Remembering the 97 on the 36th Anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster
On the 15th of April, 1989, ninety-seven fans and supporters and children and parents and brothers and sisters went to a football match and didn’t come home. Thirty-six years later, and Hillsborough remains a defining scar in the history of Liverpool Football Club.
Thirty-six years later we again mark the date in memory of it, and also in memory of those who tirelessly fought over the years for the truth and for some measure of justice for those whose lives were lost through no fault of their own in a stadium crush at the Leppings Lane end of an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest.
The match took place at Sheffield’s Hillsborough stadium. In the aftermath, the dead were blamed for the tragedy. By the police, by the media, by Margaret Thatcher’s government of the day. In April of 2016, after nearly three decades of fight and advocacy, an independent inquiry cleared them.
Instead the errors and the blame were to be found in police planning, of wrongly closed gates that funnelled fans into a single over-crowded pen, of lacking stadium design and lacking matchday operating procedures.
It was made worse by the response, with the eventual report specifically citing a lack of coordination in the reaction of the police and of the ambulance service. It was an avoidable disaster, albeit one years in the making. And it was likely an inevitable disaster, the only question being which club and fanbase would be its victim.
So again, after 36 years, we remember. Both the disaster and the coverup. Both the lost and those who then spent their lives fighting for them. Justice for the 97. Today and always.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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