Showing posts with label Ibrox Disaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ibrox Disaster. Show all posts
On this day fifty years ago, 66 Glasgow Rangers fans lost their lives in a crush at an Old Firm derby inside Ibrox Stadium. Each of them left their home in Rangers regalia to watch a game of soccer. They returned home in hearses.  

Cost cutting leads to coffin carrying. Sports fans everywhere are communities of people, not herds of cattle. Their safety is a right not a privilege. 

The Ibrox disaster as well as being a sad memory, is a torch that shines a light into the future so that nothing as dark as the tragedy of fifty years ago can repeat itself. 

The dead fans of Ibrox are a living sentinel that guards all sports fans against disasters that can and must be avoided. 

Tonight as they begin their 51st year of eternal sleep, let us not forget the 66.


Bryan Todd
Robert McAdam
Peter Wright
John Gardiner
Richard Bark 
William Thomson Summerhill
George Adams
John Neill
James Trainer
Richard Douglas Morrison
James Whyte Rae
David Douglas McGee
Robert Colquhoun Mulholland
David Ronald Paton
George McFarlane Irwin
Ian Frew 
John Crawford
Brian Hutchison
Duncan McIsaac McBrearty
Charles John Griffiths Livingstone
Adam Henderson
Richard McLeay
David Cummings Duff
David Fraser McPherson
Robert Lockerbie Rae
Robert Campbell Grant
John McNeil McLeay
David Anderson
John Buchanan
John McInnes Semple
John Jeffrey
Robert Maxwell
Matthew Reid
Alexander McIntyre 
Peter Gilchrist Farries
Thomas Melville
John James McGovern
George Wilson
Robert Charles Cairns
Hugh McGregor Addie
James Yuille Mair
Margaret Oliver Ferguson
Robert Turner Carrigan
George Alexander Smith
Walter Robert Raeburn
Andrew Jackson Lindsay
Charles Dougan
William Mason Philip
Russell Morgan 
Peter Gordon Easton 
George Crockett Findlay
Charles Stirling 
Thomas Dickson
James Graham Gray
Thomas McRobbie
Ian Scott Hunter
Nigel Patrick Pickup
Russell Malcolm 
Alexander Paterson Orr 
Thomas Walker Stirling
 
James William Sibbald
Frankie Dover
Walter Shields 
Thomas Grant, 
William Duncan Shaw
Donald Robert Sutherland

The Dead Of Ibrox

The Guardian ✒ In 1971, an Old Firm derby at Ibrox ended with the death of 66 fans as they celebrated a late goal. John Hodgman survived the terrifying crush and, 50 years on, asks how Rangers avoided taking responsibility. 


Rangers and Celtic, the dominant Glasgow football clubs, go back a long way in their sectarian hatred. The deep and violent rivalry between the traditionally Protestant Rangers and Celtic’s overwhelmingly Catholic support continues today, with total segregation at clashes between the two sides, known as the “Old Firm”.

Born a Protestant in 1947 and raised by Catholics in Glasgow, I had something of a conflicted childhood. Catholic kids had chapel and a separate education, while my birthright decreed I that was sent to Sunday School and got to wear my blue scarf to see “the Gers” at Ibrox Park every fortnight.
 
The Rangers Accordion Band had its practice hall on our tenement block and a pal took me along when I was 10. After a few weeks, I was picking up “the box” quite well, when the bandleader said he wanted a word. “They tell me your mother’s a Catholic, son.”

“No, not really,” I said. “The people who are bringing me up are Catholics. I don’t know where my real ma and da are.” 

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

''Singing And Dancing To Their Deaths' ➖ Football’s Forgotten Tragedy