Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us and that's okay. And this
Speaker 2: is our ongoing Studies Abroad ped issue.
Speaker 3: That's right, and we you know, this is about the
Speaker 3: Hillsborough disaster, which was the very unfortunate and super sad
Speaker 3: and somewhat infuriating, deadly crush that happened at an English
Speaker 3: football stadium in nineteen eighty nine. So we enlisted Kyle,
Speaker 3: our one writer from the UK, to put this together
Speaker 3: for us, and he did a great job and used
Speaker 3: all the appropriate letters and terminology and his spelling and stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I was gonna say no z's throughout.
Speaker 2: They were all s's.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He did a wonderful job this summarizing like a really
Speaker 2: big giant story that had we done this episode like
Speaker 2: when we first started, it would have been totally different
Speaker 2: because around twenty fifteen, the public opinion, the entire basically
Speaker 2: worldview of what happened at the strategedy completely flip flopped
Speaker 2: and the truth finally came out. We'll get to all that,
Speaker 2: but I'd say we kind of give everybody some background
Speaker 2: about what's going on here. The whole thing took place,
Speaker 2: like you said, in nineteen eighty nine at Hillsborough Stadium.
Speaker 2: That's in Sheffield, which is in South Yorkshire, which is
Speaker 2: a county in Yorkshire, And normally this is the home
Speaker 2: of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. That's where they play at Hillsboro,
Speaker 2: but this day it was actually hosting an FA Cup semifinal.
Speaker 2: That means it was all England teams and it was
Speaker 2: between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. So far, so good. This
Speaker 2: is just a normal Cup semifinal game that's a big deal,
Speaker 2: way bigger than the average Sheffield Wednesday Football club game.
Speaker 2: But you know, so far it's pretty normal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, they had Liverpool had more fans and
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how it is now, but nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: nine at least that was the case. I think it
Speaker 3: probably still is. But they were allocated the smaller end
Speaker 3: of the stadium and the entrance and you know, as
Speaker 3: you'll a lot of times with disasters like these, you're
Speaker 3: going to see it like a series of steps that
Speaker 3: happened to kind of ensure unwittingly that something terrible goes down,
Speaker 3: and this was sort of the first one was they
Speaker 3: allocated the larger fan base the smaller end of the stadium,
Speaker 3: and the entrance to that was at the end of
Speaker 3: Lepping's Lane, which was a street that dead ended into
Speaker 3: the stadium, and not only did it dead end, but
Speaker 3: it bottlenecks. It got more narrow as you got toward
Speaker 3: that dead end, and that the turnstiles there, which is
Speaker 3: where you get in at that part of the stadium.
Speaker 3: There were seven of them. They were old, you know,
Speaker 3: this is an older stadium, and they didn't you know,
Speaker 3: they just couldn't move people through as quickly as like
Speaker 3: you would be able to today exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know, under a normal game for Sheffield Wednesday,
Speaker 2: this was not that big of a problem. This was
Speaker 2: a very big problem this day because there were ten
Speaker 2: one hundred fans who were just the ones who had
Speaker 2: standing room only tickets in what are called pens. Right,
Speaker 2: So they're ultimately like basically little terraces with a bunch
Speaker 2: of little tiny steps on them and some railings which
Speaker 2: are called crush barriers, and you just stand in them.
Speaker 2: You just pack everybody in. But they're supposed to say like, okay,
Speaker 2: there're no more than this many people can go into
Speaker 2: this pen, no more than this many people can go
Speaker 2: into that pen.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 2: So there's ten thousand people who are all going into
Speaker 2: these pens. They have to use these seven turnstyles so
Speaker 2: very quickly. Even outside of this stadium, a bit of
Speaker 2: a crush starts to happen, in part because the cops
Speaker 2: aren't doing anything about having people form a line or q.
Speaker 2: They're not directing anybody to do anything. It's just get
Speaker 2: in where you fit in, and whoever gets there first
Speaker 2: is the one who gets through that turnstile that moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, there's plenty of surveillance footage and
Speaker 3: stuff out and it was not you know, as we'll
Speaker 3: see the story that was kind of cooked up to
Speaker 3: evade I guess being responsible for this, which is what
Speaker 3: they were, was that, you know, it was an unruly
Speaker 3: crowd of drunks. Hooliganism was a thing much more back then.
Speaker 3: They've basically eradicated that now for the most part. And
Speaker 3: if you look at the footage, it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: a bunch of kids, a lot of teenagers. It wasn't
Speaker 3: super expensive back then to get into soccer and football
Speaker 3: games like this. It was six pounds to get in
Speaker 3: for standing room only, and they were lively. They were
Speaker 3: have a good time, but it didn't look like anything
Speaker 3: threatening at that point at all. There were people just like,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of trying to get into the stadium
Speaker 3: to see a game. They were excited about.
Speaker 2: Yeah and all. This really kind of starts about ten
Speaker 2: minutes before kickoff. That's when people are like, come on,
Speaker 2: let's go, we got to get in. And like by
Speaker 2: this time that crowd had backed like the lines or
Speaker 2: whatever had backed up into Leppings Lane pretty far. So
Speaker 2: people wanted to hurry up and get through right, But
Speaker 2: like you said, everybody was generally good natured. Kickoff was
Speaker 2: set at three pm, and at ten till three pm
Speaker 2: there were still five thousand Liverpool fans who were outside
Speaker 2: on Lepping's Lane trying to get through these seven turnstyles.
Speaker 2: And so at this point the cops, at least one cop.
Speaker 2: The guy who was in charge of managing this side
Speaker 2: of the outside of the stadium, got in touch with
Speaker 2: the guy who was running all of the police for
Speaker 2: this soccer match. His name is David Duckinfield, and the
Speaker 2: guy outside said, hey, we need to open a gate
Speaker 2: and forget the turnstiles and tickets. There's a bunch of
Speaker 2: people who are about to get crushed out here, and
Speaker 2: we need to relieve some of this pressure. Please open
Speaker 2: this gate. You did that once, Duck and Field ignored it,
Speaker 2: did it twice, Duck and Field ignored it. The third time.
Speaker 2: It was almost frantic, and Duck and Field finally said, okay,
Speaker 2: go ahead and open gate. See they did that at
Speaker 2: two point fifty two pm and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: just an enormous mass of people stream into essentially the
Speaker 2: foyer of the stadium. So now you go from a
Speaker 2: crowd crush outside of the stadium to the potential crowd
Speaker 2: crush just inside the stadium.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so, and we'll get to more about David Duckinfield,
Speaker 3: the match commander, and his qualifications and stuff, I guess
Speaker 3: in a minute. But one thing we did not mention
Speaker 3: is these pins. And this was partially to kind of
Speaker 3: keep hooliganism down. They were fenced within the seating area,
Speaker 3: so once you got to this large standing there were
Speaker 3: different numbered pins within that that were you know, fenced
Speaker 3: off from each other. So there were literal pins and
Speaker 3: when people started flowing through when they opened gate, sea.
Speaker 3: They were all passing through towards this, you know, the
Speaker 3: central part of the field, down this long tunnel. I
Speaker 3: think Kyle said it was twenty three meters long to
Speaker 3: get to pins three and four, which were basically midfield,
Speaker 3: and there was plenty of room on the pins on
Speaker 3: the outside. But because nobody was directing traffic, nobody was
Speaker 3: relaying information, no one knew this, and those central pins
Speaker 3: were already full at ten till when that big crowd
Speaker 3: of people started to make their way to that spot.
Speaker 2: Right. So again, because I was standing room ontely, it
Speaker 2: didn't tell you what pen you had to go to.
Speaker 2: You could go to whatever pen. But since that tunnel
Speaker 2: was straight ahead, that's where people naturally went. And like
Speaker 2: you said, those pins were already full. So as this
Speaker 2: tunnel this crush of people, there's crowd of people after
Speaker 2: opening gate, sea floods in connects with the people who
Speaker 2: are all already coming through those seven turnstyles. Almost all
Speaker 2: of them start to go through this tunnel, and that
Speaker 2: tunnel opens up on two pens that are already full
Speaker 2: of people, way over capacity already. As they found in retrospect,
Speaker 2: there was about a thousand more people that they allowed
Speaker 2: onto each pen than they should have based on the
Speaker 2: kind of crowd control safety stuff they had in place.
Speaker 2: So it was already dangerously full before those people from
Speaker 2: Gate Sea even made their way down the tunnel. But
Speaker 2: when they did, they encountered this mass of other people.
Speaker 2: But there were people behind them who didn't know this,
Speaker 2: at the back of the tunnel, in the tunnel, and
Speaker 2: they all wanted in two so everybody was pressing forward
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden a crowd crush happened
Speaker 2: in those two middle pens.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: So it's about five till kickoff. At this point when
Speaker 3: people like later described just sort of a change in
Speaker 3: how things were going, you know, like I said, it
Speaker 3: was it was people generally happy to go see this
Speaker 3: soccer game. And by two fifty five it becomes clear
Speaker 3: that like something's wrong. Four minutes later it was a
Speaker 3: lethal crush had developed and those two central pins and officers,
Speaker 3: some of them are telling people to move back like
Speaker 3: this is part of the problem is the officers themselves
Speaker 3: were very disorganized and not sharing information. So some officers
Speaker 3: are telling people to move back. They're saying they can't
Speaker 3: move back because there's people behind them and those fences
Speaker 3: that were installed to I think that was in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy seven to prevent the hooliganism. We're keeping people like
Speaker 3: once they got in from being like, oh wow, it's
Speaker 3: getting like super crowded, let's move to these outer pins
Speaker 3: where there's plenty of room. People started climbing fences and stuff,
Speaker 3: and this is where it gets really really out of hand,
Speaker 3: like the panic starts to set in. People are trying
Speaker 3: to drag people over the fences to safety. Some of
Speaker 3: the gates of the pins were opened by the cops
Speaker 3: at that point, but it's developed into like a real dangerous.
Speaker 2: Right, And so inside the pens there's those railings that
Speaker 2: they're kind of like intermittently staggered in the pens, right,
Speaker 2: So if you walk into one of these pens and
Speaker 2: you're facing the field, you'll eventually come to a railing,
Speaker 2: and that's a crowd barrier or a crush barrier, which
Speaker 2: means that if a crush develops, that barrier is supposed
Speaker 2: to stop it from going any further than the barrier.
Speaker 2: So the people behind the barrier, life's gonna suck for them,
Speaker 2: but the people in front of that barrier will be safe. Right,
Speaker 2: it's like limiting crowd crushes. Well, the problem is one
Speaker 2: of them was very very old, at least one, and
Speaker 2: it gave So there's a whole crush of people who
Speaker 2: are pressed up against this and a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: people on the other side of it too, And now
Speaker 2: one of those barriers fall and that crush of people
Speaker 2: just basically spills into this other group of people in
Speaker 2: the same pen and people it just fell over. It
Speaker 2: was like a wave of people that overcame the people
Speaker 2: who were standing on the other side of that barrier
Speaker 2: that broke.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so all this time the match starts on time,
Speaker 3: word is not again. Communication was just kind of chaotic,
Speaker 3: and no one got word down to the pitch that hey,
Speaker 3: maybe we should delay this game and get this under control.
Speaker 3: And at three pm the game starts at three oh five,
Speaker 3: those barriers, at least the one in Pen three, had
Speaker 3: given away, and a human cascade starts. And this is when,
Speaker 3: you know, the devastating stuff. We're not going to read
Speaker 3: one thousand accounts of people getting you know, squeezed to death,
Speaker 3: because it's pretty awful, but you know what happens in
Speaker 3: a situation like that is you can't breathe because you're
Speaker 3: so packed into one another that you can't expand your
Speaker 3: chest out to get a breath, and you generally die
Speaker 3: of asphyxiation or like your heart stops right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this happened to a lot of people in
Speaker 2: this We talked a lot about this phenomenon in the
Speaker 2: Crowd episode and I think in the Black Friday episode two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Crowd one was what inspired this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we we just touched on it just a
Speaker 2: little bit, right.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if I mean, I think if
Speaker 3: we mentioned it. I said, I brought it up because
Speaker 3: I had asked Kyle to write this.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, gotcha? Okay, But when there was like when this crowd,
Speaker 2: this human cascade happened, people got pushed over, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a natural human reaction to try to get upright again,
Speaker 2: which means that you were standing on people beneath you,
Speaker 2: and so people got trampled. In addition to the people
Speaker 2: who were pressed up against the other crush barriers or
Speaker 2: against the fence. There's some really disturbing photos that were
Speaker 2: taken very close up of the people pressed up against
Speaker 2: the fence. Did you see those.
Speaker 3: I saw them when I was in high school and
Speaker 3: sports illustrated, Like, I remember this vividly. I didn't go
Speaker 3: back and revisit a lot of that because it's super upsetting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is upsiding. And there's a guy who
Speaker 2: took a lot of His name was David Cannon, and
Speaker 2: he was at least partially responsible for getting the police
Speaker 2: to finally stop the game. The reason why they wanted
Speaker 2: to stop the game so bad is because they think
Speaker 2: that that that crush or that movement that caused the
Speaker 2: human cascade was in response to one of Liverpool's players
Speaker 2: just missing a goal, and so they're like, we need
Speaker 2: to stop the game, right, So this guy, David Cannon,
Speaker 2: got them to stop the game, or at least he tried.
Speaker 2: He's one of the main photographers who was there at
Speaker 2: the time, so his pictures are like you said, it's
Speaker 2: very disturbing to see this because you can hear people
Speaker 2: describe it, you can read descriptions of it, but when
Speaker 2: you see the people pressed up against the fence like
Speaker 2: they were, it really comes home how horrific this was.
Speaker 2: Like you can kind of finally start to imagine yourself
Speaker 2: in that position.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yeah, it's pretty bad. That's why I didn't
Speaker 3: go back and look at three oh six. It was
Speaker 3: a superintendent who actually got the game stopped. He went
Speaker 3: down to the pitch and actually went to the referee.
Speaker 3: They had a couple of minutes before signaled to the
Speaker 3: police control box to stop, but it kept on for
Speaker 3: two more minutes. So that's when the superintendent finally like
Speaker 3: literally went on the field and told the referee, like,
Speaker 3: you got to stop this game. This isn't because you know,
Speaker 3: everyone thought it was just like rowdy fans, and he
Speaker 3: was like, no, that this is not what's happening. The
Speaker 3: match commander Duckinfield requested more cops to come. It was
Speaker 3: called Operation Support, and no one was explaining why or
Speaker 3: what's going on though, So once the officers and you know,
Speaker 3: communications are not what they are now. Certainly it's not
Speaker 3: an excuse, but they were not getting briefed on exactly
Speaker 3: what was going on. So a lot of the cops
Speaker 3: there assumed that the fans were just rowdy and we're
Speaker 3: trying to like storm the fence, to storm the field,
Speaker 3: and they formed a cordon on the pitch to kind
Speaker 3: of keep that from happening. And again some of them
Speaker 3: are opening gates, like they see what's going on and
Speaker 3: are some or trying to help the fans, but other
Speaker 3: cops are either ignoring them or like shoving people back in.
Speaker 2: Right or standing there facing this crowd crush in a
Speaker 2: line according with other cops. So imagine that, like just
Speaker 2: how surreal that would look because they didn't understand what
Speaker 2: was going on. So eventually they managed to open some
Speaker 2: gates which allowed the crowd crush to ease up. And
Speaker 2: so the crowd crush was bad enough, like the after
Speaker 2: effects like immediate after effects, or it just continued to
Speaker 2: go badly. The police response, the emergency response was just
Speaker 2: so uncoordinated that it surely I think they proved it
Speaker 2: cost the lives of scores of people. I think in
Speaker 2: the end, ninety five people died, seven hundred were injured.
Speaker 2: Two more people died years later. So really ninety seven
Speaker 2: people died from this crowd crush.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thirty seven people were teenagers, twenty seven were parents.
Speaker 3: There was one ten year old that died. He was
Speaker 3: very ironically, I guess, and sadly the cousin of Steven Gerard,
Speaker 3: who was became a big star for England in their
Speaker 3: soccer team, but I think the oldest I think that
Speaker 3: was the youngest at ten and the oldest was a
Speaker 3: sixty seven year old whose brother was playing for Liverpool.
Speaker 3: And it's yeah again you know to read through like
Speaker 3: each account is a little too depressing for this show.
Speaker 3: But you did mention the two that died years later.
Speaker 3: I think Tony Bland died four years after in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three. He had brain damage up into that point
Speaker 3: and then what they count as the ninety seventh victim
Speaker 3: didn't pass away until twenty twenty one, but they said
Speaker 3: it was due to you know, these life changing injuries
Speaker 3: that he suffered from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think also brain damage as well. Andrew Devine,
Speaker 2: So there were there was like an immediate response to this,
Speaker 2: right spite what we'll see Liverpool just taking all of
Speaker 2: the blame for this, Liverpool fans, there was like a
Speaker 2: public response. One of the things was Paul McCartney jumped
Speaker 2: in because this is a Liverpool team and he's from Liverpool.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you knew they're not Chuck, but he,
Speaker 2: I guess released a charity single cover of fairy Cross
Speaker 2: the Mercy.
Speaker 4: Have you heard that song?
Speaker 2: It's a good song.
Speaker 3: I didn't think it was a great but I think
Speaker 3: it was a great act.
Speaker 2: Did you listen to the I didn't listen to the
Speaker 2: eighty nine one that they released for as a charity single.
Speaker 2: Did you listen to the original, because that's very good?
Speaker 3: Oh? No, I listened to the one that pertained to
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, at any rate, it's a good song originally,
Speaker 2: and it was, like you said, a very cool act.
Speaker 2: There were also tons like you can also see photos
Speaker 2: of just the the whole entire soccer pitch covered with flowers,
Speaker 2: just as in Memoriam. It was just there was a
Speaker 2: there was a good public response, but ultimately public opinion
Speaker 2: was much more venomous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that's probably a good time for a break,
Speaker 3: and we'll come back and talk about that venom right
Speaker 3: up for this, all right, So, right after this, the
Speaker 3: police basically immediately started trying to engage in successfully as
Speaker 3: we'll see for a while, engaged in a cover up.
Speaker 3: They wanted to, you know, not be on the hook
Speaker 3: for this, and the hooliganism that I talked about had
Speaker 3: been blamed. I thought we had done an episode on hooliganism,
Speaker 3: but I don't think we ever did, did we?
Speaker 2: No? Surely we talked about it in our soccer episode,
Speaker 2: but I don't think we ever did one just on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was on the list for a while, but
Speaker 3: maybe we should wait in case things change again. Okay,
Speaker 3: but that was the narrative that was fed the public
Speaker 3: basically that match commander, and I guess we should go
Speaker 3: ahead and talk about David Duckinfield a little bit. He's
Speaker 3: the one that first started saying was that gate was
Speaker 3: forced open by Liverpool fans, Like he denied even opening
Speaker 3: that gate. This guy was not qualified for this job.
Speaker 3: I think previous commanders did things like go down before
Speaker 3: the game, like hours before, check things out, walk around,
Speaker 3: identify choke points or potential hazards, because this had happened
Speaker 3: a couple of times before, one time in this very stadium,
Speaker 3: I think in nineteen eighty one, and so it was
Speaker 3: top of mind or should have been, and he did
Speaker 3: not do that. He never actually inspected the grounds beforehand,
Speaker 3: and he kind of went missing from about noon to
Speaker 3: two o'clock on the day, never accounted for his whereabouts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had never commanded a match at the stadium,
Speaker 2: let alone a semi final match. Just even a regular match.
Speaker 2: He'd never commanded it, so he had no idea what
Speaker 2: he was doing. He was also a very arrogant person,
Speaker 2: so he felt like he could just do it naturally.
Speaker 2: He didn't need to familiarize himself. And he had served
Speaker 2: as a rank and file patrolman or PC like ten
Speaker 2: years before. That was the last time he'd worked a match,
Speaker 2: and he was definitely not in charge of it. So
Speaker 2: he was very much out of his league and like
Speaker 2: it took him decades to finally acknowledge that. Instead, he
Speaker 2: helped lead this police cover up that shifted all the
Speaker 2: blame unfairly and untruthfully toward the fans for Liverpool and
Speaker 2: off of the cops who were really responsible for the tragedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So we'll get to kind of what
Speaker 3: happened in a timeline since as this goes on in
Speaker 3: a minute, But initially the police watchdog recommended that there
Speaker 3: was like a disciplinary case would be brought against Duckinfield.
Speaker 3: That did not happen at the time, and he was
Speaker 3: medically retired two years later on full pension, basically to
Speaker 3: evade these discipline from this incident. The case again that
Speaker 3: the cops built was that people were drunk. They got
Speaker 3: there late. It was the Liverpool fans, a lot of
Speaker 3: them didn't even have tickets and they were trying to
Speaker 3: just force their way in. And over the years they
Speaker 3: found out that they had gone back in. Even this
Speaker 3: is how despicable it gets. Not only did they cook
Speaker 3: up this narrative, but they went back in and cooked
Speaker 3: the books and altered witness statements and removed comments about
Speaker 3: that were unfavorable to the police and how things were handled,
Speaker 3: and they torched it basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the force was very regimented, I saw, right.
Speaker 2: So there wasn't there wasn't going to be any descent.
Speaker 2: There wasn't going to be any secret tip offs to
Speaker 2: the press about what really happened by any of the
Speaker 2: police constables, you know, under these guys charge, right, So
Speaker 2: the top saying this is what happened. That's what everybody
Speaker 2: on the police force was going to say, what happened.
Speaker 2: And so that's what the media heard. And the British
Speaker 2: tabloids typically have like a fairly bad reputation, and they
Speaker 2: really showed up for it for this one. The whole
Speaker 2: idea that the soccer fans, especially the Liverpool fans in
Speaker 2: particular were responsible for this. Would they just beat that
Speaker 2: drum incessantly? They called the fans and by extension the
Speaker 2: victims beasts yobs, which means thugs, vile. And then The
Speaker 2: Sun printed a front page article called The Truth I
Speaker 2: think within a day or two after this that really
Speaker 2: drove this home, like just how despicable the tabloids could
Speaker 2: get about this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they said things like there were fans that were
Speaker 3: urinating on cops, that they were looting the dead at
Speaker 3: the time, and this was not the case. And The
Speaker 3: Sun ended up apologizing in twenty twelve and has been
Speaker 3: boycotted in Liverpool ever since. I still don't think they'd
Speaker 3: sell the Sun there good, even after the apologies. But
Speaker 3: this was, you know, this was the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 3: things were different back then. The hooliganism was, you know,
Speaker 3: much more prominent. So it was a narrative which was
Speaker 3: easy for people to believe in England, and when they
Speaker 3: were reading it, they you know, people were like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is the typical sort of anti social underclass is
Speaker 3: how Kyle put it. They're trying to get in without tickets,
Speaker 3: you know, drunk it through in the afternoon, it was
Speaker 3: a different kind of It was a different sport back
Speaker 3: then in a lot of ways, as far as you know,
Speaker 3: as we'll see the kind of money that poured into
Speaker 3: the sport in the nineteen nineties after this, certainly with
Speaker 3: the start of the Premier League in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 3: and ticket prices rising and stadiums modernizing and just big
Speaker 3: money and big business. It just it was a lot
Speaker 3: more just kind of small time and old school and
Speaker 3: quaint back then, and so people were ready to accept
Speaker 3: this narrative, you know, kind of as it was being
Speaker 3: fed to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Britain has a classist streak running through it and
Speaker 2: this certainly fit that idea, that supposition that lower classes
Speaker 2: were drunk and violent, and of course they were responsible
Speaker 2: for this, right, But so the public accepted this. The
Speaker 2: Thatcher government obviously was totally down with this idea, and
Speaker 2: that's just how it went. Like that was it, as
Speaker 2: far as everybody was concerned. Thanks to the police reports,
Speaker 2: thanks to the government stance, thanks to what the media
Speaker 2: was saying. What happened was a bunch of drunk Liverpool
Speaker 2: fans who didn't have tickets storm the gate and ninety
Speaker 2: seven people ended up dying as a result. Shame on
Speaker 2: Liverpool and its fans. That was the public opinion on
Speaker 2: this for years.
Speaker 3: That's right. So in nineteen ninety we get our first
Speaker 3: independent report. It was called the Tailor Report for Lord
Speaker 3: Justice Taylor, and they, I mean, this was kind of
Speaker 3: right after and they did come out blaming the police
Speaker 3: failure to control the crowd first off, and Duckinfield specifically
Speaker 3: for failing to close this tunnel. Like if they e
Speaker 3: would have closed that tunnel and it would have fed
Speaker 3: people to the empty pins, and that could that probably
Speaker 3: would have avoided this whole thing, despite like having way
Speaker 3: too many people down there. If they would have been
Speaker 3: fed to those empty your pens, this probably wouldn't have happened. Sure,
Speaker 3: and he made you know, safety recommendations in the final report,
Speaker 3: but very key, it didn't have anything in there about
Speaker 3: like like hey, these people were all just victims and
Speaker 3: they had no part in sort of making this happen.
Speaker 3: That didn't. That didn't come along until much later.
Speaker 2: No, for sure, that closing that tunnel too, or his
Speaker 2: failure to close the tunnel two is even worse than
Speaker 2: it seems because that was actually such a widely used
Speaker 2: technique for police superintendents who were in charge of overseeing
Speaker 2: matches over the years that one of them had his
Speaker 2: name on. It was called the Freeman tactic. And it
Speaker 2: was as simple as closing that middle tunnel and opening
Speaker 2: the entrances to the less the less full pens. And
Speaker 2: so that just shows you how little of a grasp
Speaker 2: Duckinfield had on the concept of safety at a football
Speaker 2: match that he was responsible for overseeing. He didn't even
Speaker 2: know about the Freeman if you ask me. And like
Speaker 2: rank and file cops who worked matches before knew about
Speaker 2: the Freeman tactic. It was like that was a huge
Speaker 2: deal in addition to all the people dying as a
Speaker 2: result that the fact that like everyone knew that you
Speaker 2: should do that and Duck and Field didn't is a
Speaker 2: big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And a year later, after the Taylor
Speaker 3: Independent Report, the Tailor Report, these inquests are coming back
Speaker 3: with verdicts. Accidental death is basically what they all were,
Speaker 3: you know, decided upon, and it was very controversial. Obviously,
Speaker 3: the victims' families are and they're the ones you know
Speaker 3: who kept us alive all these years until they, you know,
Speaker 3: finally got some measure of accountability. I guess the coroner
Speaker 3: ruled out evidence relating to death anything after three pm.
Speaker 3: He ruled out evidence because he said everybody was either
Speaker 3: dead or brain dead by three point fifteen, and there
Speaker 3: were there was like actual proof that would come out
Speaker 3: later that some people survived until four pm, and a
Speaker 3: lot of people would have survived for that forty five
Speaker 3: minutes had they gotten emergency services in there in an
Speaker 3: orderly manner.
Speaker 2: Right Yeah, those are the people I was talking about earlier.
Speaker 2: So that coroner essentially was just basically going along with
Speaker 2: the sentiment, the public sentiment that these people surely it
Speaker 2: wasn't the police who were responsible, right Yeah. In addition
Speaker 2: though to being disorganized, they were also like really cruel
Speaker 2: to the families, And this stuff came out in these reports,
Speaker 2: including the Hip report in the trials that like, if
Speaker 2: you were a victim family member, you were sent to
Speaker 2: a gym, a nearby gym that had been turned into
Speaker 2: a morgue, and the first thing that you encountered was
Speaker 2: standing out waiting outside in the cold before they led
Speaker 2: you in and handed you a stack of polaroids of
Speaker 2: the victim's dead bodies.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, I mean they had to look through those
Speaker 3: who identify their own. It was pretty brutal.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't even like are you looking for a child?
Speaker 2: Are you looking for a man? And they were sorted.
Speaker 2: It was like, here's the stack of polaroids, look through
Speaker 2: hi until you find your loved one. The parents of
Speaker 2: the children who died, they weren't allowed to hold or
Speaker 2: kiss them because they were told that they were property
Speaker 2: of the coroner. And the coroner himself seems to have
Speaker 2: been on the cover up to some degree, tangentially, because
Speaker 2: he ordered that all of the deceased, including the children,
Speaker 2: have their blood drawn to be tested for alcohol content
Speaker 2: to support this police narrative. Well, what turned out, what
Speaker 2: he did inadvertently was show that alcohol was not a
Speaker 2: factor in this really, Like there were very few drunk people,
Speaker 2: and the ones that were drunk weren't all that drunk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in a weird way, it's good that
Speaker 3: he did that, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, like you said, the families of the victims organized
Speaker 2: and tried to keep this thing alive and you know,
Speaker 2: keep the public from solidifying their about what had happened,
Speaker 2: and they managed to get a private prosecution I guess
Speaker 2: laid or charged against the police for this for the incident.
Speaker 2: Didn't know you could do that. Apparently you can still
Speaker 2: in the UK, America some other places. But a private
Speaker 2: group of people can get a court to prosecute people,
Speaker 2: and that's what they did. And this found that duck
Speaker 2: and Field, they couldn't reach a verdict on him, whether
Speaker 2: he was criminally responsible or not. One of his deputies
Speaker 2: was acquitted and the judge in this case said, that's it.
Speaker 2: Duck and Field will never face another a retrial like
Speaker 2: this is it. He's not responsible, even though we failed
Speaker 2: to reach a verdict, which is a weird thing to do.
Speaker 2: But that happened in two thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, charges against Sheffield the actual football club that wasn't
Speaker 3: even playing that day, but he played in that stadium
Speaker 3: Sheffield Wednesday, and the Sheffield City Council and the safety
Speaker 3: engineers the Eastwoods were ruled out. And this was I
Speaker 3: think years earlier, so they were already off the hook.
Speaker 3: So that was all in two thousand. Twelve years later,
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, there was another report that the Hip Report,
Speaker 3: the Hillsboro Independent Panel, and that brought about some new
Speaker 3: inquests more sort of digging into this thing about like
Speaker 3: what happened with the police, And this is the one
Speaker 3: that really started to kind of turn the tide as
Speaker 3: far as the public goes. And one of the reasons
Speaker 3: it happened was because MP Andy Burnham was at a
Speaker 3: twenty year memorial service and was just lambasted by the
Speaker 3: crowd people chanting justice for the ninety six. Really had
Speaker 3: a hard time at that event. So he's the one
Speaker 3: that was like, let's open this back up four hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand pages of information, and this is when
Speaker 3: they really kind of started to make things right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that panel apparently kept like releasing information piecemeal and
Speaker 2: the press is kept reporting on it, and very quickly
Speaker 2: the public was like, oh wait, we've been wrong. It
Speaker 2: wasn't these drunken Liverpool fans. They were mistreated. The families
Speaker 2: of the victims were mistreated, survivors were mistreated. It was
Speaker 2: actually these cops, and the cops had lied to essentially
Speaker 2: cover up their responsibility. Like the public opinion just completely shifted,
Speaker 2: and so that hip report led to new inquests, and
Speaker 2: the inquests found that the ninety six victims and later
Speaker 2: on the ninety seventh victim were all unlawfully killed. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't accidental anymore. Like the first inquest found they
Speaker 2: were unlawfully killed, which meant someone is criminally accountable for
Speaker 2: their deaths, right, And this inquest said go figure it out,
Speaker 2: like this is our we're saying, we're recommending that somebody
Speaker 2: is responsible for this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It also found that forty one I was looking
Speaker 3: for the number earlier, but forty one of the ninety
Speaker 3: six who died, they said, quote had potential to survive
Speaker 3: if the you know, rescue had been a little more organized,
Speaker 3: because I don't think we said the first ambulance arrived
Speaker 3: on the scene at three sixteen, and even when the
Speaker 3: ambulances had been called, they didn't know the severity of
Speaker 3: the situation because they I think one cop called for
Speaker 3: like a big, you know, mass of ambulances to come,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't described what was happening, so they refused
Speaker 3: that initial. The medical services refused that initial like huge
Speaker 3: rush of ambulances and just sent like some They also
Speaker 3: didn't set up patriage on the field like you know,
Speaker 3: we'll get to that in a little more detail. But
Speaker 3: forty one of the ninety six would have survived, they determined,
Speaker 3: which is just a brutal number.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in twenty nineteen, after all this stuff had come out,
Speaker 2: public opinion changed, Duckingfield was dragged back into court. Remember
Speaker 2: that one judge had been like, he can't face a retrial. Well,
Speaker 2: they were like, well, circumstances have changed enough now that
Speaker 2: he's definitely going to be tried again. And he was
Speaker 2: found not guilty of gross negligence manslaughter. And then they
Speaker 2: also heard evidence about the altering of the police reports
Speaker 2: to make it favorable for the cops and make it
Speaker 2: unfavorable for the Liverpool fans, and those guys got off too.
Speaker 2: So now we have a place where the inquest, the
Speaker 2: government inquest, is saying these people are unlawfully killed, so
Speaker 2: someone's criminally responsible, and the courts are saying the people
Speaker 2: who are responsible are not criminally responsible, So nobody is
Speaker 2: liable anymore. Nobody's responsible officially.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then the final well, who knows it's a
Speaker 3: final report because they seem to still be happening. But
Speaker 3: last year, in twenty twenty five, an Independent Office for
Speaker 3: Police Conduct report came out and basically reiterated that nobody
Speaker 3: was going to be held like, actually held responsible. You know,
Speaker 3: they it wasn't as cold hearted as it sounds, they
Speaker 3: were basically saying like, hey, this is thirty six years later.
Speaker 3: All twelve of these officers are either have either passed
Speaker 3: on or have long since retired. And I got the
Speaker 3: sense it was like, can we can we put this
Speaker 3: all behind us now and not throw these old cops
Speaker 3: in jail.
Speaker 2: Essentially, But yeah, I think the families were like, well,
Speaker 2: they're still responsible even though they're old. And the reason
Speaker 2: that they got old because you took fourteen years to
Speaker 2: conduct this investigation.
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure, let's take a break.
Speaker 2: Chuck, and we'll come back and finish up.
Speaker 4: Huh. Yeah, let's do it, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 2: So not just the hip report, but a bunch of
Speaker 2: different reports basically showed quite clearly that the police response,
Speaker 2: the emergency response was just terrible. And you talked a
Speaker 2: lot about what the I guess the cluster with the ambulances,
Speaker 2: but the police as well were essentially disorganized about its
Speaker 2: disorganized as a group of police can be. And the
Speaker 2: reason why is because again David Duckinfield was just out
Speaker 2: of his depth through and through even though he was
Speaker 2: commanding the match. And I said that he was a
Speaker 2: rather arrogant type and he was. But in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: for the first time in decades, twenty five plus years,
Speaker 2: as these reports started coming out and public opinion changed,
Speaker 2: when he was tried, eventually he admitted. After seven days
Speaker 2: of intense grilling on the stand, he finally basically broke
Speaker 2: down and admitted like, yes, he was responsible for the
Speaker 2: death of those ninety six people because the ninety seventh
Speaker 2: hadn't died yet, and that he froze under pressure. This
Speaker 2: is a complete reversal of what he'd been saying the
Speaker 2: whole time, Chuck like he'd been saying it was the
Speaker 2: Liverpool fans. They were drunk. They were drunk. These guys
Speaker 2: have been saying it for decades. Now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the guy in charge says, no, I failed and people
Speaker 2: died because I was not qualified to command that match.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, you hear something like that as a
Speaker 3: family member of a victim, and it's I don't know
Speaker 3: how that feels, actually, I don't know if that would
Speaker 3: provide some solace to finally hear the truth, yeah, or
Speaker 3: if it just like re angers you all over again
Speaker 3: after all these years.
Speaker 2: Probably both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of mixed emotion about it,
Speaker 3: but at the very least that finally happened. I mean,
Speaker 3: there is something about somebody finally admitting something like and
Speaker 3: not just continuing to gaslight the world and the victims themselves,
Speaker 3: So I guess that is something. It really changed stadium
Speaker 3: safety and security after this, the Taylor Report. They basically said, hey,
Speaker 3: no more of these standing room only things. You have
Speaker 3: to have seats for everybody that's in there. I think
Speaker 3: it was all the clubs in the top two divisions
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety four had to move to that, and
Speaker 3: then they established the Ground Sports Ground Safety Authority after that,
Speaker 3: you know, to oversee like all of these football stadiums
Speaker 3: over there.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was a major turning point, not just in
Speaker 2: safety at football matches, but in the game of football
Speaker 2: itself because this happened to coincide with England making it
Speaker 2: into the semi finals in the World Cup in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety and you know a lot of people who had
Speaker 2: been former football fans were now caught up in the
Speaker 2: spirit again. So that brought a lot of people back
Speaker 2: to being fans of pro football. Those upgrades that the
Speaker 2: clubs and the stadiums were required to undertake meant that
Speaker 2: they needed to up ticket prices, higher ticket prices, like
Speaker 2: you said, kind of change the social strata of fans.
Speaker 2: It got more expensive, it got more business like soccer
Speaker 2: changed almost directly as a result of the Hillsborough tragedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that, you know, when the Premier League came
Speaker 3: on in ninety two, like that was that was a
Speaker 3: real game changer. Like the amount of money that is
Speaker 3: spent in the Premier League on players, on the teams,
Speaker 3: on I think there's the and I'll probably get some
Speaker 3: of this wrong because I don't call the Premier League,
Speaker 3: but my good friends do all of them almost And
Speaker 3: they were talking about the you know, you get relegated
Speaker 3: if you don't I guess when, or I guess if
Speaker 3: you're in the bottom of whatever category and you don't
Speaker 3: make that you don't win that game to stay in
Speaker 3: the Premier League, you get relegated down to the lower league.
Speaker 3: And so that game to see who gets relegated and
Speaker 3: who doesn't is called the most expensive game in sports
Speaker 3: or something like that, just because of like all the
Speaker 3: money that comes with or that you miss out on
Speaker 3: with being relegated or that comes with staying in the
Speaker 3: Premier League.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these guys get paid like thousands and thousands of
Speaker 2: pounds a year to play, some of them way more
Speaker 2: than that.
Speaker 3: That even the first joke of the episode.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Keir Starmer because he is under fire
Speaker 2: right now. That family or the organization of victims Families,
Speaker 2: they haven't gone away. They organized and they're still very
Speaker 2: vocal and one of the things that they have been
Speaker 2: doing is putting pressure on Kere Starmer and his labor
Speaker 2: government because he made a direct promise that he would
Speaker 2: see through the Hillsborough Law, which would it was pretty
Speaker 2: important legislation, or it would be if they get it
Speaker 2: passed through.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the whole point, it seems to be
Speaker 3: of the Hillsborough Law would be to enforce and it's
Speaker 3: weird that you have the law to do this, but
Speaker 3: to enforce truth when cops are dealing with something like
Speaker 3: this and basically like almost like a whistleblower thing like hey,
Speaker 3: you can come out and tell the truth, Like you
Speaker 3: don't like you're obliged to tell the truth. You don't
Speaker 3: have to go along with this narrative that gets passed
Speaker 3: down and that loyalty that you were kind of talking
Speaker 3: about earlier on I don't I'm that didn't like really
Speaker 3: dig into the law. I don't know if they're like
Speaker 3: protections or anything involved, but that law was is hasn't
Speaker 3: been passed yet, which is really frustrating.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, not just cops too, but like any public
Speaker 2: official has to tell the truth and when it pertains
Speaker 2: to their work, which actually it is sad that you
Speaker 2: would need to make a law, but that would be
Speaker 2: revolutionary to have a law like that in any country,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think the hang up maybe or one
Speaker 3: of the hang ups is I five, And we did
Speaker 3: a pretty good episode on that at one point that
Speaker 3: I think Kyle helped us with that one too. But
Speaker 3: unless I'm reading this wrong, it seems like I five
Speaker 3: is hanging it up because they're like, hey, listen, like
Speaker 3: we deal in lies and subterfuge, like that's our bag,
Speaker 3: so we can't be included in this.
Speaker 4: That is our bag. Baby, That's right.
Speaker 3: I missed it. I missed the baby.
Speaker 2: You got anything else?
Speaker 3: I got nothing else, just to an awful tragedy, like
Speaker 3: I said. I remember this was right after spring break
Speaker 3: my senior year. I came home and I had been
Speaker 3: a regular Sports Illustrated subscriber since I was like nine
Speaker 3: years old and this was I think the cover issue
Speaker 3: even and that's where I saw those brutal pictures. If
Speaker 3: you're into a it's not like super hard to watch
Speaker 3: other than you know, it's about the tragedy, but they
Speaker 3: don't show like truly truly awful things. There's that twelve
Speaker 3: minute documentary from The Guardian that you sent that really
Speaker 3: encapsulates it, although there are some body bags and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, so I guess there should be a trigger
Speaker 3: warning there, Yeah, for sure, But thankfully there weren't. Like,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't see any actual video footage of
Speaker 3: the fences and the people, like, I don't know if
Speaker 3: that exists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't know either. The photographs
Speaker 2: definitely do. I'd be surprised if there wasn't any footage, So, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, I wonder if that photographer won an award
Speaker 3: for that work he did.
Speaker 2: You should have, especially if he was one of the
Speaker 2: people helping, because you know, so many fans helped, you know,
Speaker 2: try to render aid to the people on the field.
Speaker 2: One thing we probably should mention that that we didn't
Speaker 2: is that in twenty twelve, the United Kingdom government, through
Speaker 2: Prime Minister David Cameron at the time, apologized to the
Speaker 2: victim's families for the double injustice of the loss of
Speaker 2: life and the blame that was put on Liverpool fans.
Speaker 2: So at least they had that kernel of something. Yeah, Solace,
Speaker 2: maybe Salace, thank you a quantum of it.
Speaker 3: If you want to know more, you're just throwing around
Speaker 3: British pop culture references. Who knew that James Bond and
Speaker 3: Austin Powers were going to make an appearance.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start on my own sitcom called Suddenly
Speaker 2: Angle File, but it's gonna be spelled like that. I
Speaker 2: just Mangled Anglo file.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or black Adder, that's another good title.
Speaker 2: Sure, since Chuck made a joke about Blackadder has foretold
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: I'm going to call this. I screwed up on that
Speaker 3: Van Go episode about the movie. Hey, guys, just finished
Speaker 3: the Visa Bango episode. Want to let you know the
Speaker 3: movie with Willem Dafoe is called at Eternity's Gate. This
Speaker 3: is something I remember now but I forgot at the time.
Speaker 3: You mustn't have seen it. But we're aware of it.
Speaker 3: More importantly, you must see Loving Vincent, and I think
Speaker 3: that's what I said.
Speaker 4: It was called.
Speaker 3: That's the movie that's animated using sixty five thousand paintings
Speaker 3: done in the style of Ago by one hundred Polish painters.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: It's visually amazing and incredibly well done. And the soundtrack
Speaker 3: includes the song from Don McClean. I think we talked
Speaker 3: about it in the episode of Vincent Storry Storry Night
Speaker 3: beautifully compliments the movie highly recommended. My wife and are
Speaker 3: huge fans of the show. Have been listening to every
Speaker 3: episode since almost the beginning. Keep up the amazing work
Speaker 3: and don't let those naysayers who complain about your sidebars.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things we enjoy most. And that
Speaker 3: is from Brian and Alexis in Bethlehem, PA.
Speaker 2: Nice Thanks Brian and Alexis. We appreciate that, Chuck. Since
Speaker 2: you stepped up and took a correction, I feel like
Speaker 2: I should admit to one. Okay, in are Lamon's short stuff,
Speaker 2: you mean Lamon, that's part of it. The bigger part
Speaker 2: is that I said Greece is an island. I even
Speaker 2: went back and double checked, and everybody's right. It is
Speaker 2: not an island at all.
Speaker 3: I didn't catch you saying that.
Speaker 2: So it's like Germany being landlocked. Now my geography skills
Speaker 2: are starting to match up with my math skills.
Speaker 3: I wish I would have caught that, because I remember
Speaker 3: very distinctly that you could take a train there.
Speaker 2: Well, in the episode, you said, yeah, yeah, it sure
Speaker 2: is an island. I swear to God it's an island.
Speaker 4: Josh, that's right.
Speaker 3: I doubled down verbatim.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, thanks to Brian and Alexis. And if
Speaker 2: you want to be like Brian and Alexis, you can
Speaker 2: get in touch with this too via email at Stuff.
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