Hillsborough Voices


Book Description

On 15 April 1989, the world witnessed one of the worst football disasters in history occur at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. 96 people were crushed to death and another 766 injured in a tragedy that was later admitted to have been exacerbated by police failures. Hillsborough Voices does justice to the memory of all those who died and for all those left behind. From the tragic events of the day to what unfolded in the hours, days and eventually years that followed, the book will interweave the voices of those who were there with the families and friends of those who died, and all those who have played key roles in the long search for the truth. The author, Kevin Sampson, has a long history with Hillsborough. Not only was he there as a fan to witness the horror first-hand, he also helped organise the Hillsborough benefit concert at Anfield and has close connections with the justice campaign. He has conducted exhaustive and exclusive interviews both with people who have become familiar public figures and those who will be telling their heart-rending personal stories for the first time – to bring us the full story. The book will be fully endorsed and promoted by the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and will carry the official HJC logo.




Hillsborough - The Truth


Book Description

This is the definitive, unique account of the disaster in which 96 men, women and children were killed, hundreds injured and thousands traumatised. It details the appalling treatment endured by the bereaved and survivors in the immediate aftermath, the inhumanity of the identification process and the vilification of fans in the national and international media. In 2012, Phil Scraton was primary author of the ground-breaking report published by the Hillsborough Independent Panel following its new research into thousands of documents disclosed by all agencies involved. Against a backdrop of almost three decades of persistent struggle by bereaved families and survivors, in this new edition he reflects on the Panel’s in-depth work, its revelatory findings and their unprecedented impact – an unreserved apology from the Prime Minister; new criminal investigations; the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s largest-ever inquiry; the quashing of 96 inquest verdicts; a review of all health and pathology policies. Paving the way for truth recovery and institutional accountability in other controversial cases, he details the process and considers the impact of the longest ever inquests, from the preliminary hearings to their comprehensive, devastating verdicts. Powerful, disturbing and harrowing, Hillsborough: The Truth exposes the institutional complacency that led to the unlawful killing of the 96, revealing how the interests of ordinary people are marginalised when those in authority sacrifice truth and accountability to protect their reputations.




And the Sun Shines Now


Book Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE FEATURED IN THE OBSERVER'S SPORTS WRITERS' BOOKS OF THE YEAR On 15 April 1989, 96 people were fatally injured on a football terrace at an FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield. The Hillsborough disaster was broadcast live on the BBC; it left millions of people traumatised, and English football in ruins. And the Sun Shines Now is not a book about Hillsborough. It is a book about what arrived in the wake of unquestionably the most controversial tragedy in the post-war era of Britain's history. The Taylor Report. Italia 90. Gazza's tears. All seater stadia. Murdoch. Sky. Nick Hornby. The Premier League. The transformation of a game that once connected club to community to individual into a global business so rapacious the true fans have been forgotten, disenfranchised. In powerful polemical prose, against a backbone of rigorous research and interviews, Adrian Tempany deconstructs the past quarter century of English football and examines its place in the world. How did Hillsborough and the death of 96 Liverpool fans come to change the national game beyond recognition? And is there any hope that clubs can reconnect with a new generation of fans when you consider the startling statistic that the average age of season ticket holder here is 41, compared to Germany's 21? Perhaps the most honest account of the relationship between the football and the state yet written, And the Sun Shines Now is a brutal assessment of the modern game.




The Hillsborough Disaster


Book Description

An examination of the Hillsborough disaster, drawing on eyewitness accounts and interviews with those who were there and those most affected.




The Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel


Book Description

96 women, men and children died as a result of the disaster in Hillsborough Stadium on 15 April 1989. They were crushed due to overcrowding in the Leppings Lane terrace, penned in by the ground's fencing. Hundreds more were injured and thousands traumatised. Lord Justice Taylor led a judicial inquiry (1990, Cm. 962, ISBN 9780101096225), concluding that the main cause of the disaster was the failure of police control. The next 11 years saw a variety of investigations and proceedings, including a scrutiny of new evidence (Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, 1998, Cm. 3878, ISBN 9780101387828). Yet many bereaved families felt that the true context, circumstances and aftermath had not been adequately made public, and were particularly aggrieved that it had become widely assumed that Liverpool fans' behaviour had contributed to the disaster. The Independent Panel was established in 2010 to oversee full public disclosure of all documents relating to the disaster and to report on its work. This report is in three parts. Firstly it shows what was already known and in the public domain by 2010. Secondly, in 12 detailed chapters, it describes what the disclosed documents add to public understanding. The third part gives a review of options for providing an archive of the documents. The disclosed documents (available at http://panel.hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/) add considerably to public understanding. They show that multiple factors were responsible for the tragedy and that the fans were not the cause. The report also shows that the bereaved families met a series of obstacles in their search for justice over more than 20 years.




Breaking Loose Together


Book Description

Ten years before the start of the American Revolution, backcountry settlers in the North Carolina Piedmont launched their own defiant bid for economic independence and political liberty. The Regulator Rebellion of 1766-71 pitted thousands of farmers, many of them religious radicals inspired by the Great Awakening, against political and economic elites who opposed the Regulators' proposed reforms. The conflict culminated on May 16, 1771, when a colonial militia defeated more than 2,000 armed farmers in a pitched battle near Hillsborough. At least 6,000 Regulators and sympathizers were forced to swear their allegiance to the government as the victorious troops undertook a punitive march through Regulator settlements. Seven farmers were hanged. Using sources that include diaries, church minutes, legal papers, and the richly detailed accounts of the Regulators themselves, Marjoleine Kars delves deeply into the world and ideology of free rural colonists. She examines the rebellion's economic, religious, and political roots and explores its legacy in North Carolina and beyond. The compelling story of the Regulator Rebellion reveals just how sharply elite and popular notions of independence differed on the eve of the Revolution.




Division Street


Book Description

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S ELIOT PRIZE AND COSTA POETRY AWARD 2013* 'A stone is lobbed in '84, hangs like a star over Orgreave. Welcome to Sheffield. Border-land, our town of miracles...' - 'Scab' From the clash between striking miners and police to the delicate conflicts in personal relationships, Helen Mort's stunning debut is marked by distance and division. Named for a street in Sheffield, this is a collection that cherishes specificity: the particularity of names; the reflections the world throws back at us; the precise moment of a realisation. Distinctive and assured, these poems show us how, at the site of conflict, a moment of reconciliation can be born.




Hillsborough Untold


Book Description

On 15 April 1989, ninety-six spectators lost their lives at Sheffield's Hillsborough Stadium as they gathered for an FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. The events of that spring afternoon sparked a controversy that continues to reverberate through British football and policing to this day. Norman Bettison, a Chief Inspector in the South Yorkshire Police at the time of the Hillsborough disaster, witnessed the tragedy as a spectator at the match. Since then, he has found himself one of the focal points of outrage over the actions of the police. Comments he made in the wake of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012 stoked further criticism in the press and in Parliament and, in October 2012, he resigned from his job as Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police. This personal account describes how the Hillsborough disaster unfolded, provides an insight into what was happening at South Yorkshire Police headquarters in the aftermath, and gives an objective and compassionate account of the bereaved families' long struggle for justice, all the while charting the author's journey from innocent bystander to a symbol of a perceived criminal conspiracy. The author is donating his proceeds from the sales of this book to charity.




Stars are Stars


Book Description

Fifteen-year-old Danny has just one dream: to be an artist. Living in Toxteth, with his mother and five sisters, Danny meets clever, politically aware Nicole and falls in love. But when Thatcher's government withdraws the Liverpool Art School's funding, Danny slides into apathy, robbing and drug dependency. Nicole and Danny's love affair, played out to a soundtrack of Bowie and Joy Division, is grand, romantic and doomed. Then Danny finds himself sucked into the longest, most exhilarating and frightening day of his life. Set on fire by rioters, Toxteth is ablaze. Danny, transfixed, starts to paint versions of the same picture, over and over again... Can Nicole bring him back from the edge?




No Easy Answers


Book Description

On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, walked into their school and shot to death twelve students and one teacher, and wounded many others. It was the worst single act of murder at a school in U.S. history. Few people knew Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris better than Brooks Brown. Brown and Klebold were best friends in grade school, and years later, at Columbine, Brown was privy to some of Harris and Klebold’s darkest fantasies and most troubling revelations After the shootings, Brown was even accused by the police of having been in on the massacre—simply because he had been friends with the killers. Brown with journalist Rob Merritt tells his full version of the story. He describes the warning signs that were missed or ignored, and the evidence that was kept hidden from the public after the murders. He takes on those who say that rock music or video games caused Klebold and Harris to kill their classmates and explores what it might have been that pushed these two young men, from supposedly stable families, to harbor such violent and apocalyptic dreams. Shocking as well as inspirational and insightful, No Easy Answers is an authentic wake-up call for all the psychologists, authorities, parents, and law enforcement personnel who have attempted to understand the murders at Columbine High School. As the title suggests, the book offers no easy answers, but instead presents the unvarnished facts about growing up as an alienated teenager in America today. This edition contains a new afterword that describes what has happened in the United States since Columbine, and provides updates on the aftermath of the massacre.