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Hillsborough disaster could happen again at a rock concert, warns Jimmy McGovern

Liverpool writer McGovern says gigs aren't safe enough

Liverpudlian writer Jimmy McGovern has warned that the Hillsborough football disaster of 1989 could happen again at a rock concert because of serious lapses in crowd safety.

96 football fans died and nearly 800 more were injured as a result of a human crush at a match between Liverpool FC and Sheffield Wednesday FC at the Hillsborough stadium on April 15 1989.

McGovern, who won acclaim for documenting the tragedy in his 1996 TV drama 'Hillsborough', said more effort should be put into making gigs safe.

"It should never be cost effective to take risks with public safety," he told the Liverpool Echo. "If a disaster like this happens again it will be at a big rock concert where there is not an appropriate level of care."

McGovern was speaking as 'Hillsborough' is released on DVD for the first time. He said he hopes the DVD release will inform a new generation about the tragedy.

"It's important the documentary gets a modern audience as a lot of people who go the match weren’t even born at the time of Hillsborough," McGovern explained.
 

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Comments (8)

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jpdisco 

Sep 8, 2009

It was Liverpool v Nottingham Forest

binhawk 

Sep 9, 2009

Cant be making 'Schoolboys' like that on this sensitive issue...

kopite_kev 

Sep 9, 2009

I thought it was about to happen during The Prodigy at Reading this year. The crowd was usual Prodigy, but with security and barriers between front and back section that just didn't know what had hit them. Finally got more stuck/trapped in the safety of between the barriers than we were in the pit, and to leave the crush via a 8-9 inch gap, which wasn't controlled and had no obvious exit away from the hundreds being driven into the same gap.....very scary for lots of young kids who'd never seen such a crush.

minorpent 

Sep 9, 2009

This is wrong. Concerts are so less crushed than they used to be. Once places like Glasonbury had no idea how many people would turn up and there wasn't a casualty as far as I I know. Indoor gigs have escape routes everywhere and if there was a bad crush people are dragged out easily. It's just not a problem.At festivals now the neutral area in front of fans is huge and more than enough to cope with a swell going forward. I went to lots of very packed football matches in the 80s and the reason it was safe was that there was always an outlet if there was a crush. Of course some cunt then decided to put twelve foot high fences in front of us, so when there was a crush in the wrong place, people had no where to go. This just isn't going to happen at any gig.I can see an agenda here: McGovern would be outraged if they allowed us to stand at football, despite the fact it can be perfectly safe to do so. Therefore he wants us to think standing at anything is probably dangerous. He would like to see all seater festivals....

cowie86 

Sep 9, 2009

Please don't tar music fans with the same brush as moronic football fans, especially when you're only doing it as a means of promoting some shitty DVD

demun 

Sep 9, 2009

There was a huge crush at Reading after The Prodigy, it was terrifying!

wellduhobviously 

Sep 9, 2009

Easy mistake to make when you lazy throw "Hillsborough" into the Google box and up comes the fact it's Sheffield Wednesday's stadium.

Marblewing 

Oct 7, 2009

Personally I think that Glastonbury is at times a disaster waiting to happen. It is overcrowded by at least 20,000 people Iwould say, and I do believe that one day something will kick off which will lead to people getting crushed.

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