Hillsborough

Fair play

http://twitpic.com/68zxpn

Over 63000 sign petition

Two decades on from Hillsborough and Liverpool is still in the dark


On 15 April 1989, 96 people died at Hillsborough. Photograph: Rex Features

Slide out of a taxi at Anfield and a figure will hand you a "Don't buy the Sun" leaflet while a familiar throng chats outside the Hillsborough Justice Campaign shop on Walton Breck Road. The disaster that cost 96 lives 22 years ago is so integral to the experience of attending a Liverpool match that the quest for the truth is part of the identity of the club.

The campaign was always there and always will be, or so it feels, as the chip shops do their lively trade and fans gather at the Hillsborough memorial or examine Bill Shankly's statue ("He made the people happy"). But the people can't be happy – not fully – until the system extends to the families of the dead the simple right to see all of the documents relating to events in Sheffield on 15 April 1989, when Steven Gerrard's 10-year-old cousin, Jon-Paul Gilhooley, was the youngest of the 96 who went to a football match and never came back.

There is no let-up in the antipathy to the Sun over its coverage of the tragedy. Kelvin MacKenzie, the paper's editor at the time, was on Newsnight recently, pontificating about rioters. His inability to distinguish 22 years ago between a disaster and a so-called outbreak of criminality as people lay dying on the Hillsborough pitch would, in a more discerning society, disqualify him from comment on the recent disorder across Britain. But the current Sun continues to carry the stigma of those times on Merseyside, just as the families persist with their demand for full disclosure.

The story so far is that an e-petition calling for previously hidden documents on Hillsborough to be released raced past 50,000 signatures this week and looks sure to acquire the 100,000 names needed to force the House of Commons backbench business committee to consider granting it time for debate.

On Wednesday, the Cabinet Office said it would appeal against a ruling by Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, who had approved a freedom of information request from the BBC to see the papers. The e-petition took off after Kenny Dalglish, the Liverpool manager, tweeted: "Think it is very important that we support this." Since that moment, Joey Barton has interrupted his flow of Friedrich Nietzsche quotations to urge his 428,000 followers to sign online.

The Commissioner argued that it would assist public understanding of the tragedy for the concealed documents to be released. But, in a statement, the government said: "The Cabinet Office absolutely agrees with the principle of providing information to families about the Hillsborough stadium disaster, but we believe it is important any release of information should be managed through the panel's processes and in line with their terms of reference."

The panel referred to is the independent body set up by the previous Labour government to examine the archive and decide on publication. But the panel was not in existence in 2009 when the request for access was first made. The BBC says the records include "reports presented to Margaret Thatcher [the then prime minister], correspondence between her office and that of the home secretary, Douglas Hurd, and minutes of meetings she attended."

For the neutral to find a position on this procedural wrangling, one has only to imagine how it must feel for the mother or father of a victim to be told, 22 years after the event, that they are not entitled to see words on pieces of paper that might release them from the torment of not knowing the full story of the defining day of their lives.

Across Merseyside, people wake and go back to sleep with a sense of injustice that stems partly from the original coroner's inquest, which imposed a cut-off for the examination of evidence at 3.15pm, a source of anger, still, to those who believe the role of the emergency services and the full timescale of death should have been part of Dr Stefan Popper's report.

In March, the Hillsborough panel said they would look at previously concealed documents. But you can see why the families object to the idea that a panel must decide what they can and cannot see. The system has piled years and years of additional needless cruelty on the Hillsborough families. The British obsession with secrecy and protection for those in power has stretched beyond all humane grounds the process of finding out, once and for all, what happened (and who was responsible) at an FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield more than two decades ago.

To most of us, the obvious truth is that this pain and indignation will hang over Liverpool until the books are laid out. This shame-inducing suppression of evidence serves no moral purpose. Nor can the campaign be fobbed off, as every politician must know by now. Its spirit pervades every aspect of Liverpool football club, to the point where Rafa Benítez's last act as manager was to donate £96,000 to the campaign.

The first e-petition to force a parliamentary debate called for convicted rioters to be deprived of state benefits. The state moves fast when it wants to punish and slowly when people want the truth.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/aug/20/hillsborough-disaster-liverpool

81500 have signed.

100,011

At last!!!

Still plenty of time to get few more imo. Petition opened unrolled 7th Sept ?

@HJC_Official: Thank you all so much. We've done it. 100,000. Need to keep going for just a little more, though, just in case.

they defo need about 10 thousand more UK ones to cover the irish ones, better to be on the safe side

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... on-justice

Last weekend I went to Liverpool – the place that was my home for most of my adult life. I stayed with my best friend and we caught up on the news: riots in Toxteth, a local economy in freefall, and finally the Hillsborough petition, which reached over 100,000 signatures this week. Now, pending approval, the petition will be debated in parliament.


For me, it's not surprising that this 22-year-old news story is as newsworthy as if it had happened yesterday. The Hillsborough football disaster is written into the DNA of Liverpool. It represents both the city's darkest moment, and its extraordinary capacity for solidarity. As Sheila Coleman of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign put it to me, it is "a fundamental injustice that has locked people in a permanent state of bereavement". That much is obvious every anniversary in April: the sense of questions unanswered, a situation unresolved – a great knot of misinformation from the establishment, still untangled long after the cameras went home.


To understand the Hillsborough disaster, one must first understand the context in which it happened. In 1989, four years after the seismic defeat of the miners, the unemployment rate in Liverpool was among the highest in the UK and the city's council was on the brink of bankruptcy. The Liverpool fans attending the match that day were already on the receiving end of a hostile media and government, unafraid of portraying them as the feckless, undeserving poor. As Sheila Coleman reminded me, the match saw them caged "like animals in pens", as though the players on the pitch needed to be protected from them. Later, Superintendent Marshall's account of the day would place undue emphasis on the amount of alcohol consumed by the fans. Coleman recalls Marshall boasting of his ability to handle a crowd during the miners' strike some years before – as though there were some homogenous unruliness in the British working class.


In the aftermath of Hillsborough a concerted effort was made, lead by the Sun, to depict the victims as lumpenproletariat, too disorderly to be trusted. As the Sun accused fans of urinating on the corpses of their loved ones, police offered "crowd trouble" as the reason for their turning away of fans carrying the dying to ambulances. Despite fans risking their lives to save others, using advertising boards as makeshift stretchers, the narrative of a feral underclass persisted long enough to obscure the facts.


Many of my friends in Liverpool are contemptuous of the original inquiry. They say its purpose was to whitewash the truth not expose it. I can't blame them: they've seen 96 families wait decades for answers, while Norman Bettison, involved in Hillsborough, was made chief constable of Merseyside police.


So here we are again. Twenty-two years later and the old maxim, "red sky at night, Toxteth's alight" is relevant again. The Murdoch press is once again in disgrace, and Liverpool is facing the worst budget cuts in the country. As history repeats itself, the families and survivors of the Hillsborough disaster are on the receiving end of familiar obfuscation, familiar "unjustified and excessive delays" in releasing the information by the self-proclaimed children of Thatcher.


It's not right. Some wounds cannot be healed by time. Some questions cannot be left unanswered. The 96 families in Liverpool are still waiting for justice. As John Aldridge wrote in the Liverpool Echo: "They have kept on fighting and they have been so dignified. Now it's time the government started to show some dignity as well." He is right: those families have waited long enough

^^^ good article, please god something will be done now

HJC_Official HJC Official
Closing in on 130,000

The Government is "happy" for all documents relating to the Hillsborough disaster to be released, the Cabinet Office said on Wednesday night.

Until now, ministers have failed to officially support calls for all the reports about the 1989 tragedy in which 96 Liverpool fans died to be made public.

The Government was considering whether to release Cabinet papers should the Hillsborough Independent Panel ask it to as this would be a highly unusual step ahead of the 30-year rule.

But after an online petition gained 100,000 signatories, ministers have said they will sanction the release of all documents the panel believe should be made public.

It is understood the panel may put forward its recommendations on which papers should be released as early as the spring of next year.

In a statement, a Cabinet Office spokesman said: "The Government has confirmed its commitment to full transparency about the Hillsborough disaster through full public disclosure.

"All papers had previously been shared with the Hillsborough Independent Panel. The Government is happy for all the papers to be released as soon as the panel so decides, in consultation with the families.

"We expect them to be shared with the Hillsborough families first and then to the wider public."

A spokesman said it would still appeal against the ruling of information commissioner Christopher Graham that the papers should now be made public as it said it wanted them to be released in an ordered way to the victims' families first before the media.

By reaching the milestone of 100,000 signatories, the petition has automatically sparked a parliamentary debate.

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11669_7122298,00.html

Victory for Hillsborough campaigners

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/media-watch/victory-for-hillsborough-campaigners

http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2011/09/an-open-letter-to-lawro/

wow

His quote was fine imo.
He was on TV and couldn't say anything too extreme he kept it neutral

misslfc wrote:http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2011/09/an-open-letter-to-lawro/

wow

What an eloquently written piece. Be interesting to see if there is a reply.........

Bosco wrote:His quote was fine imo.
He was on TV and couldn't say anything too extreme he kept it neutral

His quote fuels people like this

BlaineyBoy Blaine O'Reilly
by pauledwards1973@
@danlobb don't worry about it fella #lfc fans can't stand stand the fact the s*n exposed them for killing their own fans

to still believe that the fans were at fault

People Like that are just grade A cunts, let me guess Manc?

didn't even check past that tbh

still loads that believe that, hence the need for the documents to be released once and for all

mind you, even when they are, you will still have comments like the above

Sadly yes you will

Latest news on petition

http://www.steverotherammp.org.uk/newsandinfo_67444.html

Hillsborough debate secured for Oct 17

Hopefully something will happen now

Hillsborough Justice Campaign Statement:


The Hillsborough Justice Campaign is pleased with the positive outcome of today’s meeting of backbenchers in relation to discussing Hillsborough.

We would like to thank those MP’s who turned up in support of the recent e -petition. They have made the right decision in moving this forward to be debated in the House on 17th October.

We would also like to thank those people who made this possible. This turn of events would not be occurring were it not for the overwhelming support of the general public who signed the e -petition, which resulted in more than 100,000 signatures in less than a week. They alone should take credit for this; a great example of people power succeeding and an indication of how technology has enabled people’s voices to be heard and acted upon.

It is worth pointing out that the e - petition arose after the Hillsborough Justice Campaign issued a statement, opposing the Government’s decision to appeal the decision of the Information Commissioner, who ruled that it was in the public interest to release the minutes of a cabinet meeting held days after the Hillsborough Disaster. The result of the e -petition is evidence that the general public is in agreement with the HJC.

Whilst pleased with today’s outcome, the bereaved families of the HJC point out that they still strongly oppose the Government ‘s decision to appeal the Commissioner’s ruling and request again that the Government withdraw the appeal.

The families of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign want the minutes of the Cabinet meeting held under Margaret Thatcher to be released (without redaction) in accordance with the Freedom of Information act and as deemed by the Information Commissioner to be in the ‘public interest’. The families can see no logical reason why this should be at variance with the work of the Hillsborough Panel. They will be lobbying their MP’s to support their request to specifically raise this during the forthcoming debate. The Hillsborough Justice campaign supports the families in this request.

Kenny Derbyshire
(Chair)

Do we know who the Tory MP is who colluded with the police federation?

A few years ago I asked Trevor Hicks if he thought he’d ever establish the truth about why he lost his two beautiful teenage daughters that day.

He told me he already had. He was in no doubt that they died through police incompetence, inadequate safety procedures, a non-existant emergency service response and a culture that had allowed society to view all football fans as dangerous scum and stick them in metal cages.

He sought another truth. Why the Establishment had wriggled out of all blame, smeared the fans as killers, lied about their actions and refused to take any responsibility for the deaths, thus denying the deceased justice and the bereaved closure.

And he said if he could be granted one wish before he died it would be to find out what was said between Margaret Thatcher and police chiefs when she visited the Leppings Lane terrace the day after the disaster.

Because someone in high places had told him that Thatcher decided it was imperative that the police were exonerated. That the consequences for a force she treated almost as her private army, would be immense if (as Lord Justice Taylor’s report later demanded) they took the rap for 96 deaths in their care.

And so the cover-up began with her press adviser Bernard Ingham briefing the media that the disaster had been caused by a “tanked-up mob”.

Three days later the Thatcher-supporting Sun’s infamous front-page about fans urinating on the dead and stealing from their pockets appeared after collusion between the Police Federation and a Tory MP. The story went round the world that drunken fans killed their own. And the truth was buried.
So for Trevor Hicks, the Thatcher documents, which constitute the minutes from that Sheffield meeting and other correspondence with her ministers, could be the smoking gun that proves a conspiracy which went right to the top of the Tory government.

Which is why it’s no surprise that the current one is fighting to stop those secret papers being made public despite the Information Commissioner demanding it be done.

If, as the families suspect, the Tories have something to hide, we need to find out what it is. Which is why MPs will demand next month that every document relating to Thatcher’s role be released in an “unrestricted, uncensored and unredacted” form.

If they win the day it won’t just be a great day for the 96 but for football. Because hers was the government that caged fans, that thought about bringing in electric fences, moats and ID cards and would willingly have killed the game.

If they win I don’t care whether the documents go straight into the public domain or to the independent Hillsborough panel. As someone lucky enough to survive that day though, I do have one wish. That if those papers contain the smoking gun, the trigger is pulled in public before Thatcher dies.

Because I’ve waited a long time to see that bullet fly.



Read more: http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion ... z1Y9g5f600
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