*BONUS* - Hillsborough: Justice for the 96

Das Criminal

This episode is upcycled from our Patreon page; it was originally published in April for our Connolly Collective. We will be back next week with a brand new episode!

It is April 15th, 1989. Your club, Liverpool FC, have reached the semi-finals of the oldest club competition in the world - the FA Cup. They are due to face Nottingham Forest in the neutral venue of Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield.

Somehow, you manage to snag a couple of tickets. You go in. You are in the Leppings Lane terrace behind one of the goals. You begin to feel dizzy as bodies crush around you. Some people are yelling. Others are being pulled up from the lower tier into the upper tier by fellow fans. A few try to climb the fences that separate the stands from the football pitch but are stopped by police.

Eventually, you manage to escape the crush. Ninety-four people have lost their lives that day. Another dies a few days later, and a 96th dies in 1993 after having been kept in a vegetative state since that day. You are alive, fortunately. The day after, you turn over the newspaper to find the press accusing you and your fellow fans of causing the crush. You are called hooligans and thugs. You are accused of pissing on paramedics and fighting with police. It is your fault, you are told.

This is what happened on April 15th, 1989. What began as a bright Saturday with football to enjoy ended in tragedy. And it was no mere accident. At every moment of the disaster, local authorities failed to act. Moreover, they then conspired to cover-up their many failures. This cover-up ran from the Yorkshire police up to the very highest pinnacle of power: the British government.

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Sources: https://bit.ly/3bhoMVw