on average) of the crowd must be one of the multitude of factors you mentioned. A crowd where the majority are feeling impatient and aggressive will behave differently to a crowd whose members, on average, are relatively patient and docile. It will be one of the variable parameters that modify the overall crowd behaviour.

[mistermack]

One thing is obvious. People commenting on this thread are spouting theories about crowd behaviour that has come straight out of their own heads.

And one thing you can be sure of, and that that the cops on duty that day knew a lot more about crowd behaviour than anybody who has posted here. Seeing as they actually HAD some training, and plenty of experience to go on.
The only thing they lacked, was experience of just how moronic the Liverpool fans of that era were.

Forget what happened inside Hillsborough, just look at the Heysel Stadium disaster video I posted.
There's nothing biased about that. Liverpool fans killed 39 innocent people that day, and yet they learned fuck all from it. Why? Because they never accepted the blame. And nobody made them.
Even the minister of sport of the day was making excuses for them, right after they'd killed 39 people.
Absolutely incredible.

Then have a look at the crush that STARTED it all off. The crush OUTSIDE of the stadium.
There was no possible excuses there. No gate opened, no tunnel. But they were shoving like pigs at the trough, and people were going to die right there, if the gate hadn't been opened.
It was those same people who did all the shoving in the tunnel. How anybody can blame the fucking stadium, or the policing, astounds me. You can see with your own eyes the mood they were in, and the way they were shoving and pushing, even when they were still outside.

I just don't understand how people can make excuses for them.
People seem to identify them with the victims, which is just stupid. They weren't the victims, they were the killers.

[Strontium Dog]

You are beyond help. I'm disgusted that you're allowed to utter this fact-free spite without anyone stopping you.

[Hermit]

While I disagree with Mistermack once again, I am really very happy that you have no say about what he is or is not allowed to say.

[JimC]

While I disagree with Mistermack once again, I am really very happy that you have no say about what he is or is not allowed to say.

[Strontium Dog]

My cat's breath smells of cat food

Thanks for your contribution.