Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Remarks visiting Hillsborough Stadium (football disaster)

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Lepping Lane, Sheffield
Source: Thatcher Archive: COI transcript
Editorial comments:

The item takes the form of disjointed extracts from two "interviews" with unknown newsmen. While visiting the ground MT spoke to a group of as many as two hundred journalists and camera crews.

Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 319
Themes: Sport, Law & order

(FIRST INTERVIEW)

Prime Minister

…   . all of a sudden, there is a big hole and a big emptiness, an enormous hole, and nothing can fill it, and we just have to gather round and be with them. Comfort is the least one can do, but it does not fill the big void of emptiness that is there—nothing can fill that.

(SECOND INTERVIEW)

Presenter

… she was immediately taken to the Leppings Lane end of the ground to the terracing where the fans died. There, she paid specific attention to the fencing against which many were crushed. She heard a policeman's account of what happened, then there were yet more words of sympathy for yet more bereaved: [end p1]

Prime Minister

…   . utter horror and dismay as we see the terraces where it has happened and we know the many many families who just feel a great emptiness today because people for whom they had lived are no longer with them and that is why the Douglas HurdHome Secretary and I felt we had to come, first to get a much better impression of what the problem was and secondly, to show—the only way we could—how very deeply we feel for those who are just bereft.

Presenter

Mrs. Thatcher had watched events unfold on television.

Prime Minister

I had been doing some tidying-up just before I got down to work and my Carol Thatcherdaughter, Carol, telephoned and said: “I think you should put the television on immediately—something terrible is happening at Hillsborough!” I put it on immediately. By that time, there were some people on the pitch and I stayed watching until the end of “Grandstand” , but we had no idea for a long time—no idea from the cameras for a long time—that there were any fatalities and then first it came twenty and then fifty and then seventy five and then over ninety.