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.