I read with interest your interview with Craig Bromfield ahead of the publication of his autobiography (Brian Clough and me: ‘If it wasn’t for him, I’d be in prison’, 30 October). In the extract from the book that you published, Bromfield writes that “for a long time” Brian Clough was convinced that 97 deaths of the Hillsborough disaster were “the innocent killed by the reckless”.
Clough witnessed the disaster and its aftermath. He received detailed accounts of the tragedy, giving him many opportunities to correct his erroneous view. However, he repeated in the Daily Mail the lie published in his 1994 autobiography, that “Liverpool fans who died were killed by Liverpool people”. It is no coincidence that his autobiography was ghostwritten by a Sun sports journalist. The book’s allegations renewed the newspaper’s intense hostility to Liverpool fans. Within days of publication, allegations of hooliganism and discussion about the deaths of Juventus fans at Heysel and Hillsborough were run together on BBC Radio 5 Live and across the national press.
Challenges by bereaved families and survivors were dismissed as “maudlin indignation”, a “kneejerk reaction” that was a byproduct of “a city wallowing in the past”. The outcry from the bereaved, survivors, players, Liverpool and Nottingham councillors and MPs was intense. Clough, however, did “not regret what I said – Liverpool people killed Liverpool people”.
Clough dismissed the campaign in Liverpool not to buy his book: “Half of them can’t read and the other half are pinching hub caps.” In a TV interview, he told Clive Anderson that in fact his allegations had been watered down: “I would have got into more trouble if it had all gone in.”
There is no doubt that Clough’s autobiography and persistent attacks in the mid-1990s contributed significantly to the myth that Liverpool fans were responsible for Hillsborough. I exposed this in 1999 in my book Hillsborough: The Truth and reaffirmed it in the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report in 2012. Finally, in 2016, the allegations were dismissed by the second inquest verdict, that all who died had been killed unlawfully, and the fans were in no way responsible.
Phil Scraton
Professor emeritus, school of law, Queen’s University Belfast
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