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Abstract

On 15 April 1989 ninety-six people were killed and 766 injured in the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. In his 1982 book ‘Major Technical Risk: An Assessment of Industrial Disasters’, Lagadec observed: “The disaster must not be seen like a meteorite that falls out of the sky on an innocent world; the disaster, most often, is anticipated, and on multiple occasions”. I shall argue that the 1989 Hillsborough disaster ‘was anticipated, and on multiple occasions’. I shall further argue that had the authorities, governing bodies and football industry learned from past misjudgements and mistakes the Hillsborough disaster might have been avoided. I shall examine both the 1989 Hillsborough and 1971 Ibrox Park football stadium crowd-crush disaster in which 66 people died and 145 were injured. That we fail to learn is indisputable. What interests me is why we fail. Systems-thinking may provide the answer.

Speaker

Dr Simon Bennett directs the Civil Safety and Security Unit (CSSU) at the University of Leicester. CSSU delivers a MSc programme in risk management to circa 300 distance-learning students. His books include ‘A Sociology of Commercial Flight Crew’ (Ashgate), ‘How Pilots Live’ (Peter Lang) and ‘Innovative Thinking in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management’ (Gower). He reads sociology with psychology.

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