Jim makes what I think is a very good point about the police in the 70s and 80s. Only a few years before Hillsborough the police in Yorkshire were beating seven shades of crap out of striking miners - or at best treating them like cattle. That's how they'd become used to dealing with large crowds of working-class men by the time of Hillsborough - plus they knew they could get away with it.

My father-in-law, on the other hand, was a police sergeant in Lancashire during the strike and never took a penny in overtime. His father-in-law was a retired miner and he knew he wouldn't be able to look him in the face if he did (despite being a Conservative voter himself).

Bit of a drift, I know, but Jim's remark just put me in mind of it.