Bang!: A History of Britain in the 1980s (64 page)

The worst tragedy of the decade followed on 15 April 1989 at the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield during an FA Cup semi-final tie, when ninety-six Liverpool fans were crushed to death. Violence
was not the cause – the number of late arrivals panicked the police into opening turnstiles that were meant to be shut, creating an unanticipated flow of five thousand supporters who were not
properly directed towards where there was still space in the stand. They therefore pushed into an already packed area, causing suffocation. Much as human error was the cause, the regular experience
of having to deal with hooliganism had a bearing on the horrifying turn of events, for it was the need to contain and separate supporters that had necessitated the pens that confined and crushed
the fans; and when many of those scrambling for their lives tried to climb over the perimeter fence, some police officers failed to comprehend what was happening and initially assumed they were
hooligans intent on a pitch invasion. If lessons were learned by the police, the same could not be said of those who remained bent on a violent search for identity. Four weeks after the shocking
scenes at Hillsborough, the police were back in action trying to separate Birmingham City and Crystal Palace fans fighting on the Selhurst Park terraces, the City fans taking advantage of a low
perimeter fence to invade the pitch and disrupt the match for half an hour until dispersed by a police cavalry charge.

Among the traits by which Britain’s first female prime minister distinguished herself from her predecessors and successors was that she never feigned an interest in football. But finding a
cure for the ‘English disease’ was for her an absolute priority. A government action plan began to take shape. The Scottish precedent (introduced in 1980) of banning alcohol within
grounds was extended to England and Wales, with the Public Order Act 1986 empowering courts to prevent identified individuals from entering grounds. Further legislation in 1989 allowed for
convicted hooligans to be banned from going to international matches. A more drastic policy initiative was sparked by events in March 1985 when Millwall hooligans ran amok at Luton Town, partially
wrecking one of the Kenilworth Road stands in a riot that injured more than thirty police officers, one of them almost fatally. Rather than risk a repetition, Luton Town responded by restricting
home matches to its own supporters, who would have to apply for membership/identity cards. These could be denied to troublemakers. It represented an extreme response which seemed explicable only in
the context of the Popplewell report’s warning that unless hooliganism was crushed, ‘football may not be able to continue in its present form much longer’. There was
much to be said against the proposal, which would clearly deter the uncommitted match-goer (perhaps the least inclined to violence), and it failed to address the ease with which those
denied identity cards could merely organize their violence in the surrounding streets – where many of the clashes took place. Yet despite sceptics, led by Douglas Hurd, within her own
Cabinet, as well as on the opposition benches and within the FA, Thatcher became convinced that a mandatory national membership scheme for all football supporters, implemented through identity
cards, was the answer. The enabling legislation was rushed through Parliament in 1989, only to be successfully derailed by the Taylor report, called in response to the Hillsborough disaster, which
in January 1990 argued powerfully that the scheme was not a solution.

Where Taylor and Thatcher were agreed was upon the need to upgrade the often dilapidated grounds. The process of rebuilding had begun following the devastating fire at Bradford City. Crumbling
facilities and dishevelled terracing had failed to keep pace with raised expectations of comfort in family life and, it was felt, represented one reason why attendances had been in long-term
decline, creating an atmosphere that discouraged attendance by women and young families with their (presumed) moderating influence. Public lavatories that were as primitive as they were scarce
meant that, as the Taylor report put it, ‘urinating against walls or even on the terraces has become endemic’, which ‘directly lowers standards of conduct’.
³¹
Overcoming objections that removing standing-only terraces would diminish the atmosphere, the government acted on the Taylor report’s recommendation
that all grounds in the top two English and Scottish leagues should convert to seating-only stadiums, where each ticket-holder would have an assigned seat. This involved a major investment by
clubs, enabled by the timely interjection of a vast new revenue stream from the sale of the Premiership’s television rights to Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV. Combined with better policing
methods, advance intelligence and the use of CCTV at grounds to identify troublemakers, the ‘English disease’ was severely diminished – though not eliminated – in the
following years, while new international investment following from the Sky deal transformed the feel, commercialism and culture of football.

Don’t Die of Ignorance

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome began to affect Los Angeles’ gay male community at the beginning of the decade and the first – extremely sketchy –
discussion of its pneumonia-like symptoms appeared in the medical journal
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
in July 1981. About four hundred and fifty Aids-related deaths had occurred in the
United States by 1983 and it
was not until 1984 that American and French doctors isolated the HIV virus. By then the disease had already arrived on British shores, having
claimed its first victim, Terrence Higgins, a 37-year-old computer programmer, on 4 July 1982. Five months after his passing, a group of Higgins’s friends founded a group in his name to raise
funds for research into the still-mysterious disease.

In tandem with research, there was an urgent need for education about the risks. Widespread public attention was not engaged until the broadcast in April 1983 of a BBC Horizon documentary
entitled
Killer in the Village
. Shortly thereafter, on 1 May, a
Mail on Sunday
headline warned of a ‘gay plague’ – a contagious phrase with biblical overtones which
quickly embedded itself in the public consciousness, defining both who was primarily affected by the disease and, by implication, who was responsible for its spread. But what was initially
transmitted through male gay sex was clearly not going to be confined to gay men, unless it was assumed that none of them ever also slept with a woman. Haemophiliacs were also showing symptoms and
the revelation that their infection came from Aids-contaminated blood used by the NHS for transfusions caused further alarm (by the autumn of 1989, ninety-nine haemophiliacs had died and more than
a thousand were HIV-positive),
³²
tinged with anger that the sexual behaviour of gay men had endangered the lives of others. Calling for the
screening of gay men who wanted to give blood (the Home Office subsequently called only for ‘promiscuous’ gay men to abstain from giving blood), a leader in
The Times
of November
1984 stated: ‘The infection’s origins and means of propagation excites repugnance, moral and physical, at promiscuous male homosexuality – conduct which, tolerable in private
circumstances, has with the advent of “gay liberation” become advertised, even glorified, as acceptable public conduct.’
³³

Despite the efforts of the government’s chief medical officer to reassure the public, fear that infection could be spread through non-sexual contact intensified. Sufferers were the object
of fear as much as pity, as the desire to protect immediate friends and family from the threatened pandemic clouded objective – let alone compassionate – judgement. In the autumn of
1985, one third of children at a Hampshire primary school were withdrawn from classes by their parents when it emerged that one of their classmates, a nine-year-old haemophiliac, had been
accidentally transfused with Aids-contaminated blood. The following year, an Aids sufferer was identified and was banned from swimming pools in Caernarfon and Cardiff until such time as the Sports
Council for Wales was satisfied that he, and those like him, presented no risk.
³⁴
Such callousness was dispiriting, yet it was hardly inexplicable
given the limits of knowledge at the time. After all, the disease was spreading rapidly. No cure existed. It was not unreasonable to assume that
the medical authorities
lacked a full understanding of how Aids could be transmitted. If it could be passed on through contaminated blood, then perhaps even fleeting contact with someone with a small cut could prove
deadly? The Church of England found itself offering guidance on the celebration of the Eucharist because there was disquiet about whether someone with a cold sore might unintentionally infect a
communion cup and wipe out an entire parish. Health workers and prison guards were particularly uneasy about the occupational hazards they believed they might face. Some newspapers managed to
strike a balance between compassionate coverage and articulating the scarcely comprehending fears of their readers. Highlighting ‘Sarah’s tragedy’, the
Daily Express
reported: ‘She is 23, intelligent and pretty. She has never slept around or used drugs. Today she is dying of Aids. Is anyone safe now?’ There was a less nuanced tone at
The Sun
:
‘Have You Got Aids? Ten Ways to Find Out’ ran one feature which, listing tiredness, weight loss, diarrhoea and a sore mouth, succeeded only in adding to the panic.
³⁵
Some articles were not only uninhibitedly sensational and factually misleading but plain wrong. Even as late as 1989,
The Sun
ran with the claim that
Aids could not be passed on through heterosexual sex.
³⁶
On this point, it was forced to climb down, though it remained indignant at complaints
about its continuing references to homosexuals as ‘poofs’. However, to blame irresponsible or shoddy journalism entirely for stoking public anxiety would be to focus far too narrowly on
who was disseminating information. Those in positions of authority at the time were reduced to making educated guesses which proved grossly inaccurate. In January 1985, for instance, the Royal
College of Nursing forecast that by 1991 there would be one million Aids sufferers in the UK.
³⁷
Extrapolating such a rate appeared to spell doom
for the human race unless a cure could be found. ‘I can assure you that half of the boys in this room will be dead in thirty years’ time because of what you think is a laughing
matter,’ one Edinburgh schoolmaster admonished his class, when a pupil responded to the announcement of an Aids prevention lecture by striking a limp-wristed posture.
³⁸
At any rate, the Edinburgh tradition of young people going up to the Royal Mile to greet the New Year by sharing drinks and kissing strangers all but ceased that
Hogmanay, given the concern that traces of blood in saliva could potentially deliver the kiss of death. The combined threats to human life on earth from Aids and nuclear Armageddon made the
mid-eighties a period disfigured by fear.

Within the UK, twenty-nine cases of Aids had been recorded by the end of 1983, 106 by 1984, 271 by 1985 and 610 by 1986.
³⁹
A breakdown of the
country’s 1,762 Aids cases in October 1988 showed that 87 per cent of them – 1,532 in all – had been contracted though homosexual acts. By comparison, the other causes remained
small in scale: 123 cases through contaminated blood given to haemophiliacs, sixty-nine through heterosexual activity and
thirty-eight though sharing of contaminated needles
by intravenous drug users.
⁴⁰
The following year took the total up to 2,296, which, for all its seriousness, was nevertheless far short of the
earlier predictions of one million sufferers within the next two years. While heading towards epidemic proportions across sub-Saharan Africa, Aids was failing to spread at the expected rate in the
First World. One factor, of course, was the change in sexual behaviour engendered by education about the disease and screening among the communities most at risk. In 1987, HIV testing was
introduced across the country and needle-exchange centres were established to protect intravenous drug users. That the UK’s rate of transmission was significantly less than that of France
suggested that the speed with which action had been taken was a significant factor.
⁴¹

Preventive measures – which included supplying heroin addicts with the means of delivering one health risk in order to save them contracting and spreading another – demonstrated the
extent to which the government had determined upon drastic action. By contrast, in December 1986 the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Basil Hume, warned of a
‘moral Chernobyl’. Far from offering ‘tacit acceptance’, he maintained that using condoms represented ‘a counsel of despair’ because sex belonged exclusively
within marriage and otherwise abstinence offered the only means of combating the disease.
⁴²
When the BBC tried to promote Aids awareness among the
young, Monsignor Vincent Nichols (Hume’s successor but one) accused the corporation of ‘disregarding moral principles’ by promoting condom use under the slogan ‘Play
Safe’.
⁴³
Endorsement of self-discipline also came from ‘God’s copper’, as the tabloid press had taken to calling the chief
constable of Manchester police, James Anderton. He condemned those most at risk from Aids – homosexuals and users of drugs and prostitutes – as the authors of their own misfortune:
‘as the years go by, I see ever increasing numbers of them swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making’, adding, ‘why do homosexuals freely engage in sodomy and other
obnoxious sexual practices, knowing the dangers involved? . . . Why is this question not asked of these people?’
⁴⁴
Treading the little-worn
path from Methodist lay preacher to Roman Catholic convert, Anderton claimed his opinions were guided by his faith; and although he was censured by the Association of Chief Police Officers (of
which he was president), Manchester police stations were deluged with telephone calls from the public voicing support for him.
The Sun
joined the plaudits, recommending: ‘What Britain
needs is more men like James Anderton – and fewer gay terrorists holding the decent members of society to ransom.’
⁴⁵
As late as 1988,
the British Social Attitudes survey suggested that two thirds of the population believed the government’s Aids campaign should go beyond health advice and issue moral strictures against some
sexual practices.
⁴⁶