That was said to me (Mark Rowe writes) after Consec yesterday, the annual conference of the Association of Security Consultants (ASC), held as ever under the Chatham House rule. Earlier, the speaker had said the disorder at the final of the UEFA Euro 2021 championship at Wembley ‘could have been a 350 to 400 fatality incident’.
In other words, the home of English football, the sacred site of the 1966 World Cup final, as host of one of the major events in world sport, could have seen a loss of life four times greater than Hillsborough, the disaster in 1989 that led to the Taylor Report and all-seater stadiums in England, a profound change in the game for spectators that has only been relaxed this year (see the SGSA website).
Why the sense of certainty about a future ‘Hillsborough’? Three reasons. First, that ‘near miss’ at the England-Italy final, as laid out exhaustively in the review by Baroness Casey published in December 2021. Even the sub-chapter headings are exhausting and chilling: ‘the early start’ (disorder went on from midday, and the crowd was so large by 3pm – when the police deployed, expecting a 12 hour shift to 3am would suffice – that the situation was ‘gone’). ‘Huge use of alcohol and drugs on the street’ (hence the reckless and aggressive behaviour of ticketless fans who tried to get in, and who screamed at Italian fans inside, one English fan taking perhaps five stewards to subdue). ‘Excess crowds overloaded’, including in confined spaces and ‘door wedging’; ‘progressive crowd collapse on staircases’; and ‘slip, trip or fall in a moving crowd with potential for trampling’. Someone who fell was ‘buried’ under others and had a seizure, but recovered.
As the Review laid out, had things turned out differently, as they could have – had England not lost the penalty shoot-out, had the weather not turned wet – people could have died after the match. To quote halfway through the Review:
Had England won, the 6,000-strong crowd outside, which remained there for the whole duration of the match, would likely have been motivated to seek entry for the presentation of the trophy. It is plausible that they would have done so at the same time as many of those inside began to leave (page 59).
In other words, the hooligans who had wanted to get in for many hours may well have tried to force their way in, while 80,000 (including 1700 to 2000 who had forced entry already – no-one can say the number for sure; minus 350 to 400 of those had been ejected) were leaving. That total of 350 to 400 (no such speculation is given in the Casey Review) becomes understandable. After the publication of the Casey Review I imagined a future disaster (see link) but didn’t put any number of casualties.
Second reason: what has changed? Anything? Baroness Casey in a foreword to her Review asked why was it ‘somehow acceptable to break into a stadium or abuse disabled entrances’ for the thousands of ticketless men (almost all men, the CCTV shows). That culture is unchanged; unchallenged. Illegal drugs are as readily available (and as cheap an option as alcohol) as ever.
Wembley’s review after the July 11, 2021 final came up with 17 recommendations; 14 have been carried through. However the stadium has made little progress on the most important, the setting up of an outer perimeter more sturdy than the temporary fencing used at the Euro final. Presumably something as high and hard to climb as the wall at Euston Gardens in front of Euston station to keep out HS2 protesters would be required; not something easily or quickly installed for big occasions. Besides, the HS2 line during the covid pandemic bought up the fencing, portable toilets and so on, leaving the UK events sector short.
Like other stadiums such as the London Stadium, the home of West Ham FC, Wembley is having difficulty in setting the boundary for its outer perimeter, on land it does not even own. Nor is there only one other owner to deal with. Land owners are understandably shy about sharing responsibility (and therefore taking on some responsibility) with Wembley in case of liability for injuries or worse. Yet it is a basic of security as true now as of castles and their keeps in the Middle Ages; if you don’t have an outer wall to keep the unauthorised out, you in effect have no security until the keep itself, in the case of Wembley the stadium ‘footprint’, which at the Euro final led to the ticketless and anti-social forcing open emergency fire doors, entrances for the disabled, and tailgating and getting in at any turnstile.
And as someone mentioned from the floor of Consec; the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley, when Barcelona beat Manchester United, had much the same disorder. Anyone who has attended any big football game at Wembley, the two FA Cup semi-finals or FA Cup final, can tell you of the zoo-like misbehaviour, the open drug-taking, the urinating on grass and in the street, the random fights cheered on. (In fact to call it a zoo is unfair to some animals.)
Which leads to the third reason: history. As Baroness Casey wrote in the Review: “The events at Hillsborough in 1989 have weighed heavily on my mind.” Anyone who policed or managed stadiums in the 1970s and 1980s is retired now or dead. But they could tell you how a Hillsborough-size crush could have happened to them. In fact it did happen; at Ibrox, the Glasgow home of Rangers in 1971 (66 dead); at Spartak Moscow in a UEFA Cup match in 1982 (when ‘at least’ 67 died; source, Sport and Society in the Soviet Union: The Politics of Football after Stalin, by Manfred Zeller, published 2018). Even Burnden Park, Bolton in 1946 (33 dead; the case for reform of stadium safety reached the Cabinet of the then Attlee Labour Government, and was dropped).
Numerous near misses never made headlines. The pre-Hillsborough near misses and fatalities (and hundreds of injured in each case besides) happened for the same, common reasons: crowd density, a bad attitude between police and the fans that meant they were routinely caged and corralled. That April 1989 Hillsborough semi-final was between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, managed by Brian Clough. In the late 1960s as he made his name at Derby County, crowds flocked to the home matches then at the Baseball Ground, in a working-class part of the then town, as so many stadiums were in those days. Not only might crowds be so tight together that no one person could move where they wanted, and might even have their feet lifted from the ground; that might happen outside, beforehand, as crowds funnelled to pay in cash at a few turnstiles.
Just as, if you cross the road to the newsagent, and it’s a busy road, and you aren’t as careful with road safety as you might be, sooner or later you will have a ‘near miss’ and, statistically, will become ever more likely to be hit by traffic, so the likelihood of a repeat of Hillsborough, some time, whenever circumstances come together, becomes, more or less, inevitable.
When it does happen, mothers will mourn for sons, florists will run out of flowers, and the authorities will order an Inquiry. QCs earning £600 an hour will forensically examine those who were putting in a shift on the day and will make them feel like criminals. Long reports will be published that few will read fully, and the authorities will say what they always do: “Lessons will be learned,” about an avoidable and preventable event.
