AAL Insight: Hillsborough, truth and long-overdue justice

Feb 10, 2018

Written By Jack J Collins, Editor, AllAboutLaw.co.uk

When ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ rang out in startling fashion against Dortmund last month, and then Liverpool went on to record another famous victory, there was a suggestion that this could be an extraordinary month for the club.

What’s happened since has raised April 2016 to perhaps the most important month in the club’s history, with the Hillsborough verdict becoming one of the landmark cases of all time and providing an end to the most sickening miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

As such, the rendition of the famous Kop anthem outside Warrington Coroner’s Court, was perhaps the most moving of all – an outburst of vindication and exoneration after 27 years of lies, institutionalised corruption and shifted blame.

The statement from Everton FC, just across Stanley Park, perhaps summarised it best – “theirs is the greatest victory in the history of football.” Against all odds, against forces greater than they could ever have imagined, these families have been vindicated in their quest for justice with only one weapon – pure, unwavering resolve.

The verdict completely exonerated supporters of all blame, instead showing that their blood was on the hands of various people – the ambulance service, the safety engineers of Sheffield Wednesday, and more than anyone else, the police and their gross negligence.

But perhaps most importantly, it indicted the justice system for time and time again failing to do its job properly and uphold a fair, balanced trial. The review criticised the first inquest which did not set its parameters wide enough to find justice, as well as Lord Taylor’s famous report from 1989 which managed to still find a way to showcase fans as the true enemy.

What next?

It’s a widely held view that this verdict has only provided the truth, and now it is up to the courts to make sure that justice is meted out to those responsible. Whilst it is hard to pin manslaughter on any particular person, the hammer of the law must come down hard on those who corroborated the lies perpetrated by South Yorkshire Police and who thus continued to make these families’ lives a living hell.

This is perhaps the most troubling thing of all – whilst those dead or dying were barely cold, police were already fabricating their story and making sure that, irrelevant of the lives lost and the countless families touched forever by tragedy, they were not going to be blamed.

Officers were sent to search the M62 for empty cans of beer, bins were searched and photographed, blood samples were being tested for alcohol. There are severe allegations of forcing witnesses and even officers, to change their statements to pre-prepared ones under duress, and all of this was done to further give credibility to a lie.

Evidence to enquiries has been withheld, video footage from the day mysteriously disappeared, and journalists and MPs were fed lies from a propaganda machine unwilling to admit its own desperate role in the tragedy.

This is not to say journalists and MPs have no share of the blame. To accept a story is one thing, but to publish it brazenly in the way it was with no attempts to see another side of the story or to explore the facts of the matter is not freedom of speech or freedom of the press – it’s sloppy, misleading, and an insult to the profession.

For MPs especially, it was an excuse that the Thatcher administration at the time had been looking for – desperate to see football fans implicated so that they could take away a gathering point for those who dared to speak out against their policies and challenge the status quo. Football crowds were loud, angry and working class, and just like their ‘rave’ cousins who were outlawed by the Criminal Justice Bill a few years later, Hillsborough provided the excuse the government needed to demonise football fans.

Now is the time, therefore, for justice – which can only come through accountability. Those who have brazenly lied, covered the truth and perverted the course of justice in the courtrooms must be given the punishments they deserve.

The two inquiries into police behaviour will have to meet their deadlines and return verdicts before the end of the year – and then the day of reckoning must come for those who have dished out pain and suffering to these families by the bucketload.

It begins

That day might already be here for Chief Constable David Crompton, who has been suspended from his duties as head of South Yorkshire Police following the result of the trial. Families have already called for his resignation following further attempts to hide behind lies in court, even 27 years on.

Andy Burnham MP, the shadow home secretary, made his feelings on the chief constable’s position very clear when addressing the Commons in the wake of the verdict.

“Disgracefully, slurs have been thrown around in this courtroom about supporters of Liverpool football club. Disgracefully, the cover-up has continued in this courtroom. Disgracefully, public money has been spent on those lies and putting these families through hell once again,” he said. “I find that completely unacceptable. People must be held to account for their actions. Prosecutions must follow.”

Stephen Wright, whose brother Graham died at Hillsborough, made it clear that the police force had continued to try and absolve themselves of the blame and pass it on to innocent fans, even when the inquest had come to a head.

“The evidence over the past two years has been overwhelming, yet South Yorkshire police and their senior officers have tried to look truth in the eye and deny responsibility and shift blame on to others, in particular, innocent football fans,” he told the Guardian.

The truth is finally out and despite an “industrial-scale cover up”, as one member of the support group put it, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. But, until those responsible have been found accountable for their actions, justice has not been meted out effectively.

The legal system must begin to right its many wrongs in the Hillsborough case and be brave, just as those families have been for 27 years, and who managed to overcome what seemed like immovable obstacles by standing together for those that they loved. They will never again, walk alone.

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