Hillsborough Disaster

Debate between Graham P Jones and David Anderson

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Members often have the privilege of visiting schools, and we are always asked why we wanted to become an MP. I wanted to become one because of nights like tonight, when we have the chance to bring justice and right a real wrong. Another question we are asked is why MPs are called “honourable”. After tonight, I shall always refer people to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram)—who has been in the Chamber for the past five hours but has just now disappeared. He gave a tremendous speech on a very important subject. One of the points he made was that this could have happened at any football ground in the country. He is right, and I want to refer to some of the things I have seen—my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) mentioned many such things in his speech earlier.

On Boxing day, it will be 49 years since I first walked into a football ground. Boxing day 1962 was when I saw my first game, and, sadly, it was the last game that Brian Clough played. About 30 minutes into the game, he was injured very badly. Even though that happened 49 years ago, the memory is still burned into my mind, because football has that effect on us; it hooks us in a way no other game in the world does. It becomes an obsession.

For football supporters, things were very different back in those days. We stood in a huge concrete stand that took 21,000 people. It was uncovered, and the day was freezing cold. The pitch had been covered in straw, and the straw had been pulled back. That was probably one reason why Clough’s injury was so severe. There were at least 50,000 people in the ground for what was a second division match. They were united in wanting to see their team do well. Sadly, as has happened far too often, we got beaten 1-0. I have been a Sunderland fan for many years, and that is a common theme.

Such results do not dampen the passion people feel, however. Regardless of whether they support Liverpool, Everton or any other team in the league, it is their team and their town, and they want to support and get behind them. That passion was there no matter how badly we were tret—and some of the grounds were unsanitary or unsafe, and no other sport would have taken place in them.

If that was the situation back in the early ’60s, how did 96 people get killed so much later on, in one of the grounds that was improved for the 1966 World cup? There is absolutely no doubt that the hooliganism of the ’70s and ’80s influenced the mindset of the people in authority in this country. Their attitude towards the fans was much harder back then. The police in particular believed that their job was to control crowds by getting the retaliation in first. In saying that, I do not in any way excuse the crass and disgraceful behaviour of some people—they besmirched the names of good football clubs—but football was not immune to what was happening outside in those days.

The police were strongly politicised in the 1980s. We had seen riots on the streets of Brixton, Toxteth and Tottenham. We had also seen the dispute at Wapping and the miners’ strike, when ordinary working men, many of them football fans, were declared to be “the enemy within”—a phrase that was mentioned earlier in our debate in relation to the people of Liverpool. Crucially, just four years earlier, we had seen the disaster at the Heysel stadium, as a result of which we ended up with fans literally penned in cages. Was that seen as an overreaction at the time? It was not. People said, “Its all they deserve. If they are going to behave like animals, let’s treat them like animals.”

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

I do not want to move away from the issue of the day, but I wish to make a point about what led to that penning in. What was done by people such as Ken Bates, who put up electrified fences at Stamford Bridge, led to disasters such as this and it is why every football fan in this country sympathises with this issue today.

[Mr Anderson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, because he raises exactly the point I am trying to make. Sadly, it was the Liverpool fans who suffered that day but it could have been any of us, because the authorities took an attitude that said, “These people are out of control. We will treat them like animals.” How did they do that? It was okay to herd people into a clearly overcrowded area. It was okay to keep forcing more and more people into confined spaces, despite their objections. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck mentioned what happened to him and I experienced a similar event at the Leppings Lane end in Sheffield in 1968. We could not even get near the turnstiles, but the design of the ground funnelled people into an area. So we were pushed up against police horses and they could not move, let alone the crowd. What stays in my mind from that day was a policeman on horseback flailing with his baton, but he could not move—none of us could move. That took place 21 years before Hillsborough, so a catalogue of events led up to what happened on that day in 1989.