Bradford City stadium fire: How city quietly marks the 'forgotten disaster' 40 years on

ITV News

08-05-2025

On 11 May 1985, 56 fans died in a fire at Bradford City's Valley Parade stadium. To mark the 40th anniversary of the disaster, ITV Calendar sports reporter Chris Dawkes spoke to many of those who were there.
I was born in 1981 in Pudsey, a market town around five miles from Bradford city centre, so I was only three years-old on 11 May 1985.
I have no recollection of the fire at Bradford City 's Valley Parade stadium, which claimed 56 lives, and I don't ever remember people talking about it.
The Hillsborough disaster happened four years later - that dominated conversation in the playground. How could 97 people die watching a football match, the game we played every lunchtime? It just didn't make sense.
Whenever anyone says the word "Hillsborough", even now, it evokes feelings of despair and sympathy. But Valley Parade? For most football fans it's just a stadium. For those with no interest in the game, it probably means nothing at all.
My dad was an English teacher in Bradford. He told me some years later, when I was old enough to understand that bad things happened in the world, that a couple of boys he taught were at Valley Parade on the day of the fire.
They were in the old Midland Road stand, opposite the main stand which caught fire, and even from that distance the heat was so intense that some loose coins in their pockets burnt their legs. That was it. Nothing more.
I knew that people had died, but the number 56 was never mentioned. It was only when I joined ITV Yorkshire in 2004 that I was to learn more about the disaster that happened so close to home.
I'm probably one of the last "old-school" breed of broadcast journalists who didn't take a journalism degree or post-grad and when I started in television it wasn't as a journalist - my first job was in the ITV Yorkshire news library.
It was in that dusty, murky archive that I was to encounter the "restricted zone".
This mountain of film and tape was off-limits to pretty much anyone except us archivists, and among the catalogue was the footage of the Bradford City fire.
It was widely accepted that under no circumstances should this footage be allowed out of what was effectively a locked prison. Why? What was so contentious?
Of course, I wasn't aware of the full extent of what was imprinted onto that film. One day, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to unlock the mystery of the forbidden tapes. What I watched shocked me.
I understood instantly why this footage was restricted and I started to appreciate more about what is referred to, by some, as the "forgotten" football disaster.
As the 40th anniversary of the fire approached, I thought there was an opportunity to revisit the archive to take an in-depth look at what had happened and speak to some of those involved at the time. For one thing, many of them are unlikely to be around to share their recollections for the next "significant" anniversary.
But myself and producer Mark Witty, a Bradford City fan and journalist of more than 40 years' experience, were unsure whether people would open up.
Why would anyone want to relive what was such a traumatic experience? The answer was, to keep the memory alive.
Virtually everybody we approached agreed to speak on camera. To such an extent that we ended up with over 30 interviewees: players, fans, commentators, survivors, bereaved loved ones, emergency service staff, nearby residents. Each with their own unique story to tell.
They included John Dewhirst, a Bantams fan since 1972, and the authority on all things Bradford and Bradford City.
He told me how the football club's decline mirrored that of the city, a once thriving industrial powerhouse. After the Second World War the closure of the cotton and wool mills had a devastating impact on the city, while the club toiled.
By the 1980s, Bradford City hadn't competed in the country's top two divisions for over 40 years.
Peter Jackson, the club's captain in 1985, reflected that the wooden main stand - built as a supposedly temporary structure in 1907 and condemned shortly before the fire - was a "tinder box waiting to happen."
And so it proved, as commentator John Helm told me as he recalled watching a small fire turn into a deadly inferno, almost in the blink of an eye: "Within four and a half minutes the whole stand was gone."
Matthew Wildman, 17 in 1985 and walking with crutches due to severe rheumatoid arthritis, was among the last to escape with his life.
He spoke in graphic detail about seeing the skin on his hands "bubbling" from the heat as he threw himself over a wall to get out.
Meanwhile, others waited in vain for news that their loved ones were safe.
Glenys Dempsey had waved her husband off earlier in the day and was at home with her daughter Georgie, following the match on the radio when the fire broke out.
"When he was leaving he said to me 'don't start cooking at the normal time because I might be late home'," Glenys said.
"He never came home."
Hearing Glenys and Georgie tell their story brought tears to the eyes of all us listening.
And it is striking how the memories of 11 May 1985 continue to stir up raw emotions among those who were in Bradford that day, four decades later.
Even men hardened by years working on the frontline of policing and the fire service still well up as they tell their stories.
"We didn't get counselling. The local pub was our counsellor," former firefighter Ken Hunter said.
"Virtually everybody knew somebody who had been involved in some way," said John Dewhirst.
The city mourned for weeks afterwards, but with a quiet fortitude which typified Yorkshire stoicism. Memorials were held, an inquest was launched and a subsequent inquiry determined that a discarded cigarette or match had ignited rubbish in the void beneath the stand.
And then the media attention surrounding what had happened slowly ebbed away and the world moved on.
What struck me from speaking to those who continue to carry the memories of 1985, though, is that there is no desire for fanfare or fuss.
Every year, Bradford City honour the 56 in their own way - with a special ceremony on the pitch.
I was at the last home match of this season when the commemorations were held.
It was fitting that the occasion also saw Bradford earn the win they needed to gain promotion to League One. Fans flooded the pitch. The mood was joyous. Just as it was in those days, hours and minutes before 3.44pm on 11 May 1985.
Over the next few days, the Bradford City fire disaster will feature on news channels, radio stations, and in newspaper articles. But then, for many, it will become a faded memory.
The people of Bradford, though, will never forget.