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8 DAILY EXPRESS Tuesday April 18 1989
D aily Express
The crucial
lessons of
Hillsborough
A S THE shock and numbness
of the Hillsborough tragedy
has given way to anger, the
tempo of recrimination has
quickened. And South Y orkshire
Police have become the main target.
This is not surprising. Nor, despite
the understandable protests of the
local Police Federation, is it unfair.
Policemen present at the disaster
have told the Daily Express of m isjudgements
in both planning and execution
of the crowd control at Hillsborough.
They have told, too, of inept leadership—or
no leadership at all—during
the unfolding nightmare.
Their stories and opinions merely
corroborate those coming from dozens
of spectators, experienced reporters
and ground staff.
To suggest that fatal mistakes
were made is not, therefore, to rush
to judgment but merely to state the
obvious.
Of course, fateful decisions were
taken with the best of intentions, by
men under pressure. But the best of
intentions led to the worst of outcomes.
This is why it is now vital to examine
ruthlessly the way the police
planned for Saturday’s match and
their actions at the time.
Home Secretary Douglas Hurd
emphasised in the Commons yesterday
that the police operation would
be a central issue in Lord Justice Taylor’s
wide-ranging inquiry.
H is investigation will focus on the
decision, taken in the teeth of ground
staff objections, to admit more than
3,000 late-arriving Liverpool fans on
to the already packed terrace at the
Leppings Lane end of the ground.
This is not a hunt for scapegoats.
Only by pinpointing m istakes and
those who made them can the correct
lessons for the future be drawn.
Mr Hurd seem s to thave grasped
one crucial lesson already. He indicated
that legislation com pelling
clubs to elim inate terraces, and
replace them with all-seating accommodation,
could be on the way.
There must be no doubt or hesitation.
Had Hillsborough been an allseat
stadium, misjudgments would
not have led to such horrifying consequences.
All-seated grounds are not a crowd
control cure-all. But they would certainly
prevent a repetition of anything
like Saturday’s carnage.
Our duty to
the public
S
OME readers were distressed
by our front page picture yesterday
which showed the agony
of young fans being crushed
against the perimeter fence.
That picture—which was the same
as, or similar to, pictures used by
other newspapers—was distressing.
Indeed it was horrifying.
It encapsulated the nightmare of
Hillsborough, in a way that words
could not match. That is why the
Daily Express and other newspapers
felt that using it was not a matter of
choice but of duty.
. -._i . . ... -V • '. ‘ /--
SHAME OF THE CHEAP WAY SOCCER TREATS ITS SUPPORTERS
T HE predictable
demand for our football
clubs to modernise
their squalid
grounds, is inevitable
after Hillsborough, but you.
can bet cigar-chomping
chairmen will wring their
hands and plead poverty.
For decades they have treated
the fans who finance the game
w ith scant disregard, certain
th at however disgusting and
dangerous their terraces, the
faithful will still be there next
Saturday. They will even alter
Hillsborough.
Perhaps supporters’ loyalty
has been so sorely tested that our
major clubs will be shamed into
dragging their facilities into the
20th century, for a fraction of the
price they will happily lash out
on some striker.
By th at the fans don’t m ean
building a gaggle of smoked-
glass executive boxes, b u t more
m odest requests like the certainty
you1 can visit the lavatory
w ithout the risk of drowning.
Boards of directors happily
hide behind the nostalgic belief
th at fans preier to sway in a
sweat-stained mob behind the
goal.
Prying into the finances of
our 92 league clubs is a little like
th e tax m an askin g to flick
through the Mafia’s books but,
on paper, 82 of them trade in the
red, so w ithout outside- help,
am bitious m odernisation plans
are the stuff of dream s.
Even so the game is awash
with cash — from lotteries,
pools, TV contracts and the like.
Unfortunately, it’s not being
spent on the people who pay out
m ost of it — the poor bloody
infantry who every Saturday are
searched, segregated and frogm
arched in police lines on to
som e con crete w asteland to
peer through steel mesh.
Talents
It would cost clubs about £35
a head for a tip-up seat. Politicians
will argue th at team s like
Spurs got their priorities wrong
when they paid out a record £2.3
million for the talents of Paul
Gasgoine when they could have
bought over 60,000 seats.
The experts insist the sum s
aren’t th at sim ple. G rounds like
Spurs’ W hite H art Lane are
am ong the game’s showpieces.
B ut author Simon Inglis —
who has m ade an exhaustive
study of B ritain’s stadium s —
says: “They are technically hard
to m odernise, hem m ed in by
houses and roads.
“You would have to tear them
down and start again some
place else like, the W est Germ an
clubs did, b u t fans hate it when
they move from their locality to
som e green-field site m iles
away.”
Even if clubs had the wiU and
the wherewitha.il to move, they
would find it near impossible to
get planning permission.
Everyone accepts the com m unity
needs a football stadium as
Squalid
saga of
the poor
little rich
clubs
long as, like a prison, it’s not in
. their backyard.
Why spend £50 million on a
new ground th at is used only 30
tim es a year and, for the rest of
the tim e, stands as an architectural
eyesore like a mausoleum?
Unless, like Preston North
E nd, you lay down a plastic
pitch and get the local authority
to use it for 90 hours a week.
Sim on Inglis says: “To help
clu b s im prove facilities; th e
Governm ent should change the
tax laws. There is m ore tax
advantage for a team to buy a
player than build a new stand.”
Ploughed
The taxm an takes over 40 per
cent of the Pools money, but
only a fraction is ploughed back
into the game.
A gencies like th e F ootball
G rounds Im provem ent T ru st
(FGIT), who get their money
from S pot-the-B all com p etitions,
have paid out over £40
m illion over the past 10 years
w ith safety as their priority, but
clubs com plain they need more.
The problem is adm instrators
keep sh iftin g th e goalposts.
After the Ibrox disaster, it was
exits th at needed renovation.
H o o lig a n ism a n d H eysel
brought a call for fencing, then
th e B radfo rd fire provoked
m ore stringent safety regula­
By DANIEL McGRORY
mm
tions, all of which forced clubs
to leave terraces empty.
G lynis F irth , se creta ry or
FGIT, says: “Every tim e we had
surplus funds and w anted to
spend it on schem es like family
enclosures and facilities for th£
disabled, there would be a new
safety requirem ent and th at is
where the money had to go.”
Disabled
They were set to embark on an
unsung campaign to get lavatory
facilities up to something like a
civilised standard, but that will
perish w ith whatever recommendations
the Hillsborough enquiry
comes up with.
Their sister organisation, the
Football Trust, which helped
clubs com bat th e hooligans,
doles out around £7 million a
year to pay for policing and the
fences th at are now being torn
down.
Last year Liverpool received
£525,000, the sam e as M ancheste
r City, w hile M anchester
United got £292,695 for safety
a n d a lm o st' as m u ch fo r
im provements.
T he u n fash io n a b le te am s
didn’t m iss out. Grimsby had
£436,515, Oxford United £469,990
and Plym outh £286,068.
The Football T rust also helps
fund a special unit at Leicester
University to investigate soccer’s
problem s.
Co-director Patrick M urphy
says: “We have to get into per­
Supporters are herded in like animals
spective how few big occasions
there are every year. If there
were half a dozen decent-sized
grounds w ith seats, th at would '
be sufficent.”
So far only a few clubs have
risked the all-seater experiment.
In Scotland, Aberdeen and Clydebank
have m anaged it with
fo rm id able su ccess, th o u g h
th e ir attend an ces are p altry
com pared to Arsenal and Liverpool.
Clubs refuse to share a ground,
preferring to run half-em pty
wrecks a few hundred, yards
apart and go deeper in debt.
S u ch n arro w chau v in ism
doesn’t blight Italian giants like
Inter Milan and AC Milan who"
share the magnificent San Sirb
stadium which is owned by the
local m unicipality even though
they have m ore cash than the
four English divisions together:
Venues
It helps that m ost of the Italian
favourites are wholly owned"
by industrial giants like Fiat
who indulge their team, Juven-
tus, like a delinquent child.
It is doubtful, even now, that
the top ten team s who need the
big venues will em bark on m assive
building program m es.
The suspicion rem ains that"
w hen all th e en q u iries are
exhausted and the tears have
dried, little will have changed at
our football grounds.
It w on’t until the fans stop
coming.
Ann Parkinson’s toughest battle
F
r
By CATHY GALVIN
Mrs Parkinson: Tenacity
a g i l e -
LOO K IN G A nn
Parkinson, wife of
T ory p o litic ia n
Cecil, Is a woman driven
by a steely am bition — to
stam p out the drug and
alcohol addiction th at she
h as w itn essed a t first
hand.
“Already 40 per cent of
th e B ritish population
are affected by some kind
of addiction,’’ she says.
“And th eir families and
friends also have to deal
with that.” Ann Parkinson
knows th at from her
own b itter experience ;—
her own daughter Mary
was addicted to drugs for
te n y ears, even tu ally
breaking the habit ju st
over a year ago.
For m ore than those ten
years she has cham pioned
the fight against
c h e m ic al dependency
w ith te n a c ity . S he
believes — and statistics
seem to back her up —
th at addiction is perm eating
every stratum of society,
from the hardened
drug addict to the businessm
an who can’t resist
th at th ird brandy after
lunch.
It’s a problem th at costs
Industry £847 m illion a
year In absenteeism —
and costs families years
of heartache.
Launch
Yesterday she took the
campaign one step furth
er w ith the launch of
Action on Addiction — a
new charity whose first
initiative is to provide a
“ceiitre of excellence” for
th e study and treatm ent
of addiction. H er advantage
as a front woman for'
this prestigious new charity
Is th at she Is a passionately
Interested am ateur
ra th e r th a n a pro fessional.
People respond to her
because she understands
the struggles of family
life and has not always
lived a life of easy luxury
as a top politician’s wife.
In a crisis, her advice Is
sim ple: “P a re n ts and
teachers m ust m aintain a
common approach. Don’t
panic. Keep on talking.
Try and keep It friendly
and balanced^ and be prepared
to share It with
somebody else.
“At some stage when
you get into a serious situation,
where th e addiction
has become Intolerable
for those around the
patient, you’ve got to say:
‘You need help, there Is
help, take It or else.’ x
“You have to be able to
provide a cool p rofessional
approach to the
subject. Ju st to hype It up
w ould u n d erm in e Its
medical and professional
basis.”
Aims
In itially , th e charity,
working with the public
and private sectors and
th e M edical R e se a rc h :
Council, aim s to provide
£6 million. It will h elp 5
develop B ritlan’s Addictio
n R esearch U nit In
London, providing training
for professionals and
treatm ent for patients.
Ann Parkinson has a
vision of what Action on
Addiction could achieve:
“I would like to think
th at 50 years hence addic-i
tion will be seen as a
m ajor Illness.”