Verdict aftermath

Looking back, I see a huge irony. Bear with me while I spell it out.

Let's start by saying it like it was. On April 15^th 1989. many ordinary South Yorkshire Policemen regarded the Liverpool fans attending Hillsborough as scum. They treated us like scum. A number of SYP pushed fans back as they tried to escape over fences, they refused to open exit gates, they ignored our pleas for help, they literally turned their backs on us in our hour of need.

Half a pitch away, some SYP followed orders and quickly formed a line to separate fighting fans - only there were no fighting fans. As body after body came past on stretchers, most of the police did nothing. I'll repeat that: they did nothing. How many bodies do you need to see before you go to help? For the majority, the answer was not even 96, they never did go and help - they held their line. Cos they had been told to? Cos they didn't care? You tell me - because I can never understand how a policeman can stand and do nothing when he sees somebody dead or injured.

Some SYP even hindered the fans trying to pull down advertising hoardings to ferry the dead and injured to medical assistance. The testimony is there for all to read - how the SYP spoke to, treated and reacted to supporters that day. At the height of the disaster, they even called for dogs and turned away ambulances.

Later the same day, their first question to many grieving parents was to ask how much alcohol their kids had had. The parents of scum, were treated as scum. That was the SYP mindset, of that I have no doubt. How else can you explain their conduct to people who have just been told their children are dead? How else do you explain a SYP telling me 11 months later that “95 dead was a good days work.” [95 excludes Tony Bland who died 3 years later]

How else do you explain a West Midlands Policeman accusing me of being a left wing agitator because I dared to criticise the SYP? Or the WMP officer who after taking her statement, went on to make a sexual advance to Diane, one of our IP applicants, at a time she was traumatised and vulnerable. The police looked at us as scum. That's how it was. It may not make easy reading, but that is how it was. That is how we were treated.

Then the next day, with the reality of their role in killing 95 fans dawning on them, the SYP started to tell the world their version of the truth, namely that we were scum. Murdering scum. Violent, drunk, ticketless yobs. Scum who stole from the dead, scum who urinated on the police as they tried to help. They knew it was a pack of lies, so why did they think they could get away with it? Easy, cos in their view we were scum - a disparate bunch of poorly-educated, working class, voiceless and faceless people that the SYP and their friends, thought they could label as murderers, as scum.

No more. It took a while, a disgusting length of time, if truth be told. So long that many mothers, fathers died without seeing their children vindicated. Many parents died before the inquests, with their children still labelled as contributing to the deaths, still labelled as part of the mob, part of the cause why so many people had died at a match. My very own mother died 6 years ago, before there was even a sniff of a new inquest, never mind the final exoneration of her son and thousands of others.

So to our little gang. I salute everyone of you. I salute every person who has been involved. I do more than salute you, I thank you. Being labelled as murderer when you have done nothing wrong is a disgusting, horrible and vile accusation – and I am labelled a murderer no more. Thank you to every survivor who gave a statement, who took to the stand, who held up a placard, who signed a petition. To every member of the HJC, the HFSG and HFH, Anne Williams' group. Every person who supported the fight for justice, I salute you and I thank you.

And now the irony, the beautiful irony. I salute you all the more because so many of the very people seen as scum by the SYP were the very people who played crucial roles in the fight for justice. The SYP, the Coroner and Mr Beggs...they all underestimated us, underestimated our determination, our tenacity and our fight.

And be clear, these 'scum', are the very people who the nation should be thankful to. These people from ordinary families, these supporters and survivors...they stood their ground and they campaigned for years. However much they fell out with each other, or disagreed over tactics, or over how best to achieve what they wanted, they always had certain crucial things in common: They had truth on their side, they had determination on their side and they had suffered a huge injustice that they needed to put right. The injustice of not just seeing your loved one killed, but then shamefully, seeing them blamed, too.

Every single person in our country, who values police accountability, who values truth and justice, who wants our police, our politicians and our institutions to act in the right way - every one of them owes a huge debt of thanks to the campaigners. For we might, we just might, have changed things in the UK. If nothing else changes, every single police officer in the UK now knows one simple truth: you are not, nor will you ever be, above the law. You can lie, intimidate, threaten witnesses, fabricate evidence, alter statements and get the press on your side - you can even cosy up to the PM and their press officer and you can lie under oath all you want...but you just might one day get found out. It might not be tomorrow, but you risk getting shown up and you risk the world finding out exactly what sort of person you are.

Let's go back to the pub in London, six months earlier when the MITP first told us about Q7 and how he thought the Coroner was looking to stitch up the fans. It struck me that the Coroner, much like the SYP 27 years earlier, had assumed we were a disparate, poorly-educated, voiceless and faceless bunch of non entities. He hadn't fallen for the “robbing the dead” nonsense, but he seemed to believe that the Liverpool fans could be treated as a sacrificial lamb, to placate the SYP. He seemed to think that Liverpool fans, the families, the survivors and the campaigners would accept this injustice and melt away. His view seemed to be that the survivors were expendable and not worthy of the truth or justice.

In the pub, with fellow survivors talking to the MITP, 6 months before the verdicts, I had asked: Who does the Coroner think we are? Does he think we are idiots? Does he think any of us will accept this? Any of us?

Well, in the case of 6 survivors, he now knows who we are, boy does he know who we are now...