The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal crowd crush at a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in the two standing-only central pens within the Leppings Lane stand allocated to Liverpool supporters. Shortly before kick-off, police match commander David Duckenfield ordered exit gate C to be opened in an attempt to ease crowding, which led to an influx of supporters entering the pens. This resulted in overcrowding of those pens and the fatal crush; with a total of 97 fatalities and 766 injuries, the disaster is the deadliest in British sporting history. Ninety-four people died on the day; one more died in hospital days later, another in 1993, and in 2021, a 97th who had suffered irreversible brain damage on the day. The match was abandoned and restaged at Old Trafford in Manchester on 7 May 1989; Liverpool won and went on to win that season's FA Cup.
The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between pickets and officers of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and other police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant at Orgreave, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It was a pivotal event in the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike, and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history.
The South Yorkshire Supertram, sometimes referred to as the Sheffield Supertram, is a tram and tram-train network covering Sheffield and Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. The network is owned and operated by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA).
Cleveland Police is a territorial police force in England responsible for the policing the boroughs of Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland in North Yorkshire and Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham within North East England. The force is overseen by the Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner. Since 2022, the chief constable has been Mark Webster.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester in North West England.
West Yorkshire Police, formerly the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police, is the territorial police force responsible for policing the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire, England. It is the fourth largest territorial police force in England and Wales by number of officers.
North Yorkshire Police is the territorial police force covering the unitary authorities of North Yorkshire and the City of York in northern England. As of April 2024 the force had a strength of 1,665 police officers, 127 special constables, 192 PCSOs and 1,072 police staff. Of the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, the force has the 3rd largest geographic area of responsibility whilst being the 15th smallest force in terms of police officer numbers.
Alan Roy Billings is an Anglican priest and Labour politician who served as the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner from 2014 to 2024.
Meredydd John Hughes is a retired British police officer. He served as Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police from 1 September 2004 to 2011.
Bernard Hogan-Howe, Baron Hogan-Howe, is an English former police officer and was the head of London's Metropolitan Police as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2011 until 2017.
Rotherham is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies at the confluence of the River Rother, from which the town gets its name, and the River Don. It is the largest settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham.
Sir Norman George Bettison, QPM is a British former police officer and the former Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police. He resigned in October 2012 amidst controversy about his role in the Hillsborough disaster, in which he was involved in the implementation of a cover-up of police errors. He remained the subject of an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation, and was charged on the 28 June 2017 with four counts of misconduct in public office. The case was dropped on 21 August 2018. Bettison's own book Hillsborough Untold (2016) contains his version of events.
Peter Wright was the Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police force from 1983 to 1990. During that period members of the force he commanded clashed with striking miners during the UK miners' strike (1984–85) and were responsible for the Hillsborough football ground in Sheffield on 15 April 1989 when the Hillsborough disaster occurred, where 97 fans died.
Shaun Wright is a British politician. He was the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner from 2012 to 2014. He was the first person to hold the post, to which he was elected as a Labour Party candidate on 15 November 2012. As he held a senior position in child services during the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal, he faced continual calls to resign. This resulted in his resignation from the Labour Party on 28 August and from his post on 16 September 2014.
The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consists of the organised child sexual abuse that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England from the late 1980s until 2013 and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period. Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history", with one report estimating that 1,400 girls were abused by "grooming gangs" between 1997 and 2013. Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers. From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16.
The South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner by-election was a 2014 by-election on 30 October 2014 for the position of Police and Crime Commissioner in the South Yorkshire Police region of the United Kingdom. It was triggered by the resignation of Shaun Wright, the inaugural South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, who stepped down from the position on 16 September 2014 following the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal. Wright had been head of children's services in Rotherham between 2005 and 2010, while events surrounding the scandal were taking place. The Labour candidate, Alan Billings, was elected.
Dan Johnson is an English journalist and presenter, working as the West & South West of England correspondent for BBC News.
Coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster by the British tabloid The Sun led to the newspaper's decline in Liverpool and the broader Merseyside region, with organised boycotts against it. The disaster occurred at a football match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Ninety-seven Liverpool supporters were crushed to death, and several hundred others were injured, due to negligence by the South Yorkshire Police. On 19 April 1989, four days after the incident, The Sun published a front-page story with the headline "The Truth" containing a number of falsehoods alleging that Liverpool supporters were responsible for the accident.
The 2022 South Yorkshire mayoral election took place on 5 May 2022 to elect the Mayor of South Yorkshire, the leader of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. It took place alongside other local elections across the United Kingdom. The Labour and Co-operative Party candidate, Oliver Coppard, won the election in the second round with 71.4% of the vote.
Travel South Yorkshire is the public transport passenger information brand used by South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. It was originally the public facing brand of the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive before it was dissolved and merged into SYMCA in April 2023.
