Hillsborough remembered

Walsall blogger Mark Jones looks back 20 years to the Hillsborough disaster and the aftermath for football fans.

This is my truth …

' You see in England somebody, somewhere, knew what they were doing, and there was this system, which nobody ever explained to us, that prevented accidents of this kind'.

'There was no plan after all; they really had been riding their luck all that time.'

Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch (1992)

For what it's worth, in the April sunshine a late Stuart Rimmer equaliser at home to Hull staved off the inevitable relegation back to Division 3 for three days. But that didn't matter because April 1 1989 was the day football changed forever.

96 football fans lost their lives simply because they wanted to see their team play a match. The reports had filtered through, firstly that there'd been some kind of disturbance, then that the game had been abandoned and finally that there'd been fatalities.

Sadly the general assumption was that hooliganism was to blame, especially as Liverpool fans had been involved in the tragedy at Heysel four years earlier. However it quickly became apparent that those who had died had been crushed to death, mostly against the fences, as a result of overcrowding on the terraces. Whilst at the same time the reactions of those people employed on the day to protect and serve and to ensure the comfort and safety of the fans were hopelessly inadequate.

Fans were most certainly not to blame.

The 96 victims were Liverpool fans and clearly Hillsborough has had a profound and lasting effect on the Anfield club and its followers, but the events of that Saturday afternoon seemed to bring football fans everywhere closer together.

It was everybody's tragedy.

Anybody who went to football in the 1980s was unintentionally declaring themself a second class citizen. We stood on crumbling terraces in decaying stadiums, invariably behind horrendous fences, and for the most part were treated like idiots by the police and untrained, uncaring stewards.

As the astute comment from Nick Hornby illustrates, Hillsborough had been an accident waiting to happen for years and years. It could have happened to supporters of any team; the sad fact that it was a big club playing an F.A.Cup Semi Final just magnified everything horrendously.

It could have happened to Walsall fans, packed in like sardines at Anfield of all places in 84, at Watford in 87 or at Ashton Gate in the Play-Offs in 88. It could have been at Doncaster's old Belle Vue, where there was a caged tunnel leading to the away end which had fences not only at the front but at the back too; or at the old Northampton ground where the combination of huge fences and a terrace below pitch level meant you couldn't see at least half of the pitch.

And worryingly it could have happened in the away end at Fellows Park from 1988 onwards, when unnecessarily large fences were put up to meet the requirements of Division 2. You can only shudder to think what would have happened if those fences had been there for the Liverpool Milk Cup Semi in 1984.

Coverage of the disaster in the media was widespread and sympathetic, with most people asking how and why this could have happened.

And then after a couple of days 'The Sun' went and broke ranks. Under the infamous misnomer of a headline 'The Truth' they made a number of disgraceful, unsubstantiated allegations about the behaviour of fans at Hillsborough. Sales of the rag on Merseyside went down substantially overnight and have stayed low ever since.

To me it seemed that this had been a botched first attempt at blaming fans, and demonising fans as drunk, lawless hooligans, for the tragedy; designed to let everyone else – police, football authorities, government – off the hook. If this was the case, then it was a serious error of judgement. It had happened after Heysel but you'd have thought they'd have known that Hillsborough was different. TV evidence and the heart-wrenching accounts of those that were there should have made a nonsense of this kind of ill-informed 'reporting'.

A few months later one local journo, the kind who use 'plain speaking' as a disguise for prejudice and bigotry, also came out with a nasty little piece entitled 'Blinded to the truth about Hillsborough'. Unfortunately the individual responsible is still in employment, although none of his 'truths' have ever been substantiated in the last 20 years.

It didn't end there, a lot of police evidence to the Taylor Enquiry that followed Hillsborough referred to drunken or ticketless fans forcing their way into the ground. Thankfully Lord Justice Taylor listened to plenty of other evidence too.

What some people hadn't realised was that a lot had changed between 1985 and 1989.

This was the era that saw the emergence of the fanzine movement and the establishment of the Football Supporters Association (FSA), the organisation founded by Liverpool fan Rogan Taylor as a direct response to the events of Heysel using the fine slogan 'Reclaim the Game'.

Intelligent and articulate, Taylor epitomised the new breed of people who weren't afraid to say they were football fans and to demand an end to fans being treated like animals. The FSA contributed a huge amount to the Taylor Report and were able to contradict the idea that we were all just mindless yobs.

It was the Taylor Report that shaped football in the 90s and as we know it today. Thankfully in a mass outbreak of common sense, the fences began to come down within days of Hillsborough (although sadly and shamefully not at Fellows Park). They'd been put up as a crude way of dealing with the hooliganism of the 70s and 80s, punishing everyone for the actions of a minority. And of course, whilst they may have prevented pitch invasions, they did nothing to stop hooliganism.

Equally mad was the Thatcher Government's answer to the problem – Colin Moynihan's ridiculously flawed Membership scheme, which thankfully was also kicked into touch by Lord Justice Taylor.

Taylor recommended all-seater stadiums (echoing a decree from UEFA about top level games), better match-day organisation, better ticketing arrangements, better policing and proper training for stewards and a proper dialogue between the authorities and supporters.

For the most part, these recommendations have been implemented and have been for the better. Many people, myself included, still yearn for the return of safe terracing but are also resigned to the fact that this may never happen.

There are still terraces doted about the lower leagues and I can think of at least 5 examples of 'old school' crowd control measures at away matches over the years, but thankfully they are the exception. Football is better now, and I'm glad my kids don't have to endure the shocking conditions at football grounds that I put up with two decades ago.

The internal police investigation into Hillsborough unsurprisingly cleared all officers of anything more than incompetence, although the families of the 96 and Liverpool fans continue the fight for justice. Sadly I fear this will never happen, but although I can never begin to know how those who lost loved ones feel, I do understand the need to keep their memory alive.

The mistakes that lead to the Hillsborough tragedy on April 15 1989 should always be remembered.

The 96 who died should always be remembered.

And we will remember them.