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I'm sure I've said this before, but not one of the 96 who died are to blame. Period.
Who is to blame is between a mixture of police and some Liverpool fans.
Those fans you see crushing other fans in front of them at the gates outside the ground are to blame.
As are the fans who stormed in after the gates were opened and ran straight through the central pen and kept on pushing.
As Snoots said, so are all the hooligans from the previous 15 years or so - some of which were Liverpool fans. Let's not forget Heysel.
And of course the bloody Police. As well as gross incompetence and sh1t planning, the cover ups, lies and downright vile behaviour of some of them needs to be punished.
But the bit that really got me mad about this whole inquest findings is the words used below:-
"the behaviour of Liverpool fans was exonerated. The jury found they did not contribute to the danger unfolding at the turnstiles"
Yes they bloody well did contribute to the dangers, and not all of them are blameless.
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Precisely. No one should say the 96 were responsible. They were there legitimately with tickets. But the ones at the back? They were all pushed there by the police? No, some of them had to be doing the pushing. Not every person of every party is liable. Not all the Liverpool fans and not all of the police. What you can say four definite is that the 96 did nothing wrong.
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26-04-2016, 15:56
(This post was last modified: 26-04-2016, 16:17 by Lord Snooty.)
There was one fella who topped himself because he couldn't live with the shame of being one of those who pushed from the back. Shame for him that this verdict took 27 years to come around and his own personal exoneration.
I think if any verdict other than the one we got had come through, we would never hear the end of it.
I hope now that some people are brought up in front of the hanging judge. Yond c*** from The Sun for starters.
The verdict is that the Liverpool fans, all Liverpool fans present at the match, are totally blameless. We must accept this if we believe in the British justice system.
The world is a different place to the world we inhabited in 1989. It's changed for the better and the unending quest for justice by the Liverpool fans and families has contributed to this. No longer can the authorities brush these things under the carpet.
Hopefully we can now do the same for the miners and have the Orgreave inquiry.
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Disgusting, I'm shaking my head in disbelief. I'm infact I'm bloody angry.
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Shep's post says it all for me and I think that retributive justice has been applied here. Certainly justice has eventually been done for the 96 and their families, but the culture of let's blame the authorities for everything seems to be at the forefront.
The biggest disgrace of all is the years of lies and cover-ups by the relevant authorities.
It's just my opinion of course, but sincerely held nonetheless.
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This is the correct verdict, of that I have no doubt. I have read numerous books about this and obviously have intimate knowledge of that end of the ground and the way the police handled this whole event was wrong from the planning through to the execution of that plan!! I still have seen no explanation from SYP why they changed the operating procedures for this game from the ones used a year earlier with the same two teams being involved!! The most glaring change was the removal of the cordon they put up on Leppings Lane way before you got to the ground where you had to show a ticket to get anywhere near the turnstiles, this had worked perfectly the year before but was abandoned in 1989. I assume it was Duckenfield who made that decision after he was put in charge of the game late in the whole process.
As regards the fans, they were never going to be blamed for any of this at these inquests because of the all the crap that has been spouted over the years about the role the fans played in this tragedy. The cover up by the police, government and media made sure that the campaign they had of solely blaming the fans to cover up their own failings ensured that even though the fans were one of the many minor causes of this disaster no jury was ever going to say it!!
Madsteve said on our board earlier that in reality the culture of football and the fans over the previous 20 years was the root cause of this tragedy. Without the constant hooligan element, without the pitch invasions, fighting with police, Heysel, Luton, Birmingham incidents then the pens and fences would not have been there in the first place. A similar crush happened on the same terrace in the 1981 semi final between Spurs and Wolves, not as serious for sure but any serious injury was averted because the fans were able to spill onto the perimeter track because there were no fences to stop them from doing so. No fences or pens on 15th April 1989 would have almost certainly prevented 96 innocent fans from dying, the whole of football in the 20 years prior to that day needs to some degree hang their head in shame at what those actions caused.
Having said that there is no doubt that had the police performed to the standard we expect then this disaster was completely avoidable and therefore I think the main verdict they arrived at was correct. Seems a little harsh to aim it at one person but he was in that position to make the key decision and he got just about every one of them tragically wrong!!
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I'm angry on a number of fronts.
Laying blame to those fans outside the ground pushing to get in, they just wanted to see a football match, had the incompetent SYP done the job of crowd control correctly nobody would've have died in a crush that day.
As for the fans who rushed through to the central pens, again what do you think anyone is going to do..they want to watch football so go the nearest and quickest rout onwards the pitch. Unfortunately the police failed to implement something called the Freeman Tactic which would close the central pens to further crowding. When asked Duckingfield said he'd never heard of it. Even though it had been used at previous semi finals
Then we come to the suggestion that fans were present without tickets, has this ever been proven. Seems to me the inquest have been given all the evidence over 2 years and had it been true would have been a contributing factor in the deaths but it's simply not true
Then we have some numpty on twitter(I've blocked him now) claiming it's a government coverup. They weren't on the scene and by the time they had arrived SYP had already concoctedthe lies about "forcing a gate" and 'drunken fans'. The police lied to everybody, the fans,the public,the government the media....everybody.
They are guilty of being hoodwinked by a police force that did anything it could to cover its own arse and not just at this disaster, you can add in Orgreave and the child sex abuse cases that have recently come to light in South Yorkshire
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Well said, Wakey.
I don't think that the people turning up without tickets is relevant anyway. It's well known that people did in those days but if they did they're not really a contributory factor in all this.
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A brilliant and superb account of that day and the police corruption behind it is in this article......I swear most will read this and cry :-
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016...ed-decades
In beer there is freedom, in wine there is health, in cognac there is power and in water there is bacteria
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