Hillsborough

[robertlouis]

On April 15 1989 96 Liverpool fans died at the what should have a been a celebration of football, a FA Cup semi-final between their club and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough in Sheffield, the home of Sheffield Wednesday. There was confusion, there was horror, but the families, the club and the city of Liverpool were traumatised deeply for months. The pain has never gone away because of what appeared to be a mix at best of prevarication, equivocation and downright lies on the part of the authorities who should have accepted their responsibility, in particular the South Yorkshire Police. Insult was literally added to injury when The Sun, the UK's best-selling tabloid paper, asserted that the fans had robbed from the bodies of the fallen and had urinated on them.

Today, 23 years later and after several previous abortive attempts to investigate, an independent panel has reported a catalogue of official conspiracy and cover-up which may even have extended into Downing St.

David Cameron gave a fulsome and gracious apology in Parliament. The news here, radio, tv, online, has been full of little else.

As I said in the sub-heading, we all knew this was the truth. Now, can the victims finally expect justice?

[robertlouis]

Bump

[Prospero]

Justice in my view would the prosecution and probable imprisonment of the cabal who cooked up the lie which has held sway over the past 23 years. There were many young people who died that day who could have bee saved if the emergency services and police had been better organised. That was tragic. But the conspiracy afterwards to blame the fans themselves and to hide the truth was utterly and wholly criminal.

[Stavros]

I don't know what Justice means in this context. If you look in detail -and many people have known some of the details for some time- you find that

1) Hillsborough was not a satisfactory venue, that fans in previous semi-finals in the 1980s had come close to being crushed to death -which suggests that the FA was at fault for choosing Hillsborough without insisting on the club making changes to its ground (turnstiles inadequate for the job, for example) -and when Sheffield Wednesday made it clear they wen't going to spend the money to upgrade their ground the game should have been moved elsewhere.
The FA and Sheffield Wednesday were part of the cause, what would justice today look like regarding their role in 1989?

2) The Police service's relationship with Sheffield Wednesday had broken down even before the match day, the man in charge on the day stepped in at short notice and didn't have a clue how to organise the day; the police focus was on public order rather than safety; it appears that it was claims made by policemen to the press that ended up in The Sun as lies over the behaviour of fans; and it was to save their own reputation that the police lied, lied and lied again.
But if the key serving officers are either retired or dead, what does justice look like?

3) The ambulance service was there, and it wasn't there -I can't think of a more lamentable non-performance from a front-line service in a major emergency -although its on a par with those ambulance personnel who weren't allowed to rush in to the underground on 7/7 for 'safety reasons'...
Who must take responsibility for it now?

4) the core issue is exposed by a note Margaret Thatcher made in the margin of a report on the police to the effect that it would be more damaging to expose the failure of the police than to tell the truth. The cover up ran from top to bottom, and the fact that it was Liverpool, with no Tory MPs, the reputation for militancy, the bad example both Tories and Labour wanted to be rid of, made it easier to turn a blind eye. I recall the argument that the Birmingham Six could not be exonerated of their crime because it would cast a bad light on the judiciary!

If there is justice, and if it cannot be precisely focused on the individuals responsible in 1989, it can be met through the creation of a more open society in which we do not run scared from exposing poor decision making in high office be it in the Government, the Police or the Ambulance Services, and that due diligence on sporting venues should be uncompromising -if it isn't safe, it isn't chosen.

The sad fact about the truth and Hillsborough, is that we have barely moved on. Tony Blair now says that the Freedom of Information Act was the biggest mistake of his government, and in the Security and Justice Bill going through Parliament there is a provision for the creation of Secret Courts that will handle cases where 'national security' is involved, but this is an amendment from the proposal to have a broader justification for secret sessions, which to me is simply intolerable in a democratic society.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/may/29/secret-justice-bill-not-perfect
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/sep/11/un-official-secret-courts-torture