Hillsborough: now for justice
Hillsborough will be remembered for many things. For the families of the 96 Liverpool fans who died, the disaster 27 years ago will forever be associated with grief and loss. For the emergency service personnel who helped tend to the dead and injured, the afternoon of April 15 1989 will be seared on their collective memories. For football, it was the moment where the old ways of watching the game ended: spectators would no longer be crammed into poorly designed and uncomfortable terraces. Although some supporters feel all-seater stadiums detract from the experience, a calamity such as that at Hillsborough is now far less likely.
For the police, it is a day that will live on in infamy. Many people at the time were prepared to believe the official explanations of what happened, including the accusations about drunken supporters pushing their way into the ground. In the 1980s, football fans had a bad reputation: just a few years previously 39 Juventus supporters died during the European Cup final with Liverpool at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, after which 14 Liverpool fans were found guilty of manslaughter. It also seemed inconceivable that the police would try to cover up the truth behind such an appalling event. Yet, to their great shame, they did.
The first most people realised the extent of the mendacity was in 1996 when Jimmy McGovern’s TV drama-documentary exposed the contradiction between the Taylor Report into the disaster, which found that the South Yorkshire Police were culpable, and the accidental death verdict of the inquest. It suggested that vital evidence was lost or tampered with to suppress the truth and save the jobs and reputations of senior officers.
The second inquest, which ended yesterday after two years, the longest in British legal history, has rectified the wrongs of the first, which did not know the full facts because the police lied. On a majority verdict, the jury found the 96 victims had been unlawfully killed. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating allegations against officers on duty that day and charges conceivably could be brought against others criticised by the inquest jury.
Just as the families were entitled to the truth denied them for so long, they now have a right to justice. This was a dark episode for policing, which needs to demonstrate with the rest of the criminal justice system that it can never be repeated.