Hillsborough

This programme contains some strong language and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

POLICE RADIO CHATTER

POLICE RADIO: '..post office at Ranmoor.

'Could be armed robbers - repeat, could be armed, over.

'..if you could investigate...'

BIRDSONG

You get up in the morning,

you come out, you know, after sort of the winter,

and you come out and it's lovely and sunny and just a little bit warm,

and you go, "Ahh."

It was a lovely day.

Me dad's life was Liverpool and so it became to me, as well.

There was never any choice of being anybody else -

you were always going to be a Liverpool fan.

The FA Cup semifinal, still, at that point, meant something,

and winning an FA Cup semifinal, being at an FA Cup semifinal

was a very special event in any football fan's life.

Not really done anything on my own.

I don't think I was a very... grown up 18-year-old.

We took her to the train and put her on the train...

and Richard was to meet her at the other end.

We were going... going up after the game

and we were picking Stephanie up and driving her home,

and we were going to have a picnic on the...the, er, pass

on the way out of Sheffield.

Trace was going to bring all the butties.

I was going to bring the goodies, as she said -

cakes, biscuits, bottle of wine.

James was so excited that he was going the game.

When he got to my front door, he just turned round and looked at me

and he said, "Mum, we're going to win today,"

and I just shut the door,

never knowing that'd be the last time I'd ever see my son alive.

Saturday, 15th of April 1989,

went on duty at about half past eight in the morning.

Obviously we knew it were a semifinal match,

Liverpool and Notts Forest.

A big game.

Obviously you've got to have police officers not just at the ground,

you've got to cover the whole of the city,

so it's all hands to the pump, really.

I'd booked to go to Scotland, er, for a week,

and they said, "You're going to have to delay it,

"cos we need everybody to work on the Saturday,

"and of course you can go on your leave on the Sunday."

We got to the ground about 9.30am,

drove there in our own cars, in uniform.

I think I parked probably half a mile away from Hillsborough

and walked down to the ground.

The police would come from all over South Yorkshire -

there'd be dog handlers, police horses.

In the calendar of South Yorkshire's year,

this will have been the biggest thing they were doing.

A third of the force all out on one day - massive operation,

it needed somebody with experience and know-how and craft,

and also somebody who knew about football.

Sheffield Wednesday Football Club

is under the jurisdiction of Hammerton Road Police Station.

The Chief Superintendent who has responsibility for that division

is Brian Mole.

Brian Mole has policed Hillsborough

and been responsible for Hillsborough stadium

since the early '80s.

He was one of those guys who grew into this job

and was loyal to his officers

but, you know, he was grounded in experience.

He knew the job, he knew the area,

and, actually, he knew football, as well.

MEN STRUGGLE

Shut your mouth, otherwise I'll blow your head off!

MAN GRUNTS Shut it.

An informant had told me that a young police officer,

I think he was in his early 20s, very new to the service,

had been lured to a post office in Ranmoor.

Move!

Get here! Get...

Come on! Get here!

From there he was taken by armed robbers with balaclavas on.

-Get him on his knees!

-Get down.

Stop struggling! Get his pants down!

They had two pistols with them...

-HE CHOKES

-Take the shot!

..and they pointed them at his head.

CAMERA FLASH WHINES

It later turned out they were just officers playing a trick on him.

THEY LAUGH Well done, my son!

Now, none of us are going to enjoy that,

and they certainly aren't going to enjoy it

when you find out that it's some colleagues that's done it to you.

-What?!

-Come on, pull your trousers up.

His humiliation must've been complete.

HE SOBS

He went home, told his wife, and then the next thing you know

a complaint's made, so an investigation was started,

which is when the leak came to me

that, um, they'd set this poor officer up.

At the end of it all, they decided to sack four of them

and reduce two in rank, and fine two others.

There was a huge amount of embarrassment,

and Chief Superintendent Brian Mole,

who would've had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the incident,

erm, felt the sharp brunt of it by being transferred -

I think I'm right in saying, for the first time ever -

outside of Sheffield from F Division, Hammerton Road

to Barnsley.

It means that 21 days before the semifinal on the 15th of April 1989,

21 days, an officer with no experience of policing Hillsborough

is given the job that Brian Mole had.

David Duckenfield is in a position

where he does not have the experience

to deal with the complexity of Hillsborough

should anything actually go wrong.

The first thing he said

when he sat down was, "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen,

"to the press conference

"ahead of the Liverpool versus Nottinghamshire..."

and everybody looked around

and then somebody said, "Nottingham Forest."

"Nottingham Forest." So, I immediately thought,

"If he doesn't know the name of the teams at this stage,

A, that's a bit odd - maybe it was a slip of the tongue."

But it also made me think, "Maybe he isn't a football person."

This is an all-ticket game, er...

A football person's likely to have a better handle

on what the event's going to be like

and all the different combinations that make up a football match,

you know, in terms of, er, the passions and the tribalism.

..signs of excess alcohol...

He just came across as an academic,

not somebody that was in any way, shape or form,

er, like his predecessor.

About ten o'clock-ish we went into the North Stand,

the cantilever stand,

and we had a briefing with a lot of senior officers.

The briefing basically went the same at every match.

You had discussions of how to react with people

who were arrested for offences, monitoring the crowd for offences,

disciplining the crowd -

and not a word on crowd safety.

This briefing just seemed to go on and on and on.

And I always remember Mr Duckenfield, his last words were,

"Well, ladies and gentlemen,

I know it's been a very long and involved briefing,

"but I do believe we've covered for every eventuality."

And I thought... I thought at the time, I thought,

"This guy likes the sound of his own voice."

Hillsborough was an old stadium that had been kind of upgraded

for the 1966 World Cup.

There had been modifications made,

but a perfect example of its danger was the Leppings Lane end.

If you start out on the street,

there is only access from Leppings Lane.

You arrive outside of the stadium, and it was a well-known bottleneck.

So you've got over 24,000 people

being processed through this small number of turnstiles.

All of the fans are converging on the one spot.

ANNOUNCEMENT OVER TANNOY

BAND PLAYS

We didn't really have plans for going to the match,

we couldn't get tickets.

It was always impossible, almost, to get tickets for the semifinal -

but you didn't want to miss that,

so it was worth the drive to Sheffield

on the off chance that you might get in the ground.

At that end of the ground at Hillsborough,

there is a concourse area.

You kind of go into some outer gates

before you go through the turnstiles,

and we were herded into that area.

I didn't have tickets, but I thought,

"I'm herded in here," you know, "who knows what might happen?

"Who knows? I might be able to give a guy a fiver on the gate."

It got fairly...crushy there,

and so they opened up the gates,

and everyone went through and we thought...

"Brilliant."

Like all of us, I tried to get behind the goal,

and way too many of us tried to get behind the goal,

and it was about the worst experience I ever had

at a football match.

The match in 1981 when fans were crushed at Hillsborough,

people could have been seriously injured or killed.

The game proceeded, even though some fans went to hospital,

many had bruised ribs...

..and the police took the decision to allow them to sit quietly

around the perimeter track.

And the police indicated that had that not occurred,

there could've been deaths.

And the response from the chair of the club

was to say that was a nonsense -

I think he used the phrase, "Bollocks.

"Nobody would've died."

That, to me, is a clear indication

of how deep institutional complacency can run.

Despite all the warning signs of 1981,

nothing was in the operational order to prepare police officers

for what happened on the day at Hillsborough with regards to safety.

Obviously, first thing is, there's nobody there, first off.

I expected it to be slow, but it was extremely slow.

It was so slow that one of the turnstile operators

remarked to another he'd only had 74 people through,

and he was so bored,

he'd worked out what rate they'd got to come through at.

We got to the ground probably at about 1.30.

Liverpool fans were arriving, there weren't that many there,

and we just started hunting around

to see if we could find anybody who might want to swap a ticket,

so we sort of, you know, we managed that pretty quickly, I think.

I was pretty pleased to get two significantly more expensive tickets

in the stand and, erm, he swapped those for a pair of tickets

for the Leppings Lane terrace.

We went through that turnstile at about two o'clock,

into that concourse behind the stand

and then just saw the sign that said "standing"

right in the middle of the bottom of that stand.

There was only one place we were going,

and, you know, that sort of thrill you get as a football fan

when you go into the ground and you get the first glimpse of the pitch.

"We're going to see Liverpool play in the FA Cup semifinal."

We were in, and we were... we were right behind the goal.

Me and my brother went by car,

cos we'd been successful the previous year.

Hung around and went to the same pubs

that we went the previous year.

We managed to find a place to park.

Like people do, we went and had two pints in the, er...

in one of the pubs there,

and the pub was... it was all a good atmosphere,

there was no problems in the pub.

Everybody was singing and having a good time.

It were like a good-natured carnival atmosphere -

it was semifinal.

Our job was to escort the Nottingham Forest fans

to the ground on the buses.

Everyone's jovial, you know,

asking if they could stop off for a pint on the way to the ground.

I said, "No, we're going straight to the ground, we don't stop."

The fans saying, "Well, I want to get off,"

"Well, this bus isn't stopping," you know, that sort of thing.

And when all the buses were empty we'd go back and get more.

He's a nice lad, anyway, mate.

I saw one or two fans who were obviously...

they'd had a drink but they weren't...

you couldn't construe them as being drunk

for purposes of locking them up

for drunk and disorderly or owt like that.

And if they'd got a tinnie or owt like that,

we made 'em either sup it up or pour it down a grate

before they went into ground.

We walked down towards the ground

and there was just a few people first of all...

..and then it just built up,

and I was surprised at the amount of people

that were walking towards the ground.

Didn't really see any visible police presence.

We were checking fans who were coming through the turnstiles,

searching, they were all decent people, good humoured, sober,

well behaved, well mannered, very compliant.

You know, and it was a really good, good atmosphere...

..and then it started to get busier and busier.

The attitude seemed to change.

It was about twenty past two, twenty-five past two,

myself and a colleague detained a lad

who jumped through the turnstile without a ticket,

detained him and took him to the police room,

processed him through there,

and when we came back it was just mayhem.

We got there about 20 past, and it was really busy outside.

There was no real organisation there.

It was just a mass of people - there was no queuing or anything.

The more we were watching it, the less people seemed to be going in.

There didn't seem to be anybody really going through the turnstiles.

We thought the turnstiles must've been broken,

and the previous year we got there at the same time,

and we just... I don't remember any problems at all,

we just seemed to walk straight in.

At that time, the Leppings Lane at Hillsborough

was segregated into pens,

and the two central pens behind the goal were quite busy,

but the ones to the side were really empty.

'Well, you look at the Liverpool end,

'to the right of the goal,

'there's hardly anybody on those steps.

'No, to the right of there - that's it.

'Look down there.

'Unless that's some sort of segregation

'for what they call neutrals

'who've got their tickets from Sheffield Wednesday -

'that could be it, I suppose.'

You could see all the concrete, you could see the crush barriers.

If you could see concrete or you could see barriers,

you knew there was a lot of spare capacity.

But the two central pens were quite busy.

It just kept on filling up and filling up

and I said to Phil at one point,

"Shall we go down the front?

"Because it's getting uncomfortable here."

We mulled it over for, like, five minutes -

we were standing next to each other -

and then by about half two, it just got more and more full,

to the point where we couldn't have got down the front if we wanted to.

We all know that football fans love to get behind the goal.

Soon that fills up, and what you do is you work sideways from there,

and you find your own level.

You'd always have the sway and the push and the shove

and all of the things we now know that are so dangerous,

but that would be the way.

You could go sideways if you felt that you were being crushed,

you could move sideways.

Once pens were introduced at Hillsborough in 1985,

you couldn't move sideways, you had to stay in that confined area.

So that idea that fans could go down that tunnel

into the backs of already crowded fans

and then somehow they could find their own level is a nonsense,

because there was nowhere to go.

The control box is right there at the corner of Leppings Lane.

It's above the terrace, perfect view,

right down into the central pens,

right across the whole of the terrace.

It's a very small box, full of monitors,

monitoring the crowd at all points.

In the control box you have Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield,

you have his assistant Bernard Murray.

The only place where there is relative silence

and relative calm is in the control box.

Those officers inside the ground and outside the ground

are dependent on the control box for instructions - this is the hub.

You can see right beneath them, right in their eye line -

they don't need monitors -

you can see this incredible compression of bodies,

so you can already see, at that point,

prior to the disaster occurring,

that the central pens are packed tight.

Had some lunch in the gymnasium.

I had apple pie with custard.

That sticks in my mind for some reason, I don't know why,

it's bizarre.

And then there was, like, an atmosphere started,

and you could see police were starting looking at the door,

and you're thinking, "What's going on?"

It just started... atmosphere started to build,

and everyone's sort of, "Right, well, let's...I'm just going to...

"Where's my hat? Where's my helmet? Where are my gloves?"

You can tell people's tone of voice starts to creep up,

and you're thinking, "That's not sounding too good,"

I think we're getting ready to move,

and, of course, we were deployed to Leppings Lane end.

There was a mass of people in front of the ground.

Couldn't see any turnstiles at all.

The crowd built up behind us,

so much so that we were in a mass of people.

As soon as we came round that corner,

you could see just a press of people outside.

"How are we going to get all these people in?"

People were being forced in the turnstiles.

We were literally pulling people through the turnstiles

to get them out of the crush outside.

It was quite normal that a message would be given

that the kick-off was being delayed,

and that can then be relayed to the fans outside,

but there's no plan to delay the kick-off.

ALL SHOUT

MAN SCREAMS

CROWD JEERS

We could hear on Sergeant Jacques' radio the voices of police officers

getting more and more frantic,

and when I say frantic...

I mean frantic.

You could tell...

..there were an element of fear in their voices.

Some poor lad just lost it.

I remember this on the radio, saying,

"For fuck's sake, for fuck's sake, open these gates!

"If you don't open these gates, people are going to die.

"For fuck's sake, please open these gates."

I looked at me colleague, "Someone's swearing on the radio."

Didn't happen, you just didn't do it.

You would hope that people would see what was happening

outside the ground.

CCTV would've shown what was happening outside the ground.

There seemed to be a big gap, a big black hole,

a big nothingness coming from police control room.

It were as if everybody... everybody had just frozen.

You're in a situation where the pressure is so great

that you're going to actually have injury and death outside the ground.

The police officer in charge outside the ground,

Superintendent Marshall, realises this -

he phones through into the ground, to Duckenfield.

He can see what's happening outside the ground on his monitors

and he's asked to open exit gate C,

so that the fans who were at the back of that crush

can be fed into exit gate C,

therefore relieving the crush at the turnstiles,

preventing death or injury,

as Marshall puts it, outside of the stadium.

RADIO CHATTER

Duckenfield takes the decision,

"If this is what needs to be done, so be it."

He orders the gate to be opened, and at that point, un-stewarded,

in come the fans.

We just went in with the crowd.

We were among the first 20 or 30

to actually go through the gates that were opened.

Some had got tickets and were saying,

"Do you want to see my ticket?"

and I said, "No, just get in, just get in."

The gate got opened...

..so we then just walked at a leisurely pace through.

I was quite surprised that it was quite free of people -

we literally could stand quite free.

If it had been as packed there as it had been outside,

I don't think I'd have gone down the tunnel.

I said to me mate, cos I was in the stands,

so I was in the wrong area,

so I said to him, I said, "I'll see you later," you know,

"Yeah, fine."

And I went one way, and he went down the tunnel.

Foolishly we just went for the tunnel, really,

we just went straight down a tunnel.

An open-mouthed tunnel, nobody policing it.

Previous years, that had been sealed

when it appeared that the central pens were full,

but not this year.

I know that when you come through that gate, you see that tunnel.

You certainly wouldn't think about going past the tunnel

and into the other entrance into the West Stand.

CROWD CHANTS

We were in red, they were in all white,

the pitch was as green as you've ever seen.

If you would've taken a snapshot of football

at its most beautiful, that was that moment.

I just thought to myself, "This is great, this is..."

You know, "Football doesn't get any better than this."

-MOTSON:

-'So, on a clear, sunny day at Hillsborough,

'the stage is set for a rerun of last year's classic,

'Liverpool in red, Forest all in white.

'Stuart Pearce gives away the first free kick.'

I had no idea that the game had even started.

We were pushed forward very quickly,

just the momentum took us forward

and there was a gap created behind us,

obviously from the momentum that had come,

and Tracey had fallen down.

I turned round and somebody picked her up,

didn't see sight of Richard or Tracey after that.

By the time I stopped, I was right near the front.

This panicked mass -

nobody was watching the game.

There was a bit of a surge and I got pushed onto a barrier.

It eased off a bit, and I turned round,

and I could see me dad behind me,

and the last thing I said to him was, "Are you OK?"

and he just said, "Yeah."

Next thing, I was... I was pushed again.

The pressure just got immensely worse.

At the beginning I thought,

"Oh, it's going to... it'll ease off again,"

because it always eases off, I've done this countless times.

But it just didn't... it didn't ease off at all,

it just got tighter and tighter

and then you could hear people crying, er, like they were dying.

There was two lads on the other side of the barrier,

I was really in their face, cos I was right over the barrier.

I was asking them to help me but...they couldn't,

they said, "We can't help you, we're struggling ourselves,"

and there was this other lad who was...

he was taking all the weight of me,

and I seen him look at me, he never said a word,

he just looked at me, and I...

there was nothing I could... there was nothing I could do.

The only recollection I have of the six minutes that was played

was Beardsley hit the bar.

'Beardsley.

'Oh, he's hit the bar.'

That was the moment it felt like the crowd sort of convulsed,

and then something...went.

I felt very light-headed, I felt like my vision was narrowing

and you were hearing shouting about,

"Hold him up, hold him up, hold him up."

"I've got to get down.

"If I can get down I'll be all right.

"If it just eases off for a second, I'll get down on the floor,

"that's what...that's what I'll do,"

and then I'm thinking to myself, "No. I'm dying here."

Eventually I passed out.

Nothing was being done.

These two or three police officers, whatever it was,

were just looking,

telling this guy to get off the crush barrier.

This was unfolding within feet of where they were standing.

I presume that these guys had policed football matches

many, many times before...

..which, you know, says it all

about how the police saw football fans at that time.

CROWD ROARS

'And there are fans on the pitch here, in the six-yard area.

'The referee's going to have to stop the game.

'There's an overflow behind the goal

'and the police inspector is on the pitch,

'and they've come through the barriers.

'Now, I can only think that's overcrowding,

'it doesn't look to me to be any sort of misbehaviour.

'More police are being called for.

'Reinforcements are coming from the Forest end now

'to attend to this problem.'

As we got to the corner of the pitch,

the centre pen looked absolutely crammed,

and I could see there's too many people

in those middle two pens than...

It was obvious it was too many people.

This is going tits up.

It's not a pitch invasion, it's not public order,

it is people dying and in distress,

so I opened the pen.

Just carried on screaming, and then all of a sudden

I just heard somebody say, "Come through here,"

or, "Come here, love," or...

and I was literally sort of grabbed, sort of pulled...

..and I found myself on the pitch with a camera on my face.

It was just a lot of fractured sort of breathing

and people rasping and people shouting

and a rising tide of panic and anguish and anger.

FANS SHOUT FURIOUSLY

I was stood at the fence looking into the ground,

but I was looking long-sighted,

and there was a police officer next to me,

we're just looking round and he said, "He's a goner."

And he pointed in front of him, and I...

to my shock, about three foot in front of me...

..was this lad.

It was like looking at fish in a trawler net.

People were so crushed...

..that you...you couldn't see a full person, if you like.

And that were just something that will haunt me forever, really.

All I could see was his shoulders and his face...

..and his face was deep purple.

He wasn't breathing.

I don't think he was.

And I thought, "It's...

"Oh, my God, you know, this is... This is..."

I just... And then it suddenly...

This isn't happening.

And I noticed there was just bodies everywhere,

a sea at the front of bodies.

It was seeing that, you know, broken, crumpled, er...

..pile of people, and then you just thought,

"Jesus", you know,

"this isn't one or two, this is...

"This is a lot of people."

I saw one particular lad who was caught up to his waist in bodies.

So I grabbed hold of his hands and I thought,

"I'll pull him out, no problem."

No chance, absolutely no chance.

He was just... He might as well have had his legs in vices.

I could not move him. Could not move him.

As I leant over, my radio fell out my pocket.

There he is, in all this...carnage,

all this terror,

and, to my amazement, he picks me radio up and hands it back to me.

I was a small, skinny kid in glasses and this bloke said to me,

"Go on, lad, up you go," and, like, lifted me up.

These guys were leaning right over.

you just looked up and they were just, you know,

making eye contact with you and just saying, you know,

"You get up here."

I was lifted up and this guy leant over the barriers

and put his arms out and pulled me up

and then he slapped me around the face a couple of times.

He looked in my eyes and said, "Are you all right?"

Then just said, "Get up the back."

I went up to the back of the stand, right at the back of the stand,

and I just sat there sort of feeling numb

and watched this thing unfold.

I looked over my left shoulder and I thought,

"I'm not doing anything good here."

I could see that nobody could get in through the gates

that were in front of those two pens,

but when I looked across to my right,

I could see Sergeant Green, who was one of my sergeants at the time,

was stood at a gate.

So I thought, "If I go in there,

"I can just run along and get into the other pen."

I got in and I couldn't understand why

these people weren't moving towards me.

There's actually a six-foot-high spike railing fences

between the pens.

No wonder people can't move.

And I thought, "What a stupid thing, having a spiked fence."

But I thought, "I've got to get over that fence," so I jumped in.

It was like spaghetti, they were tangled up.

It was just a case of trying to rescue people, get them out.

You'd see the same socks on.

Well, that's going be somebody's legs,

so you try and pull them out.

But you can't pull them out,

because their arms are wrapped round somebody else's leg.

You'd feel for a pulse,

but their tongues were so black and swollen,

I thought, "You're struggling, really, to get any air in there."

Lips were blue, eyes were glazed.

By this time, you could see people were starting to be

taken onto the pitch.

I thought, "They're starting to get their act together

"and starting to treat people outside,

"so get them over as fast as you can,"

and we were just pulling people out.

When I come to, it had all eased off around me quite a bit.

I remember some fella saying,

"Don't go down there, get up off the floor."

So I said... So I got up. As...as I turned round,

I could see people getting hoisted up into the stand.

And I... I didn't know...

All I thought was,

"Just get out of here. I've just got to get out of here."

So I put me hand up, and me right arm wouldn't work,

I'd crushed me right arm.

I got pulled up, but just by me left arm.

I could see people pulling at the barriers,

and there's police and people on the pitch,

I could see all sorts going on.

I've gotta find me dad, because he's going be worrying for me.

You know, I've... "Where...? How...how is he?"

Worrying about how he was, but I thought,

"He's going be worrying where I am.

"If I'm up here, he's going be looking everywhere for me."

There was this big chap that was being helped out.

He was, erm...

unconscious at least.

I really was the only officer there, so I lifted his T-shirt up.

I put my ear to his chest, couldn't hear anything.

I think a St John Ambulance chap came up and looked in his eyes,

and he said, "He's dead."

And so I just lifted his T-shirt over his face.

Erm...

There was a big guy.

He had a red shirt on and they pulled it over his head.

And at that point you realised, "Jesus, he's dead."

And everyone around me was like,

"No, he's... No-one's dead, no-one..."

You know, cos no-one wanted to...to believe,

everyone was in denial.

I'd done some CPR training.

I thought, "Well, I'll go round and see whether I can help."

I made me way out. I was just totally on me own,

cos obviously everybody else was focused

on what was going on down below.

As I walked down the steps, just as I got to the bottom of the steps,

I could see me dad lying on the floor.

Me dad was outside the ground, on, like, a concourse area.

There must've been another ten bodies that were just...

all just lying there.

They were all covered over but he had a tattoo on his arm

and I recognised him straightaway.

The next thing I know there was a big crowd of police all round me.

It was surreal.

A line of police, I don't know, 40, 60,

and then there was people lying on the floor,

and that's when I realised they were dead.

But the police were just standing there.

I mean, why would you just stand there?

So I went up to one of the police. I said, "What's going on?"

I said, "Why aren't you doing something?"

They just sort of looked straight ahead of me.

I said, "How many? How many?" And he started sobbing.

I did... I just, like, really panicked badly.

And ran away as fast as I could from the ground.

Rose shouted to me in the kitchen,

"Marg!" she said, "There's trouble at Hillsborough."

And I just carried on doing the sandwiches and I thought,

"Where's Hillsborough?"

So I said, "Where's Hillsborough, Rose?"

She said, "Isn't that where our Jimmy is, James?"

I said, "No, they've gone to Sheffield."

So she said, "Marg, this is where the trouble is, Sheffield."

I said, "You've just told me Hillsborough."

She said, "That's the ground."

-MOTSON:

-'Now, one has to say

'that that is a segregated part of the ground,

'the Leppings Lane Terrace.

'Liverpool supporters occupying it,

'and I can only assume that there was overcrowding,

'and as they tried to come out from behind the barriers,

'people at the front were crushed.'

I was really upset...

..cos I knew my three were in there.

'There are an enormous number of police there

'but they clearly haven't sorted out the number of people

'who can't seem to find any space.'

I immediately rang Les, who was in work.

I asked him had he been watching

what was going on in Sheffield on the television, he said yes.

I wasn't to worry, because Richard would never take the girls

down the front.

'It's such a sensitive time...'

Just watching the screen and I saw these people...

..getting laid... people laid on the pitch,

and I thought I'd saw James.

I waited at home, I switched everything off

and the minute Les was home, we were leaving for Sheffield.

People were getting pulled out and put on the pitch.

And I literally just stood there and just cried.

I didn't know what to do, didn't know what to think.

In the back of my mind, I was always worried about Tracey,

cos she'd fallen down and I thought,

"She's smaller, she's more petite,"

but Richard was stocky, he was tall.

He was a big lad and I never once thought

that anything would be wrong with him.

I thought that I've got out, he would get out,

but I was concerned about Tracey.

It's pretty clear that there is no order coming from the control box.

Intuitively, it should've been obvious

that what was happening was crushing and a safety problem

and trying to get people out.

What happens then, the control box is visited by Graham Kelly

from the Football Association, along with his assistant.

And for whatever reason, in the heat of the moment...

..David Duckenfield tells him that there has been an inrush

of Liverpool fans forcing entry through an exit gate

into the stadium and down the tunnel.

At that moment, the person who is ultimately responsible

for the hiring of the stadium is told, unequivocally,

that Liverpool fans have caused the disaster

by violent access to the ground.

That's the message that, within minutes,

even before the bodies are pulled out of pen three,

the world knows that the responsibility for Hillsborough

lies in the actions of Liverpool fans.

'Yeah, I've got...

'I've got an explanation of what's happened here.

'I'm going to give you a line.

'And the story emerges that one of the outside gates

'leading into that terrace was broken.

'People without tickets got in, were therefore overcrowding

'the people with tickets, and that's why the crush occurred.'

The lie that this is,

when Duckenfield knows that he ordered,

agreed to, the opening of gate C,

the lie becomes defining.

It becomes the defining moment of the first phase

of building a case against Liverpool fans,

who, from this moment onwards, are discredited in their actions

as coming to the ground without tickets, forcing entry,

being violent, being drunk.

That whole process then feeds the myth.

The myth begins with the lie.

All emergency planning procedures have a core element,

which is the declaration of emergency.

It is clear that no emergency plan is put into operation.

Everything that happens from there on is ad hoc.

If you don't have an emergency response plan,

that's when you have an ambulance coming on the pitch,

another ambulance coming on the pitch.

Ambulances arriving outside, backing up, right up Penistone Road.

They can't get past each other.

You have ambulance officers leaving their vehicles,

but not leaving their keys so you've got them boxed in.

At the same time, you've not got people coming with stretchers,

or people coming with defibrillators or any other...

any other of the standard processes that we would operate

in terms of an emergency.

The fact that no emergency is declared, in a situation

where people have only got a limited time to be saved...

..is an important element of the whole process.

Don't be looking at them.

You want to look at the fucking police who are doing fuck-all!

I remember going into ground.

No sooner had we rushed in ground

than we'd got pulled straight back out again.

I just remember, like, there being carnage.

We had to go to help get ambulances in.

Police officers' immediate response

is to do as they're told.

Their instruction is to place a cordon across the pitch

so that Nottingham Forest fans,

who might interpret what's happening as hooliganism,

don't come on to the pitch.

That gives the appearance that the police officers

are caught in the headlights, that they're doing nothing,

but that's their order, that's what they are doing.

Some police officers, who are not in that cordon,

who actually had responsibility for that end of the ground,

they are actually trying to rescue.

But the majority of people who are involved in the rescue

are the fans who've managed to escape the pens,

who then realise there are no stretchers,

there's no emergency procedure -

they become the emergency helpers, along with some police officers.

I came out on to the pitch.

A bloke came up to me and pointed to somebody on the ground.

I thought, "I'm going to make him live, he's going to stay alive."

I think an ambulanceman came across to me, and we said,

"I think we can get this one."

So we just grabbed him, put him in the back of the ambulance.

I do remember we picked up a police motorbike escort

and we just hared it to the Northern General Hospital.

We got to Northern General, the staff were already waiting.

They'd got the gurneys out, lined up.

Doctor looked for pulse, eye tests, things like that, and said,

"I'm afraid this gentleman's not made it."

So...

That devastated me, cos I've never had somebody die

literally in my arms before.

So I had to take him to the plaster room.

There was certainly four people there.

But what hit me the most was a young lad,

who couldn't have been more than 14, 15, with a Liverpool shirt,

and he was at the very end.

I just thought, "Christ, he's only 14, 15, and he's dead."

I cried.

Yeah.

I went round to gymnasium.

There were just these lines...

..and lines of dead people...

..young people.

They were using gymnasium as a temporary mortuary.

I... I'd seen some sights in me life, you know,

but I'd not seen anything like that ever.

PHONE RINGS

I do remember getting a call from Teri, my mother-in-law,

pointing out to us that, you know, something was going on in Sheffield

and she was very distressed, because Andrew had gone over there.

You'd put the phone down, ring it again,

ring back right again, right...

I just couldn't get through on the emergency number.

It became obvious, the longer it went on,

that the only way we were going to get any information at all

was to actually go over there.

We headed off on the Snake Pass, and it was never-ending.

At first, you were talking all the time,

but then all the conversation just petered out,

and you just couldn't wait to get there.

It was a horrendous drive up there, it was...

And Doreen was going on in the background, of course, you know,

"What do you think?" and all this.

I was absolutely convinced by this time

that there was no way he would've left Stephanie on her own

unless there was something seriously happened

and I was hoping he was going be in hospital,

that was my best hope for him.

But I was already assuming he was dead.

And I was driving through wondering how the hell

we were going to get through this, you know.

We were told to stand down and sit in the North Stand...

..looking at this scene of carnage at Leppings Lane,

which is just a few feet away.

Then we heard that there were, er, confirmed 80-plus dead.

You're a police officer, you're supposed to, er...

Your primary duty is to protect life.

Not catch villains, your primary duty is to protect life,

and there were all these dead people there.

Totally out of my depth.

Totally out of my depth,

as most bobbies were, I would imagine.

Totally out of their depth.

The last thing you expect.

The last thing you expect is people not going home

after a football match...

..especially that many.

This Chief Inspector came walking past,

and one of the lads from our serial said,

"Sir, what shall we put in our pocket books?"

And this Chief Inspector turned round and he says...

.."Oh, you don't need to put anything in your pocket books,

"it'll all be covered in the disaster log."

And then he walked off.

It's hard to, er...

..articulate...

..er...

..the enormity of a statement...

..if you're not in police family.

The enormity of a statement like that

if you're not in police family,

or if you weren't in police family back in them days.

Your pocket book was sacred.

If you saw Billy Smith, a local burglar,

walking down the street at 9.30 in the morning,

you'd put it in your pocket book,

"Saw Billy Smith walking down the street 9.30",

because there might have been a burglary round corner

at that time, and you've got evidence there to show

that you were in that area.

Well, we already knew by then that there were 80-odd people dead,

and some Chief Inspector's saying,

"Don't bother putting anything in your pocket book"?

Once he moved off, Dave Jacques, like, had a look round.

I also remember... Dave Jacques were proper, first-class...

..Sheffield Police Sergeant.

What he didn't know about coppering weren't worth knowing.

His exact words were,

"Fuck him.

"There's been scores of people killed here.

"You're going to put everything in your pocket books,

"from what time you arrived at the nick this morning

"to whatever time you get off,

"you even put in what time you went for a piss."

RADIO STATIC BETWEEN STATIONS

'Chaos broke out five minutes after the game started

'when the force of people in the Leppings Lane end of the ground

'forced fans to climb the barriers onto the pitch

'to escape being crushed.

'The match was halted...'

That journey home was just a nightmare.

'I saw a man having his chest pumped to try to save his life.'

As you were going along, the numbers just kept going up and up.

You know, so every time it went up, everyone would just groan.

'..the doctors and off-duty policemen to get to the ground.

'The unofficial death toll here is 74.'

You just couldn't get home fast enough.

By the time we got back to Liverpool,

we were just in a state of real shock.

The main story this evening,

74 football supporters are reported to have been crushed to death

at the FA Cup Final at Hillsborough in Sheffield this afternoon.

Hundreds more were injured.

Fans rushed through a broken turnstile,

crushing Liverpool supporters against the front of the stand.

So me and me father ducked under the turnstile...

ducked under, like, the barrier to get sort of some fresh air,

a bit of breathing, because he was in real trouble.

The next thing the police opened these big blue gates,

the exit gates. And, like, everybody, including me,

just went for these gates, just to get in the ground.

We weren't going to get in the ground otherwise.

Well, that was it, really. My dad died in the crush.

That's it. That's all I've got to say, really.

Can I ask your name?

Brian Anderson.

In the chaos of Hillsborough, coroner Stefan Popper is called.

And he decides he's going to attend the stadium

where he knows the majority of bodies are being held.

He meets up with Professor Alan Usher,

one of the country's leading pathologists

who happens to be based in Sheffield.

The coroner is hearing, as is the pathologist,

the stories of the lie.

You know, they...they can't be impervious to that,

it's on the news by now.

And part of that story is drunkenness.

According to the coroner,

he makes a decision at that moment

that he's going to take the blood alcohol levels

of all who died, including the children.

Because, he says, he assumed...

..that this would be an important factor.

This is the first time it's ever happened in a disaster.

Yes, you would take blood alcohol levels

of a pilot in a plane crash, or a train driver in a train crash,

or even people driving cars.

But the idea that you take the blood alcohol levels of all people

is absolutely unprecedented.

The pathologist agrees to this,

and that is the first establishment of the notion

that alcohol played a significant part in Hillsborough.

We all went down to Lime Street Station to get James.

You're standing there and you're waiting

and you see the coaches coming in,

and you just can't wait to get hold of your son.

The first coach come in.

Poor people were getting off, they were in a terrible mess.

And I thought, "He's not on that one."

So I said to the driver, "How many more coaches?"

He said, "Oh, there's a few more to come in."

Next one come in.

No James.

We waited till the very last one.

I thought, "He's got to be on this one.

"He's got to be on this one." I'd...

I was just ready to hug him.

I was desperate to hug him... and love him.

But all the passengers got off and I thought, "Where is he?"

Teri, Colin and myself were shown to a hut.

It was the most... tangible form of suffering

of human beings that I could imagine.

The atmosphere in that boys' club was...

..appalling.

Everybody in there was looking for somebody.

There was wailing.

Short of gnashing of teeth,

it was a picture of Dante's Inferno.

The level of suffering in that hut...

This is just when we were waiting to find out -

what do we do next, where do we go?

I was basically thinking,

"They're going to take me to a hospital

"and I'm going to find out that Rick's injured

"and I'll be able to sit with him."

It must've been getting near midnight,

and the room was slowly filling up with priests and vicars.

There was more...

..dog collars than there was people.

It must've been half one, quarter to two in the morning.

A policeman come in and he stood on a chair.

He said that we were going to be taken back to the football ground...

..and we were going to look at photographs.

We all got on a double-decker bus.

It was freezing cold as well.

It had been so nice, but it was so cold.

I was pushing and pulling Leslie and asking him,

"Why? Why are we going to the football ground?

"Why aren't we going to the hospital?"

Of course Leslie knew.

We were taken into another room...

..and told to stand there...

..and we would be called in.

They wanted to just take me dad through, I think,

but me mum said she had to go with him.

They told me that I couldn't come,

so I stayed with the social worker outside

while they went in to view the photographs.

And there was loads of them.

Photographs were in Polaroids -

small, very hard to see.

Not split in any race or colour

or sex or age, nothing.

And I said, "Are they all dead?"

And somebody nodded their head.

And we went down and down and down, down these photographs.

And fairly soon into that process,

I thought what I saw in front of me was a picture of Andrew.

I collapsed.

To be honest, I didn't even recognise Tracey

from the photographs

because her face was so black and bruised.

I didn't even recognise her, but I recognised Richard.

Without another word being said,

two trolleys were brought in, and, um...

..there was body bags on the trolleys.

Leslie nodded his head.

They wheeled his body up on a trolley.

He was a mess.

And I touched his face.

I went to bend down to cuddle him.

(Give me a minute.)

I wasn't allowed to, er...

They said he was the property of the coroner.

I brought him into the world, I needed to see him out.

I wanted to cuddle him.

I didn't say goodbye, I needed to...

I needed that, that was me that needed that.

I don't think they were gone that long, really, and they came back.

I mean I knew from their face.

I just said, "Both of them?" They said, "Yeah."

That was that.

Me mum was...a wreck.

After the initial, "Both of them?"

I don't know whether I went quite calm, really, to be honest,

when the police officer said that we had to give a statement...

So, you and your brother went the pub, you say?

A lot of the questions were about drink.

Had me mum and dad had a drink on the way to Sheffield to come to me?

Had I had a drink before we went to the game?

Had we had a drink the night before?

And I was going, "Well, yeah.

"Yeah, I had a half a cider in the pub today.

"We had a couple of ciders last night,"

and I'm thinking, "Why am I saying this?"

And all the time he was tap, tap, tap with his pen.

When Teri was asked did he smoke, she said no.

Did he drink? She said no.

The next comment from the police actually was,

"You'll be telling us he was a virgin next."

And this unflappable woman that was my mother-in-law

was flummoxed, she could not respond to that.

When I was giving me statement and they were asking me about drink,

I said, "You opened the gates, you know," I said,

"It was down to you," I was making sure they knew that.

But they weren't really interested in that when I was telling them.

Why are they attacking me?

Why are they attacking my family?

None of the family have done anything wrong.

It was quite calculating.

Everybody was going through the same thing,

and it was just a process,

"Let's get this done as quickly as possible,

"done and dusted with these statements

"and then we've had it, we can say what it's all about tomorrow.

"It's all about the drink."

The vicar took us back to where our car was

and to Richard and Tracey's flat.

All the butties were there for the picnic.

It was just so sad.

And from there we got in the car and Leslie drove home.

The day after the disaster,

Margaret Thatcher arrived in Sheffield.

One of her roles was to go and visit people in the hospital,

the other was to go to the stadium.

Standing there with David Duckenfield,

Peter Wright the Chief Constable,

Douglas Hurd the Home Secretary,

Conservative MP Irvine Patnick, and Bernard Ingham her Press Secretary.

And it's at this moment that the lie really consolidates

in the minds of the politicians.

How do we know that?

Bernard Ingham writes when questioned...

"..What we learned on the spot...

"..that a tanked-up mob had actually caused the disaster."

CHATTER

In the immediate aftermath,

we see the police pulling together at significant meetings,

and those meetings are absolutely crucial.

They knew that the West Midlands Police would be arriving.

They knew that the Director of Public Prosecutions

would be looking for the potential criminal investigation,

and they knew there'd be a coroner's inquiry, an inquest,

and the West Midlands Police would feed into that.

There is no question that

the significance of the meetings that were held

within South Yorkshire in the immediate aftermath

are about getting their house in order,

about actually preparing for the evidential collection,

preparing for actually developing their side of the whole story.

It was clear that he was under immense pressure

to have an initial report out which gave some indication

of what had happened at Hillsborough.

I welcome the inquiry which is about to take place,

and which will undoubtedly reveal the true nature and cause

of this terrible tragedy.

I believe that when it's completed,

the actions of the South Yorkshire Police

will be seen in a very different light.

After the Hillsborough tragedy,

we hear in many of today's newspapers

that the police have criticised the behaviour of Liverpool fans.

Police have claimed that drunken Liverpool football fans

attacked them as they tried to help victims

of the Hillsborough disaster.

They say they were kicked, punched and urinated on.

A lot of the fans - many, many hundreds of them

outside that gate - had been drinking very heavily.

People were... I use the expression drunk,

they used a better descriptive word about it.

They arrived very late,

only a few minutes before the game was due to start,

500-plus were there without any tickets,

and they were pushing and crushing

and very, very strong.

The police officers there were virtually overwhelmed.

People were actually lifting the police horse...

And they're diving under the bellies of police horses...

Between its legs.

Now anybody who does that, I don't care what other people say,

they're either mental or they're drunk.

He said that they were urinated on by people

who were in the balconies above them.

He said they were kicked

whilst they were giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

And all I've said to you is honestly what was reported to me

by the officers on the ground that night.

Now that happened to me on Saturday.

Since then, the story...

other people have added to it, but it is a fact.

So I have to accept that what they were telling me was the truth.

It's a question I've always asked people

when they've asked me about the stealing from the dead,

the urinating on the police and all that.

I would say to them, "Would you do it?"

No-one's ever said "Yeah." They all go, "No."

I said, "Why would you believe I did it?!"

Why?!

And if you're a journalist, why?

That's the first question you've gotta ask.

"Would I do it? Um, no."

I'm really glad that my name never appeared on a story

suggesting that happened for two reasons -

one, it didn't happen,

and two, can anybody ever really think

that when somebody's giving CPR to somebody on a football field,

that somebody would go and urinate on the back of a policeman?

It's just... I remember at the time thinking, "That's nuts."

In fairness to those people who wrote that story,

and I'm sure they really wished they didn't now,

that came from one or two sources.

Journalists will frequently write a story

if they trust the source that gave them.

They can't prove it themselves,

but, you know, they'll say to their editor,

"This guy I've known for 20 years, he's never let me down,

"he says it's definite," and in those days we'd say

"Right, let's go with it."

You'll, er... You've got a fight ahead of you.

I think the families realised that more or less from...

..straightaway.

They were drunken hooligans that came through the gate

and killed their own.

Really, that was like a red rag to a bull to me,

because my son loved life.

He didn't drink a lot, he was well-educated.

He was no drunken hooligan.

People do think that.

They think that the people who came in through that open gate...

..killed the people at the front.

But that's not true, three of us came in, and only I came home.

LIGHTS CLINK ON

We were asked to do an officer's report first.

That is, "What do you remember of the day?"

A lot of people put whatever they want in it.

They're trying to express what they were feeling at the time,

what other people's moods were, things like that.

I said what I did, and I put in what I thought was relevant -

the lack of radios, the lack of command structure,

the fact that we seemed to be seriously undermanned

for the job we were expected to do -

signed it, submitted it and that was it.

That was the end of it for me.

My position was as a senior scientific officer

within the mechanical engineering department.

We were called in to look at various aspects,

including the turnstiles -

how they operated, how accurate they were

and what turnstiles were allocated to different parts of the ground.

We were just looking at the numbers.

We weren't looking at how people behaved.

What we found was that the fans from Liverpool had to go through

a far fewer number of turnstiles.

In my report,

there is a graph which shows that from about ten past two

they were coming at a fairly constant rate.

Having seen the number of turnstiles,

it was fairly obvious that crowds would build up

and they wouldn't all get in the ground on time.

We looked at the influx of spectators through Gate C.

The figure we came up with was at 1,800.

The main conclusion was there weren't thousands of ticketless fans

because our total count through Gate C and the turnstiles

was not dissimilar from the capacity of the western terraces.

I was on patrol going through a suburb called Beighton.

And in Beighton is this railway level crossing barrier.

And just as I approached it,

the barriers came down for a train to go through.

LEVEL CROSSING BELL RINGS

In the intervening three weeks, I was feeling really ropey.

Off my food, couldn't sleep at night,

asking myself, "Could I have done more?"

And I just had this...

this weird feeling, and I put my hands up to my face...

..and I realised I was crying.

I was crying without even knowing it.

And then I... I felt wet down my crotch.

And I looked down and, er...

I'd... I'd pissed in my pants.

RUEFUL LAUGH

A big roughy, toughy ex-Para, Sheffield copper, er...

..I...

I pissed in my pants and I was crying.

So I got on the radio, I said, "I don't know what's happening,

"there's something wrong with me, can you send somebody down

"to me, I'm down at Beighton."

And, er...

They thought... "Are you all right, Mac?"

They thought I were in trouble with some toerag or something.

I said, "No, there's something wrong with ME."

A sergeant and a PC mate come out and saw the state I were in,

and they took me straight to me doctor's.

And...

..he put me on valium. It were a mental breakdown.

-NEWSREADER:

-Lord Justice Taylor today presented his interim report

just three months after starting his inquiry.

The actions of the police

are severely criticised

in the report.

In fact, it says,

"The main reason for the disaster

"was failure of police control."

On an individual basis, the actions of most police officers

inside the ground is praised as heroic in ghastly circumstances.

The harshest words in the report are reserved

for Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield,

the senior officer present, who's been suspended on full pay.

It talks of his failure to take effective control

of the disaster situation. He froze.

The thing is about David Duckenfield,

he wouldn't wanted to have frozen.

He froze because it was a human reaction, the trouble is,

if you're paid to be a chief superintendent,

then you're not paid to freeze,

you've got to immediately act decisively to save lives.

He didn't.

So, was he the right man for the job? Clearly not.

The report says the officers lacked leadership,

and as it examines the disaster stage by stage,

it finds faults with the decisions - or lack of decisions -

taken by South Yorkshire Police.

In fact, sections of the report are titled...

To me, that was Taylor seeing through the way

in which the South Yorkshire Police had tried to manipulate the story.

Taylor said the fans weren't to blame.

Drink played no part in that disaster.

You know, I think families felt,

"Somebody's got to be held responsible for this."

Didn't happen.

Didn't happen, did it?

The Coroner has absolute independence,

nobody tells the Coroner what the Coroner should do.

And it's decided by the Coroner that he's going to introduce

a cut-off of 3.15 on all evidence.

What that meant was anybody who died after 3.15,

if there are any other factors that might've

influenced their death,

they wouldn't be taken into consideration.

There was no absolute science about that at all.

There was a lot of taking advice from different sources,

making his mind up on the hoof, being influenced by...

senior police officers who were carrying out the investigation,

West Midlands police officers.

It's clear that there is somebody here struggling.

One of the concerns has also been

the amount of alcohol

that has been, erm, consumed prior to the match.

The indications are there wasn't a lot taken into the ground,

albeit we did find 300 cans, I think we counted on the concourse,

-on the inside of the turnstile.

-Yes.

But we've had a lot of evidence that there was

a lot of drinking taking place prior to arriving at the ground.

And indeed, we've been plotting that in terms of the pubs

and off-licences and supermarkets.

There were some families who hardly missed a day,

we're talking here about literally months of inquests,

travelling from Liverpool to Sheffield and back.