What do we learn from the history of crowd related incidents?
Georg Hegel famously proclaimed humans fail to learn from history. This suggestion is notably relevant in the events industry and naturally poses the question, ‘Why?’ Why do major incidents continue to occur with clear similarities to those before them? My recent research provides some interesting insight.
Over one hundred and twenty crowd safety professionals were canvassed. These included Football Safety Officers, specialist Football Police Officers and Police Event Commanders. One section of the survey concerned awareness of previous crowd related incidents whilst another focussed on familiarity with published guidance.
The only way to begin countering Hegel’s assertion is to ensure sufficient and widespread awareness of notable history. In order to prevent repeated failures, those charged with crowd safety must be aware of the said failures in the first place. Whilst this may seem an obvious point, the research resulted in concerning findings.
An average familiarity score across twelve high profile football crowd related incidents was less than 5 out of 10 and the highest modal response, (which represented the phrase ‘Completely Unfamiliar’) was the lowest possible score of 1 out of 10.
Subjects were most familiar with the incidents at Hillsborough, 1989 and Wembley 2021 but even then, 10% of respondents reported being less than familiar with these events.
30% of participants reported low awareness of the infamous incidents at Bradford, 1985 and Heysel, 1985 with the remaining serious crowd related events all averaging less than 4 out of 10 on the scale. Of note, whilst still below 5 for seven of the incidents, Safety Officers reported higher familiarity when compared to police officers.
These results were surprising. Given the nature and specificity of the chosen incidents, the participants were expected to have a reasonable level of awareness. All have responsibility for football crowd safety and would surely benefit from understanding previous incidents?
Helpfully, many reports and guidance documents have been written, which review past incidents and provide advice on how to improve and develop crowd safety. Whilst it could be argued unrealistic to expect complete awareness and understanding of many different crowd related incidents, it is suggested a sound acquaintance with key reports and guidance is a fair and realistic expectation of crowd safety professionals.
However, familiarity was less than convincing. Whilst Safety Officers provided scores of over 8 out of 10 for two of the documents (The Taylor Report and The Green Guide) the general familiarity amongst respondents was considerably lower than expected. Perhaps most notable were the responses regarding the Cabinet Office document ‘Understanding Crowd Behaviours’ (2009) and the very recent ‘Casey Review’ into the Euro 2021 Final.
The former, which provides comprehensive detail on crowd theory, achieved an average familiarity score of below 5. Police officers reported a frustratingly low familiarity with the latter; especially given some of the recommendations are aimed in their direction. In fact, the police familiarity with all of the chosen documents was surprisingly low.
Ever since the early twentieth century, commentators including Lords, academics, Chief Constables and journalists have repeated the failure of crowd safety professionals to learn from previous incidents.
Albeit with a limited and specific sample, the research poses the question, ‘Are enough crowd safety professionals suitably familiar with past tragedies and subsequent guidance documents to prevent reoccurrences?’
Crowd safety management is difficult. However, very few event crowds are uniquely different and therefore awareness and understanding of past incidents can certainly make things easier. What’s more, the knowledge and expertise of others used in preparing reports, reviews and guidance documents often means most of the hard work has been done for us – we should all promote familiarity.