Hillsborough Disaster

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

First, I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) for being late to the debate. I am sorry that I did not hear his introductory speech. I was chairing a Select Committee meeting, which I could not get out of. I came in for the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg). I thank him for what he said about the people of Sheffield and how they responded to people who were leaving the ground on that day. We have to remember that it was an era before mobile phones. People were desperate to make contact with families and friends. Houses were opened up; people were welcomed in; phones were used and cups of tea were made. That was felt by the people, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton has expressed similar feelings to me in the past about that.

I was at the game on that day. I was leader of Sheffield city council. Normally, when I went to matches at Hillsborough, I was on the Kop. That day, I was in the directors’ box, at the invitation of the club to go to a semi-final; I had been to a number over the years. I remember when things started to happen that, initially, there was a feeling that there might be a bit of disturbance in the crowd. We could see people start some movement. People were trying to clamber over the fences. Eventually, it became apparent that something more serious had happened—an accident of some kind. The thought was that people had been crushed and perhaps fainted. It took an awful, long time for even people sitting there watching the events to realise the horror of what had actually happened. Initially, we were told that 60-odd people had died. Then it became more, of course, as the events unfolded.

I remember simply going back to the directors’ box, being kept abreast of events and just simply sitting with the directors and one or two friends who were there and crying. What else could we do? This was in our city, in my football ground: 96 people had died before our eyes. What else could we do? Next morning, I went back to the ground, after the Prime Minister had been there, with representatives of the three councils—Liverpool, Nottingham and Sheffield—and the clubs to look at the scene where things had happened, and people simply stood and cried again.

This was a tragedy, of course, above all else for the people who died, for their families, for the people who were injured, for Liverpool as a football club and for Liverpool as a city, but it was also a tragedy for Sheffield and Sheffield Wednesday as well. We went a few days later outside the ground to see the scarves, the flowers and the messages from football fans all over the country. This was a tragedy for football and football fans, and it could have happened to any club and many grounds up and down the country, but it happened there on that day. Therefore, although the tragedy is with Liverpool, there is also a desire in Sheffield to have all this information come out in the open. We want to see it out in the open. We want to see as much information as possible out there, so that people can really believe that the cover-ups are at an end and they can reach their own decisions about that information. There are real concerns about the coroner’s inquiry and the artificial cut-off point. In my view, that should never have happened. I hope that this might let some light fall on that.

I was a member of the police authority as well. I will not go into all the details about the police’s actions. That has been covered already. All that I have to say is that, the previous year, I went round when the same two clubs were to play a semi-final at Hillsborough with a senior police officer and looked at the arrangements. My understanding is that they were somewhat different on the day of the disaster than they had been in the previous year.

So, in the end, it is incumbent on us all to make sure that this information is available, particularly for the families and friends and those who were injured to get the certainty that they have lacked all this long time—certainty, when they have not known whether something is there, hidden away, that has not been brought out into the light of day that might better explain exactly what happened, why it happened and whether it could have been avoided and their loved ones could still be alive today if other action had been taken.

I am doing my small part. I have already been approached by the panel. I have papers in the Sheffield archives that I understand are classified as my personal papers, but they relate to my responsibilities as leader of the council. Some of them relate to Hillsborough, and I have indicated that I am quite prepared to have all that information in the public domain. It is incumbent on us all to do our small bit to make sure that the information gets out into the open.