The facts about what truly happened took years to emerge. The truth was buried and would take years to come out. Imagine being a father, 
your son’s hopes and dreams crushed behind the Hillsborough iron fences. Families in Liverpool, exhausted with rage, anguish, sorrow and 
depression, waited and waited for the truth. A long suppressed, shocking truth that would take 30 years to see the light of day.
The findings of the Taylor Report led by Lord Justice Taylor had exonerated Liverpool fans completely, and placed 
responsibility for the disaster on a failure of Police control. The Taylor Report made clear that alcohol consumption had 
not been an issue, and that ticketless fans had not stormed the stadium, both early allegations made by the Police. 
Instead, the Report revealed Hillsborough Stadium did not have a safety certificate. It was a disaster waiting 
to happen. A coroner’s report however gave a verdict of accidental death on every victim. This gave way to 
a sense of deeper anguish amongst victims’ families, the pain and hurt growing increasingly with 
each passing year. 
Liverpool families deserved the truth. At the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster, the Minister 
for Sport at the time Andy Burnham gave a speech at Anfield but the mass crowd present that day 
shouted, ‘Justice!’ This lit a fire under Mr Burnham and he was determined to get to the bottom of 
what happened at Hillsborough once and for all.
Tamsil Hussain, Year 10
People say ignorance is bliss. I believe that 
knowledge is power. What happened at 
Hillsborough on that fateful day brought a 
harrowing reality that was previously unheard of, a 
reality that many would rather forget. Despite that, 
forgetting is the most cowardly and ignorant thing 
we can do. We must never forget.
April 15th, 1989 began as an exciting day, much 
like any other FA Cup semi-final. But it became 
a day like no other. Thousands of fans enclosed 
the Hillsborough stadium. The atmosphere was 
euphoric, electric, and ecstatic. Looming steel 
fences surrounded the outskirts of the pitch, 
supposedly as a way of keeping the players and 
the fans safe.
As kick-off edged closer, at the constricted 
Leppings Lane End turnstiles were in a state of 
disrepair. This subsequently led to a large crowd 
of Liverpool supporters being pushed and shoved 
under increasing pressure outside the stadium. 
A ‘blunder of the first magnitude’, as the Taylor 
Report expressed it, was the result. A monumental 
blunder. A fatal lapse in judgment by the Police 
which led to the opening of exit gate C.
Fans came flooding like a relentless tidal wave 
down a narrow, claustrophobic tunnel, with no 
other clear path to take. The opening of exit gate 
C and its consequences was a decision we must 
not forget.
Mohammad Amaan Uddin, Year 10
WHEN YOU WALK 
THROUGH A STORM
Football matches are occasions for excitement and drama, but the national game has also witnessed 
incidents of great loss and grief when events have gone catastrophically wrong. One such tragedy 
was the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989 at the beginning of an F.A. Cup semi-final between Liverpool 
and Nottingham Forest, which would become a day of unimaginable sorrow. Year 10 have been 
practising speech writing for their English GCSEs, and here relate the events of that tragic game.
© Chris Dorney | Dreamstime.com
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