Hillsborough E-Petition *MUST SIGN*

[Shaggy]

The headline on the BBC website is an absolute ****ing disgrace.

[Buzzo]

Thatcher was told drunk fans caused Hillsborough, leaked papers say

Former PM Margaret Thatcher was told a senior Merseyside police officer blamed "drunken Liverpool fans" for causing the Hillsborough disaster, confidential government documents have revealed.

The BBC has seen leaked briefings about Britain's worst sports tragedy.

Ninety-six football fans died after a crush on overcrowded terraces at an FA Cup Semi Final in April 1989. The official inquiry said the disaster was caused by the failure in crowd control by South Yorkshire Police. Letters to and from 10 Downing Street and cabinet minutes that show what Mrs, now Lady, Thatcher was discussing and being told behind the scenes have been made public for the first time by BBC Radio 4's The World at One.

For years, the families of those who died have been calling for the release of secret government and police papers relating to the disaster. The government has agreed that this will happen. The Hillsborough Independent Panel, set up in 2009, is reviewing hundreds of documents but they are not expected to be made available to the families of those who died or to the wider public until later this year. It is thought there will be thousands of pages to sift through.

The most controversial issue in the papers that the BBC has seen relates to what Mrs Thatcher was being told about the views of some senior members of the Merseyside Police Force. They are contained in a letter sent to the prime minister from a member of her policy unit in Downing Street. Four days after the disaster, the adviser attended a long planned meeting with the Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, the late Sir Kenneth Oxford, and some of his senior colleagues.

"Today's revelations do not constitute a 'smoking gun' but do add to public knowledge about the political reaction to these terrible events”
Martin Rosenbaum BBC Freedom of Information expert

Martin on the Hillsborough papers
It is important to bear in mind that this was written just days after the Hillsborough disaster and the views of the chief constable and those of his senior officers may well have changed over the subsequent weeks. According to the letter, the Merseyside chief constable said: "A key factor in causing the disaster was the fact that large numbers of Liverpool fans had turned up without tickets. "This was getting lost sight of in attempts to blame the police, the football authorities, etc." The prime minister was informed that a senior member of the Merseyside Police directly blamed supporters: "One officer, born and bred in Liverpool, said that he was deeply ashamed to say that it was drunken Liverpool fans who had caused this disaster, just as they had caused the deaths at Heysel."

This officer is not named.

Hundreds were injured and 39 supporters died when rioting Liverpool fans charged Juventus fans before the 1985 European Cup Final at the Heysel stadium on 29 May 1985. Margaret Aspinall, whose teenage son James died in the Hillsborough disaster, described the comments made by the unnamed senior officer as "appalling" and "offensive". "We knew things were going on behind closed doors, we've always known that. It doesn't surprise me in a sense... but I'm surprised by the content," the chairwoman of the Hillsborough Families Support Group said of the briefings.

More of the views of the chief constable are also referred to in the files: "He deplored the press's morbid concentration on pictures of bodies. He was also uneasy about the way in which Anfield was being turned into a shrine." 'Truth must come out' There is nothing in the documents the BBC has seen about any briefings from South Yorkshire Police. It is possible more will become known about that when many other confidential papers are officially released in a few months time. Margaret Thatcher walks with Bernard Ingham, Douglas Hurd, Bert Millichip and others as they see the scene of the Hillsborough Disaster, at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield. April 16 1989 The government has promised to release files relating to Margaret Thatcher and Hillsborough

Instead, we have learnt about the controversial views of some of Liverpool's own senior police officers and how, just days after the disaster, they were being passed on directly to 10 Downing Street and to Mrs Thatcher.

Sheila Coleman, from the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, said: "We are really concerned that the emphasis is totally on Merseyside Police here and not on South Yorkshire Police, and that makes us very suspicious of how this information was leaked.

"We find it a strange coincidence that this information was leaked only days after we found out the (Hillsborough Independent) panel are not going to report until the autumn."

A spokesman for the panel said it could not comment on leaked documents.

Andy Burnham, Labour MP for Leigh, Greater Manchester, who has campaigned for the Hillsborough families, said: "The truth must be told and the people of Liverpool must have an apology for one of the biggest injustices of the 20th Century." Other Downing Street papers seen by the BBC provide an insight into what the prime minister was saying and discussing with her cabinet colleagues in the days after Hillsborough. The main issue of discussion contained in these documents was the effect the disaster was going to have on controversial legislation aimed at controlling the behaviour of football fans.

The Football Spectators' Bill was already going through Parliament. The government was determined to continue with it, in order to introduce a national membership scheme for the sport. This would have brought in what were dubbed as identity cards for football fans. According to the conclusions of the first cabinet meeting to take place after the disaster, Mrs Thatcher told her ministers that the situation on crowd safety and hooliganism at football matches "cried out for action". The government wanted the legislation to be passed in time for the following year's World Cup finals in Italy - to reduce the prospect of crowd trouble. The meeting also discussed using it to bring in any interim recommendations from the Hillsborough Inquiry.
'Gravest matter'

In another meeting with senior cabinet colleagues which took place on the same day, the prime minister said: "To abstain from taking action… would be the gravest possible matter, now that the need for this action had been so conclusively demonstrated."
Floral tributes laid following the Hillsborough disaster Bereaved families have been calling for the release of secret government and police papers about the disaster Five days later, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd met the man conducting the official inquiry into Hillsborough, Lord Justice Taylor. A letter written by a civil servant at the Home Office says Mr Hurd told the judge about the government's proposed new timetable to get the football spectators' legislation passed by Parliament. He then asked Lord Justice Taylor what he would say if the government went ahead with this and then asked "…whether he was really quite sure that it was out of the question to form and express a view on the subject of membership cards in the three and a half months… between the start of the inquiry… and the end of August?"

According to the letter, Lord Justice Taylor told him that "this was possible, but he was not confident that it could be achieved". He said his priority was establishing the facts of what had happened at Hillsborough and could not promise to come up with any recommendations on membership cards in time to fit in with the government's political schedule. The prime minister was told what had happened in a briefing note from her principal private secretary, who informed her: "Lord Justice Taylor was distinctly unhelpful." In the end, the government did press ahead with its plans and the law was passed. However, the following year, in his report, Lord Justice Taylor said he had "grave doubts" about the feasibility of football membership cards and "serious misgivings" about the scheme's likely impact on safety. As a result of his concerns, the government dropped the scheme and it was never implemented.

LINK

[little dave hedgehog]

clarify for those on their phones in other countries?

[Buzzo]

The headline on the BBC website is an absolute ****ing disgrace.

'Fans blamed in Hillsborough Files'

[Shaggy]

They've changed the headline now but it's still not ideal. It did say: Fans Blamed in Hillsborough Files.

Now it says: "Thatcher was told drunk fans caused Hillsborough, leaked papers say"

[Buzzo]

They've changed the headline now but it's still not ideal. It did say: Fans Blamed in Hillsborough Files.

Now it says: "Thatcher was told drunk fans caused Hillsborough, leaked papers say"

It still says it on the sports page

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/

[Shaggy]

Appalling.

[Kenneth]

not quite sure why the headline was so bad tbh. Literally it's pretty much true, although the wider impression it might give is out of kilter with the story. Good that they changed it anyway.

[Buzzo]

Appalling.

Yep, it means some folk will read no more than.

Fans blamed in Hillsborough files
A senior police officer blamed disaster on "drunken fans".

Which lacks context.

[Lecter]

I was there both years (88 & 89)

The difference was stark

In 88 anyone without a ticket or with alcohol was stopped a long long way before you reached the stadium and either turned away or told to drink up/discard your alcohol before you went any further

You had to go through numerous checkpoints/police baracades en route down the road into the Leppings Lane entrance and produce your ticket each time

In 89 there was no such checkpoints until you reached the Leppings Lane turnstile

Drink played no part in the disaster it was just totally mismanaged by the police on so many levels

[Chazza]

****ing Guardian again

Guardian sport @guardian_sport
'Drunken Liverpool fans' blamed for disaster in leaked Hillsborough files http://gu.com/p/368vf/tw via @guardian

[Chazza]

Hillsborough: The Thatcher papers

Cabinet Office papers from 1989 seen by the BBC show how Margaret Thatcher's government was misinformed about the cause of the Hillsborough disaster - and illustrate why the Information Commissioner demanded the disclosure of these secret documents.

Last July the commissioner ruled that it was in the public interest for documents about the Hillsborough tragedy to be released, since it would "add to the public knowledge and understanding about the reaction of various parties to that event, including the government of the day".

This followed a freedom of information request from the BBC that had been rejected by the Cabinet Office. That FOI case was dropped after a government pledge to publish its files on Hillsborough via an independent panel later this year.

The BBC has seen now some of this material and on Thursday is reporting details from these documents.

Due to these disclosures, we now know that a few days after the tragedy in April 1989 Margaret Thatcher was informed about the views of senior officers from Merseyside Police. She was told that one of them blamed drunken Liverpool supporters for the terrible incident which led to the deaths of 96 of the club's fans as a result of horrific overcrowding.

The briefing she received also reported the assessment of the then Merseyside Chief Constable Sir Kenneth Oxford. He thought that a key factor was the presence of Liverpool fans without tickets and this was being ignored while the authorities were being blamed.
Blame game

Sir Kenneth was a controversial chief constable who had often clashed with local politicians over his tough policing strategy, and was at this point close to retirement.

We already knew that private briefings accusing the Liverpool fans had been coming from South Yorkshire Police - this was the force responsible for the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield. It was later criticised for the poor crowd control that had actually been the main factor in causing the loss of life.

Lady Thatcher's then press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham has already revealed that when he accompanied her on a visit to the stadium the day after the tragedy, they were told the incident was the fault of a "tanked-up mob" of Liverpool supporters.

What we now know is that a similar message was coming to her, not only from the force which had made catastrophic errors in policing the FA Cup semi-final, but also from the top ranks of the police force covering the locality of most of the victims - the bereaved families and the anguished survivors.

Of course this document only reveals what was said in the period soon afterwards, and those involved may have changed their minds as further evidence came to light.

But it is interesting to note that the position of the senior Merseyside officers conflicted with that taken at the same time by some junior ranks in the same force.

In newspaper reports at the time, the Merseyside Police Federation was quoted as saying that the accusations against Liverpool fans were "ill-informed comments" which were "based on hearsay rather than evidence". The local federation secretary said that his phone had been "red hot" with calls from Merseyside officers demanding he speak out to "redress the balance".

In due course it was the view of the federation, rather than the chief constable, which was found to be correct by the official inquiry into the disaster by Lord Justice Taylor. He attributed the main cause of the incident to police failures in crowd control that led to a fatal crush in the Liverpool fans' section of the ground.

The BBC's report today also contains another interesting revelation: that there was unease within the government about what a senior Downing Street official considered to be Lord Taylor's "distinctly unhelpful" response to an approach to align his inquiry schedule with the government's political timetable.

In the wake of Hillsborough, Margaret Thatcher's policy priority was to press ahead with introducing a compulsory identity card scheme for football supporters. The government had already been planning this to tackle the hooliganism that badly affected the game in the 1980s (although the idea was never eventually implemented).

The Home Secretary Douglas Hurd met Lord Justice Taylor soon after the judge was appointed to carry out the inquiry. Lord Hurd tried to persuade him to consider the membership scheme in time to fit in with the government's schedule for pushing forward with it. The judge couldn't guarantee this, insisting his timings would be determined by the process of establishing the facts of what happened.

The current government has promised that official records relating to the disaster will be released through the Hillsborough Independent Panel. This was set up in December 2009 by Labour to work towards publishing these files, although cabinet papers were initially excluded from its terms of reference.

The panel has said it will complete its work by the end of June, although there are reports today that this deadline will be postponed. It is expected to release a very large quantity of documentation. The papers being covered today by the BBC are only a small proportion of the undisclosed material.

Today's revelations do not constitute a "smoking gun" or lend support to any kind of conspiracy theory, but they have added valuably to the state of public knowledge about the political reaction to the terrible events at Hillsborough in April 1989.

In brief, we have learnt that the top ranks of Merseyside Police helped to misinform Margaret Thatcher by wrongly blaming Liverpool fans. And we have learnt that there was dissatisfaction within the government at Lord Justice Taylor's refusal to adapt his inquiry to their political timetable for pressing ahead with an identity card scheme for football fans.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17238494