April 21.Jack McLean's words of wisdom on the Hillsborough tragedy
(April 21) needed to be said but the sadness (despair?) which permeates
the article obscures the real killer -- mob rule.
A mob in action, left to itself, starts off mindless but in a very
short space of time creates its own rules, eg, ''watch the weans'',
''watch the wife'', etc. When attempts are made by an outside body to
control a mob they are either accepted (sporting events) or rejected
(inner city riots). Once a mob accepts outside control (for its own
safety, protection, or survival) and that control ceases to be
effective, it reverts to its original mindless state until it has gone
through the process of refinding its own rules.
Grossly simplified, this appears to have been what happened at
Hillsborough. The crowd control system before, and at, the turnstile
area broke down and what was intended as a life-saving emergency measure
created the situation where the mob reverted to mindlessness, rushed the
terracing entrance, and deaths resulted.
What makes football crowds different from the Murrayfield crowds cited
in Jack McLean's article is that over the years regular attenders at
football matches have been conditioned to a strict and highly effective
level of crowd control with the result that individual fans' sense of
danger has been blunted. Perhaps, as his article implied, the real
message of Hillsborough is that at such events the danger is always
there and you forget it at your peril.P. J. Duffy,
187 Maxwell Avenue,
Westerton,
Bearsden.
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