Gay & Phil, I do appreciate where you are trying to come from. As a dude that (as you’ve all discovered) has a strong penchant for delving to the very depths in search of truth, I understand the points you are making, and why you are asking the questions that you are.
The thing is, you’re attempting to do so, when in this case, the facts are already known. And I mean the actual facts, not the ‘facts’ the government wanted us to hear.
I’ll make this as simple as I can:
Due to a so called “career progression” (he was actually moved to Barnsley for involvement in bullying) – South Yorkshire Police suddenly and without warning, decided to transfer the highly experienced Match-day Commander, Chief Superintendant Brian Mole, who had run the operation at Hillsborough for years, and took charge of the previous years semis there, having established a system of control that worked – and replaced him with the inexperienced David Duckenfield, who had not even worked at Hillsborough in any capacity for over ten years.
Mole had a fine-tuned operation, which saw him driven all around the city for hours before the game, keeping an eye on the build up of the fans, and ensuring everything was under control. Once at the ground, he would be highly active in directing operations, and communicating essential information to his colleagues, about the movements of the crowd.
Duckenfield did none of this. In fact he refused to even familiarise himself with any of Mole’s established proceedures that had proven to work well. Such was his arrogance (and reputation as a “disciplinarian”) – he instead spent the hours before the game giving his new charges a dressing down, telling them how crap they all were, and that now things would be done “his way”. “His way”, was essentially to presume that all the fans were going to be beered up and looking for trouble, and as such, by his own admission (albeit after lying for 27 years) – he “didn’t even consider” the possibility of any danger through bottlenecking and crushing. He was only concerned with trouble. And rather than being active as was his predecessor, he hid himself away in the crontol box, and never emerged from it once there.
To make matters worse – as well as completely ignoring all of Mole’s proven methods, he was completely unaware of what was called the ‘Freeman tactic’ – which was to close what is known as “the tunnel” (a narrow galley that leads into the central “pens” where most of the 96 died) once they were full.
Ignorant as he was of the potential for a crush, when informed of the impending dangers rapidly building outside the turnstiles at the Leppings Lane End, after dallying for ages on what to do, (remember that as Flahute has said - this area was a funnel) as more and more fans arrived uncontrolled, compressing those at the front with nowhere to go, a dangerous crush was developing. If you look at the video on the Guardian article Fowlly linked, you’ll see that there was loads of space in the terracing to either side of the central pens, which had the Freeman Tactic been in operation as it should, and the Tunnel to the central pens closed – fans would naturally have been filtered into the spaceous areas to the sides when allowed entry.
But no. Duckenfield in his supreme arrogance, didn’t have a fucking clue, but thought he knew best. He ordered the gates to be opened to relieve the crush outside, failed to close the doors to the tunnel (which was directly in front of the gates to be opened) – and the fans – under the unavoidable crushing pressure from behind, poured straight down the tunnel, and into the already full to capacity central pens. The rest is horribly tragic history.
It was not the fans fault that South Yorks police failed to effectively control and stagger the crowds building up in the funnel of Leppings Lane outside. It was not the fans fault that under the horrible conditions at the front of that external crush, when saved by the opening of the gate, that under that tidal pressure of built-up humanity, they all rushed forth to escape certain death.
It is not the fans fault that a stupid arrogant cunt failed them yet again, by not closing the Tunnel doors as he should have known to do, and that they were then forced by the weight of the crowd straight forward into the already full to capacity central pens.
Had Duckenfield done his job properly, the crowd outside in Leppings Lane would have been effectively staggered to control the build up of fans. When discovering his initial fuck ups, he would have ordered the Tunnel doors closed, and then opened the turnstile gates, directing his officers to guide the fans down into the areas with plenty of space left to fill to the flanks.
The fans were completely at the mercy of his decisions. He tragically and criminally let them down, and sent them to their deaths. And all because he was too arrogant to do any research at all on how to control a crowd at Hillsborough, before taking responsibility for the safety of 54,000 human beings, going to “enjoy” what should have been one of their most memorable days of their lives, and for the right reasons, not the ones it is sadly so memorable for now.
To compound all this – in his extreme arrogance, he still could not accept and take responsibility for his actions, and instead sought to concoct a series of vicious lies, to paint the fans as being “to blame”, for drunken and unruly behaviour.
I hope that you can understand now, how the fans had no choice, and no fault in what happened to them. As he has finally broke down and admitted twenty fucking seven years too late – he fucked up on a massive scale – froze, and completely bottled it when the scale of his mistakes started become evident. David Duckenfield sent those fans to their dealths, and he now deserves to pay the price for his arrogance and lies.