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4 Death on the Terraces: The Contexts and Injustices of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster
... On April 15, 1989, Liverpool F.C. played Nottingham Forest in the semifinals of the British Football Association (FA) Cup in the Hillsborough stadium. Due to overcrowding and an ensuing mass panic, 97 Liverpool supporters lost their lives, hundreds were injured, and thousands traumatized (Scration 2004;Wright 1993;Wright, Gaskell, and O'Muircheartaigh 1998). 2 As pictured in Figure 1, The Sun's sensationalist coverage of the disaster was particularly one-sided and falsely claimed that "the truth" about the disaster was that Liverpool supporters were responsible for the chaotic escalation, and ultimately, for their own death. ...
Whether powerful media outlets have effects on public opinion has been at the heart of theoretical and empirical discussions about the media’s role in political life. Yet, the effects of media campaigns are difficult to study because citizens self-select into media consumption. Using a quasi-experiment—the 30-year boycott of the most important Eurosceptic tabloid newspaper, The Sun, in Merseyside caused by the Hillsborough soccer disaster—we identify the effects of The Sun boycott on attitudes toward leaving the EU. Difference-in-differences designs using public opinion data spanning three decades, supplemented by referendum results, show that the boycott caused EU attitudes to become more positive in treated areas. This effect is driven by cohorts socialized under the boycott and by working-class voters who stopped reading The Sun. Our findings have implications for our understanding of public opinion, media influence, and ways to counter such influence in contemporary democracies.
... Within minutes, Chief Superintendent Duckenfield falsely instructed the Football Association chief executive that Liverpool fans had forced entry and caused the crush. This precipitated a retelling of Hillsborough that was to become institutionally cemented through the media (Scraton, Jemphrey and Coleman 1995;Scraton 1999aScraton , 1999bScraton , 2004The Sun 1989). ...
The 15th April 1989 saw one of the worst football stadium disasters of our time. At Sheffield Wednesday football ground at Hillsborough, UK, at the FA Semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, a fatal crush in enclosed spectator ‘pens’ resulted in the deaths of ninety-six Liverpool football fans. Unprecedented investigative processes followed in which the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) provided self-taken narrative testimonies that served as evidential documents to subsequent inquiries (1989, 1997) into the cause of the disaster. These narratives consistently blamed fans for the events that led to the crush, both explicitly and implicitly. An overwhelming number of narratives produced by the SYP and the their West Midlands counterparts, document numerous references to fans either drinking, buying, or carrying alcohol, arriving late to the turnstiles, and generally misbehaving in and around the stadium, all in spite of no such activities being evident on CCTV footage on the day, and in striking contrast to fans’ own narrative accounts. In the ongoing pursuit of justice, an Independent Panel (2012) reviewed over 450,000 evidential documents and exposed an institutional cover-up predicated on the ‘review and alteration’ of witness testimonies that pro-actively sought to blame fans for the crush and deflect institutional blame away from the SYP, the WMP and the South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service (SYMAS). These manipulated re-tellings of the Hillsborough story had a significant impact not only in the investigations that followed, but on the survivors and the families of the bereaved, not least because they cemented the ‘hooliganisation’ of Liverpool fans in public consciousness. This chapter then, considers how narrative retellings in forensic contexts can (inadvertently or otherwise) reframe a witness’s story in various ways: through institutional control or promotion of topics, through (undocumented) questioning or probing, and by reporting not only what is claimed did happen, but by reporting what did not. In analyzing the institutional linguistic representation of witnesses’ narratives, essentially the retelling of a witness’s account in a process that is undeniably interactional, the chapter calls for greater transparency particularly in regards to witness control in collecting and producing witness narratives.
Keywords: Hillsborough Disaster, retellings, witness statement.
... Firstly, public and media attitudes in England towards football had shifted somewhat. The dominant public narrative emerging around the game post-Hillsborough had altered perceptions of travelling football fans in England, from mainly aggressive young men who required harsh management and discipline to that of a much more varied cohort of late-modern supporters or customers who deserved better safety, some comfort and reassurance in the face of poor facilities and sometimes heavy-handed and intolerant treatment by the police (Scraton 2004, Bebber 2012. As a result, the previously intensely authoritarian and largely unaccountable police routines for managing English football fans established in the 1970s and 1980s slowly shifted towards a more nuanced, less aggressive approach, even as legislation proliferated. ...
How has football hooliganism in England, largely, been successfully managed or displaced over the past 30 years, while violence and disorder caused by sections of the ultras movement in Italy continues to dog the domestic Italian game? This paper tries to map out the relevant developments off, as well as on, the sporting landscapes in each of these countries. Many European states have looked, simply, to legislative changes and to reforms in policing and stewarding in England, without understanding how these have been combined with a wider cultural transformation of the fan experience at football matches in a new generation of highly priced, modernized and highly regulated stadia. The Hillsborough Stadium disaster in England in 1989 - not caused by hooliganism but predicated upon expectations it might occur – provided for something of a sea change in public attitudes towards the game and football fans. It also changed the prevailing rhetoric inside English stadia from a struggle over who controls stadium space to one focused on pacification and fan safety. A forced stadium modernization programme in England in the 1990s marginalized hooligan cultures from the global sporting product the EPL has since become. By contrast, in Italy less of this modernization, or change in attitudes or approach, has occurred in quite the same way. Violent ultras in Italy are more politicized and wield more power in the Italian game than their equivalents do in England. Moreover, no major trauma has occurred in Italy to aid radically re-positioning the domestic game.
The apparent growing popularity of soccer, as a spectator sport, in Australia makes this an opportune time, especially after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, to investigate its roots and comment on its future. The current A-League is the most successful incarnation of domestic soccer in Australia to date. As spectator numbers increase, clubs, stadium managers, spectators, police, and private security providers will play pivotal roles in the management of the sport. This paper draws on archival data from newspapers, official inquiries, football literature and statistical data to map the history of disorder and disasters at soccer matches in several countries. The causes of the disorder are complex and range from inadequate crowd control strategies to infrastructure failures. This paper examines both Australian and European history to map the effects of disorder at soccer matches and what tactics the police use to mitigate or reduce it. This mapping exercise concludes that all countries should adopt an approach of prevention rather than cure to overcome soccer’s bad reputation, returning it to a family oriented recreational activity while maintaining high levels of safety and security in football grounds. The chapter concludes that to ensure safety and security at football matches, the police need to constantly monitor their tactics and act proactively but fairly to deal with soccer-related violence. This year, as spectators were largely excluded from attendance at live soccer matches during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a unique opportunity to address problems and issues to ensure the safety and security of football fans into the future.KeywordsPoliceAustraliaThe United Kingdom (the UK)Soccer violenceHooliganism
This article examines the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire through the coverage of the national, local, and specialist print and broadcast media. Drawing upon extensive media coverage, it argues that the reporting of the fire provides a useful lens through which to understand the emotional environment and construction of communities during Britain’s ‘decade of disasters’. Moreover, archival sources have been consulted to reveal the multiplicity of personal and collective responses to the media reporting of the fire, covering both the immediate and longer-term aftermath. Through letters sent by members of the public to the Bradford Disaster Appeal Fund, it shows how people received media narratives and articulated their own affective bonds with the tragedy. These included declarations of belonging, through which the disaster became the impetus for the creation of a multicultural civic identity in Bradford. Finally, it uses social services records to show how survivors and the bereaved continued to be affected by the disaster even as the story of the fire—as told in the mass media and through memorial ceremonies—turned towards resilience and recovery.
The Hillsborough football stadium disaster (1989) in Sheffield, UK, led to the deaths of 96 football fans and resulted in the longest jury case in British legal history (2016). This article examines the witness statements of two Sheffield residents who claim to have attended the match. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates a cognitive linguistic framework (Text World Theory) with visualisation software (VUE) we consider both form and function of a number of linguistic features, such as meta-narrative, evaluative lexis, syntax, and modality to investigate how institutional voices permeate and potentially distort lay-person narratives. Our analysis casts doubt on the veracity of the statements and raises questions about what can be considered “evidential” in a forensic investigation.
Journalists’ representation of press bad behaviour is often characterised by certain paradigm repair strategies. The notion of paradigm repair relates to efforts by the press to protect news paradigms rather than critically examining them to see if there is a need for change (Bennet et al. 1985, cited in Carlson, Metajournalistic discourse and the meanings of journalism: Definitional control, boundary work, and legitimation. Communication Theory, 26(4), 349–368, 2015, p. 4). This chapter shows how the paradigm repair strategies of “threat to the paradigm” (warnings of attacks on journalism) and “historicisation” (using history to protect journalistic paradigms) were used to argue against efforts at reforming media policy. The author takes the position that media reform efforts are weakened, to a large extent, by the way the media cover debates about their policy. She argues that understanding the strategies used by the media to protect journalistic paradigms will help the public digest the coverage of media policy intelligently and push for healthy and effective media reform.
This chapter presents highlights on how the media covered the press reform debate that followed the News of the World phone hacking scandal. It argues that rather than serve as a democratic public sphere where diverse voices can have proportionate access to the press reform debate, the media used their gatekeeping powers to advance their views while limiting or preventing arguments that were against their self-interest from gaining entrance into the public sphere. This reduced the quality of the debate on press reform by inhibiting the kind of robust deliberations that produce plurality of views. The author recognises the challenge in asking the press to serve as a democratic public sphere during debates about their policy because bias is inevitable, and every organisation or industry may exhibit some level of bias in its own favour. She, therefore, argues that steps to make the press accountable should also come from outside the press. The author advocates non-governmental public reformism as a means of ensuring press accountability.
This open access book provides a detailed exploration of the British media coverage of the press reform debate that arose from the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry. Gathering data from a content analysis of 870 news articles, Ogbebor shows how journalists cover debates on media policy and illustrates the impact of their coverage on democracy. Through this analysis, the book contributes to knowledge of paradigm repair strategies; public sphere; gatekeeping theory; the concept of journalism as an interpretive community; political economy of the press; as well as the neoliberal and social democratic interpretations of press freedom. Providing insight into factors inhibiting and aiding the role of the news media as a democratic public sphere, it will be a valuable resource for the press, media reform activists, members of the public, and academics in the fields of journalism, politics and law.
There is a substantial amount of literature on law enforcement and corruption. However, most of this is on national state law enforcement bodies or specific police units (i.e. narcotics and/or vice) that have engaged in corruption. This chapter will build on this work but also consider the problem of trying to define law enforcement corruption, discuss the causes of corruption, undercover work and private policing. The chapter will conclude with a review of law enforcement reforms that regardless of the approach used have failed to stem the tide of corruption.
She was born in the 1920s on Merseyside, England, imprisoned under order aged 11. Classified ‘feeble-minded’, her offending behaviour was unspecified ‘persistent theft’. Incarceration lasted 45 years, behind the bars of harsh regimes. Judged aggressive and violent, she self-harmed. Jane Doe lives in recent history, an object of psychiatric and surgical experimentation. She is one of many women – and men – of great courage and determination whose private resistance to public degradation led eventually to release. Her twilight years have been lived out in day–to-day routines of a society which, for so long, denied her existence. No explanations, no apologies and no acknowledgement of the institutionalised brutalisation of a locked-in ward.
For much of the 20th century Jane Doe and those similarly classified, including children born and brought up in ‘mental hospitals’, endured enforced mutilation, electrically induced convulsions, drugging and ritual humiliation. Their bodies and minds constituted unrestricted test sites in medicine’s obsession with the identification and eradication of individual pathology. They feared the perpetrators, the formalised physical abuse of the doctors accompanied by the routine, informal assaults of ‘care’ staff, and they feared the fate of absent friends; those who disappeared. A fear of death not by natural causes but by unlawful killing: experiments that failed, drug cocktails with fatal side-effects, restraint methods that suffocated and suicides of despair. These were the consequences of licensed assault and the institutionalisation of inhuman and degrading treatment. Another night trolley, another premature death.
Informed and endorsed by the pseudo–scientific principles of eugenicism, these punishing regimes were not confined to Nazi barbarism or other forms of totalitarian rule. They were central to routine treatment administered to those classified and researched as mentally disordered throughout social democracies; forming an invisible and virtually autonomous archipelago of incarceration in mental institutions and special hospitals. For such regimes to exist, to remain hidden from independent scrutiny, professionals within and beyond the network were involved. They were implicated through an unquestioning acceptance of classifications made by powerful definers and their failure to inquire into the dubious circumstances of unexplained deaths. Doctors, nurses, care workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, coroners, pathologists, police officers, lawyers, administrators, clergy remained silent, ambivalent, accepting – and someone pushed the trolley.
The Hillsborough disaster happened at a premier United Kingdom soccer stadium in April 1989 claiming the lives of ninety-six men, women, and children. Over the next decade there followed a Home Office inquiry, a criminal investigation, compensation hearings as far as the House of Lords, the longest inquests in recent history, a judicial review, a judicial scrutiny, and private prosecutions. Media coverage has remained intense and there has been persistent parliamentary debate. Despite the evidence amassed, much of it undisclosed, the legal argument and official discourse, the bereaved and survivors remain deeply concerned that the ‘truth’ of Hillsborough has been suppressed and reconstructed.
This paper considers Hillsborough and its long-term aftermath in the context of a theoretical discussion of the reconstitution and registration of ‘truth’ within social democracies when state institutions stand accused. It adopts a critical analysis drawing on human rights discourse in discussing how ‘regimes of truth’ operate to protect and sustain the interests of the ‘powerful’. In examining the formal legal processes and their outcomes regarding Hillsborough, the paper demonstrates how they were manipulated to degrade the truth and deny justice to the bereaved. In revealing the procedural and structural inadequacies of these processes, the paper raises fundamental questions about the legal and political accountability of the police. Finally, it discusses alternative forms, informed by a human rights agenda, through which ‘truth’ can be acknowledged and institutionalized injustices reconciled.
Aftershock: The Psychological and Political Consequences of Disasters
- D Cohen
D. Cohen, Aftershock: The Psychological and Political Consequences of Disasters (London: Paladin, 1991),
p.143.
From Deceit to Disclosure: The Politics of Official Inquiries in the United Kingdom
- See P Scraton
See P. Scraton, 'From Deceit to Disclosure: The Politics of Official Inquiries in the United Kingdom',
in G. Gilligan and J. Pratt (eds), Crime, Truth and Justice: Official Inquiry, Discourse, Knowledge
(Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2004), pp.46-70.
Press Secretary to the Prime Minister, personal correspondence
- Sir Bernard Ingham
Sir Bernard Ingham, Press Secretary to the Prime Minister, personal correspondence, 13 July 1994.
Correspondence held by author.
Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, quoted in the Sheffield Star
- Peter Wright
Peter Wright, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, quoted in the Sheffield Star, 6 Feb. 1990.
The Hillsborough Project 1989. Held in the Disasters Research Archive
- Personal
Personal interview, The Hillsborough Project 1989. Held in the Disasters Research Archive, Centre for
Studies in Crime and Social Justice, Edge Hill.
No Last Rights: The Denial of Justice and the Promotion of Myth in the Aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster
- P Scraton
- A Jemphrey
- S Coleman
P. Scraton, A. Jemphrey and S. Coleman, No Last Rights: The Denial of Justice and the Promotion of
Myth in the Aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster (Liverpool: LCC/Alden Press, 1995).