It is a cold January evening and some 80,000 people have just watched a nail biting football
match, for nearly 88 minutes not much had happened until an exciting goal then equalising
goal in the last minute or so of play.
The game is an old firm fixture where Glasgow’s two biggest teams face off, as such it’s
always well attended and rivalries between the two groups of fans run high.
After the game thousands look to make their way home, some walk, others catch the bus
but a popular way home is via the Glasgow subway.
To get to Copeland road station football fans need to negotiate stairway 13.
As the crowd is funnelled down the stairway a crush begins, many are shuffled along by
the weight of bodies, this is a common occurrence, but in the push someone loses their footing,
then another and another.
This triggers a chain reaction as more and more people join the top of the stairway.
An avalanche of bodies tumbled down the stairs, many were trapped and couldn't move.
When all is finished 66 lives would be lost.
Welcome to plainly difficult.
My name is John and today I’m looking into the 1971 Ibrox disaster.
Background
Today our story starts in Glasgow Scotland but more specifically the suburb Ibrox, located
south of the river Clyde, which is around here on a map.
The suburb's name is derived from Scottish Gaelic which roughly means badger den.
Glasgow’s history and by extension IbroxS goes way back to before the 6th century, but
we will fast forward to the 1800s for today's video at least.
The Rangers football team in the late 1800s was ever increasingly in need of a permanent
purpose built home.
This resulted in the first Ibrox park completed in 1887, but it proved over the following
10 years to be nothing but a headache.
It was not the right size for the games the club wanted to host and as such a new ground
was planned.
This would be the current day stadium site, opened in 1899 it boasted a capacity of pretty
much as many as you can fit inside.
This would lead to the first of the park's major disasters just 3 years after opening
in 1902, where a wooden terrace collapsed killing 25.
But we won’t dwell on this too much as it’s likely to be covered in another video, however
this disaster resulted in the removal of the wooden terraces of the East and west stands.
These were later replaced by earthen mounds.
By 1910 the capacity was officially at 63,000 and Scotland had become the home for 3 of
the worlds largest football grounds at the time.
The park would continue to see redesigns and developments over its lifetime with a brick
main stand built on the south side in 1929.
The banking of the terraces increased now to get out off these terraces staircases were
provided, these were steep and ran down the back of the terrace, you can see the western
one here in this picture, there was also an eastern one around here, which was called
stairway 13, but we will come to this in a bit.
Now 1939 would see a pretty big crowd of nearly 130,000 people, one of the largest in British
history, in a football stadium.
Post war the stadium would receive flood lighting and coverings for the north and east terraces.
Which leads us to the 1960s.
Stairway 13
The 1960s would be a deadly time for the park, the stadium had issues with herding fans off
the site safely.
You see Copeland road subway station was right near the corner of the east stand, as such
it was a popular method of leaving the area post match.
The subway was pretty handy running in a circle line throughout the city, you could in theory
jump on any train regardless of direction and eventually reach your destination.
The subway only had 15 stations after all.
As such heading for Copeland road was a pretty popular way to get home.
Because of this the nearest exit to the station was no 13 and it’s associated stairway which
gained the name quite understandably stairway 13.
After the final whistle blew crowds would pour down the long and steep set of stairs
to exit 13, needless to say this can be a recipe for disaster.
If you’ve ever been in a big crowd before it doesn’t take much to get seperated from
the group or even get pushed in the wrong direction.
In 1963 concerns were raised over a number of incidents of overcrowding on stairway 13,
this was sparked off when on the 16 September 1961, two people were killed in a crush.
The club installed safety measures but two more crushes in 1967 and 1969, injuring 8
and 26 respectively.
However the club hadn’t consulted any professional firms as to what safety precautions were needed.
But this would just serve as a prelude to one of the worst accidents in British football
history, in the early 1970s.
The disaster.
It is the afternoon of 2 January 1971 and some 80,000 people have piled into Ibrox park
to watch a favourite new years tradition, an old firm match.
The Rangers v Celtic game kicks off and for the most part on this bitterly cold day, thick
with freezing fog, is uneventful, no one has scored, however at the last minute Celtic
winger Jimmy Johnstone scored a seemingly winning goal.
Looking like the match was lost, Rangers fans started to leave Ibrox, many hoped to quickly
get on the subway before the rest of the crowds piled out after the final whistle.
But just seconds later in injury time Rangers’ player Colin Stein scored, equalising the
game.
With the final whistle now blown, the numbers leaving the stadium would increase significantly,
from the east stand stairway 13 was the obvious choice of egress, as hundreds crowded the
stairway, the usual crush developed.
A couple spectators lost their footing on the steps, many fell but the numbers joining
the staircase continued.
This caused a cascade effect of more and more people falling over, one person would later
say,
“As we went down the stairs what was apparent was that as we went down our angle slowly
progressed towards the horizontal and I was quickly aware that we were falling.”
People who had fallen over on the lower stairs, had more people fall on top of them creating
a crush several people deep.
More and more people unaware of the crush below made their way onto the top of the stairway,
adding to the weight of those who had lost their footing.
As the weight mounted up of the fallen bodies, those underneath could not breathe, this created
a condition called compressive asphyxia.
This is a mechanical condition where expansion of the lungs is prevented by compressing the
torso, this inturn restricts breathing, and thus causes death.
Within just a few minutes the pile of human bodies was 6 feet deep in some places, the
victims couldn't escape due to the weight, shouts came out from the crowd to stop pushing,
but the flow of people was like an unstoppable wave.
Eventually the flow was stemmed, and as people at the top of the crowd managed to free themselves,
more of the more trapped were also freed.
Due to the crush many of the injuries were related to restricted blood flow, internal
bleeding and severe bruising from the sheer weight placed on their bodies, however these
could be considered the lucky ones.
After some 45 minutes, the cries for help had been dulled, you see because of the compressive
nature of the disaster, some victims had been made unconscious, and many others had little
air to shout out.
Eventually first responders including ambulance workers and police managed to free some of
the more trapped victims, taking them and laying them out on the pitch for medical care.
Several lives were saved that evening on the pitch at Ibrox, but for 66 this would not
be the case.
All of the victims were under the age of 50, with half under the age of 20, in addition
to the deaths, there were over 200 injured.
The disaster was over within just a few hours after it had begun, but it had raised the
question how could this have happened.
The investigation and Aftermath.
Just a few weeks after the disaster staring on 15 February 1971 a fatal accident inquiry
was held to investigate and officially determine the circumstances of the 66 deaths.
The inquiry found some pretty worrying things out about safety in Ibrox park.
The inquiry found that there was a grossly excessive crowd pressure present, that lifted
many victims off their feet, not allowing them a chance to select which of the 7 lanes
on the stairway to take.
It was found that all on the stairway were travelling in the same direction, which stopped
rumours of the crush being caused by fans going back into the stadium after the first
goal.
They also found that the regulation of crowds fell squarely at the feet of rangers fc due
to Ibrox park being private property.
It was also found that the clubs directors had not considered the safety of the park's
stairways, which is pretty worrying due to the number of fatal and near fatal crushes
on the site in the 1960s.
Although damming of the club, the inquiry praised the first responders and the police
who acted as quickly as possible to try and rescue many of the injured.
Another inquiry by Lord Wheatley was set to explore the ways to improve safety across
the industry more deeply than the fatal accident inquiry could have done in its 7 days of hearing
evidence.
Lord Wheatley would lead an inquiry into the Ibrox disaster and its wider implications
across the sports ground and crowd control industries.
Wheatley would publish his findings in 03 May 1972, which would lead to legislation
in the form of the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975, Which designated any sports ground
with accommodation for more than 10,000 spectators (or more than 5,000 spectators for grounds
hosting Premier League / English Football League matches) as requiring a safety certificate
to admit spectators.
A civil damages trial was raised at Glasgow Sheriff Court in May 1974 by the widow of
one of the Ibrox victims.
The ruling like the fatal accident inquiry was damning for the football club saying:
"The said accident was due to the fault and negligence of the defenders, Rangers F.C.".
The site was extensively remodelled in the 1970s, to encompass an all seating capacity
of 44,000-capacity stadium by 1981, which would eventually be increased to 50,000.
You see, reducing the number of occupants, and making the site all seating drastically
helps with crowd management.
But although improvements were enacted it would prove not to be the end of football
match disasters in the UK, but this will probabl;y be the story for another video.
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corner of London, uk.
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