Cameras were only sent to Valley Parade to record the joyful finale to Bradford’s championship-winning season in the Third Division. But as flames ripped through the wooden main stand and fans poured on to the pitch, ITV went on air for the nation to watch a catastrophe that claimed 56 lives.
Media coverage of this tragedy – a mix of sensationalism and later disregard – has led to one of the worst episodes in British sporting history being marginalised in the national consciousness and little known among younger generations, beyond West Yorkshire.
The Valley Parade fire was initially world news. Margaret Thatcher declared it “one of the worst things I have ever seen” and ordered an inquiry. From New Zealand to Argentina, people saw coverage and sent money to the Bradford Disaster Appeal. Then the city was left to grieve alone. “It was global and then all of a sudden it wasn’t,” reflects Tony Worboys, director of the 90-minute documentary. “The funerals had not happened but the news cycles moved on.”
There was no social media but the news cycle still moved at pace. Bradford dropped out of view.
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Read MoreEven the ensuing Popplewell inquiry into stadium safety conflated Bradford with Birmingham and Heysel, both of which involved fan violence. “The fact that Heysel came three weeks after has a major impact on how we remember this story… and then Hillsborough happened four years later,” says Worboys, who won a Bafta for his work on Hillsborough, a film on the 1989 disaster, in which 97 Liverpool fans died.
“Bradford never wanted the headlines,” says Worboys, a Yorkshireman. “People from Yorkshire, we tend to bury things. We have people in our film who have never spoken about it and pretend they weren’t there.”
This tragedy was a consequence of the institutional neglect of working communities during the 1980s, when football fans were treated like cattle. Since Hillsborough, stadiums have been upgraded and the sport transformed. But as Bradford went off the media’s radar, the neglect of fire safety precautions took hold in other parts of society. The Grenfell Tower inferno of 2017 did not look so unprecedented to those who remembered Valley Parade.
After 40 years, Bradford people are more willing to speak up. “People who didn’t want to talk are realising that the story is not quite landing with the next generation,” says Worboys. “That spurs individuals to tell people what they know.” It is not too late for lessons to be learned, including by the media in covering the tragedies of the future.
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