Author Archives: Mike Nicholson

So you thought Liverpool fans were late, drunk & ticketless at Hillsborough?

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It’s understandable. The police force that had a duty of care that day were led by Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, who started lying about what really happened before the dead & dying were even freed from the terrifying crush on the Leppings Lane terrace.

That lie was then transmitted to the waiting media, and headlines were being printed before the lies were even realised.

Here are some of the accusations that South Yorkshire Police peddled, with the actual facts, which disprove them all:

Late? - What time are you supposed to turn up for a football match?

I have been going to football matches for 25 years, and I have literally no idea what time would be considered early, which would be on time and which would be late.

What I do know as a fact is that the match ticket for 15.04.1989 at Hillsborough told people to be in place 15 minutes before kick off. I also know that kick-off was scheduled for 3pm that day, and so when a dangerous crush outside the ground started building up at 2.30pm, I fail to see how those fans could be deemed to be late?

FYI, South Yorkshire Police ordered vehicular traffic to be stopped on Leppings Lane at 2.17pm, such was the density of fans.

Drunk? – Lord Justice Taylor was asked by the Home Office to investigate into events at the Hillsborough stadium on the 15th April 1989.

He had evidence from pubs, members of the public, South Yorkshire Police and the local supermarkets and off license establishments. Lord Justice Taylor concluded that most were “not drunk, nor even the worse for drink”.

He went on to say that “Some officers, seeking to rationalise their loss of control, overestimated the drunkenness in the crowd.”

Ticketless? – The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) studied the CCTV footage after the disaster, in order to try and ascertain how many supporters had entered the Leppings Lane end of the ground.

The capacity of the Leppings Lane end in its entirety was 10,100.

The HSE supplied three estimates of the number of fans who had entered that day based on video evidence. The first number was 9,267 fans were inside; the second ‘best estimate’ was that 9,734 were inside and the maximum number given was 10,124. The problem clearly wasn’t that there were too many fans, it was simply that too many fans were in the central two pens.

These are all facts. Cast iron, totally verified, facts.

I hope that after the Independent Panel Report on September 12th 2012, that you can start to chip away at these long standing lies, and understand the real truth of Hillsborough.

Calling all police officers on duty at Hillsborough on 15.04.1989

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There were a great many junior officers on duty that day that did a fantastic job, without senior supervision, to try and help those who were trapped and dying in the Leppings Lane terraces.

Recent documentaries, in the light of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, have seen PC’s come forward and tell their side of the story.

It seems that no matter what depths senior officers were willing to sink, that there are a great number of more junior officers who were, honest, who tried their best and who were horrified at the way their statements were amended to remove any criticism of the police.

I would be forever grateful, if one such hero of the day would step forward and help me tell the story about the real truth of Hillsborough?

The first part of the 3-part documentary is online here:

Please help me unravel this horrendous cover-up. My email is mike_nicholson@hotmail.co.uk

Even if you are unwilling/ frightened to appear on camera, I would still welcome your anonymous comments.

Thank you for reading.

Fan at Hillsborough struggles with his feelings post September 12th 2012

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When someone asks ‘how do you feel?, it is a very difficult question to answer when you don’t have a clue. You know how you probably ‘should’ feel, you’ve felt a variety of feelings, often conflicting ones at the same time. But nothing you could hope to understand much less articulate comes to mind. So the response has to be ‘I’m not really sure’.

It might just be me. I hate being called a Hillsborough ‘survivor’ nearly as much as being called lucky. I wasn’t lucky; 96 plus the often overlooked injured and suicides were unlucky. Tragically unlucky. The fact I was plucked out of the central pen to the stand above has always made me feel like a fraud. A guilty fraud. The few times I’ve let it known I was at Hillsborough, I recoil from the gasps and inevitable (but well meaning) comments.

It’s just I never dealt properly with Hillsborough. Too ‘stiff upper lip’ for counselling. Too proud to show emotion. Too many years of burying and bottling emotions to try and stop that little voice that says ‘were you partly to blame?.

Being there meant you always knew the truth. It was accepted people were still alive beyond 3.15 in my mind as I saw them, and with that was a kind of assumption everyone else knew too. What the momentous day of Wednesday 12th September showed was just how many people, outside of Liverpool, sort of believed ‘the official line.

23 years of me shamefully avoiding all things Hillsborough, including services, memorials and documentaries as I couldn’t really deal with it was probably not a smart thing to do. An ill advised internal safety mechanism.

The ‘are you to blame’ voice: I’d better explain. I know I did nothing wrong. I hadn’t drunk any alcohol, but I was later than I should have been due to roadworks. I wasn’t unruly. I just wanted to see a semi final. Funny though how constant insinuation, constant misreporting and constant lies start to play on your mind. I remember the exit gate being opened and gleefully going in (I never showed my ticket to anybody) thinking ‘great, I’m not going to miss any of the game’. Cue the endless internal conversation post that day:-

Brain: ‘you were a contributing factor to the crush’

Logical Mind: ‘I hadn’t got a clue what I was walking into’

Brain: ‘that’s not the point. You were part of that mass that overcrowded the pen’

Logical Mind: ‘as an individual I don’t think it made any difference’

Brain: ‘everyone could say that’

Repeat ad nauseum.

Hillsborough has caused me emotional damage. But it’s nothing and laughable to what many have suffered.

When the truth came out I didn’t feel ecstatic. I was too ashamed to feel selfish relief that officially I wasn’t to blame. I’d love to feel burning anger to the people that created and perpetuated the lies. I felt happy for the families that have worked so hard. I felt cynical to the apologies from people who didn’t want this inquiry, and probably weren’t happy the e-petition hit 100,000 votes. But the over riding feeling is one of numbness.

Maybe there’s a 23 year emotional volcano that’s going to explode when the depths of the disgraceful behaviour sink in. When I think about how the ground had no safety certificate. When I fully comprehend many lives could have been saved. When the realisation hits people were gambling with my life, herding me into a pen and ignoring the injuries and warnings from previous years. But most of all, when I let myself think properly about how to save their sorry backsides people lied, altered documents, smeared us all and compounded everyone’s suffering – I think at that point I’ll finally be able to tell you how I really feel. I’m kind of scared of that day, even though I need it.

HILLSBOROUGH: LIVERPOOL v NOTTINGHAM FOREST 1988 SEMI-FINAL

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The Hillsborough Independent Panel has uncovered evidence that the serious over-crowding in the central pens in 1988 prompted one fan to write to the FA to complain. Comments in the letter …

“The whole area was packed solid to the point where it was impossible to move and where I, and others around me, felt considerable concern for personal safety,”

“As a result of the crush an umbrella I was holding in my hand was snapped in half against the crush barrier in front of me… My concern over safety was such – at times it was impossible to breathe – that at half-time… I managed to extricate myself from the terrace, having taken the view that my personal safety was more important than watching the second half.”

I would therefore like to add this page as another chapter in the story. We have a page with many comments from Spurs & Leeds fans for both the 1981 and 1987 semi-finals, links to those are below.

Please reply to this page with your recollections of the 1988 semi-final, and leave your contact details if you are willing to appear in the documentary.

1987 semi-final with comments from Leeds & Coventry fans: http://thehillsboroughdisasterdocumentary.com/2011/11/18/hillsborough-leeds-v-coventry-1987-semi-final/

1981 semi-final with comments from Spurs & Wolves fans: http://thehillsboroughdisasterdocumentary.com/2011/11/16/hillsborough-1981-disaster-narrowly-avoided/

Part one of the documentary is can be watched here:

 

 

The funny thing about Justice.

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The funny thing about Justice.

Imagine the uproar,
And the weight of the law,
If 96 coppers,
Lay dead on the floor.

The law could not stand this,
This terrible day,
The people who caused it,
Would be locked safe away.

The blame would be total,
And the sentence so raw,
The guilty would feel the,
Long arm of the law.

The papers would say things,
Bout’ those brave lads in blue,
How did ‘they’ cause this?
I haven’t a clue.

They were 96 heroes,
And shouldn’t have died,
At least with our Justice,
We’ll avenge their sweet lives.

Justice is needed,
And justice is right,
And justice is the reason,
We won’t give up the fight.

We lost our brothers,
Our Sisters and Dad’s
And our Mother’s and Uncles,
And Friends that we had.

Yet as strange as it seems,
For that terrible day,
The justice we seeked,
Just eroded away.

We never saw Justice,
Like those brave boys in blue,
To me it seems wrong,
Does it to you?

By Mike Nicholson

My personal wish list on the eve of the 12th September 2012

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The Hillsborough Independent Panel are due to report to the families tomorrow, and here is my personal list of things I would like to happen as a result.

1. I would like the panel to have found something massive within those papers, that will make all of the nations media go berserk! It would obviously have to be something massive for the media to go as large as they did in the aftermath of the tragedy, but the only way the truth will reach everyone, is if it receives similar a similar level of coverage.

2. I would like the information to prompt The S*n to make a front page apology, saying “We lied” just as Kenny Dalglish suggested on or around Wednesday 18th April 1989.

3. I would like some kind of legal action to be taken against Duckenfield. I can forgive mistakes, they happen, and sometimes tragedy follows them. What I will never forgive is his ‘disgraceful lies’  as they were too hurtful & did too much damage, simply because he was afraid to face the consequences of his actions. At the very least I would like to know if he suffers at all from guilt, nightmares or PTSD as a result of that day, like all of the victims do.

4. In the tradition of saving the best until last, finally, I would like for those who still feel so much pain and anger to get some sort of closure. If the legacy of this panel was that troubled souls wee able to find some peace, then their work would have been the most noble and worthwhile work imaginable.

What are your personal wishes ahead of the report? Make a comment below, so it will last on this blog forever.

Hillsborough: 71 hours of video footage & thousands of photographs couldn’t find any misbehavior

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This is for anybody who read about the Hillsborough disaster in the immediate aftermath, and got the impression that Liverpool fans were to blame.

On the day of the Hillsborough disaster, three different organisations were filming video footage, namely South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club and the BBC. Lord Justice Taylor had 71 hours of video footage available to his official enquiry into the disaster, even after the missing CCTV tapes, and you are yet to see a single clip of video that supports the outrageous lies that were printed in the media in the days and weeks after.

The photographers that were there to shoot the events on the pitch ended up shooting people being crushed against the fences. The photographers were on the pitch, running in between the dead and dying taking photos. You are yet to a single picture that supports the lies told in the media in the days and weeks after.

Do you not think that if Liverpool fans had done anything wrong, that there would be supporting evidence in the extensive collection of video and photography? There is not a single image, not one. The lies in the press were just that, lies. They were told to shift the blame from those in authority, to the victims, and the sickening thing is that the lies started while Liverpool fans were dying on the terraces and pitch.