Former police inspector Gordon Sykes says approach to turnstiles was a death trap and match commander seemed weak

A former South Yorkshire police inspector who was on duty at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough when 96 people were crushed to death has said he believed before the match that the approach to the stadium’s Leppings Lane turnstiles was a “death trap” and that police had “got away with” crowd safety for years before the disaster.

Gordon Sykes also told the inquest into the disaster that there was “a big problem” with managing safety at Hillsborough if there was an inexperienced chief superintendent in overall command, as happened in 1989.

Sykes said he had been unimpressed by Ch Supt David Duckenfield, who was promoted 19 days beforehand to command the match at which 54,000 people were expected, sensing he was “weak and didn’t have a clear idea of what a semi-final entailed”.

However, questioned by Christina Lambert QC, for the coroner, Lord Justice Goldring, Sykes agreed that after the disaster he had not raised these concerns with the Police Federation or the South Yorkshire police chief constable, Peter Wright.

Instead, Sykes told the Police Federation secretary, Paul Middup, and local Conservative MP Irvine Patnick, at the police’s Niagara social club on the night of the disaster, 15 April 1989, that Liverpool supporters had been drunk and that he had been kicked while trying to attend to people in the disaster.

He also told Middup that after the lethal crush, when he was trying to resuscitate a young woman whose breasts had become exposed, one Liverpool supporter had shouted from the stand above: “Throw her up here and I’ll fuck her.”

Michael Mansfield QC, representing 75 families whose relatives were killed in Hillsborough’s Leppings Lane “pens,” challenged Sykes that he had made up that incident to besmirch supporters, which Sykes refuted. He agreed that he had approached Patnick in the Niagara club and offered to tell him “the truth,” and that he was aware the stories were going to “the highest level” - the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who was coming to Sheffield the following day, home secretary Douglas Hurd and sports minister Colin Moynihan.

Mansfield accused Sykes of lying when after offering Patnick the truth, instead of telling the MP that he had known and had been warning for years that the ground was a deathtrap, Sykes had instead alleged fans’ misbehaviour, the incident with the woman, and urged Patnick to tell the police’s story in parliament that “it was booze that did it.”

“That was a lie, wasn’t it?” Mansfield asked.

“Absolutely not,” Sykes replied.

“We have just been through this issue about what went wrong, the dangerous end at Leppings Lane, so what you are doing here, beginning with you, particularly you, is creating in the mind of a public servant, an MP, that in fact it is alcohol and it is the Liverpool fans,” Mansfield said.

“No,” Sykes maintained, “that wasn’t my intention at all. I didn’t go any further to talk about the ground or the dangers; that [the incident with the woman] were just one thing that were said there and then.”

Those stories, including the alleged abusive language of one supporter towards the young woman, then appeared in the Sun on Wednesday 19 April 1989, along with other police claims about Liverpool supporters’ alleged misbehaviour, under the headline “The Truth”.

The article said South Yorkshire police officers “hit back” to “reveal their side of the story” after press criticism of the force’s policing at Hillsborough and to counter the alleged painting of Liverpool supporters as “lilywhite”.

It quoted an unnamed high-ranking officer describing the Liverpool fans as “just acting like animals” at Hillsborough. Sykes told the inquest that the unnamed officer was not him.

Sykes said he believed he had spoken to Middup and Patnick in the Niagara club in confidence, and had not expected his stories to appear in the press, although minutes of a Police Federation meeting on 19 April, the day the Sun story appeared, do not record him making that point.

With other senior officers who had been on duty at Hillsborough, Sykes also attended a debriefing with Wright, the chief constable, on 16 April, the morning after the disaster.

Wright also attended the Police Federation meeting, at which he talked about a need to “pull the case of the South Yorkshire police together”, and said accounts that “drunken behaviour of fans was a cause of the disaster needed to be reflected in officers’ statements”.

Wright let it be known, Sykes agreed, that he was giving Middup “carte blanche to put the record straight”.

Sykes told the inquest that there had been crushing in front of Hilsborough’s turnstile area at several previous matches, in which he feared people could have been killed.

The approach was a bottleneck, he said, and the narrow layout, with iron gates on the concourse in front of the turnstiles, created “nooks and crannies” in which people could become dangerously trapped.

Sykes said he had believed before 1989 that the turnstiles approach was a death trap and said he had made that observation clear to senior officers several times.

“Death trap is a strong word,” Lambert said to him.

“Yes,” he said, “but that is what I honestly believed.”

Sykes said that under the command of the previous, experienced officer, Ch Supt Brian Mole, police used to manage the problems of congestion at Leppings Lane by trying to place cordons in front of arriving crowds, or using police horses, but the area made orderly queues “totally impossible”.

On four previous occasions, he thought, they had alleviated the pressure by opening a large exit gate, C, and allowing large numbers of supporters inside the ground.

Whenever that was done, he said, an order would be given to the control room, which was commanded by Mole, to block off the tunnel inside, which led to the central area of the Leppings Lane terrace.

This was not done by Duckenfield in 1989 when gate C was opened to relieve the crush in the turnstiles area, and the lethal crush happened in the terrace’s central pens.

Asked about the police management of crowd safety at Leppings Lane, Sykes said: “Up to 1989, I’m going to put it bluntly: we got away with it.”

Lambert said Duckenfield had given a briefing the day before the match, 14 April 1989, in which he said he wanted to see “firm but fair policing”. She asked Sykes what he had thought that meant.

“I haven’t a clue,” he replied. He said it was meaningless, that the briefing was “not inspiring”, and that he sensed that Duckenfield was “weak and didn’t have a clear idea of what a semi-final entailed”.

Approximately 100 people who lost relatives in the disaster 25 years ago, most of them parents whose children died, were in the converted courtroom in Warrington, listening silently to the evidence.

Lambert challenged Sykes about whether he had mentioned his safety concerns in the debriefing and other meetings after the disaster. She said the minutes of neither meeting recorded him expressing such observations.

“You were in a very good position, weren’t you, to do that which the chief constable invited officers to do, which is to reveal the saga of the stadium?” Lambert asked him. “At what stage did you first voice your concerns relating to the Leppings Lane turnstiles configuration?”

In a low voice, Sykes replied: “I honestly can’t remember. I can’t just put a timetable on it.”

The inquest continues.