Posts Tagged ‘Justice for the 96’

“The match shouldn’t go ahead” Former MP Joe Ashton recalls the horror of Hillsborough

26/04/2016, 10:00:35 PM

Former Labour MP for Bassetlaw Joe Ashton was at the Hillsborough Disaster and saw the tragedy unfold. He later became a director of Sheffield Wednesday and lives a few miles from the ground. Here, in an interview with his daughter Lucy Ashton, he recounts the horror of the day.

After a historic inquest lasting two years, jurors today returned a number of verdicts on the Hillsborough Disaster. The most damning was that the 96 fans had been unlawfully killed.

The human crush killed 96 people and injured 766 others at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on 15 April 1989.

Bassetlaw Labour MP Joe Ashton, who had campaigned in Parliament for improvements to football stadiums, was a lifelong Sheffield Wednesday supporter. He had been invited to the match by the Football Association and was sitting with England manager Bobby Robson.

He remembers: “Around 15 minutes before kick-off, we started to see the crowd. I said to Bobby ‘there’s going to be trouble’ because part of the stand was empty but the other part was full and you could see the crowd getting pushed.”

“We went downstairs into the changing room where all the players were ready to go and we started telling people that the match shouldn’t go ahead.”

“The referee didn’t know what to do as people were telling him different things so finally he sent the players out.”

The match started but Joe says it quickly became obvious something catastrophic was unfolding in the stand.

“People were getting terribly crushed,” he said. “You could see people jumping on the pitch to save themselves, quite rightly. I told Bobby Robson ‘this is trouble mate’ and the ref stopped the match.”

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