The Hillsborough Disaster Part III

 

Memorial at Hillsborough

A memorial rose garden on Sudley Estate in South Liverpool (also known as the APH). Each of the six rose beds has a centre piece of a white standard rosebush, surrounded by red rose bushes, named 'Liverpool Remember'. There are brass memorial plaques on both sets of gates to the garden, and a sundial inscribed with the words: "Time Marches On But We Will Always Remember".

In the grounds of Crosby Library, to the memory of the 18 football fans from Sefton who lost their lives in the Hillsborough disaster. The memorial, sited in a raised rose bed containing the Liverpool Remembers red rose, is made of black granite. It is inscribed "In loving memory of the 96 football supporters who died at Hillsborough, Sheffield on 15 April 1989. Of those who lost their lives the following young men were from Sefton families." The memorial was unveiled on 4 October 1991 (two years before the death of Tony Bland) by the Mayor of Sefton, Councillor Syd Whitby. The project was carried out by the Council after consultation with the Sefton Survivors Group.

Memorial at Old Haymarket, Liverpool

A 7-foot high circular bronze memorial was unveiled in the Old Haymarket district of Liverpool in April 2013. This memorial is inscribed with the words: "Hillsborough Disaster – we will remember them", and displays the names of the 96 victims who died.

An 8 foot high clock, dating from the 1780s, was installed at Liverpool Town Hall in April 2013, with the hands indicating 3:06 (the time at which the match was abandoned).

A memorial plaque dedicated to the 96 at Goodison Park in Liverpool, home of local rivals Everton F.C.

Hillsborough Oaks - 96 oak trees planted in Cross Hillocks Wood, next to the Knowsley Expressway, with a memorial unveiled on 20 September 2000.

Memorial ceremonies

The disaster has been acknowledged on 15 April every year by the community in Liverpool and football in general. An annual memorial ceremony is held at Anfield and at a church in Liverpool. The 10th and 20th anniversaries were marked by special services to remember the victims.

From 2007, an annual Hillsborough Memorial service was held at Spion Kop, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The ceremony was held on the Spion Kop Battlefield which gave its name to the Kop Stand at Anfield. There is a permanent memorial to the 96 fans who died, in the form of a bench in view of the battlefield at a nearby lodge. Dean Davis and David Walters, South African Liverpool supporters, were responsible for the service and the bench was commissioned by Guy Prowse in 2008. Following on from (and out of respect for) the Hillsborough families' decision to conclude official memorials at Anfield with a final service in 2016, it was decided not to hold any further memorials at Spion Kop. The Memorial bench remains at Spion Kop Lodge.

In 2014, to mark the 25th anniversary of the disaster, the FA decided that all FA Cup, Premier League, Football League, and Football Conference matches played between 11–14 April would kick-off seven minutes later than originally scheduled with a six-minute delay and a one-minute silence tribute.

10th anniversary

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In 1999, Anfield was packed with a crowd of around 10,000 people ten years after the disaster. A candle was lit for each of the 96 victims. The clock at the Kop End stood still at 3:06 pm, the time that the referee had blown his whistle in 1989 and a minute's silence was held, the start signaled by match referee from that day, Ray Lewis. A service led by the Right Reverend James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool, was attended by past and present Liverpool players, including Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman and Alan Hansen. According to the BBC report: "The names of the victims were read from the memorial book and floral tributes were laid at a plaque bearing their names." A gospel choir performed and the ceremony ended with a rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone". The anniversary was also marked by a minute's silence at the weekend's league games and FA Cup semi-finals.

20th anniversary

In 2009, on the 20th anniversary of the disaster, Liverpool's request that their Champions League quarter-finals return leg, scheduled for 15 April, be played the day before was granted.

The event was remembered with a ceremony at Anfield attended by over 28,000 people. The Kop, Centenary and Main Stands were opened to the public before part of the Anfield Road End was opened to supporters. The memorial service, led by the Bishop of Liverpool began at 14:45 BST and a two-minute silence (observed across Liverpool and in Sheffield and Nottingham, including public transport coming to a stand-still) was held at the time of the disaster twenty years earlier, 15:06 BST. Burnham, by then the Sports Minister, addressed the crowd but was heckled by supporters chanting "Justice for the 96". The ceremony was attended by survivors of the disaster, families of victims and the Liverpool team, with goalkeeper Pepe Reina leading the team and management staff onto the pitch. Team captain Steven Gerrard and vice-captain Jamie Carragher handed the freedom of the city to the families of all the victims. Candles were lit for each of the 96 people who died. Kenny Dalglish, Liverpool's manager at the time of the disaster, read a passage from the Bible, "Lamentations of Jeremiah". The Liverpool manager, Rafael Benítez, set 96 balloons free. The ceremony ended with 96 rings of church bells across the city and a rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone".

Other services took place at the same time, including at the Anglican Liverpool Cathedral and the Roman Catholic Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. After the two minutes' silence, bells on civic buildings rang out throughout Merseyside.

A song was released to mark the 20th anniversary, entitled "Fields of Anfield Road" which peaked at No. 14 in the UK charts.

Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester United players showed respect by wearing black armbands during their Champions League quarter-final matches on 14 and 15 April 2009.

On 14 May, more than 20,000 people packed Anfield for a match held in memory of the victims. The Liverpool Legends, comprising ex-Liverpool footballers beat the All Stars, captained by actor Ricky Tomlinson, 3–1. The event also raised cash for the Marina Dalglish Appeal which was contributed towards a radiotherapy centre at University Hospital in Aintree.

With the imminent release of police documents relating to events on 15 April 1989, the Hillsborough Family Support Group launched Project 96, a fundraising initiative on 1 August 2009. At least 96 current and former Liverpool footballers are being[needs update] lined up to raise £96,000 by auctioning a limited edition (of 96) signed photographs.

On 11 April 2009, Liverpool fans sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" as a tribute to the upcoming anniversary of the disaster before the home game against Blackburn Rovers (which ended in Liverpool winning 4–0) and was followed by former Liverpool player, Stephen Warnock presenting a memorial wreath to the Kop showing the figure 96 in red flowers.

Other tributes

The Hillsborough disaster touched not only Liverpool, but football clubs in England and around the world. Supporters of Everton, Liverpool's traditional local rivals, were affected, many of them having lost friends and family. Supporters laid down flowers and blue and white scarves to show respect for the dead and unity with fellow Merseysiders.

On Wednesday 19 April 1989, four days after the disaster, the second leg of the European Cup semi-final tie between A.C. Milan and Real Madrid was played. The referee blew his whistle two minutes into the game to stop play and a minute's silence was held for those who lost their lives at Hillsborough. Halfway through the minute's silence, the A.C. Milan fans sang Liverpool's "You'll Never Walk Alone" as a sign of respect. In April 1989, Bradford City and Lincoln City held a friendly match to benefit the victims of Hillsborough. The occasion was the first in which the two teams had met since the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire that had claimed 56 lives at Valley Parade.

On 30 April 1989, a friendly match organized by Celtic F.C. was played at Celtic Park, Glasgow, between the home club and Liverpool. This game was Liverpool's first appearance on the football field since the disaster two weeks earlier. The crowd numbered more than 60,000, including around 6,000 Liverpool fans, and all the match proceeds went to the Hillsborough appeal fund. Liverpool won the match by four goals to nil.

As a result of the disaster, Liverpool's scheduled match against Arsenal was delayed from 23 April until the end of the season, and the game eventually decided the league title. At the rescheduled fixture, Arsenal players brought flowers onto the pitch and presented them to the Liverpool fans around the stadium before the game commenced.

During a 2011 debate in the House of Commons, the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, Steve Rotheram, read out a list of the victims and, as a result, the names were recorded in the Hansard transcripts.

In December 2021, Liverpool City Council nominated Andrew Devine posthumously for the freedom of the city of Liverpool, a tribute given to the original 96 victims in 2016.

Controversies

Media portrayal

Initial media coverage—spurred by what Phil Scraton calls in Hillsborough: The Truth "the Heysel factor" and "hooligan hysteria"—began to shift the blame onto the behaviour of the Liverpool fans at the stadium, making it a public order issue. As well as The Sun's 19 April 1989 "The Truth" article (see below) other newspapers published similar allegations; the Daily Star headline on the same day reported "Dead fans robbed by drunk thugs"; the Daily Mail accused the Liverpool fans of being "drunk and violent and their actions were vile", and The Daily Express ran a story alleging that "Police saw 'sick spectacle of pilfering from the dying'." Peter McKay in the Evening Standard wrote that the "catastrophe was caused first and foremost by violent enthusiasm for soccer and in this case the tribal passions of Liverpool supporters [who] literally killed themselves and others to be at the game" and published a front-page headline "Police attack 'vile' fans" on 18 April 1989, in which police sources blamed the behaviour of a section of Liverpool fans for the disaster.

In Liverpool local journalist John Williams of the Liverpool Daily Post wrote in an article titled "I Blame the Yobs" that "The gatecrashers wreaked their fatal havoc ... Their uncontrolled fanaticism and mass hysteria ... literally squeezed the life out of men, women and children ... yobbism at its most base ... Scouse killed Scouse for no better reason than 22 men were kicking a ball".

In other regional newspapers, the Manchester Evening News wrote that the "Anfield Army charged on to the terrace behind the goal—many without tickets", and the Yorkshire Post wrote that the "trampling crush" had been started by "thousands of fans" who were "latecomers ... forc[ing] their way into the ground". The Sheffield Star published similar allegations to The Sun, running the headline "Fans in Drunken Attacks on Police".

Many of the more serious allegations—such as stealing from the dead and assault of police officers and rescue workers—appeared on 18 April, although several evening newspapers published on 15 April 1989 also gave inaccurate reporting of the disaster, as these newspapers went to press before the full extent or circumstances of the disaster had been confirmed or even reported. This included the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star, which reported that the match had been canceled as a result of a "pitch invasion in which many fans were injured". This article was presumably published before there were any reports that people had been killed. These media reports and others were examined during the 2012 Hillsborough Independent Panel report.

The Sun

On 19 April, four days after the disaster, Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of The Sun, ordered "The Truth" as the front-page headline, followed by three sub-headlines: "Some fans picked pockets of victims", "Some fans urinated on the brave cops" and "Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life". Mackenzie reportedly spent two hours deciding on which headline to run; his original instinct being for "You Scum" before eventually deciding on "The Truth".

The information was provided to the newspaper by Whites News Agency in Sheffield; the newspaper cited claims by police inspector Gordon Sykes, that Liverpool fans had pick-pocketed the dead, as well as other claims by unnamed police officers and local Conservative MP Irvine Patnick. The Daily Express also carried Patnick's version, under the headline "Police Accuse Drunken Fans" which gave Patnick's views, saying he had told Margaret Thatcher, while escorting her on a tour of the ground after the disaster, of the "mayhem caused by drunks" and that policemen told him they were "hampered, harassed, punched and kicked".

The story accompanying The Sun headlines claimed "drunken Liverpool fans viciously attacked rescue workers as they tried to revive victims" and "police officers, firemen and ambulance crew were punched, kicked and urinated upon". A quotation, attributed to an unnamed policeman, claimed a partially unclothed dead girl had been verbally abused, and that Liverpool fans were "openly urinating on us and the bodies of the dead". In fact many Liverpool fans helped security personnel stretcher away victims and gave first aid to the injured. The Guardian later wrote that "The claim that supporters higher up the Leppings Lane terrace had urinated on police pulling bodies out of the crush appeared to have roots in the fact that those who were dying or sustaining serious injuries suffered compression asphyxia and many involuntarily urinated, vomited and emptied their bowels as they were crushed."

In their history of The Sun, Peter Chippendale and Chris Horrie wrote:

As MacKenzie's layout was seen by more and more people, a collective shudder ran through the office (but) MacKenzie's dominance was so total there was nobody left in the organisation who could rein him in except Murdoch. (Everyone in the office) seemed paralyzed—"looking like rabbits in the headlights"—as one hack described them. The error staring them in the face was too glaring. It obviously wasn't a silly mistake; nor was it a simple oversight. Nobody really had any comment on it—they just took one look and went away shaking their heads in wonder at the enormity of it. It was a 'classic smear'.

MacKenzie maintained for years that his "only mistake was to believe a Tory MP". In 1993, he told a House of Commons committee, "I regret Hillsborough. It was a fundamental mistake. The mistake was I believed what an MP said", but privately said at a 2006 dinner that he had only apologised under the instruction of Rupert Murdoch, believing: "all I did wrong was tell the truth ... I was not sorry then and I'm not sorry now". On Question Time the next year, MacKenzie publicly repeated the claims he said at the dinner; he said that he believed some of the material they published in The Sun but was not sure about all of it. He said in 2012, "Twenty-three years ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium ... these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters ... I published in good faith and I am sorry that it was so wrong". A member of the Hillsborough Families Support Group responded "too little, too late".

Widespread boycotts of the newspaper throughout Merseyside followed immediately and continue to this day. Boycotts include both customers refusing to purchase it, and retailers refusing to stock it. The Financial Times reported in 2019 that Merseyside sales were estimated to drop from 55,000 per day to 12,000 per day, an 80% decrease. Chris Horrie estimated in 2014 that the tabloid's owners had lost £15 million per month since the disaster, in 1989 prices. The Hillsborough Justice Campaign organized a less successful national boycott that had some impact on the paper's sales nationally.

In 2004, after Wayne Rooney gave exclusive interviews to The Sun, causing backlash in Liverpool, The Sun ran a front page story apologizing for "the most terrible mistake in its history", saying "We long ago apologised publicly ... We gladly say sorry again today: fully, openly, honestly and without reservation". It said criticism of Rooney was wrong and co-ordinated by the Liverpool Echo and Liverpool Post. The Liverpool Echo condemned the apology as "cynical and shameless". In 2012, under the headline "The Real Truth", The Sun made a front page apology, saying "we are profoundly sorry for false reports". The editor at the time, Dominic Mohan, wrote: "We published an inaccurate and offensive story about the events at Hillsborough. We said it was the truth - it wasn't ... for that we're deeply ashamed and profoundly sorry". Following the second inquest in 2016, The Sun's eighth and ninth pages carried images of the 96 victims and an editorial which apologised "unreservedly", saying "the police smeared [supporters] with a pack of lies which in 1989 the Sun and other media swallowed whole". A lengthier apology was published online.

James Murdoch made a full apology for The Sun's coverage when he appeared at a hearing of the House of Commons Select committee dealing with the News International phone hacking scandal in 2012.

On 12 September 2012, after the publication of the report exonerating the Liverpool fans, MacKenzie issued the following statement:

Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline. I too was totally misled. Twenty-three years ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield, in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium. I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster. As the prime minister has made clear, these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters thereby shifting the blame for the tragedy from themselves. It has taken more than two decades, 400,000 documents and a two-year inquiry to discover to my horror that it would have been far more accurate had I written the headline The Lies rather than The Truth. I published in good faith and I am sorry that it was so wrong.

In response, Trevor Hicks, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, rejected MacKenzie's apology as "too little, too late", calling him "lowlife, clever lowlife, but lowlife". A press conference held by families of the victims also banned all Sun reporters from entering, with a sign on the door reading "NO ENTRY TO SUN JOURNALISTS".

Following the April 2016 verdict of unlawful killing, The Sun and the first print edition of the Times (both owned by News International), did not cover the stories on their front pages, with The Sun relegating the story to pages 8 and 9. An apology appeared on page 10, reiterating previous statements that the 1989 headline had been an error of judgment.

The coverage was widely condemned on social media, with Twitter users saying that this reflected "Murdoch's view on Hillsborough", which was a "smear", which "now daren't speak its name". On the night of the verdict coverage, more than 124,000 tweets used the term The Sun.

However, on Sky News, The Sun's Political Editor Tom Newton Dunn defended this decision, saying: "I don't think it should all be about The Sun—it was not us who committed Hillsborough." Trevor Kavanagh, the political editor at the time of the Hillsborough disaster, said that he was "not sorry at all" about the reporting and supported his former boss Kelvin MacKenzie, stating that "we were clearly misled about the events and the authorities, including the police, actively concealed the truth".

In February 2017, Liverpool F.C. issued a ban on The Sun journalists from entering their grounds in response to the coverage of Hillsborough by the newspaper. Everton F.C. followed in April 2017 on the eve of the 28th anniversary of the disaster after a column by Kelvin MacKenzie concerning Everton footballer Ross Barkley. MacKenzie was suspended as a contributor to the newspaper.

The Times

The journalist Edward Pearce was criticized for writing a controversial article in the aftermath of the disaster, at a time when a number of victims' funerals were taking place. His column in The Sunday Times on 23 April 1989, included the text:

For the second time in half a decade a large body of Liverpool supporters has killed people ... the shrine in the Anfield goalmouth, the cursing of the police, all the theatricals, come sweetly to a city which is already the world capital of self-pity. There are soapy politicians to make a pet of Liverpool, and Liverpool itself is always standing by to make a pet of itself. 'Why us? Why are we treated like animals?' To which the plain answer is that a good and sufficient minority of you behave like animals.

Pearce went on to reflect that if South Yorkshire Police bore any responsibility, it was "for not realizing what brutes they had to handle."

Professor Phil Scraton described Pearce's comments as amongst the "most bigoted and factually inaccurate" published in the wake of the disaster. A number of complaints were made to the Press Council concerning the article, but the Council ruled that it was unable to adjudicate on comment pieces, though the Council noted that tragedy or disaster is not an occasion for writers to exercise gratuitous provocation.

On 27 April 2016, Times staffers in the sports department expressed their outrage over the paper's decision to cover 26 April inquest, which ruled that the 96 dead were unlawfully killed, only on an inside spread and the sports pages, with some in the newspaper claiming there was a "mutiny" in the sports department. The Times later tweeted that "We made a mistake with the front page of our first edition, and we fixed it for our second edition."

The Times was the only major UK newspaper not to give the story front-page coverage other than fellow News UK-owned Sun. Gary Lineker described the incident as "disgusting as it is unsurprising", and David Walsh, chief sports writer at the Sunday Times, said it was a "shocking misjudgment" to not include this story on the front page. However, insiders dismissed any suggestion that a visit by News UK owner Rupert Murdoch to the Times newsroom on the day of the verdict had anything to do with the editorial decision.

FHM

The November 2002 edition of the men's lifestyle magazine FHM in Australia was swiftly withdrawn from sale soon after its publication, and a public apology made in the Australian and British editions, because it contained jokes mocking the disaster. As a result, Emap Australia, who owned FHM at the time, pledged to make a donation to the families of the victims. Although the original apology was not printed in the magazine as it was not considered "serious enough", its Australian editor, Geoff Campbell, released a statement: "We deeply regret the photograph captions published in the November issue of the Australian edition of FHM, accompanying an article about the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. The right course of action is to withdraw this edition from sale—which we will be doing. We have been in contact with the Hillsborough Family Support Group and the Hillsborough Justice Campaign to express our deep regret and sincere apologies." The British edition disassociated itself from the controversy, stating: "FHM Australia has its own editorial team and these captions were written and published without consultation with the UK edition, or any other edition of FHM."

The vice-chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, Philip Hammond, said he wanted all football fans to boycott the magazine, saying, "I am going to write to every fanzine in the country—including Liverpool F.C.'s—telling them to ban FHM. People are very upset by it. I think there will be a real boycott." He added it would be like making jokes about the 2002 Bali bombings, in which eight fewer Australians were killed. The publication was finally discontinued in 2016, for unrelated reasons.

The Spectator

The Spectator was criticized for an editorial which appeared in the magazine on 16 October 2004 following the death of British hostage Kenneth John "Ken" Bigley in Iraq, in which it was claimed that the response to Bigley's killing was fueled by the fact he was from Liverpool, and went on to criticize the "drunken" fans at Hillsborough and call on them to accept responsibility for their "role" in the disaster:

The extreme reaction to Mr Bigley's murder is fed by the fact that he was a Liverpudlian. Liverpool is a handsome city with a tribal sense of community. A combination of economic misfortune—its docks were, fundamentally, on the wrong side of England when Britain entered what is now the European Union—and an excessive predilection for welfarism have created a peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche among many Liverpudlians. They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it. Part of this flawed psychological state is that they cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society. The deaths of more than 50 Liverpool football supporters at Hillsborough in 1989 was undeniably a greater tragedy than the single death, however horrible, of Mr Bigley; but that is no excuse for Liverpool's failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon. The police became a convenient scapegoat, and the Sun newspaper a whipping-boy for daring, albeit in a tasteless fashion, to hint at the wider causes of the incident.

Although the editor Boris Johnson did not write this piece, journalist Simon Heffer said he had written the first draft of the article at Johnson's request. Johnson apologised at the time of the article, traveling to Liverpool to do so, and again following the publication of the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012; Johnson's apology was rejected by Margaret Aspinall, chairperson of the Hillsborough Families Support Group, whose son James, 18, died in the disaster:

What he has got to understand is that we were speaking the truth for 23 years and apologies have only started to come today from them because of yesterday. It's too little, too late. It's fine to apologize afterwards. They just don't want their names in any more sleaze. No, his apology doesn't mean a thing to me.

The Spectator's comments were widely circulated following the April 2016 verdict by the Hillsborough inquest's second hearing proving unlawful killing of the 96 dead at Hillsborough.

EastEnders

In November 2007, the BBC soap opera EastEnders caused controversy when the character Minty Peterson (played by Cliff Parisi) made a reference to the disaster. During the episode car mechanic Minty said: "Five years out of Europe because of Heysel, because they penned you lot in to stop you fighting on the pitch and then what did we end up with? Hillsborough." This prompted 380 complaints and the BBC apologised, saying that the character was simply reminding another character, former football hooligan Jase Dyer, that the actions of hooligans led to the fencing-in of football fans. Ofcom also received 177 complaints.

Charles Itandje

Liverpool goalkeeper Charles Itandje was accused of having shown disrespect towards the Hillsborough victims during the 2009 remembrance ceremony, as he was spotted on camera "smiling and nudging" teammate Damien Plessis. He was suspended from the club for a fortnight and many fans felt he should not play for the club again. He was omitted from the first team squad and never played for the club in any capacity again.

Jeremy Hunt

On 28 June 2010, following England's departure from the 2010 FIFA World Cup competition in South Africa, the UK's Culture and Sport Secretary Jeremy Hunt praised the England fans for their behaviour during the competition, saying "I mean, not a single arrest for a football-related offence, and the terrible problems that we had in Heysel and Hillsborough in the 1980s seem now to be behind us." He later apologised and said "I know that fan unrest played no part in the terrible events of April 1989 and I apologize to Liverpool fans and the families of those killed and injured in the Hillsborough disaster if my comments caused any offence." Margaret Aspinall, chairperson of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, asked for a face to face meeting with Hunt before deciding if she would accept the apology.

Fans' chants

Fans of rival clubs have been known to chant about the Hillsborough disaster at football matches, in order to upset Liverpool fans. Following the findings of the Independent Panel in September 2012, Alex Ferguson and two Manchester United fan groups called for an end to the "sick chants". Leeds United chairman Ken Bates endorsed this call in the club programme and stated, "Leeds have suffered at times with reference to Galatasaray; some of our so-called fans have also been guilty as well, particularly in relation to Munich." This is a reference to the deaths of eight Manchester United players in the Munich air disaster of 1958.

Oliver Popplewell

In October 2011, Sir Oliver Popplewell, who chaired the public inquiry into the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire at Valley Parade that killed 56 people, called on the families of the Hillsborough victims to look at the "quiet dignity and great courage relatives in the West Yorkshire city had shown in the years following the tragedy". He said: "The citizens of Bradford behaved with quiet dignity and great courage. They did not harbour conspiracy theories. They did not seek endless further inquiries. They buried their dead, comforted the bereaved and succoured the injured. They organized a sensible compensation scheme and moved on. Is there, perhaps, a lesson there for the Hillsborough campaigners?"

Popplewell was criticized for the comments, including a rebuke from a survivor of the Bradford fire. Labour MP Steve Rotheram, commented: "How insensitive does somebody have to be to write that load of drivel?"

David Crompton

In 2013, a formal complaint was made against David Crompton, South Yorkshire's chief constable, over internal emails relating to the Hillsborough disaster. On 8 September 2012, just four days before the Hillsborough Independent Panel Report was published, Crompton had emailed the force's assistant chief constable Andy Holt and head of media Mark Thompson. In the email, which came to light as the result of a Freedom of Information request, Crompton had said that the families' "version of certain events has become 'the truth' even though it isn't". South Yorkshire's police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright appointed chief constable Simon Parr of Cambridgeshire Constabulary to head an investigation into the matter. Wright said: "The request has been submitted by a firm of solicitors in Liverpool acting on behalf of a number of individuals affected by the event."

In March 2016, Crompton announced that he would retire in November. On 26 April 2016, after the inquest jury delivered a verdict affirming all the charges against the police, Crompton "unequivocally accepted" the verdicts, including unlawful killing, said that the police operation at the stadium on the day of the disaster had been "catastrophically wrong", and apologized unreservedly. Following continued criticism of Crompton in the wake of the unlawful killing verdict, South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Billings suspended Crompton from duty on 27 April 2016.

Civil servant

In June 2014, an unnamed 24-year-old British civil servant was sacked for posting offensive comments about the disaster on Wikipedia.

Steven Cohen

In 2009, nearly twenty years to the day after the disaster, Steven Cohen, a presenter on Fox Soccer Channel and Sirius satellite radio in the United States (an Englishman and Chelsea fan), stated on his radio show that Liverpool fans "without tickets" were the "root cause" and "perpetrators" of the disaster. A boycott of advertisers by American Liverpool fans eventually brought about an apology from him. Despite this he was replaced as presenter of Fox Football Fone-in. His actions were disowned by Chelsea Football Club and he no longer works as a broadcaster.

Bernard Ingham

In 1996, Sir Bernard Ingham, former press secretary to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, caused controversy with his comments about the disaster. In a letter addressed to a victim's parent, Ingham wrote that the disaster was caused by "tanked up yobs". In another letter written to a Liverpool supporter, also written in 1996, Ingham remarked that people should "shut up about Hillsborough". On the day of the inquest verdict, Ingham refused to apologize or respond to the previous comments he made, telling a reporter, "I have nothing to say." There have since been calls to have Ingham stripped of his knighthood.

Topman

In March 2018, British clothing retailer Topman marketed a T-shirt which was interpreted by members of the public, including relatives of Hillsborough victims, as mocking the disaster. The T-shirt was red with white details like a Liverpool shirt, and had the number 96 on the back like a football shirt, with the text "Karma" and "What goes around comes back around", and a white rose, as associated with Yorkshire. Topman stated that the T-shirt was in reference to a Bob Marley song re-released in 1996 and apologised and withdrew the item.

Radio, television and theater

1989: After Dark (TV discussion programme)

On 20 May 1989, five weeks after the disaster, Channel 4's After Dark programme broadcast an extended live discussion called "Football – The Final Whistle?". Among the guests were bereaved father James Delaney and his wife Eileen, who said "they didn’t give the poor people who were killed any dignity . . . I bent down to kiss and talk to [my son] and as we stood up there was a policeman who came from behind me . . . trying to usher myself and my husband out . . . I had to scream at the police officer to allow us privacy . . . the total attitude was, you’ve identified number 33 so go!"

Further extracts from what Eileen Delaney said can be found on the Hillsborough Justice Campaign website and in Phil Scraton's book Hillsborough: The Truth.

1996: Hillsborough (TV drama)

A television drama, based on the disaster and subsequent events, titled simply Hillsborough, was produced by Granada Television in 1996. It won the BAFTA Award for Best Single Drama in 1997. The cast included Christopher Eccleston, Annabelle Apsion, Ricky Tomlinson and Mark Womack. The film was aired for the first time in 1996, and has been shown four times since then: in 1998, in 2009, in September 2012 (shortly after the release of the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel), and again on 1 May 2016 on ITV.

2009: The Reunion (Radio discussion programme)

On the 20th anniversary of the disaster, BBC Radio 4 produced an episode of their series The Reunion on the subject of Hillsborough. Sue MacGregor brought together a group of people who were involved in the disaster to talk about the events of that day at a time when they were still in the midst of their fight for justice. The programme was repeated on 1 May 2016, at the end of the week in which the Hillsborough inquest ruled that the 96 Liverpool football fans died unlawfully.

2014: Hillsborough (TV documentary)

The American sports network ESPN produced the documentary Hillsborough as part of its 30 for 30 series of sports films (under a new "Soccer Stories" subdivision). Directed by Daniel Gordon and co-produced with the BBC, the two-hour film chronicles the disaster, the investigations, and their lingering effects; it also includes interviews with survivors, victims' relatives, police officers and investigators. Hillsborough first aired in the US on 15 April 2014, the 25th anniversary of the disaster.

As the documentary included previously unreleased security camera footage from the stadium on the day of the disaster, it could not be shown in the UK upon initial release due to the 2012 High Court inquest still being in progress. After the inquest verdict, the BBC aired the documentary on 8 May 2016, with additional footage from the inquest, as well as its final verdict.

2022: Anne (TV drama)

Anne is a four-part docudrama about Anne Williams' campaign to reveal the truth about her son's death, which aired on ITV in January 2022. Williams was portrayed by Maxine Peake whose performance was described in The Guardian as "Almost unwatchably intense".

Stage plays

Two British stage plays also dealt with the disaster with different view points:

Jonathan Harvey's Guiding Star showed a father coming to terms with what had happened some years later.

Lance Nielsen wrote Waiting For Hillsborough about two Liverpool families waiting for news of their missing loved ones on the day, which leads to discussion of football safety and the culture of blame. Nielsen's play won him an award at the 1999 Liverpool Arts and Entertainment awards and was highly praised by the Liverpool press.