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Times
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire — a vital reminder of a football tragedy
If you asked people to name a British football catastrophe, most would probably cite the national scandal that was the Hillsborough disaster. The Bradford City fire tragedy happened four years earlier in 1985, leaving 56 people dead, but it is fading more from public memory. The feature-length Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire (BBC2) was an impressive, forensic and enormously moving rejoinder to this, not only reminding us of the sheer horror of that day, May 11, when the main stand became a furnace, completely swallowed in flames in under four minutes, but also honouring the victims and the strength of the local community. It interviewed emergency responders and fans who survived the disaster, some of whom are clearly still traumatised 40 years on. It replayed
Sky News
11-05-2025
- Sport
- Sky News
'It never gets easier': Woman who lost father and son in Bradford City fire speaks 40 years on
A woman who lost her father and son in the Bradford City fire 40 years ago said the pain "never gets easier". Wendy Middleton's 84-year-old father Frederick and her youngest son, 11-year-old Adrian, died when a fire ripped through a stand at Bradford City's grounds on 11 May 1985. Frederick was excited that his beloved Bantams had won promotion and wanted to take his grandson for the last game of the season as a special treat. It would be Adrian's first and last time at Valley Parade. Fifty-six people died and hundreds more were injured in the fire that was spotted by a commentator in the 40th minute of a match against Lincoln City. Within a few minutes, the entire wooden structure was engulfed by smoke and flames. The dilapidated stand was due to be demolished. Fans and players sought safety on the pitch and could only watch on in horror as people tried to escape. But some were trapped by locked turnstiles and couldn't get to safety. Wendy has never spoken publicly about her loss before and told Sky News: "It still hurts an awful lot, it never gets easier, you just cope with it in a different way." Wendy had to wait days before her father and son were formally identified. She says the waiting was unbearable. Her father was identified by his front door keys. On Sunday, Bradford held a powerful and poignant memorial service as the city hall bell tolled for each of the people who lost their lives in the tragedy. Players past and present joined relatives of victims to pay their respects as the names of the victims were read aloud. Wendy has never been able to go back to Valley Parade after she lost the "baby" of the family. But reflects that "it's comforting to know that people still care and think about it". Survivors, too, are haunted by the tragic events of that day. Bashir Abrahim, 65, was with his father when the chaos of the fire separated them. After a frantic search, they were reunited on the pitch. He says he'll never forget the immense heat from the flames. He bears the psychological scars from what he experienced that day, but every year he attends the memorial service and says he prays for the victims and their families. The huge turnout at the service in Centenary Square shows how Bradford is still bound together by what happened 40 years ago. A city united in grief and a determination to never forget the 54 Bradford City fans and two Lincoln City fans who went to a football match and never returned home.
Telegraph
11-05-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire, review: a worthy memorial made with care and respect
The title of Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire (BBC Two) is carefully chosen. The 1985 tragedy that claimed 56 lives will, of course, never be forgotten by the victims' families or those who witnessed it. For Bradfordians like myself who are old enough to remember that day in May, the memory lingers. If you're a football fan, perhaps you recall seeing the horror unfold live on television. But, by and large, it has faded from public consciousness, overshadowed by other footballing disasters. It was the last day of a triumphant season, the team already crowned Third Division champions. TV footage of the match, shown here, catches a hint of smoke in the corner of the frame. From there, it takes under four minutes for the stand to become an inferno. Almost all of those who died had attempted to escape through the back of the stand, but found turnstiles and gates closed. Forty years on, this documentary revisits the tragedy through the recollections of people who were there. They include the team captain, Peter Jackson; Mick Doyle, the groundsman, who realised upon seeing the flames that his brother was in the stand; and Hazel Greenwood, who lost her husband and two sons. Her testimony is heartbreaking. Six boys from Hazel's street went to the game that afternoon, 'and they all came home, but my boys'. We hear a replay of sports reporter Mike Delahunty's anguished radio commentary, begging fleeing fans to evacuate and 'watch for the kiddies'. Eleven of the victims were children. It is an excellent documentary, made with care and respect, and a worthy memorial. It sets the scene by describing Bradford's decline from centre of the wool trade to a city of poverty and hardship. 'A lot of once-magnificent thoroughfares turning to s--t, basically', said Jim Greenhalf, a venerable Telegraph & Argus journalist who deftly contextualised what Bradford City's soaring fortunes that season meant to local people. 'Once you start having expectations, your days change. Once you start looking forward to something, as opposed to gritting your teeth and hoping for the best, you wake up with a different feeling. Right across Bradford, people waking up and not feeling c--p for once.' Similarly, Asadour Guzelian, a local photographer, described the Valley Parade ground as a 's--theap' back then, and yet: 'On its day, it generated an atmosphere unequalled anywhere.' You could substitute any number of British towns and cities for Bradford here. Delahunty called it 'lower division heaven'. There are plenty of tough men in the documentary, reduced to tears by what they saw. In addition to the archive footage, we have Guzelian's haunting photographs, shot in black and white after he reasoned that the lab required to process colour film wouldn't be open on a Saturday afternoon. A discarded cigarette or match is thought to have caused the fire, falling between the wooden floorboards and setting light to rubbish that had accumulated beneath. The Popplewell Inquiry concluded that it was an accident; a later theory that it was arson, linked to chairman Stafford Heginbotham's financial difficulties, is dealt with briskly here and dismissed as unfounded. Perhaps this is why the Bradford fire has faded from memory. There was no need to campaign for justice or accountability. All that's left is grief, not grievance.
The Guardian
11-05-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire review – teases a daring tale of humanity out of a devastating inferno
On Saturday 11 May 1985, the last day of the football season, Bradford City's fans were celebrating. They had already won the Third Division: the team was presented with the trophy before the final game, at home against Lincoln City, kicked off. An unusually large crowd turned up at Valley Parade for what was more a party than a match. What happened next has perhaps faded more than it should have from public memory, the rancid injustice of the Hillsborough tragedy having come to represent all the calamities that befell English football fans in the 1980s. But, 40 years since 56 people died in an inferno at Valley Parade, the sober, thoughtful documentary Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire remembers them anew. Before a tale of stunning horror takes hold, the film puts what was meant to be a glorious day in context. Jim Greenhalf, a journalist for the local Telegraph & Argus, remembers how he gradually appreciated the importance to the community of trips to Valley Parade, with its wooden main stand looking 'like it used to be a railway carriage in world war one', at a time when one of the city's main sources of worthwhile employment, heavy engineering, had dwindled and once-proud streets were turning to ruin. Greenhalf recalls what he was thinking in the winter and spring of 1985: 'This club is becoming more and more important to a fairly large group of people, because everything else is being taken away from them.' Bradford City had survived a brush with bankruptcy in 1983, a predicament that prompted players and fans to organise a crowdfunding appeal before businessman Stafford Heginbotham stepped in. The Third Division title was meant to be Bradford's reward. But just before half-time against Lincoln, a lit cigarette or match fell from the hand of a spectator through one of the many gaps in the main stand's floor. It set fire to a pile of rubbish that had collected in the void below the tiered seating area. The construction was almost entirely made of wood and flammable bitumen: within four minutes the entire stand, a whole side of the ground, was ferociously blazing. Perhaps the film's most memorable sequence arrives when we watch television coverage of the game, which soon becomes a report on the fire, in the company of fire safety expert Ben Hanney. He commentates on the pictures, which are timecoded so we can see the sheer speed of the developing catastrophe. Hanney points out behaviours that seem odd with hindsight but are just human nature: fans initially stand watching the flames, rapt or amused; then they panic when they appreciate the danger, with no middle phase in between. The shortness of the time that elapses between minor incident and major disaster is wholly terrifying. Unforgotten might frustrate some viewers with how little time it spends on recrimination. Rather than focus on the warnings that had been received by the club about the litter below the stand, it explains that several other similar venues had seen wooden stands catch fire in the years before the Bradford blaze, fortunately without the same dreadful consequences: such events were, apparently, just how things were back then. There is contemporaneous footage of Heginbotham defending himself against a reporter's questions, but the programme mirrors the approach of Sir Oliver Popplewell, who led the official inquiry and is also seen answering queries in news footage from the time. 'This is to improve things in the future,' Popplewell says of his upcoming analysis. A journalist asks him: not to apportion blame? 'No.' This decision becomes more understandable in the light of an interview with one of the police officers on the scene, Adrian Lyles, who tried to usher fans away from the fire when it had just started and did so successfully, despite their initial reluctance to believe this was necessary. Moments later, he remembers, smoke had 'replaced the air' and scores of lives depended on him: there is a devastating moment where he says he has never recovered from hostile questioning at the inquiry, suggesting that his decision to direct fans towards the rear turnstiles – which, it turned out, were locked – had been wrong. Unforgotten's document of the aftermath takes in survivors' guilt, the moral dilemmas faced by Greenhalf and other media figures as the fire became a huge story, and the pure grief of Hazel Greenwood, whose husband and two sons went to the match and didn't come home. But it prefers to speak more about the way the community united afterwards, the safety upgrades that were made at football grounds nationwide, the fundraising that established a burns unit where globally significant medical innovations took place. Courageously, it tries to rescue hope and humanity from the ashes. Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now
BBC News
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Memorial service marks 40 years since Bradford City fire
Relatives and friends of those who died or were injured in the Bradford City fire were among the crowd of people who attended a 40th anniversary memorial service took place at the Bradford City Fire Memorial sculpture in Centenary Square at 11:00 City of Bradford Brass Band played You'll Never Walk Alone, before the City Hall bell tolled 56 times to mark the number of people who died. A wreath was also laid on behalf of King Charles of Bradford Beverley Mullaney said the service was set up to help people "come together to pay tribute". She added: "It is important to the city and district that we take time to remember those who were affected and those who continue to be affected by the tragic events on 11 May 1985."The service also included Canon Pastor Oliver Evans, who is the Bradford City AFC club chaplain, giving a welcome Reverend Andy Bowerman, Dean of Bradford, also gave a short the memorial service finished, the City Hall opened for a short while for fans and visitors to view a memorial bell at the top of the civic staircase in the hall. The bell, which came from the first fire engine to arrive on the scene on 11 May 1985, was donated to the city by the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue City were playing Lincoln City in their last home match of the season when a fire ripped through the Valley Parade stadium with 11,000 fans four Bradford City supporters died, along with two travelling Lincoln supporters, as well as injuring more than 260. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
