4-page Ibrox Disaster piece in today's Guardian (3/12/20)

Corriebear said:
Quite scathing of all things Rangers. The article states the club exonerated itself of responsibility and fought against financially supporting the victims families.

The journalist clearly has an agenda, which is unsurprising given it’s The Guardian. In addition to the points outlined above by Rudolph, the other parts that stood out for me were:

Celtic founded to feed the poor narrative
Rangers fans aggressive and ignorant, even when stepping over dead bodies.
The random and completely unnecessary comment about Rangers now being owned by a different company.

as usual with The Guardian, it’s all about appealing to their middle class sneering champagne socialist readers.
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That's actually a good point. Same football club, operated by a different company now.

Ironically, Ibrox was probably the best-appointed stadium in Scotland (if not Britain) at the time. A large amount of money, for the period, had been spent on the ground since previous accidents. As deedle has explained, this included work on the so-called "stairway 13" (that wasn't the actual number of the stairway, though some people might have referred to it that way). The Rangers board cannot necessarily be exonerated of all blame but, particularly taking into account the context of the times, it was a tragic accident.
 
I came down stairway 13 that day.
My mates & myself stayed to the final whistle & bizarrely I remember a section of our support singing The northern lights as it kept Aberdeen within touching distance at the top of the table, this was after Stein equalised.
Now coming down the stairs was one helluva crush but we made it & only when we got back to the supporters bus did we hear of a couple of fatalities.
By the time we get home the death rate kept rising.
I learned a couple of days later a close friend of mine from college had lost his brother & nephew ,he himself had to make his way home ( Govan ) barefoot.
So the theory of fans turning back may have happened but I don't believe it caused the crush
 
Sounds to me as if this out of left field article was commissioned by this Greenslade character to throw a hand grenade into all the present day Rangers positivity, and to deflect from the multitude of scandals affecting Celtc.

Some journalists seek the truth others seek to hide the truth.
 
mulguy1953 said:
I came down stairway 13 that day.
My mates & myself stayed to the final whistle & bizarrely I remember a section of our support singing The northern lights as it kept Aberdeen within touching distance at the top of the table, this was after Stein equalised.
Now coming down the stairs was one helluva crush but we made it & only when we got back to the supporters bus did we hear of a couple of fatalities.
By the time we get home the death rate kept rising.
I learned a couple of days later a close friend of mine from college had lost his brother & nephew ,he himself had to make his way home ( Govan ) barefoot.
So the theory of fans turning back may have happened but I don't believe it caused the crush
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My understanding of it from what I’ve read was it was not fans turning back. It was fans at the bottom leaving, but part of the stairway had collapsed at the top, it was the pushing from the back to exit, not fans coming back in. It was way before my time and I’ve read about it, I may be wrong with that assessment.
 
JayDee said:
That's actually a good point. Same football club, operated by a different company now.

Ironically, Ibrox was probably the best-appointed stadium in Scotland (if not Britain) at the time. A large amount of money, for the period, had been spent on the ground since previous accidents. As deedle has explained, this included work on the so-called "stairway 13" (that wasn't the actual number of the stairway, though some people might have referred to it that way). The Rangers board cannot necessarily be exonerated of all blame but, particularly taking into account the context of the times, it was a tragic accident.
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Exactly this. The accident could have happened at virtually any stadium with a large attendance at that time. We have all been to various grounds where just standing in a stadium could be frightening because when the crowd moved it felt like being trapped in a concrete mass of moving bodies. You could hardly touch your feet on the ground. Just look at old images of the Kop. I had even been to games at Hull City when it was like that. The article is very poor and based on what others are saying looks half made up.
 
How unsurprising.
Rangers playing well and top of the league, our, ahem, right on trendy "left wing" rivals rioting in the street and toiling on the park at home and abroad.
So the Manchester guardian decide to do a grubby hack job and release it on a day when we have a important European game.
I would imagine this is just the start of a lot of similiar articles and media output to be spewed out the closer we get the 50th year since the disaster and if we continue to be succesful this season.
Would they print such about Bradford,Hillsborough or Heysel?
 
Jan Wyck said:
Sounds to me as if this out of left field article was commissioned by this Greenslade character to throw a hand grenade into all the present day Rangers positivity, and to deflect from the multitude of scandals affecting Celtc.

Some journalists seek the truth others seek to hide the truth.
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It's from the same paper whose large article into Celtic a few weeks ago marks them as one of the only few to properly look into the story.
 
ClockworkOrange said:
It's from the same paper whose large article into Celtic a few weeks ago marks them as one of the only few to properly look into the story.
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Yes they did indeed and I would give them enormous credit if it wasn't their professional duty to do so. But this article smacks of an attempt to smear Rangers in a perverted act of "balance" with an ill informed and an agenda driven historical piece lifted from out of the ether while Celtc are in turmoil.
 
I came down those stairs that day saw stein scoring stayed till final whistle going down was a nightmare but didn’t see any injuries never knew anything about casualties till I got home around 7 pm
 
I wasn't at that game, but came down that stairway plenty of times before and after the disaster. In no way was it in bad condition, if anything pre disaster it was too well constructed. It had solid fences on either side which didn't collapse, perhaps if they had lives would have been saved. When it reopened the fences were replaced by a railing similar to the ones that ran down the middle, so it was easy to get under it and onto the grass slope.
All big grounds were the same in those days and it is fortunate it never happened elsewhere. The stairways at Hampden and the Piggery were shorter that Ibrox, that might have helped. I remember coming out of the Piggery once and being swept off my feet in the crush. The stairways there also had no handrails which I thought was unsafe.
 
Tumshie said:
It's been proven time and again the Stein equaliser had nothing to do with the crush. The Club should be complaining to IPSO about that disgusting piece.
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Was at the game that day and was at stairway 13, mates and I had just left when Rangers scored, ran back up some stairs, celebrated then back down same stairs and never new anything about the disaster till later that night.
 
Jan Wyck said:
Yes they did indeed and I would give them enormous credit if it wasn't their professional duty to do so. But this article smacks of an attempt to smear Rangers in a perverted act of "balance" with an ill informed and an agenda driven historical piece lifted from out of the ether while Celtc are in turmoil.
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The fact that no other papers have ran with it suggests that they ran it of their own accord. If they felt a need to balance it up then they wouldn't have published it in the first place. No one else has.
 
calderbear said:
All the grounds in that era were potential death traps.
I remember when I started going to football from 1980 that egress from the game was ,to put it mildly, uncomfortable and disturbing.
Leaving parkhead after the game we were always met with a horrendous crush as we squeezed along narrow gangways leading to the steep steps out of the ground.
Hampden was a filthy place with seas of mud leading to the turnstiles and rotting railway sleepers for terracing.
Even in the late 80's you still had the crush at the back of the terracing at easter road as you squeezed down a steep hill to the exits.
Tannadice was a nightmare with the ultra, ultra steep terracing and leaving from the stands was a nightmare as you tried to squeeze your way out of narrow corridors under their ramshackle stand.
Finally, I can never forget the nightmare of trying to get out of Brockville as you squeezed out of narrow exits in the pitch black.
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This post has brought back some vivid memories.

As you say, Brockville was horrendous and the slopes at Tannadice were astonishing. It’s amazing people didn’t suffer serious injuries there all the time.

Also, your comments about the piggery and Hampden are spot on. Ironically, our terraces after 1971 became some of the safer ones but none were “safe”. And the exit arrangements at multiple grounds were terrifying. Indeed entry arrangements could be horrendous as well. I well remember being pinned against a gate outside Fir Park and genuinely could hardly breath and couldn’t move at all. When the crush slightly subsided, I struggled my way out.

For all that we might moan about lack of atmosphere, I don’t want to see us go back to those days where you actually risked your wellbeing going to a match.
 
Went to the match as a 16 year old, and my recollection is that my older brother and myself left Ibrox as soon as Stein scored. We always stood adjacent to that exit at the top of the stairs. We never knew nothing about it until mar got home about 6.45.
 
One thing I’ve never seen is an estimate of how long after the final whistle the disaster took place.

Arguing that it started within seconds of Colin Stein’s goal has never seemed right - the vast majority of Rangers fans were still in the ground.
 
RfcIbrox said:
Exactly this. The accident could have happened at virtually any stadium with a large attendance at that time. We have all been to various grounds where just standing in a stadium could be frightening because when the crowd moved it felt like being trapped in a concrete mass of moving bodies. You could hardly touch your feet on the ground. Just look at old images of the Kop. I had even been to games at Hull City when it was like that. The article is very poor and based on what others are saying looks half made up.
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I have been Ibrox with 94k and never felt feart I also have been in the Kop with 56k at Anfield and the Gwladys Street end at Goodison with a 58k and i was feart everytime I was in those terraces. I was at the "disaster game" and it was a very quiet game re the crowd. I left from the 19 Stairway because it always made sense to me because I came from Pollokshaws ie the easy way to get home.
 
deedle said:
The article is critical of the RC Church but it’s main focus is Rangers.

There are quite a few inaccuracies. Firstly, Rangers not signing Catholics was hardly a ‘proud boast’. The first mention in the press came via an interview with Ralph Brand after he left the club. Directors were loath to discuss it although throughout the 70s a media seeing a direct link with hooliganism was putting them under pressure on the issue.

I’d query some of the points John Hodgman makes. The disaster occurred before the 1974 HASW Act and at a time when there was nothing like the focus on health and safety there is today.

According to his account, the accident in 1961 took place when the terracing (or some of it at least) and, importantly, stairs took the form of earth and gravel held by timbers. By 1971 the terracing and stairs had been completely concreted over. One part of his 1971 account about the landings on Stairway 13 is therefore very questionable.

If there had been some means of reducing the flow to Stairway 13 (as in the relatively simple remedy of building a wall near the top) then the accident almost certainly wouldn’t have happened. However, another critical factor was the ’penning in’ of Stairway 13 by a thick wooden fence - presumably erected because the club didn’t want fans scampering down the grass slope. Whether this was present in 1961 (I heard that it wasn’t) is a key point. I believe the club thought it had made improvements but these may have turned out to have counter-effective in terms of safety.

I’d also question whether he would have had a good view of Stairway 13 when approaching from the terracing. It was very dark by that time. My understanding was that very few realised what was happening until they became caught up in the crush. The story about fans trying to get back up the stairs raises its head again although most witnesses and observers don’t accept it as credible. I walked past the foot of Stairway 13 several minutes after the final whistle and no-one behaved as if anything untoward had occurred.
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This is the bit that tells me he either wasn't there and is talking shyte. Like you I attended the game and walked past Stairway 13 at least two minutes after the final whistle. I was so close to it I could have touched the bottom step. nothing at that point had happened. I have always thought as soon as I turned away from there to head home, that is when the disaster happened. I probably couldn't hear the commotion because of the noise and supporters singing.
 
Quite a sickening article written by someone who has a severe hatred of our fanbase, that much is obvious. As someone who was at the game, although I left with 4 or 5 minutes remaining, that article has really sickened me, I remember the ambulance and police sirens flying up PRW, at the time we thought it was due to fighting but obviously it was far more serious.

It wasn't until we got to Partick that we heard that 2or 3 people had died, it was later that night that the true extent of the tragedy was starting to be known.

I will never forget the panic and worry that families went through waiting on news of loved ones, my own included waiting and hoping my brother was safe. Later on we learned about the death of a friend.
Whoever is the author of this vile article should be shown up for the scumbag that he is.
 
deedle said:
The article is critical of the RC Church but it’s main focus is Rangers.

There are quite a few inaccuracies. Firstly, Rangers not signing Catholics was hardly a ‘proud boast’. The first mention in the press came via an interview with Ralph Brand after he left the club. Directors were loath to discuss it although throughout the 70s a media seeing a direct link with hooliganism was putting them under pressure on the issue.

I’d query some of the points John Hodgman makes. The disaster occurred before the 1974 HASW Act and at a time when there was nothing like the focus on health and safety there is today.

According to his account, the accident in 1961 took place when the terracing (or some of it at least) and, importantly, stairs took the form of earth and gravel held by timbers. By 1971 the terracing and stairs had been completely concreted over. One part of his 1971 account about the landings on Stairway 13 is therefore very questionable.

If there had been some means of reducing the flow to Stairway 13 (as in the relatively simple remedy of building a wall near the top) then the accident almost certainly wouldn’t have happened. However, another critical factor was the ’penning in’ of Stairway 13 by a thick wooden fence - presumably erected because the club didn’t want fans scampering down the grass slope. Whether this was present in 1961 (I heard that it wasn’t) is a key point. I believe the club thought it had made improvements but these may have turned out to have counter-effective in terms of safety.

I’d also question whether he would have had a good view of Stairway 13 when approaching from the terracing. It was very dark by that time. My understanding was that very few realised what was happening until they became caught up in the crush. The story about fans trying to get back up the stairs raises its head again although most witnesses and observers don’t accept it as credible. I walked past the foot of Stairway 13 several minutes after the final whistle and no-one behaved as if anything untoward had occurred.
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This would tie in with my version of events as we (my dad and uncle) were still on the terracing when Stein equalised and when the game ended we were about to go down the stairs when my dad said lets go down the embankment (the old derry) and watch them come down the stairs singing.So there was a good few minutes had passed before we got there and stood for it may only have been 30-60 seconds or whatever but at that point STILL NOTHING HAD HAPPENED,now whether it started as soon as we turned our backs we will never know but therefor but the grace of god it may well have been us caught up in it.RIP my fellow Bears.
 
Was at the game so sad I left at the other stairway didn't know about the accident. I was in the pub after the game and my brother was looking for me.
 
calderbear said:
All the grounds in that era were potential death traps.
I remember when I started going to football from 1980 that egress from the game was ,to put it mildly, uncomfortable and disturbing.
Leaving parkhead after the game we were always met with a horrendous crush as we squeezed along narrow gangways leading to the steep steps out of the ground.
Hampden was a filthy place with seas of mud leading to the turnstiles and rotting railway sleepers for terracing.
Even in the late 80's you still had the crush at the back of the terracing at easter road as you squeezed down a steep hill to the exits.
Tannadice was a nightmare with the ultra, ultra steep terracing and leaving from the stands was a nightmare as you tried to squeeze your way out of narrow corridors under their ramshackle stand.
Finally, I can never forget the nightmare of trying to get out of Brockville as you squeezed out of narrow exits in the pitch black.
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For a spell post Souness I stopped going to both Edinburgh grounds as both were death traps. The 1-1 game in September or October 87 at Tynecastle when Cooper scored was the turning point for me. How there weren’t any injuries during the crush I don’t know

Parkhead wasn’t far behind, just have a look at the footage of the Scottish cup semifinal v St Johnstone on the same day as Hillsbrough. Lack of fences saved lives and serious injuries that day

So to me Scottish football learned nothing from January 1971
 
mulguy1953 said:
I came down stairway 13 that day.
My mates & myself stayed to the final whistle & bizarrely I remember a section of our support singing The northern lights as it kept Aberdeen within touching distance at the top of the table, this was after Stein equalised.
Now coming down the stairs was one helluva crush but we made it & only when we got back to the supporters bus did we hear of a couple of fatalities.
By the time we get home the death rate kept rising.
I learned a couple of days later a close friend of mine from college had lost his brother & nephew ,he himself had to make his way home ( Govan ) barefoot.
So the theory of fans turning back may have happened but I don't believe it caused the crush
Click to expand...
I was also there and we were about a quarter of the way down the terracing behind the goal, we waited a few minutes after the whistle before making our way up and round, I was caught up in it right at the beginning and could see the face of the person lying on the ground a s the crowd opened up to try and get him up and then closed again, I was trapped and unable to go anywhere, I was lifted off my feet turned around facing back up the stairs and ended up horizontal and I assume on top of others until I got lower and lower and ended in the ground trapped by the legs until I was able to get out, fans running back up one load of pish.
 
Rudolph Hucker said:
It's the Guardian, so they're playing to the left wing crowd and to hell with the facts since big, bad Rangers are traditionally bastions of everything they loathe.. A few lowlights:


Born protestant but brought up catholic
Thrown out of Rangers Accordion Band when they find out he's being brought up by catholics.
Involved in the 1961 disaster
Still loved football (and travels to World Cup and European matches, apparently) but lost interest in Rangers
"Rangers hadn’t changed. It was their proud boast entering the 70s that they hadn’t signed a Catholic in nearly 100 years. Celtic, however, were managed by a Protestant." :rolleyes:
As a journo, was asked to attend on 2/1/71 so spent 1st half in celtic end and 2nd half near stairway 13.
When Stein equalized, lots of people turned back and tried to make their way back into Ibrox (he states this "would" have happened since he didn't see it himself)
"On the terracing, sober husbands and fathers cheered themselves hoarse. Drunken thugs bayed at the suddenly silent green end of the stadium."
"Jock Stein of Celtic was a tower of strength, along with many of his Parkhead people."
"Those fans whose families had not been affected were loath to criticise Rangers in any way, to the point where the few who did so were regarded as traitors."
Sectarianism, sectarianism, sectarianism, sectarianism...

And so forth. Best summarised as long on hyperbole, hypothesis & hypocrisy and big on bitterness, bigotry and bile. Rangers weren't blameless but he's got an obvious agenda which he sticks to like superglue.

Hatchet job from someone with an obvious chip on his shoulder trying desperately to prove his lefty credentials to his sandal-wearing friends. File under "Garbage", sub-section "Utter".
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I saw Greenslade tweeting about it and tagging Phil 3 Names.

You could have guessed the tone of the article just from that.
A gratuitous kick at the Rangers support a month ahead of the anniversary of the disaster and a few days after the Celtic support disgraced itself outside an empty Piggery.

Is anyone else a fan of Join the Dots puzzles?
 
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I have read the article. In 1971 I left via the Edmiston Drive stairway beside the main stand and walked into the city centre. I knew nothing about the disaster until overhearing a conversation on Argyle Street. However, I was on the stairway in 1961 and have a clear and vivid memory of what took place. I was fourteen and had made my way to the top of the terracing when Baxter scored, a left foot shot from outside the box into the right corner of the net. I left after the final whistle and experienced the usual crushing on the stairway but this is where my recollection differs from the writer. I saw no evidence of anyone turning back up the stairs and knew nothing until later that evening. However, the stairway was a problem. It was very steep. And like the terracing at that time they were formed of railway sleepers in earth while the handrails were very thick timber. Safety experts recommended that the stairs be concreted and the timber handrails replaced by tubular steel embedded in concrete so the reference to the steps being “uneven as ever” is inaccurate. In addition, reinforced fencing was installed on either side of the stairway. It has always been my opinion that these ‘improvements’ recommended by experts contributed to the disaster as they provided no means of escape. For what it is worth, the worst crushing I experienced was at St. James‘s Park, Newcastle in 1969 at our Fairs Cup semi.
 
calderbear said:
All the grounds in that era were potential death traps.
I remember when I started going to football from 1980 that egress from the game was ,to put it mildly, uncomfortable and disturbing.
Leaving parkhead after the game we were always met with a horrendous crush as we squeezed along narrow gangways leading to the steep steps out of the ground.
Hampden was a filthy place with seas of mud leading to the turnstiles and rotting railway sleepers for terracing.
Even in the late 80's you still had the crush at the back of the terracing at easter road as you squeezed down a steep hill to the exits.
Tannadice was a nightmare with the ultra, ultra steep terracing and leaving from the stands was a nightmare as you tried to squeeze your way out of narrow corridors under their ramshackle stand.
Finally, I can never forget the nightmare of trying to get out of Brockville as you squeezed out of narrow exits in the pitch black.
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I remember a hairy moment leaving Hampden around 1990 where, as a skinny wee teenager, I was swept up in the crowd and my feet weren’t on the stairs. It was terrifying and I just waited for the crowd to die down until going near the stairs after that.

I remember seeing similar conditions at the home end of Parkhead when my dad took me a few years before that - the crowd just swept you along.
The away end was worse, with steep angles and little or no actual crowd control in place.


We are talking about incidents nearly 2 decades after the Ibrox Disaster and it is staggering that the other 2 large grounds in Glasgow had been able to maintain the status quo for all that time.
 
JayDee said:
That's actually a good point. Same football club, operated by a different company now.

Ironically, Ibrox was probably the best-appointed stadium in Scotland (if not Britain) at the time. A large amount of money, for the period, had been spent on the ground since previous accidents. As deedle has explained, this included work on the so-called "stairway 13" (that wasn't the actual number of the stairway, though some people might have referred to it that way). The Rangers board cannot necessarily be exonerated of all blame but, particularly taking into account the context of the times, it was a tragic accident.
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I never knew that is was not stairway 13, how did that "fact" survive all these years unchallenged?
 
Calvinist said:
“Rangers hadn’t changed. It was their proud boast entering the 70s that they hadn’t signed a Catholic in nearly 100 years.”

some Rangers fan that guy was . He has just made this up or hasn’t a clue about the club , or in fact is a tim setting a narrative
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Usually a give away that someone doesn't know what they're talking about and doesn't care to find out.
 
granda bob said:
I was also there and we were about a quarter of the way down the terracing behind the goal, we waited a few minutes after the whistle before making our way up and round, I was caught up in it right at the beginning and could see the face of the person lying on the ground a s the crowd opened up to try and get him up and then closed again, I was trapped and unable to go anywhere, I was lifted off my feet turned around facing back up the stairs and ended up horizontal and I assume on top of others until I got lower and lower and ended in the ground trapped by the legs until I was able to get out, fans running back up one load of pish.
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That sounds like you were very lucky
 
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