On April 15, 1989, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest met in an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, a neutral ground, before 54,000 spectators. Liverpool’s supporters were given the Leppings Lane end, whose standing terrace was divided by radial fences into pens, with a high perimeter fence at the front to keep fans from the pitch. In the half hour before the 3 p.m. kick-off, a dangerous crush built up outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles, where some 10,100 terrace ticket holders had to pass through just 23 turnstiles.
At 2:52 p.m. the match commander, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield of South Yorkshire Police, ordered a large exit gate opened to relieve the pressure outside. About 2,000 supporters poured through a tunnel marked “Standing” that led directly into pens 3 and 4 — already full — with no one posted to close the tunnel or direct fans to the emptier side pens. The crowd in the central pens became a crush in which people were pressed helplessly against the perimeter fence, and a crush barrier in pen 4 gave way. The match was stopped at 3:06 p.m. Ninety-four Liverpool supporters died that day, a 95th four days later, and more than 760 people were injured.
Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry reported within the year. His interim report, in August 1989, found that the main reason for the disaster was a failure of police control, and it cleared the supporters of blame: the fans had not caused the crush. Duckenfield, Taylor found, had failed to act as the crush developed — and had afterwards lied, claiming the gate had been forced open by fans. The final report, in January 1990, recommended the end of standing terraces at major grounds, leading to all-seater stadiums across the top of English football and the removal of the perimeter fences.
For the families, the official record then failed for a generation. The original inquests returned verdicts of accidental death. The Sun newspaper’s front page headed “The Truth”, fed by police sources, falsely blamed the victims, and is boycotted on Merseyside to this day. Not until the Hillsborough Independent Panel reported in September 2012 — having examined 450,000 pages of documents disclosed for the first time — was the record set straight: the Panel found that no Liverpool supporter contributed to the disaster, that police statements had been altered to shift blame, and that the emergency response had been so flawed that 41 of the victims might have survived with better care. The Prime Minister apologised in Parliament.
The original inquest verdicts were quashed, and fresh inquests — the longest in British legal history — concluded in April 2016 that the victims had been unlawfully killed, and that the behaviour of the supporters had played no part in the disaster. By then the toll stood at 96, Tony Bland having died of his injuries in 1993; in 2021 Andrew Devine, who had lived with catastrophic injuries since 1989, became the 97th, a coroner ruling that he too had been unlawfully killed. Duckenfield was tried for gross negligence manslaughter and acquitted at a retrial in November 2019; no one has been convicted over the disaster itself.