1971 Ibrox disaster
The 1971 Ibrox disaster was a crush among the crowd at an Old Firm football game, which led to 66 deaths and more than 200 injuries.
It happened on 2 January 1971 in an exit stairway at Ibrox Park (now Ibrox Stadium) in Glasgow, Scotland.
It was the worst British football disaster until the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, England, in 1989.
The stadium’s owner, Rangers F.C., was eventually determined to be at blame in a sheriff’s verdict on one of the killings.
Rangers did not argue this verdict and was sued for damages in 60 other cases brought by relatives of the dead.
BACKGROUND
The first accident at Ibrox occurred during a 1902 home international match between Scotland and England.
The back of the wooden West Tribune Stand collapsed owing to heavy rainfall the previous night, inflicting 25 deaths and more than 500 injuries.
Ibrox Park in 1910, with the Copland Road exit at the far corner of the stadium. An comparable staircase can be seen descending the nearest corner.
During 1963, concerns were raised concerning the safety of the stairway adjacent to route 13, informally known as Stairway 13, the exit closest to Copland Road metro station.
It was noted that the stairs gave very little freedom of movement due to crowd pressure; many were carried off their feet by the mob and had no option in which lane they were going to utilize, or at what pace.
On 16 September 1961, two persons were killed in a crush on the stairwell.
In 1967, eight people were hurt after exiting the stadium. In 1969, 26 were injured in an accident on Stairway 13 during egress.
No steps were done to consult a professional firm to discuss the possible threats from crowds on Stairway 13 following these events.
Subsequent to the 1961 accident, Rangers had by then spent a total of £150,000 (equivalent to £2,500,000 in 2019) on modifications to Ibrox, a fairly considerable sum of money for the time.
EVENTS
The incident occurred on Saturday, 2 January 1971, when 66 people were killed in a crush as supporters tried to escape the stadium.
The match was an Old Firm game (Rangers v Celtic) and was attended by more than 80,000 supporters.
In the 90th minute, Celtic grabbed a 1–0 lead through Jimmy Johnstone, but in the last moments of the match, Colin Stein scored an equaliser for Rangers.
As thousands of fans were leaving the ground by stairway 13, it looks that someone may have fallen, sparking a major chain-reaction pile-up of people.
The loss included numerous children, five of whom, Peter Easton, Martin Paton, Mason Phillips, Brian Todd and Douglas Morrison, were schoolmates from the same town of Markinch in Fife.
The loss also included 31 teenagers, including the only female victim Margaret Ferguson of Maddiston in Falkirk, age 18.
The youngest child to die was Nigel Patrick Pickup of Liverpool, age 9.
Most of the deaths were caused by compressive asphyxia, with bodies being heaped up to six feet deep in the region.
More than 200 other fans were injured.
Initially, there was speculation that some fans left the ground slightly early when Celtic scored, but then turned back when they heard the crowd shouting when Stein scored the equaliser, colliding with fans leaving the pitch when the match concluded.
The official study into the accident concluded that there was no reality in this notion, however, as all the spectators were heading in the same direction at the time of the collapse.
Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish, then a Celtic player, was in the stands when the tragedy occurred. Dalglish was also present at the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters in 1985 and 1989, respectively.
VICTIMS
Sixty-six individuals died on the day at the stadium as a result of injuries received during the accident. Over 200 persons were reported to have received injuries.
Ages
Of those who died, all were aged under 50, 61 were under 40, 49 were under 30, 33 were under 20 and 1 was aged under 10.
| Age range | Males | Females | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–9 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 10–19 | 31 | 1 | 32 |
| 20–29 | 16 | 0 | 16 |
| 30–39 | 12 | 0 | 12 |
| 40–49 | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| Totals | 65 | 1 | 66 |
CONSEQUENCES
The accident caused the UK government to explore into safety at sports fields. In February 1971, Scottish judge Lord Wheatley was invited to conduct an inquiry.
His results, published in May 1972, provided the basis for the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (Green Guide), originally published in 1973.
Exterior image of all-seater Ibrox Stadium, with Stairway 13 corner in the foreground (2008)
A fatal accident inquiry had been undertaken in Glasgow which commenced on 15 February 1971.
It lasted 7 days, although the jury of four men and three women had been ordered not to make recommendations around safety concerns at football grounds since an inquiry chaired by Lord Wheatley would be reviewing this.
The 1971 disaster led to a significant rebuilding of the Ibrox ground, driven by the then-manager Willie Waddell, who visited Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion for inspiration.
After three years’ rebuilding work, three-quarters of the ground being replaced by contemporary all-seater stands, Ibrox was turned to a 44,000-capacity stadium by 1981.
Further renovation in the 1990s boosted the stadium capacity to 50,000, and Ibrox was subsequently awarded UEFA five-star certification.
The Scottish folk singer-songwriter Matt McGinn (1928–1977) wrote a song called “The Ibrox Disaster” as a memorial to the victims who died in the awful event.
For some years after the 1971 incident, there was simply a little plaque at the corner of the site where it happened. However, in 1995, Rangers revealed plans to honor the 66 supporters killed in the 1971 disaster.
On 2 January 2001, the 30th anniversary of the catastrophe, a larger monument was unveiled at the corner of the Bill Struth Main Stand and the Copland Road Stand.
The monument features blue plaques commemorating the names of each person murdered in all three tragedies.
A statue of John Greig, the Rangers captain at the time of the 1971 catastrophe, rests atop the monument.
In 2011, the 40th anniversary of the disaster was marked before the Old Firm game on 2 January 2011 when a one-minute silence was observed before the game.
Both teams donned black armbands as a token of respect and were led out by John Greig and Billy McNeill – the respective club captains at the time of the catastrophe (although Billy McNeill had not participated due to injury).
DAMAGES CLAIMS
Sheriff James Irvine Smith, in his damages statement, ruled: “The said accident was due to the fault and negligence of the defenders, Rangers F.C.”.
Smith found Rangers F.C. guilty on four counts in the case of the death of Charles Dougan, a 31-year-old boilermaker from Clydebank who died, as did 56 others, from acute asphyxia.
After hearing of the sequence of mishaps on Stairway 13 including September 1961 when there were 70 people hurt and two deaths, September 1967 when 11 people were brought to hospital, and January 1969 when 29 people were injured, Sheriff Irvine Smith commented,
So far as the evidence is concerned, the Board never so much as considered that it ought to apply its mind to the question of safety on that particular stairway […] and would appear – I put it no higher – to have proceeded on the view that if the problem was ignored long enough it would eventually go away.
Indeed it goes farther than this because several of their behaviors can only be read as an intentional and apparently successful attempt to persuade others that they were doing something, when in fact they were doing nothing.— Sheriff Irvine Smith, damages statement.
In the case of Charles Dougan and a further 60 instances made by relatives of the dead, Rangers F.C. did not question the findings of Sheriff Irvine Smith and instead just contested the calculation of the damages as can be seen from the appeal ruling of the Sheriff Principal.
In his autobiography, Irvine Smith writes that almost 40 years after his decision, he was viewed with contempt by certain Rangers-supporting acquaintances, who accused him of “disloyalty”.
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