Hillsborough: How Police Shifted Blame to Supporters

On 15 April 1989, David Duckenfield ordered an exit gate opened at Hillsborough, allowing around 2,000 Liverpool supporters into already packed central pens behind the goal. The South Yorkshire Police chief superintendent was commanding the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. After the crush, he accused supporters of forcing open a gate. During the later inquests, he admitted that he had tried to shift the blame.

That was not the only accusation directed at supporters. The Hillsborough Independent Panel’s 2012 report traced how allegations from police officers reached newspapers in the days after the disaster. In a memorandum reproduced by the panel, White’s News Agency described officers telling its reporters that fans had attacked police and urinated on officers as they tried to help victims. The agency initially considered the claims insufficiently confirmed, then filed a story after another officer supplied similar allegations.

A further officer alleged that supporters had stolen from the dead. He had not witnessed theft himself: according to the agency’s memorandum, he relied on missing property and what other officers had told him. White’s said it had checked the story as far as it could in the time available and had faithfully reported what it was told. But the panel found no evidence in the disclosed documents and video material to verify the serious allegations of exceptional drunkenness, ticketlessness or violence, or that fans stole from the dead and dying.

The effort to present the police account also took place within the Police Federation. Records examined by the panel described a federation meeting on the morning The Sun published the allegations. Federation secretary PC Middup said getting the police side into the press had been his priority. Chief Constable Peter Wright joined the meeting and said a defence and a “rock solid story” should be presented to the inquiry. He believed the force would be exonerated and that blame should be directed toward “drunken ticketless individuals.”

Lord Justice Taylor’s interim report rejected the allegations against Liverpool fans as exaggerated and stated that their behaviour played no part in the disaster. Yet the federation sought a “counter attack” against his findings, the panel reported. The panel also found no evidence that supporters had conspired to arrive late and force entry. Instead, it found that the vast majority of fans on the pitch helped rescue and evacuate the injured and the dead.

In 2016, the inquest jury concluded that the 96 victims were unlawfully killed and that supporters had played no part in causing the disaster. It found that South Yorkshire Police errors created a dangerous situation at the turnstiles, failures by commanding officers caused the crush on the terraces, and mistakes were made in the police control box over the order to open the exit gates. Stadium defects and an error in safety certification also contributed. The police and ambulance services delayed declaring a major incident, delaying the emergency response.

The unlawful-killing conclusion was an inquest finding, not a criminal conviction, and carried no direct criminal consequence. Criminal investigations were then proceeding independently. Families sobbed when the jury concluded that supporters had played no part, and the courtroom later stood to applaud the jurors.

For survivor Dave Golding, the finding reached into a burden he had carried for almost three decades. He had watched his 41-year-old uncle die while fighting to avoid being pulled down into the crush, and told The Independent that he had been made to feel culpable for the death. “I can finally live with what happened now,” he said. “It’s relief more than anger after all these years.”