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 Post subject: Bradford
PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2010 9:39 pm 
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25 years on.

I remember watching it unfold on the box, it didn't appear to be the disaster it turned into at the time.

RIP

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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2010 9:53 pm 
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Bratford.

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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2010 10:02 pm 
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I was in a hotel in Llangollen that day

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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2010 10:27 pm 
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I came home from watching city with my brother to be met by our very worried mum who had only heard the "city" part of the story on the radio...

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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 2:31 am 
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Literally forgot bradford existed for about 4 years even though i was born and raised in leeds, once i finished going to school there there is no reason whatsoever to go there


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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 6:05 am 
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ESM wrote:
25 years on.

I remember watching it unfold on the box, it didn't appear to be the disaster it turned into at the time.

RIP


What happened?

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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 8:19 am 
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BiscuitBlueCheese wrote:
Literally forgot bradford existed for about 4 years even though i was born and raised in leeds, once i finished going to school there there is no reason whatsoever to go there


Pilgrimage to where the Yorkshire Ripper lived?


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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 8:53 am 
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The disaster was a result of the contempt football club owners and the authorities had for supporters. It took two more disasters before anything was done.

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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 8:56 am 
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You've got a serious class struggle complex going on at the moment Slart.


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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 9:24 am 
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South East Citizen wrote:
You've got a serious class struggle complex going on at the moment Slart.


Bradford had an old wooden stand filled with rubbish from the 1960s. The council carried out a safety check and told the club it was a fire hazzard. The club ignored the council's letter. The council didn't follow up and close access to the stand. Over 50 people burned to death and hundreds more were injured.

The inquiry stated, amongst many things, that if fences are used between the crowd and the pitch then there should be exit gates in case of an emergency.

This was ignored. Two years later nearly one hundred people were crushed to death at Hillsborough.

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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 9:47 am 
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South East Citizen wrote:
You've got a serious class struggle complex going on at the moment Slart.


more rage at what people will do to other people to make a bit/save a bit of money. righteously livid.

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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 11:52 am 
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Bradford remembered: The unheeded warnings that led to tragedyTwenty-fifth anniversary service marks the day Bradford's Valley Parade ground became a sad monument to neglect
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David Conn
The Guardian, Wednesday 12 May 2010
Article history

Flashback to the dreadful day 25 years ago when 56 people perished needlessly after fire engulfed Bradford's Valley Parade. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

Under a grey sky in Bradford's Centenary Square yesterday, the archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, led a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the appalling day in 1985, when 56 people died and 265 were injured in the fire which engulfed the old wooden main stand at Bradford City's Valley Parade ground.

It was a horrific landmark in English football's history of disasters, and its cause, revealed by the legal processes which followed, was not mere accident, but scandalous neglect.


The official inquiry by a high court judge, Mr Justice Popplewell, heard forensic evidence that the fire, at the final game of the season for a sparkling young side who had already won promotion from the old Third Division, was caused by the "accidental lighting of debris" under the stand. A discarded match, cigarette or pipe tobacco from a spectator smoking above was identified as the likely cause, but the accumulation of rubbish itself became a symbol of football's widespread mismanagement.

Bradford City had fallen into receivership in 1983, then were bought by Stafford Heginbotham, who became the chairman, and Jack Tordoff, the vice-chairman. Tordoff, now 75, was, still is, one of Bradford's most successful businessmen, a major shareholder and chairman of the JCT600 group of car franchises. In an interview with the Guardian last month, Tordoff recalled that he and Heginbotham bought the club for around £30,000 each. Heginbotham, whose own business was failing, ran the football side while Tordoff managed the club financially.

"We were not in it to make a profit," Tordoff said. "We gave our time voluntarily, to maintain football for the people of Bradford."

The police officer responsible for searching the debris of the burnt-out stand told Popplewell he found litter which had been there for years, including a 1968 copy of the local newspaper, the Telegraph and Argus.

It then emerged that West Yorkshire metropolitan county council, which was responsible for football ground and fire safety, had written to the club on 18 July 1984, specifically warning about that main stand: "The timber construction is a fire hazard and in particular, there is a build-up of combustible materials in the voids beneath the seats. A carelessly discarded cigarette could give rise to a fire risk."

The club did not act on that warning, nor did it reply to the letter. Tordoff told Popplewell, and the subsequent legal action by the bereaved and injured, that he believed the letter referred to surface litter, not to rubbish under the stands.

In his recent interview he said they were operating "in the culture of those days", when the authorities had a less rigorous approach to health and safety. If the council considered the fire risk "a big issue", he argued, it had the power to close the ground, which it did not do.

The inquest into the deaths, in July 1985, relied on the same evidence presented to Popplewell. The coroner, James Turnbull, advised the jury that a verdict of misadventure, not accidental death, would mean the fire could have been foreseen and action taken to avoid it.

"It crossed my mind to consider manslaughter," Turnbull, now retired, recalls. "It is difficult, to make a corporate body liable, but with the warnings they had, it was very close. Ultimately I thought misadventure was more appropriate, and the jury came to that conclusion."

Tordoff told the Guardian he would have been "devastated" by a manslaughter recommendation, stressing again that he and Heginbotham, who has since died, were giving their time for free. "It was a full-time job we were doing part-time," he said. "We did our best."

After the misadventure verdict, test cases were brought against the club and council for negligence, by David Britton, a police sergeant injured working heroically to save spectators' lives, and by Susan Fletcher, who lost her husband John, 11-year-old son Andrew, John's brother Peter and his father Edmond in the fire. On 23 February 1987 Sir Joseph Cantley found the club and the county council, by then abolished, respectively two-thirds and one-third responsible.

"The continued negligence of the club and the continuing indifference of the council in various departments after being alerted to the existence of the danger were concurrent in causing this disaster," he ruled.

The judgment meant that 110 bereaved or injured people and 44 police officers would have their claims for compensation met, a multimillion pound settlement which was then the largest civil action brought in Britain.

By then, Valley Parade had been rebuilt and reopened, a full house watching a City side play an England representative team, on 14 December 1986. The team had played their intervening matches at Huddersfield Town, Leeds United, then Bradford's Odsal Stadium, and the return to Valley Parade was hugely emotional, felt by many fans as a monument to life continuing after disaster.

The rebuilding, which Tordoff oversaw, was paid for largely with public money; West Yorkshire metropolitan county council gave the club £1.4m even while it was jointly being sued for negligence. Further grants came from the Football Trust, and the club's insurance – Tordoff said they received £200,000 more than they needed.

In January 1988, Tordoff bought Heginbotham's stake in City, paying around £400,000 for the shares which had originally cost Heginbotham around £30,000. Tordoff described that as "a fair price", saying the rebuilt stadium gave the club more "balance-sheet value".

In 1990, Tordoff sold out himself, for £700,000, to a new owner, Dave Simpson. Tordoff acknowledged that was a "decent profit" but said the money all went back into the club in sponsorship from JCT600.

Popplewell made extensive safety recommendations after Bradford, although his inquiry was substantially concerned with hooliganism, taking in a riot at a match between Birmingham City and Leeds United on the same day, then the Heysel disaster, which happened 18 days after the fire. Popplewell concluded that all football supporters should hold membership cards, endorsing the policy being pursued by Margaret Thatcher's government but opposed as an identity-card scheme by supporters' groups.

He recommended that all grounds be designated to require a safety certificate, that no wooden stands be built, and that fences around the pitch, which would have been lethal at Bradford, need not come down, but must have wide enough exit gates to allow fans out in an emergency.

Yet that recommendation was not implemented, with disastrous consequences at Hillsborough four years later, where 96 Liverpool supporters died, crushed behind the fences.

Martin Fletcher, Susan's other son, was 12 when he lost his father, brother, uncle and grandfather to the Bradford fire, but survived himself. Now a chartered accountant, with an MA from Warwick University and postgraduate diploma in law, he has extensively studied the processes which followed the fire, and its surrounding circumstances.

"The club at the time took no actual responsibility for its actions and nobody has ever really been held accountable for the level of negligence which took place," he argues now. "It was appalling that public money was given to the club while it was still owned by the same shareholders under whose direction the fire had happened.

"I do not include the people currently running the club, who have always displayed a great, sensitive duty to the memory of those who died. Yesterday's events were beautifully planned and it was touching to see so many Bradford people out in support on a working day.

"I was at Hillsborough with friends, so I bore witness to that disaster, which was a clear testament to the failure of Popplewell's report to properly address safety at sports grounds. The only reason I feel my family did not die in vain is the pioneering research work for victims by Bradford University's plastic surgery and burns research unit, which continues to this day."

In January 1990, Lord Justice Taylor produced his final report after Hillsborough, rejecting identity cards, and demanding football conclusively sweep away its neglectful approach to supporters. Taylor's safety recommendations for all grounds were swiftly passed into law, heralding English football's true rebuilding.

He lamented that the recommendations of eight previous reports had not been implemented, following disasters or crises dating from overcrowding at the first Wembley FA Cup final of 1923 to Bradford. Asking why, Taylor suggested one main reason: "Insufficient concern for the safety and wellbeing of spectators."

That is the culture whose passing was marked yesterday, along with the remembrance of so many innocent lives lost.

_________________
"It felt like a really pointless version of ketamine: no psychedelic effects, no pleasant slide into rubbery nonsense, just a sudden drop off the cliff of wrongness."
"i'm gonna wreck you so bad we're going to have to change church"


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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 11:52 am 
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Bradford remembered: The unheeded warnings that led to tragedyTwenty-fifth anniversary service marks the day Bradford's Valley Parade ground became a sad monument to neglect
(4)Tweet this (9)Comments (12)


David Conn
The Guardian, Wednesday 12 May 2010
Article history

Flashback to the dreadful day 25 years ago when 56 people perished needlessly after fire engulfed Bradford's Valley Parade. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

Under a grey sky in Bradford's Centenary Square yesterday, the archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, led a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the appalling day in 1985, when 56 people died and 265 were injured in the fire which engulfed the old wooden main stand at Bradford City's Valley Parade ground.

It was a horrific landmark in English football's history of disasters, and its cause, revealed by the legal processes which followed, was not mere accident, but scandalous neglect.


The official inquiry by a high court judge, Mr Justice Popplewell, heard forensic evidence that the fire, at the final game of the season for a sparkling young side who had already won promotion from the old Third Division, was caused by the "accidental lighting of debris" under the stand. A discarded match, cigarette or pipe tobacco from a spectator smoking above was identified as the likely cause, but the accumulation of rubbish itself became a symbol of football's widespread mismanagement.

Bradford City had fallen into receivership in 1983, then were bought by Stafford Heginbotham, who became the chairman, and Jack Tordoff, the vice-chairman. Tordoff, now 75, was, still is, one of Bradford's most successful businessmen, a major shareholder and chairman of the JCT600 group of car franchises. In an interview with the Guardian last month, Tordoff recalled that he and Heginbotham bought the club for around £30,000 each. Heginbotham, whose own business was failing, ran the football side while Tordoff managed the club financially.

"We were not in it to make a profit," Tordoff said. "We gave our time voluntarily, to maintain football for the people of Bradford."

The police officer responsible for searching the debris of the burnt-out stand told Popplewell he found litter which had been there for years, including a 1968 copy of the local newspaper, the Telegraph and Argus.

It then emerged that West Yorkshire metropolitan county council, which was responsible for football ground and fire safety, had written to the club on 18 July 1984, specifically warning about that main stand: "The timber construction is a fire hazard and in particular, there is a build-up of combustible materials in the voids beneath the seats. A carelessly discarded cigarette could give rise to a fire risk."

The club did not act on that warning, nor did it reply to the letter. Tordoff told Popplewell, and the subsequent legal action by the bereaved and injured, that he believed the letter referred to surface litter, not to rubbish under the stands.

In his recent interview he said they were operating "in the culture of those days", when the authorities had a less rigorous approach to health and safety. If the council considered the fire risk "a big issue", he argued, it had the power to close the ground, which it did not do.

The inquest into the deaths, in July 1985, relied on the same evidence presented to Popplewell. The coroner, James Turnbull, advised the jury that a verdict of misadventure, not accidental death, would mean the fire could have been foreseen and action taken to avoid it.

"It crossed my mind to consider manslaughter," Turnbull, now retired, recalls. "It is difficult, to make a corporate body liable, but with the warnings they had, it was very close. Ultimately I thought misadventure was more appropriate, and the jury came to that conclusion."

Tordoff told the Guardian he would have been "devastated" by a manslaughter recommendation, stressing again that he and Heginbotham, who has since died, were giving their time for free. "It was a full-time job we were doing part-time," he said. "We did our best."

After the misadventure verdict, test cases were brought against the club and council for negligence, by David Britton, a police sergeant injured working heroically to save spectators' lives, and by Susan Fletcher, who lost her husband John, 11-year-old son Andrew, John's brother Peter and his father Edmond in the fire. On 23 February 1987 Sir Joseph Cantley found the club and the county council, by then abolished, respectively two-thirds and one-third responsible.

"The continued negligence of the club and the continuing indifference of the council in various departments after being alerted to the existence of the danger were concurrent in causing this disaster," he ruled.

The judgment meant that 110 bereaved or injured people and 44 police officers would have their claims for compensation met, a multimillion pound settlement which was then the largest civil action brought in Britain.

By then, Valley Parade had been rebuilt and reopened, a full house watching a City side play an England representative team, on 14 December 1986. The team had played their intervening matches at Huddersfield Town, Leeds United, then Bradford's Odsal Stadium, and the return to Valley Parade was hugely emotional, felt by many fans as a monument to life continuing after disaster.

The rebuilding, which Tordoff oversaw, was paid for largely with public money; West Yorkshire metropolitan county council gave the club £1.4m even while it was jointly being sued for negligence. Further grants came from the Football Trust, and the club's insurance – Tordoff said they received £200,000 more than they needed.

In January 1988, Tordoff bought Heginbotham's stake in City, paying around £400,000 for the shares which had originally cost Heginbotham around £30,000. Tordoff described that as "a fair price", saying the rebuilt stadium gave the club more "balance-sheet value".

In 1990, Tordoff sold out himself, for £700,000, to a new owner, Dave Simpson. Tordoff acknowledged that was a "decent profit" but said the money all went back into the club in sponsorship from JCT600.

Popplewell made extensive safety recommendations after Bradford, although his inquiry was substantially concerned with hooliganism, taking in a riot at a match between Birmingham City and Leeds United on the same day, then the Heysel disaster, which happened 18 days after the fire. Popplewell concluded that all football supporters should hold membership cards, endorsing the policy being pursued by Margaret Thatcher's government but opposed as an identity-card scheme by supporters' groups.

He recommended that all grounds be designated to require a safety certificate, that no wooden stands be built, and that fences around the pitch, which would have been lethal at Bradford, need not come down, but must have wide enough exit gates to allow fans out in an emergency.

Yet that recommendation was not implemented, with disastrous consequences at Hillsborough four years later, where 96 Liverpool supporters died, crushed behind the fences.

Martin Fletcher, Susan's other son, was 12 when he lost his father, brother, uncle and grandfather to the Bradford fire, but survived himself. Now a chartered accountant, with an MA from Warwick University and postgraduate diploma in law, he has extensively studied the processes which followed the fire, and its surrounding circumstances.

"The club at the time took no actual responsibility for its actions and nobody has ever really been held accountable for the level of negligence which took place," he argues now. "It was appalling that public money was given to the club while it was still owned by the same shareholders under whose direction the fire had happened.

"I do not include the people currently running the club, who have always displayed a great, sensitive duty to the memory of those who died. Yesterday's events were beautifully planned and it was touching to see so many Bradford people out in support on a working day.

"I was at Hillsborough with friends, so I bore witness to that disaster, which was a clear testament to the failure of Popplewell's report to properly address safety at sports grounds. The only reason I feel my family did not die in vain is the pioneering research work for victims by Bradford University's plastic surgery and burns research unit, which continues to this day."

In January 1990, Lord Justice Taylor produced his final report after Hillsborough, rejecting identity cards, and demanding football conclusively sweep away its neglectful approach to supporters. Taylor's safety recommendations for all grounds were swiftly passed into law, heralding English football's true rebuilding.

He lamented that the recommendations of eight previous reports had not been implemented, following disasters or crises dating from overcrowding at the first Wembley FA Cup final of 1923 to Bradford. Asking why, Taylor suggested one main reason: "Insufficient concern for the safety and wellbeing of spectators."

That is the culture whose passing was marked yesterday, along with the remembrance of so many innocent lives lost.

_________________
"It felt like a really pointless version of ketamine: no psychedelic effects, no pleasant slide into rubbery nonsense, just a sudden drop off the cliff of wrongness."
"i'm gonna wreck you so bad we're going to have to change church"


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