Yeah, but, Tom Cleverley can still fuck off yeah ?
Hillsborough: Searching For The Truth
- Thread starter Rael
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Yeah, but, Tom Cleverley can still fuck off yeah ?
There have been many times of late when I could no longer see the club that I fell in love with, all those years ago. What I thought made us special as a collective group of fans was slowly fading. We were just becoming like any other club, both team and fans alike.
Today I have had my faith restored.
Today I have had my faith restored.
deffo
Agreed - I have been trawling through lots of different forums from different teams and the support from Utd's has stood out. If they do something at the game on the 23rd I sincerely hope it is respected. I'm sure it will though.
Like rurikbird, I have never been to Liverpool. It has been an emotional day for me and I found it very difficult to listen to some of the audios and read some of the articles.
I am finding it difficult to put my emotions in words but I am going to try.
All the people who participated in the fight for justice are heroes who will inspire a generation all over the world. I am in my early 30s now and I had started to slowly loose faith in humanity and the simple values of right and wrong. Today has changed that. However difficult the task, however insurmountable the obstacles seem to be, do the right thing and do it with dignity.
I am finding it difficult to put my emotions in words but I am going to try.
All the people who participated in the fight for justice are heroes who will inspire a generation all over the world. I am in my early 30s now and I had started to slowly loose faith in humanity and the simple values of right and wrong. Today has changed that. However difficult the task, however insurmountable the obstacles seem to be, do the right thing and do it with dignity.
I haven't heard a thing today. The FA thrives on injustice, so today will have been a bad day for them. They have quite a few questions to answer, including why they arranged the fixture at Hillsborough knowing that the ground had no safety certificate and that there had already been some nasty incidents there.
Perhaps they should be charged with "bringing the game into disrepute."
I hope these revelations act as a civilising agent between us and the mancs. Those there with long memories know what it's like to be fucked by your own govt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
And in terms of the collusion between murdoch and the feds... to see these two events, the hacking scandal and hillsborough bookend twenty years, twenty years when the media narrative has been defined by utter scum in fleet street and scotland yard. It makes me want blood. There's a lot more to it than just these two stark examples. It's how the state works. Billy Bragg has this one so right.
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1P6KUyOhBc
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1P6KUyOhBc
We live in hope mate. I hope you are feeling a bit better btw. Today has been tough for everyone but you and silversean have my utmost respect.
*brappage*
Thanks dude but I did nothing other than attend the game and luckily walk away.
I was just thinking of the peterloo massacre today. There's an excellent In Our Time podcast on it.
You have my respect anyway.
Does anyone else not think Murdoch has a lot to answer for in all this? I know he didn't write the story but I think he has to be directly responsible for creating such a poisonous, recklessly aggressive atmosphere at The Lying Rag by employing and directing people like MacKenzie in pursuit of such a low brow and lurid agenda. Plus of course at every stage of the past 23 years he's had it in his power to produce a fitting front page such as the one they've finally been forced to put out today. It's always bugged me how lightly he gets off in this thing.
So, I am one of the OOTs that has felt a little strange today. I have been a Liverpool fan all my life, but grew up first in Brighton and Hove and then in the USA. I have been lucky to visit Anfield several times over the past few years. I do not sit in the Kop, as I have not earned that right yet, but I always visit the flame and it always moves me.
Over the past four years, I have also taken each of my two daughters to Anfield and each of them stood in front of the flame and read the names of children their own age, and suddenly, going to a football game with Dad was just a little bit more serious.
Today, after football practice, I sat down with my girls for dinner and told them that today was a big day in the history of Liverpool.
"What happened, Dad?"
"You remember that flame at Anfield, girls?"
I had told the girls about the first tragedy, but had not fully explained the second - the blame placed against the Liverpool supporters and the victims themselves. So, we talked about it and I started to cry.
"And, today, the British government admitted that 'the families were right'. After 23 years, the truth had come out and that the heroic families of the victims and our football club made the truth come out."
So, while I feel odd being as emotional as I am about these events and my club, I am thankful that I can share with my young and impressionable girls the amazing perseverance of the families against all odds, those who were there and suffered in so many ways, and those with responsibility today that had the courage to support the inquiry and make plainly known its outcome:
"The families were right."
Over the past four years, I have also taken each of my two daughters to Anfield and each of them stood in front of the flame and read the names of children their own age, and suddenly, going to a football game with Dad was just a little bit more serious.
Today, after football practice, I sat down with my girls for dinner and told them that today was a big day in the history of Liverpool.
"What happened, Dad?"
"You remember that flame at Anfield, girls?"
I had told the girls about the first tragedy, but had not fully explained the second - the blame placed against the Liverpool supporters and the victims themselves. So, we talked about it and I started to cry.
"And, today, the British government admitted that 'the families were right'. After 23 years, the truth had come out and that the heroic families of the victims and our football club made the truth come out."
So, while I feel odd being as emotional as I am about these events and my club, I am thankful that I can share with my young and impressionable girls the amazing perseverance of the families against all odds, those who were there and suffered in so many ways, and those with responsibility today that had the courage to support the inquiry and make plainly known its outcome:
"The families were right."
Front page of the New York Times tonight
23 Years After Soccer Tragedy, an Apology and a Shift in Blame
By JOHN F. BURNS
LONDON — Nearly a quarter of a century after 96 Liverpool soccer fans were crushed to death in one of the worst stadium disasters in history, Prime Minister David Cameron formally apologized on Wednesday to the victims’ families, saying their “appalling deaths” were compounded by an attempt by the police, investigators and the news media to depict the victims as hooligans and to blame them for the disaster.
Before a hushed House of Commons, Mr. Cameron said the families had suffered “a double injustice” in the failures of the police, fire officials and other authorities to anticipate the disaster or to contain its scale once it occurred, and in the efforts that followed to cover up police failings by altering witness statements, and to pin responsibility on the victims for their own deaths.
The prime minister’s apology, and the findings of a new inquiry panel on which it was based, marked a stunning reversal in a saga that has been an open wound in Britain since April 15, 1989, when 3,000 Liverpool supporters sought to crowd into standing-room terraces approved for barely half that many at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, 150 miles north of London. All but one of the victims perished that day, many of them within minutes. The last victim remained in a coma until he died in 1993.
It has become known simply as the Hillsborough disaster, a horrifying reference point for sports officials throughout the world, and it has come to symbolize an era of rambunctious British soccer fans and the measures that clubs and the police took to contain them. Fences separated rival fans and prevented them from throwing beer bottles and other missiles onto the field. Clashes with the police were common.
The violence has receded in the past decade, and the sport has become a more family-friendly affair, with bans on drinking in the stands and the elimination of the crowded terraces where much of the rowdiness occurred.
In effect, Mr. Cameron’s apology amounted to an acknowledgment that the official version of what happened in the Hillsborough disaster was a stereotyped overlay, eagerly crafted by the police, on a far more complex event that had its roots in bungling and a cover-up by the authorities.
“This appalling death toll of so many loved ones was compounded by an attempt to blame the victims,” Mr. Cameron said as the new report was published, effectively rejecting earlier findings by a judicial inquiry and an inquest whose narrow conclusions, blaming police failings but also pointing to unruliness among the victims, had been battled relentlessly by the families for more than 20 years.
Mr. Cameron held out the prospect of the government’s seeking to quash the original inquest finding, which ruled the deaths to have been accidental, effectively exculpating the police. Legal experts said a new inquest, which could follow a government appeal to the High Court, could lead to compensation payments to the families, and potentially even criminal charges against some of the police officers involved.
Quoting from the new report, Mr. Cameron said: “The Liverpool fans were not the cause of the disaster. The panel has quite simply found no evidence in support of allegations of exceptional levels of drunkenness, ticketlessness or violence among Liverpool fans, no evidence that fans had conspired to arrive late at the stadium, and no evidence that they stole from the dead and dying.”
The latest inquiry came about because Andy Burnham, the culture secretary in 2010, successfully lobbied the Labour government to create an independent panel that would conduct a more comprehensive and objective examination of what happened at Hillsborough.
The report was the result of an 18-month inquiry by that panel, led by the Anglican bishop of Liverpool, the Rt. Rev. James Jones. It examined 450,000 official documents on the disaster, many of them unseen by previous inquiries.
The panel, which included medical and legal experts, as well as an author of one of the most respected studies of the disaster, won a standing ovation from the victims’ families when the panel met them earlier on Wednesday. Later, church bells pealed across Liverpool in celebration.
The report contained grim revelations. Among them was the finding that many of the victims who were declared dead at the site of the disaster, barely an hour after the game was halted because of the chaos on the terraces, might have survived if they had received prompt medical attention. The report said autopsy findings showed there were 41 victims who did not have the traumatic asphyxia that caused most of the deaths, and Dr. Bill Kirkup, a physician on the panel, said they might have survived if they been taken swiftly to a hospital.
The report also concluded that 116 witness statements presented by the police to previous inquiries had been amended by the police “to remove or alter comments unfavorable to the police,” and that police officers conducted computer checks on those who had died in an attempt “to impugn the reputations of the deceased.” In addition, the report said the coroner measured blood-alcohol levels in all who died, including children, only to discover — a fact withheld from previous inquiries — that the levels of alcohol consumption were “unremarkable and not exceptional for a social or leisure occasion.”
For Liverpool, a center of wealth and industrial power in 19th-century Britain that has struggled with economic decline for decades, the report, and Mr. Cameron’s apology, had a profound emotional impact. As it descended into rust-belt status after World War II, the city found a source of special pride in Liverpool Football Club, known locally as the Reds, as the club established itself as one of the most successful teams in Europe.
Against that backdrop, the developments on Wednesday were taken by many in the city as a vindication, and not only of the soccer fans who died in the opening minutes of a semifinal matchup in the F.A. Cup, England’s annual club championship, between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, then also one of Europe’s top teams.
The families’ years of protest had drawn a measure of mockery from some quarters, including an article in 2004 in The Spectator, a conservative weekly, in which Boris Johnson, now mayor of London, accused the people of Liverpool, particularly the one-third of the population that is of Irish descent, of “wallowing” in their “victim status” over Hillsborough.
Dominic Mohan, editor of The Lying Rag newspaper, publicly apologized Wednesday for an article the paper published days after the tragedy alleging that Liverpool fans looted the victims, urinated on police officers and attacked officers seeking to save lives.
“We published an inaccurate and offensive story about the events at Hillsborough,” Mr. Mohan said in a video posted on the newspaper’s Web site. “We said it was the truth — it wasn’t.”
23 Years After Soccer Tragedy, an Apology and a Shift in Blame
By JOHN F. BURNS
LONDON — Nearly a quarter of a century after 96 Liverpool soccer fans were crushed to death in one of the worst stadium disasters in history, Prime Minister David Cameron formally apologized on Wednesday to the victims’ families, saying their “appalling deaths” were compounded by an attempt by the police, investigators and the news media to depict the victims as hooligans and to blame them for the disaster.
Before a hushed House of Commons, Mr. Cameron said the families had suffered “a double injustice” in the failures of the police, fire officials and other authorities to anticipate the disaster or to contain its scale once it occurred, and in the efforts that followed to cover up police failings by altering witness statements, and to pin responsibility on the victims for their own deaths.
The prime minister’s apology, and the findings of a new inquiry panel on which it was based, marked a stunning reversal in a saga that has been an open wound in Britain since April 15, 1989, when 3,000 Liverpool supporters sought to crowd into standing-room terraces approved for barely half that many at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, 150 miles north of London. All but one of the victims perished that day, many of them within minutes. The last victim remained in a coma until he died in 1993.
It has become known simply as the Hillsborough disaster, a horrifying reference point for sports officials throughout the world, and it has come to symbolize an era of rambunctious British soccer fans and the measures that clubs and the police took to contain them. Fences separated rival fans and prevented them from throwing beer bottles and other missiles onto the field. Clashes with the police were common.
The violence has receded in the past decade, and the sport has become a more family-friendly affair, with bans on drinking in the stands and the elimination of the crowded terraces where much of the rowdiness occurred.
In effect, Mr. Cameron’s apology amounted to an acknowledgment that the official version of what happened in the Hillsborough disaster was a stereotyped overlay, eagerly crafted by the police, on a far more complex event that had its roots in bungling and a cover-up by the authorities.
“This appalling death toll of so many loved ones was compounded by an attempt to blame the victims,” Mr. Cameron said as the new report was published, effectively rejecting earlier findings by a judicial inquiry and an inquest whose narrow conclusions, blaming police failings but also pointing to unruliness among the victims, had been battled relentlessly by the families for more than 20 years.
Mr. Cameron held out the prospect of the government’s seeking to quash the original inquest finding, which ruled the deaths to have been accidental, effectively exculpating the police. Legal experts said a new inquest, which could follow a government appeal to the High Court, could lead to compensation payments to the families, and potentially even criminal charges against some of the police officers involved.
Quoting from the new report, Mr. Cameron said: “The Liverpool fans were not the cause of the disaster. The panel has quite simply found no evidence in support of allegations of exceptional levels of drunkenness, ticketlessness or violence among Liverpool fans, no evidence that fans had conspired to arrive late at the stadium, and no evidence that they stole from the dead and dying.”
The latest inquiry came about because Andy Burnham, the culture secretary in 2010, successfully lobbied the Labour government to create an independent panel that would conduct a more comprehensive and objective examination of what happened at Hillsborough.
The report was the result of an 18-month inquiry by that panel, led by the Anglican bishop of Liverpool, the Rt. Rev. James Jones. It examined 450,000 official documents on the disaster, many of them unseen by previous inquiries.
The panel, which included medical and legal experts, as well as an author of one of the most respected studies of the disaster, won a standing ovation from the victims’ families when the panel met them earlier on Wednesday. Later, church bells pealed across Liverpool in celebration.
The report contained grim revelations. Among them was the finding that many of the victims who were declared dead at the site of the disaster, barely an hour after the game was halted because of the chaos on the terraces, might have survived if they had received prompt medical attention. The report said autopsy findings showed there were 41 victims who did not have the traumatic asphyxia that caused most of the deaths, and Dr. Bill Kirkup, a physician on the panel, said they might have survived if they been taken swiftly to a hospital.
The report also concluded that 116 witness statements presented by the police to previous inquiries had been amended by the police “to remove or alter comments unfavorable to the police,” and that police officers conducted computer checks on those who had died in an attempt “to impugn the reputations of the deceased.” In addition, the report said the coroner measured blood-alcohol levels in all who died, including children, only to discover — a fact withheld from previous inquiries — that the levels of alcohol consumption were “unremarkable and not exceptional for a social or leisure occasion.”
For Liverpool, a center of wealth and industrial power in 19th-century Britain that has struggled with economic decline for decades, the report, and Mr. Cameron’s apology, had a profound emotional impact. As it descended into rust-belt status after World War II, the city found a source of special pride in Liverpool Football Club, known locally as the Reds, as the club established itself as one of the most successful teams in Europe.
Against that backdrop, the developments on Wednesday were taken by many in the city as a vindication, and not only of the soccer fans who died in the opening minutes of a semifinal matchup in the F.A. Cup, England’s annual club championship, between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, then also one of Europe’s top teams.
The families’ years of protest had drawn a measure of mockery from some quarters, including an article in 2004 in The Spectator, a conservative weekly, in which Boris Johnson, now mayor of London, accused the people of Liverpool, particularly the one-third of the population that is of Irish descent, of “wallowing” in their “victim status” over Hillsborough.
Dominic Mohan, editor of The Lying Rag newspaper, publicly apologized Wednesday for an article the paper published days after the tragedy alleging that Liverpool fans looted the victims, urinated on police officers and attacked officers seeking to save lives.
“We published an inaccurate and offensive story about the events at Hillsborough,” Mr. Mohan said in a video posted on the newspaper’s Web site. “We said it was the truth — it wasn’t.”
I must confess, I always avoided this subject, always steered away from it. Looking at the families, today must be So incredibly different to every day that has happened before. I'm tempted to say, why didn't this come out sooner? But relieved, it did come out, as it so easily might have remained hidden for another 23 years.
Maybe because Liverpool has that Irish thing going on, and scousers are treated as outsiders at times, today reminded me of the guildford 4, the birmingham 6, and other such injustices that were overturned over the years, like the Bloody Sunday apology.
The families are inspirational - and it reminds us of what a special club this is in a special city. YNWA.
Maybe because Liverpool has that Irish thing going on, and scousers are treated as outsiders at times, today reminded me of the guildford 4, the birmingham 6, and other such injustices that were overturned over the years, like the Bloody Sunday apology.
The families are inspirational - and it reminds us of what a special club this is in a special city. YNWA.
It's hard to know what to say, or what to add as everything that could be said has been by people better versed than me. That a light has finally truly been shone on the most heinous of days, and a global appreciation of what those families have gone through for 23 years is something to cherish. But it's the start, and as others have said, the justice is to follow.
I haven't seen much of the coverage over the last 24 hours, but I just spent the last half hour in some shitty internet cafe with Cameron's apology on youtube blaring out, and trawled through this thread. Both I'm unashamed to say brought a tear to the eye. Wonderful thread with some compelling posts by some great people. Well done to you all.
Maybe some day soon we won't have to put the letters JFT in any remembrance of the beloved 96.
YNWA.
I haven't seen much of the coverage over the last 24 hours, but I just spent the last half hour in some shitty internet cafe with Cameron's apology on youtube blaring out, and trawled through this thread. Both I'm unashamed to say brought a tear to the eye. Wonderful thread with some compelling posts by some great people. Well done to you all.
Maybe some day soon we won't have to put the letters JFT in any remembrance of the beloved 96.
YNWA.
If ever a thread needed to be to pinned, it's this one.
As emotionally draining as it is, to be able to reread it, regularly, is something that we should all do.
It has been a monumental day for all associated with Liverpool Football Club and English football in general.
A heartfelt "thank you" to those posters who shared their painful memories, so that we could all have a deeper appreciation of this watershed day.
When this forum is good, it's gold.....
As emotionally draining as it is, to be able to reread it, regularly, is something that we should all do.
It has been a monumental day for all associated with Liverpool Football Club and English football in general.
A heartfelt "thank you" to those posters who shared their painful memories, so that we could all have a deeper appreciation of this watershed day.
When this forum is good, it's gold.....
What a great thread.
I don’t have anything to add, especially anything particularly emotional, because as the count stated, I don’t want it to sound like a faux emotion. Like gene and rurik, I have no connection with the city of Liverpool, and possibly no right to feel emotional about this, but here I am, sitting with a gigantic lump in my throat as I trawl through this thread, and the numerous videos floating around on this.
I guess it was only perchance that I started supporting this club. I was only a 12 year old boy, who enjoyed playing and watching football, when I chanced upon watching a Liverpool v. Villa game on tv. Anfield, to me, then was the prettiest football stadium I’d seen, and the words YNWA seemed particularly inspiring. We were languishing 8th in the table, and I hadn’t the faintest idea that we were the most successful club in English football history. Strangely enough, those two things were sufficient, and I was hooked for good.
Over the years, I’ve asked myself many times why I feel so connected to the club. When I do, I run off to youtube and watch the video of the fans singing YNWA after the Chelsea CL semi-final win, and I find my question answered. It really is the most powerful embodiment of what this club stands for. And yesterday’s events really show what it truly means.
YNWA.
I don’t have anything to add, especially anything particularly emotional, because as the count stated, I don’t want it to sound like a faux emotion. Like gene and rurik, I have no connection with the city of Liverpool, and possibly no right to feel emotional about this, but here I am, sitting with a gigantic lump in my throat as I trawl through this thread, and the numerous videos floating around on this.
I guess it was only perchance that I started supporting this club. I was only a 12 year old boy, who enjoyed playing and watching football, when I chanced upon watching a Liverpool v. Villa game on tv. Anfield, to me, then was the prettiest football stadium I’d seen, and the words YNWA seemed particularly inspiring. We were languishing 8th in the table, and I hadn’t the faintest idea that we were the most successful club in English football history. Strangely enough, those two things were sufficient, and I was hooked for good.
Over the years, I’ve asked myself many times why I feel so connected to the club. When I do, I run off to youtube and watch the video of the fans singing YNWA after the Chelsea CL semi-final win, and I find my question answered. It really is the most powerful embodiment of what this club stands for. And yesterday’s events really show what it truly means.
YNWA.
I think if anyone needs further evidence of what this club is about, they should consider Hick's comments that many police officers DID try to help. Unlike the original media agenda to shift complete blame onto the club and it's fans (while funnily enough, a couple of London clubs were the real problem at the time in hooliganism), the families and panel have been considered and fair in their accounts of what happened. It was a two fold problem of an inadequate health and safety issue (and an emergency services that was ill-equipped, poorly trained and improperly managed) and a media intent on bringing down the club, the city and it's fans. A real indictment of this countries press and it's desperate need to knock down their own. Fortunately we're not 'their' own.
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