8/7/01
2:34 am GMT
7 June 1996 Hillsborough: Seven Years On Stuart Waiton challenges the compensation payments given to some police who were on duty at Hillsborough People always say they remember where they were when President Kennedy was shot or when Margaret Thatcher resigned. I don't remember either of those occasions, but I do remember where I was on the day of the Hillsborough disaster. I was at a friend's house with tears of rage in my eyes as I watched the police push Liverpool supporters back into the hell from which they were trying to escape. 95 people died that day, while the police brought out the dogs and formed a line down the centre of the pitch to stop the Liverpool 'hooligans' from fighting. Finally on Saturday night, when the city of Liverpool was in mourning and the streets of the city were deadly quiet, the Merseyside police made another contribution to the day's events, by sending out extra patrols to keep the embittered community in order. The police were not victims that day, but the instigators of the disaster. The very fences that surrounded the ground at Hillsborough and stopped the fans from escaping had originally been erected because of a Law and Order panic about hooligans. This panic meant that by the end of the 1980s football fans were being herded like cattle before and after matches, and were caged like animals while watching their team play. Then the Tories ranted about the 'yob class' at football matches. Today they talk of a 'yob culture' that surrounds the game. Then they took away people's civil liberties and eventually took away nearly a hundred people's lives. Today no lives have been lost, but football fans are losing what few rights they have left as 10 000 police gear up for Euro 96. Already we've had mug shots in Newcastle's local paper followed by dawn raids on suspected hooligans' houses. The papers are filled with tales of 'potential' violence and the police are tooling up on the back of another hooligan panic. It is a sick joke that members of this same police force can claim victim status for their part in the Hillsborough 'disaster', and are now receiving £1.2 million in compensation. Presumably the retired torturers of Chile and South Africa will be next in the line claiming compensation for the emotional distress of extracting information by force.
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