Hillsborough families hope truth will finally come to light this Wednesday
23 years after 96 football fans lost their life, the city of Liverpool hopes the truth will finally come out this week reports The Guardian.
A panel of experts, chaired by the Bishop of Liverpool James Jones, have spent the last 20 months examining 450,000 internal documents relating to that tragic day on April 15 1989.
On Wednesday, the panel will aim to deliver a definitive narrative of the events that took place at the Sheffield stadium during the 1989 FA Cup semi-final in which 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives.
Sources say it will be ‘in favour’ of the families and finally illustrate in detail the ‘cover up’ orchestrated by South Yorkshire police as they attempted to blame the fans for their own failings.
The city is praying this week will finally expose the lies that saw Liverpool fans blamed for the incident, and portrayed as drunk, unruly and ticketless by the police and then newspaper The Sun who ran an article claiming Liverpool fan’s stole from and urinated on the dead under the headline ‘The Truth’.
For the first time, details of what happened after 3.15pm on the day of the tragedy will be revealed. It is understood these details will expose the chaotic response from the emergency services, and a clearer picture of how many more lives could of been saved will emerge.
Margaret Aspinall, who lost her son James in the tragedy says the campaign by those culpable to hide the truth has deepened the grief and made it impossible for those affected to move on.
She said: “It’s not just the survivors, we have to clear their names [the dead] … I get angry when I think they have allowed the families to suffer for 23 years, to allow the survivors to go through torture knowing it was a cover-up.”
There has still been no apology from the government or the police, despite Lord Justice Taylor’s official enquiry in 1989, which revealed police failings caused the tragedy.
“Liverpool has always been a militant town, but the attitude to Hillsborough destroyed any trust in the government. It can never be repaired,” says Kenny Derbyshire, a survivor of the tragedy.
Derbyshire explained how the sense of injustice has left so many unable to draw any sort of closure. The Hillsborough Justice Campaign knows of at least six survivors who have taken their own lives, unable to come to terms with the incident and the official response it drew. Only two weeks ago one survivor threw himself under a train.
“There a lot of walking wounded out there, broken marriages, people turning to drink,” says Derbyshire, 46. “Thousands remain traumatised. To many it feels like it happened yesterday.”
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If – as expected – the verdict reveals errors made by the police and other public bodies there will be an overwhelming demand for a fresh inquest, with the coroners verdict of accidental death being void.
The government could lodge an application to the high court for a fresh round of inquests, with attorney general Dominic Grieve promising to consider this weeks evidence and make a decision “as quickly as I can.”
Michael Mansfield, QC, will be offering free legal advice to the families this Wednesday following the release of the documents. The lawyer who specialises in miscarraiges of justice has said: “It was a false story, it’s time to put it to bed.”
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