I was surprised to read that Surrey Police Commissioner Kevin Hurley cited ‘fans turning up late from the pub’ as one of the three primary causes of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster (Policing My Way, Epsom Guardian, February 14).

That the disaster was caused by ‘late’ fans is one of the many pieces of misinformation spread by South Yorkshire Police in the aftermath of the disaster, in order to detract from their own failures. 

These untruths have proved surprisingly tenacious, despite having no basis in fact.

The 2012 Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel categorically stated that "the crush at the Leppings Lane turnstiles was not caused by fans arriving late."

The dangerous crowd build-up outside Hillsborough arose because the 7 antiquated turnstiles were insufficient to cope with 10,100 supporters allocated to the Leppings Lane terraces.  Unable to process over 1,000 people an hour, it was inevitable - and perfectly foreseeable - that there would be a dangerous crowd build-up.

This notorious Leppings Lane bottleneck saw similar crushes develop at Hillsborough FA Cup semi-finals in 1981, 1987 and 1988, and fatalities then were only narrowly averted.

David Cameron was unequivocal that the fans were not to blame for Hillsborough, as was Lord Justice Taylor in his 1989 Inquiry and the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012.  Even the current Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police has labelled the attempts by his Force to blame the fans for the disaster as ‘wrong and sick.’  

Incidentally, Mr Hurley refers to the match commander at Hillsborough as a ‘fast tracker.’    Wrong again - Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield had been a police officer for 26 years by the time of Hillsborough in 1989, having made Inspector rank in 1974, and Superintendent rank in 1983. 

To call him a ‘fast tracker’ is absurd.  The salient problem was that Duckenfield had little experience of command of policing football matches, and when confronted with a dangerous problem, he simply ‘froze’ . 

Patrick Shanahan
Northamptonshire