First published in The Times, April 17, 1989

A radical reappraisal of football ground safety will follow Britain's worst sports disaster at Sheffield in which 94 people, including a boy aged 10, died and 169 were injured.

Amid accusations of incompetence against police, rescue services and ground staff, it became clear last night that any inquiry must look beyond Sheffield and into the whole organization of football as a spectator sport.

Last night South Yorkshire police called in an outside force to investigate the critical decision of a senior officer to open an outside steel gate and allow thousands of extra Liverpool fans to swarm into the Hillsborough ground as the match began.

Tragedy on the terraces

• 'Mayhem' after gate was opened

• 'We watched them die, innocent figures, lying prostrate and crushed on the green grass'

• Doctors attack 'total chaos' of rescue effort

Police in 'open gate' inquiry

• The man who opened the gate

• Force condemned for failing to avert turnstile disaster

• Senior officers were not willing to concede fault

Mother tells of losing husband and son as she witnessed crush on TV

• Names of the supporters who died are released

• Liverpool welcomes vindication of fans' behaviour

• Thatcher hears of heroic courage

Anfield Kop becomes silent focus of city's mourning

• Thousands at requiem mass as Liverpool mourns deaths

• Sombre lessons soccer failed to learn

Related Links

• The man who opened the gate

• Force condemned for failing to avert turnstile disaster

• Senior officers were not willing to concede fault

Significantly, the investigation will be directed at the planning and operational decisions of the officers. One question to be examined by the police inquiry will the liaison between police inside the ground and those trying to control the fans still outside as the kick-off approached.

On Saturday there were 800 officers assigned to duty in and around the ground under the command of a chief superintendent who, in turn, had four superintendents assisting him, two inside the ground and two outside. The decision to request that the gate be opened was relayed by a senior officer outside the ground to the main police control room in the North Stand who then instructed an officer to carry out the unlocking procedure from inside. The inquiry will ask whether officers inside the ground were consulted and whether they were aware of the cramped conditions already existing on the terraces.

Today, Mr Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, will announce a judicial inquiry. Politicians are predicting that it will change the way football has been traditionally watched in Britain. There is also a call to freeze legislation currently going through Parliament to force spectators to carry identity cards. Influential MPs want the Government to wait for the results of the new inquiry, leaving an opportunity to incorporate its recommendations in a new Bill.

A complete breakdown in police co-ordination of the crowd at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on Saturday was being blamed last night for the tragedy. There were also claims that the death toll was increased by the inadequate response of rescue services and that the seeds of the disaster were sown long before Saturday's game by the intransigence of the FA and the endemic problem of soccer hooliganism.

The claims are backed by interviews by The Times with spectators, football administrators, doctors and safety experts. ``The whole thing from beginning to end had incompetence running right through the organizational arrangements,'' a professor of medicine who was at the scene said. The tragedy is certain to lead to renewed calls for a national disaster agency to co-ordinate planning for such emergencies. But its principal result may eventually be the modernizing of Britain's league football grounds into all-seater stadiums where a tragedy such as Saturday's could simply not happen.

Mr Tom Pendry, chairman of the Parliamentary Football Committee and Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, said yesterday that British football was ``a nineteenth-century structured sport'' and called for all-seater stadiums ``to bring it into the twenty-first century.'' The costs of converting football stadiums to all-seater grounds would run into many millions of pounds. But after years of tinkering with British soccer's increasing problems, pressure for such a fundamental change is now likely to be irresistible from politicians and public alike in the wake of the harrowing images of young people trapped and crushed on the terraces on Saturday.

They provided terrifying reminders of the other recent disasters for British football: the fire at Bradford City's ground in which 53 people were killed in May 1985, and the stampede at the Heysel stadium in Brussels shortly afterwards in which 39 people died during the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. They came only days after English clubs except Liverpool had been conditionally readmitted to European competition by the European football organization after their post-Heysel ban.

Mrs Margaret Thatcher was clearly shocked by a visit to the Hillsborough ground yesterday with Mr Hurd and Mr Colin Moynihan, Minister for Sport. She said: ``It is a disaster of enormous proportions, coming on top of previous disasters and coming on top of many precautions which have already been taken and which clearly have not been enough.''