Hillsborough: The Fight For Justice

Posted on 15. Apr, 2011 by Simon Furnivall in Hillsborough

For twenty-two years there has been a fight for justice. Justice for the ninety-six killed, seven hundred and sixty-six injured and thousands scarred for life. That fight may be inching towards a result, however, amongst a growing, yet cautious, hope that the truth about what happened on 15^th April 1989 will finally be told.

At the 20^th Anniversary memorial service, the speech of then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, was drowned out amidst chants of “justice for the ninety-six” by the assembled crowd. It was at this moment that perhaps real progress towards that truth began to be made.

It was after the coroner’s inquest, in March 1991, delivered a verdict of ‘accidental death’ that the campaign for justice began in earnest. Infuriated by the decision to order that there had been no deaths after 3:15pm, and that therefore no evidence from after that time would be heard, Anne Williams, whose son, Kevin, had died in the disaster, began a campaign for a new inquest.

Having spoken to witnesses and found evidence that Kevin had not, in fact, died until 4pm, Anne began the relentless fight to have the facts of her son’s death officially recognised. She, like every other family of those who died, found brick wall after brick wall blocking their path to justice.

In 1998, under the same Labour government as Burnham served, Jack Straw, then the Home Secretary, ruled out the possibility of a Public Inquiry into the cover-up of the disaster. In July of 2000, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield and Superintendent Bernard Murray walked free from court following a failed private prosecution brought against the pair for their part in events.

A further blow came in 2008 when the European Court of Human Rights threw out Anne Williams’ case, citing the fact that too much time had passed since Kevin’s death for them to consider her appeal.

Finally, in the aftermath of Burnham’s speech, however, things began to turn in favour of the families. The result was the formation of the Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP), chaired by James Jones, the bishop of Liverpool. The panel given a remit of ordering documents, many never made public, into a publicly readable archive and to produce a report.

That report is expected to be published next year and it is hoped that it will finally reveal the full truth of the disaster, its aftermath and subsequent cover-up.

Bishop Jones, speaking to Guardian journalist, David Conn, whilst naturally being wary of revealing what the panel has seen before the report has been completed, did confirm that the documents released will add to what is already known. He said, “There is significant material that sheds light and adds to public understanding of the disaster, its aftermath and the way it was investigated. Without doubt. There is material which we will put into the public domain which has not been seen before.”

It was only last month that the panel announced that, crucially, they would be looking at previously hidden documents in an effort to determine what exactly happened subsequent to the 3:15pm cut-off point on that fateful day. A spokesperson for the panel said, “We have a wide remit to analyse all documents relating to the context, circumstances and consequences of the tragedy and its aftermath.”

This news was warmly greeted by Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group. “From the very start at the first inquest, the 3:15pm cut-off time affected everybody. We kept asking them to look at it, but they wouldn’t budge. Now, they’ve promised to scrutinise every document, which is absolutely great news.”

Those documents which will be scrutinised by the panel include South Yorkshire Police’s entire archive on the disaster. That adds up to some 350,000 documents, including every statement made in both its original and changed form. It is because of things like this, and the regular meetings between the families and the panel, that the families have placed such trust in the HIP.

Aspinall said of the panel, “We do feel a trust in them. We feel we are finally being listened to after twenty-two years of having to fight for everything, even for the good name of our loved ones. But because of everything that has happened before, what we have been put through, we still have to be cautious. We are, this time, cautiously optimistic.”

Twenty-two years of lies mean that no one is yet willing to believe too fervently that truth may be around the corner. Their prayers have gone unanswered for too long for that to be the case. Yet there remains the hope, perhaps stronger than ever, that some day soon those ninety-six souls may be able to rest in peace, safe in the knowledge that the justice their lives deserve, and for which their families fought so hard, is finally theirs.