Heysel and Hillsborough...

[max_tranmere]

brainsinmedick, thats interesting. It is inconsistent for them to go on about Hillsborough but largely ignore Hysel, and to have the commerations, the charity song, etc, following on from the tragic events of Hillsborough, at the VERY SAME TIME as your club is banned from Europe because of your fans' behaviour and deaths caused by them (and every other English club banned too - because of you) is a bit odd.

[max_tranmere]

biffalo, interesting points there. I remember Bradford. You're right that the pens and the impenetrable fences were put in place solely because of the hooligans. Like Eric said earlier though, they could have had the fences as openable gates in case the pens becamse over-full.

[max_tranmere]

Are there ANY commemerative things in Liverpool about Heysel? I don't think there would be somehow, but there should be. "This was the day that Liverpool football fans brought shame on the whole of England, football at large, and got every English club banned from Europe for years. It was also the day when the behaviour of Liverpool fans caused many deaths". Somehow I dont think they would put words like that up on a plague in Liverpool but they should put something up to commemerate it, whether it shows them in a good light or not. It's called being consistent and showing humility and integrity.

[Tony__T]

Max, I think if you spoke to Liverpool fans, most would accept that Heysel was the fans' responsibility.

It was a horrible tragedy that, as I said previously, the club and fans were punished for.

Incidentally, on the 15th Anniversary of Heysel, the city's bells tolled 39 times for the Italian (and Belguim) victims and a plaque was unveiled next to the Hillsborough memorial.

Have you heard of Paul Nixon? He was a Crystal Palace fan killed by a group of Manchester United fans after an FA Cup semi-final match. Or Matthew Fox? He was killed by a Gillingham fan in 1998. Or Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight who were both Leeds fans stabbed to death by Galatasary fans? Should Manchester United, Gillingham and Galatasary put up plaques and hold memorial services every year for the people their fans killed?

As I said before, Hillsborough and Heysel are seperate incidents. I fail to see why the families of people who were killed at Hillsborough, who weren't at Heysel and had nothing to do with it, should be denied the right to find out why their loved ones died. I think some people have let their dislike of the city (and fair enough, it has its problems and its share of 'bad apples' but no more than any other city) blind themselves to a basic human tragedy.

[max_tranmere]

Tony, you give examples of fans being killed by the supporters of a rival club. I don't think there should necessarily be memorials to those as they were just a one-off. This isnt to play it down, it is very serious, but it was one person. When MANY are killed at once, that is when a memorial should go up and it should be talked about many years subsequently.

Interesting that the city's bells tolled 39 times (I assume you mean in Liverpool) to commemorate Heysel. I do think they could remember it a bit more than just that and a small plaque. I personally have never viewed people from Liverpool as anything other than very decent - I've known many scousers and they are socially nice people.

I know a scouser in London who even jokes about some of the stereotypes of his people and his city. We met someone from the more wealthy rural areas of the north-west (Cheshire I think) and after the 3 of us had been talking for a while my scouse pal said to me, but so the other guy could hear, "I don't think he really wants to talk to me anyway, probably thinks I'm gonna rob him or summat!" He was just kidding and they both laughed about it!

[Tony__T]

Haha that sounds about right! Despite our image, you'll find most Scousers can laugh at themselves (during the time the Harry Enfield sketch was popular, it was quite common to see Liverpool fans coming to Anfield dressed in curly wigs saying "calm down, calm down"!).

Liverpool is like any city Max, it has its good parts and its bad parts. Heysel was a very dark chapter in its history, and if I'm honest I think people are still coming to terms with it, nearly 25 years on.

Like I said originally, I don't want to fall out with anyone but Hillsborough especially makes me a bit touchy.

I stand by what I said - that the two tragedies are unrelated and that what happened at Heysel shouldn't stop the Hillsborough families fighting for justice - but I appreciate that you think the city should do to remember the Heysel dead, and I respect your point of view.

[biffalo]

Thanks Max, but as for the 'openable gates', this completely passed them by, because their only concern at the time was to fence us in. I remember the fence they had at St James's in the eighties - what a fucking monster it was - everthing else in the ground was shit - the toilets, the 'catering facilities', the terracing, the barriers, the players - but when it came to the fencing, by God, it was the stongest, finest mesh they could find, designed to keep us in, an to kill as many of us as they possibly could, given the circumstances.

[max_tranmere]

By the way, what is the deal with The Sun newspaper in Liverpool? I have heard it doesn't sell very well and that certain shops refuse to sell it - all as a result of the coverage the paper gave following Hillsborough. The Sun tried to apoligise a few years later calling what they did "the worst mistake in our entire history" (or words to that effect) but it made little difference.

Kelvin Mackenzie, the then "editor", has been loathed in Merseyside ever since. He really is a bad bad guy. He made up so many stories in the 1980's, paid people to lie, and drove at least one person to commit suicide - David Scarborough, the original guy who played "Mark" in Eastenders. Not long after Scarborough's family emigrated and have never returned to Britain in spite of having been born and raised here and lived all their lives here.

Mackenzie is a total scumbag. All the stuff on their front page, under the heading, "Hillsborough The Truth" has meant The Sun don't sell on Merseyside, and it has cost Rupert Murdoch's News International millions of pounds in losses. But back to the original issue: what is the deal with The Sun in Liverpool now? What proportion (roughly) of shops there don't sell it? And it is true there were mass burnings of the paper in the weeks and months following Hillsborough?

[Arginald Valleywater]

Give them all ?100k compensation and you would never hear of Hillsborough again. They want cash. not justice.

[Tony__T]

Hey Max

You're right, McKenzie is an complete scumbag. You're right, he's ruined a lot of people's lives (I totally forgot about the David Scarborough incident, thank you for reminding me).

The deal with The Sun is this. A few days after the disaster, Tory MP Irvine Patnick told The Sun that drunken Liverpool fans were solely responsible for Hillsborough - he said they broke down the gate, then rampaged around the stadium, urinating on policemen and robbing the dead. This was despite the fact that Mr Patnick wasn't even at the game.

McKenzie decided to run with the story, despite any corrorobating evidence. The headline was "The Truth" with some sub-headings to the effect of 'fans urinated on brave cops', 'thugs robbed the dead' and so on. Despite the fact that there were CCTV cameras all round the stadium, and of course the BBC cameras were there too - and there were no witnesses to these acts which The Sun alleged occured. It's said that even Sun journalists were very wary of running the story, but McKenzie was such a fearsome figure that everyone was terrified of standing up to him.

Anyway, it hit The Sun's circulation hard. At the time it sold approx 55,000 copies on Merseyside. This was reduced by three-quarters after their Hillsborough coverage. At the moment, it sells about 12,000. There are certainly many shops that refuse to sell it today. I don't know about the ritual burnings and so on - there was a programme on BBC2 last year, where Alexi Sayle tried to give away copies of The Sun for free, and nobody would take it. In order to get rid of the remaining copies, he burnt them on the pavement outside.

The apology came after Wayne Rooney sold the rights to his autobiography to The Sun. However, much of the apology was an attack on Trinity Mirror, who owns the local paper, the Liverpool Echo. Some of the familes thought the apology should be accepted, but most people didn't want to know. Personally, I won't even pick up a copy of that newspaper, someone at work offered me their old copy to read a few weeks ago, and I can't even bring myself to touch it.

Kelvin McKenzie, for his part, retracted his personal apology a few years ago. He is adamant he "told the truth" and said he only apologised at the time because Rupert Murdoch told him to.