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A really interesting a thought-proking read. It is definitely not something I have ever thought about how Hillsborough effected those Forrest fans that were there.
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This oneâs a feature - by Ian Byrne MP, who went the match.
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BRIAN READE: âI saw the horror at Hillsborough 36 years ago â Starmer move is an insultâ
ITâS that time of year when I get a dull pain in the heart as my mind drifts back to a dark place. On Tuesday, it will be 36 years since I walked through the opened Leppings Lane gate at Hillsborough and into Britainâs worst ever sporting disaster.
Unlike 97 fellow football fans, I survived, and, being a journalist, was able to write, that night, a cathartic article unleashing my torment and anger.
And even though it was only hours after Iâd left the death scene, the main target of my rage was the contempt towards fans shown by authorities, later proven to be the root cause of the disaster, and the police cover-up which had already begun. That 31-year-old me never envisaged that in my mid-60s Iâd still be writing about that dark day.
The pain should have receded by now, especially after an inquest found that every fan was unlawfully killed due to gross Ânegligence by police who later lied and doctored evidence, and, in 2012, PM David Cameron told the Commons he was âprofoundly sorry that this double injustice has been left uncorrected for so longâ.
But the pain hasnât receded because with no individual held legally responsible for the deaths, the British state has refused to assuage it. Choosing instead to cover its own backside.
Take the latest fudging over Âintroducing a Hillsborough Law, which, it is hoped, would guard against future cover-ups by imposing a legal âduty of candourâ on public authorities and giving bereaved families equality of funding.
Keir Starmer vowed to introduce the law in Labourâs general election manifesto and last year pledged to bring it to parliament before Tuesdayâs Hillsborough anniversary. Not just as a testament to the 97 but the victims of other perceived injustices such as Grenfell, the Post Office scandal and nuclear testing.
Yet, thanks to the government attempting to water down key sections of the law, which families cannot accept, that promise has been broken. And Starmer has not met with them to explain why. As it stands, the law would merely ask public authorities to sign up to a charter without any legal enforcement and there would be no provision of equal funding. It means police officers who lied in 1989, could do so again, and still get away with it.
The government denies jettisoning the Hillsborough Law, asking for more time to get the legislation right. They really have to. Not just because we need a Âmechanism for the powerless to gain justice but as a last chance to honour the memory of 97 souls who for decades were dishonoured by an Establishment that repeatedly kicked the bereaved families in the teeth.
Through relentless campaigning those families have shone a light on the inner workings of the British state and exposed corruption at its core. That in itself has earned them the right to see a much-needed levelling-up of justice in memory of their loved ones.
To not introduce a Hillsborough Law in full, after pledging to do so, would be to accept the narrative that those without a voice will never be heard in Britain because those at the top will not allow it.
For a Labour government, led by a former head of public prosecutions, to accept such a scenario, would be unforgivable. Because giving a voice to the voiceless is the very thing the party was set up for.
Please, donât let them down.
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Anne Williams Mural⊠
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More about it here - Hillsborough Law will include duty of candour on public officials - BBC News
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Neil Atkinson of the Anfield Wrap writing about the Hillsborough Law.
You shouldnât know who Anne Williams is.
You shouldnât know who Alastair Morgan is.
You shouldnât know who Nicole Gbangbola is.
You shouldnât know who Marie Lyon is.
You perhaps could know who Ste Purse is but for his work as an actor not as a campaigner.
The reason you know any of those names is because that they were bereaved, traumatised and lied to. By the state. By people in a position of authority. They were treated as inconveniences; as problems, as things to avoid.
Thereâs a Pratchett line that everything bad stems from treating people as things. Everything else comes from there. Itâs wise and typically morally strong but can be reinforced - everything bad also stems from treating people as problems.
What I have long found difficult to conceive of is how individual people, even if part of a bureaucracy or organisation, looks at those grieving, in the most agonising loss and confusion and chooses to deepen that agony, to create more confusion, chooses to deepen the hell.
The only way such a thing is possible, as a choice a human could make, is to feel it is being part of a bigger whole, an organisation which needs to protect itself against forces from the outside. That the person is a problem. That the person is a thing to be got beyond so the organisation can get on with its work.
The only way it works is if you institutionalise inhumanity.
That we do know who those people are, and hundreds more besides, is that some ordinary people when put into that institutionalised inhumanity refuse to take it lying down. They continue being a problem.
This, to be clear, isnât to decry those who donât refuse to take it lying down. Compartmentalising, trying to carry on, taking that pain and torment and bundling it up and carrying it is what humans do. It is, to an extent, what being human is much of the time and it happens globally every day.
But the problem people, in their hundreds, thousands, came together to be part of a solution. Hillsborough Law. Itâs important to understand that in a great many of these cases something that works as Hillsborough Law will is of no practical use to the campaigners now - Hillsborough itself being a great example. Instead it is to protect others from having to go through this hell.
It has been a campaign of selflessness, in the usual aspects like those who have worked unpaid on it, but also the other campaigns who came behind the Hillsborough banner, removing ego because the goal was to change the culture of the nation that had traumatised them and continued to do so.
Weâre bound by what we have shared. But that isnât always the same as liking it. Every development, positive or negative, sends me back to those bonds, sends me back to what has been done to ordinary people, sends me back to the banality of it all. There have been conspiracies and conversations in corners (it is worth remembering that the chase for the truth on Hillsborough David Cameron likened it to a "blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isnât thereâ) but ultimately it is a machine which has stopped justice on so many occasions.
Maybe itâs me. As demonstrated when I wrote about this for The New Statesman on two occasions (when it was still just about worth writing for) I canât take my eyes off the wreckage. When thereâs good news - and this is good news, let me tell you this is the best news youâre getting all week - in this sphere, I am always filled with anger knowing how hard the road to this bit of good news has been; that the road to natural justice and to support future traumatised people is fraught with endless traps.
When thereâs good news all I can think is that the people who have given almost everything they have to bring the good news about shouldnât have had to. Shouldnât have had their lives ripped open in the first place. Then shouldnât have been lied to. Then should have been given every chance for justice at the time.
Because Iâve seen the toll. Itâs too much. Itâs just too much.
Becoming 18 in around 1999 in Liverpool and going the match was to speak to a group of people who effectively carried group trauma with them everywhere they went. Starting SOS in 2008 was even more of this. Doing The Anfield Wrap I have seen it over and over, Iâve also seen the weight that was lifted when the second Inquest verdict came through.
It was beautiful. It just took far, far too long and so, so much damage had been done.
There are people - most of whom are on the right politically but not exclusively so - who will say of campaigners that they enjoy it. That the people who do it would be doing something like it anyway, that they are professional complainers.
From my experience in the above, in being around these circles, pulling some Hillsborough Law work together, meeting those broken and trying to make sense of it all, pleading with people who could help them to make sense of it all to lift a finger to help, from all of that, my view is that this is bollocks. Absolute cast iron fantasies from people who havenât had their life destroyed without meaning or explanation.
People who havenât survived. And known what it is to be a survivor with all of its guilt and pressure and feelings of falling short. Chips on shoulders - âchippyâ - and axes to grind. Thatâs what they say.
Even now expect the counter attack to come. There was some yesterday in The Telegraph. Expect it to come from the seen and unseen channels who will not believe this Labour Government has the temerity to remove power from the establishment and redress an absurd, life destroying imbalance.
Because what the Government put forward on Tuesday was almost everything that campaigners have asked for. It was something very close to what Pete Weatherby and Elkan Abrahamson originally drafted.
It was a surprise.
Given the events of last April it is a remarkable reversal from the Government and for that they deserve credit. April was a mess in public and private. The briefing against the manifesto commitment suggested a civil service in panic mode and a Government which had not grasped the issues.
Whatâs brought this reversal about is unclear. We can pick a version of events which we like - praise the strength of the campaign, the work of the Merseyside MPs, the threat of a Liverpool conference on the horizon, any of the above or more.
The version I want to go with is that Richard Hermer, a legal professional since 1993, the Attorney General, grasped the issue in April and realised that you canât be a little bit pregnant. That a Hillsborough Law logically needs the three pillars. That complaints such as sick days being made illegal in public service were spurious nonsense and this campaign was underpinned politically by the Merseyside MPs and Metro Mayors, underpinned intellectually by Pete and Elkan, underpinned emotionally by the campaigners who had turned their wreckage into weaponry and that the direction of travel was irresistible but most of all it was right. Just right. And that meant it had to be done and done well.
I prefer to think intelligence won the day, natural and unimpeachable justice from a lifelong lawyer came through.
The Government will know now, almost certainly more than Keir Starmer did in 2022 when he first committed to this, that:
a) What it is proposing is the most profound cultural shift for the British State since the Good Friday Agreement;
b) It is in for a fight across committees and the Second Chamber;
c) That it has deepened its commitments to the ordinary people who have shown themselves to be extraordinary.
The Government has looked Margaret Aspinall, Clive Smith, Steâs Purse and Kelly in the eye and allied itself to them. The Government has promised to fight alongside Charlotte Hennesey and Marie Lyon which is good news for the Government let me tell you.
Weâre bound by what we have shared. The Government is bound.
None of this should have happened. We shouldnât know these people however inspirational they may be. They shouldnât know each other, shouldnât have known their grief, shouldnât have fought their fight.
Everyone would rather not have had their lives turned upside down. We would all rather that.
But because they institutionalised inhumanity we now need to institutionalise it out. Everyone got here by being in it together and the only way we get to the other side is by that continuing. There is more to do. There always is. There was vested interests to fight. There always are.
When it ends, those lives will still have been ruined. Words like âlegacyâ will be used and used rightly, but legacy doesnât replace a lost child. Itâs something, but it isnât enough.
Those who have had their lives ruined know that too. They know they arenât problems, their loved ones werenât things and there isnât jam tomorrow. They know that more than anyone could.
Thatâs why we need to stay with them. Stay with them and love them. Let them breathe and help them be. Fighting to change the wrong in our society nearly breaks you. All acts of kindness build you back up. Letâs do this together, step by step.
Neil