Hillsborough, 20 years on: families still want justice

The city of Liverpool will come to a standstill today at 3.06 pm, exactly 20 years after 96 football supporters died in a crush on the terraces of the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, where Liverpool were meeting Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final.
 
All public transport in Liverpool will be halted for two minutes. At Anfield, Liverpool FC's home ground, 96 candles will be lit and a representative of each family will be awarded the Freedom of Liverpool.

The Lord Mayor, Steve Rotheram, said: "Hillsborough affected so many lives, not just on Merseyside but across the whole of the UK. I attended the match 20 years ago and the passing years do not diminish the importance and the poignancy of this occasion."

Twenty years on, controversy over the disaster still rages, with South Yorkshire police accused of blaming fans for the disaster when evidence pointed to the police being culpable. Too many Liverpool fans were allowed into the Leppings Lane stand, police were too slow to spot the crush developing and, when it became obvious that fans were being asphyxiated, they allowed only one ambulance to cross the pitch to attend to the injured and dying - yet there were more than 40 available.

Two government ministers, Andy Burnham, the minister for culture, media and sport, and Maria Eagle, the junior justice minister, are using the anniversary to call for all emergency services involved in the disaster - the police, ambulance service and other public bodies - to make available any documents they hold relating to the incident and its aftermath.

This follows the news earlier this week that Meredydd Hughes, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, has promised to make available all police documentation "not subject to legal privilege". Hughes has acknowledged that in the aftermath of the disaster his force did not take responsibility for what happened.

Eagle, who has consistently accused the police of having engaged in "a conspiracy to cover up" its own culpability, has welcomed Hughes's approach. But she believes full disclosure should also apply to all other relevant authorities. "Given that all legal actions against the police are concluded, I believe documents should be disclosed regardless of whether they were previously covered by legal privilege," she said.

The inquest did not properly examine the emergency services and police response

Andy Burnham said: "It is vital that we have transparency, for the families to know they have been able to view all the information about the deaths of their loved ones."

Families of the fans who died remain angry not only at the police, but also at the coroner, Dr Stefan Popper, who restricted the inquest into the Hillsborough deaths to events up until 3.15pm on April 15, 1989, by which time, he argued, all the victims had received irreversible crushing injuries.

But the families believe that decision made it impossible to examine the police and emergency services' response to the disaster, which some paramedics have since condemned as "chaotic".

The Football Association has dropped plans for a minute's applause at this Saturday's FA Cup semi-final at Wembley between Arsenal and Chelsea in tribute to those who died at Hillsborough. After "long and extensive" discussions with Liverpool FC and the Hillsborough Families Support Group, it has been decided that a more appropriate tribute would be a presentation of flowers to 12 representatives of the families.

All the players will wear black armbands on Saturday, as they will in the second semi-final at Wembley on Sunday between Everton and Manchester United.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYINGJames Lawton, the Independent: In the absence of any form of official apology, which is the last scandal of Hillsborough, the steady seepage of truth is no doubt a small source of comfort to the bereaved. The worst of the lies have been held up to the light and been ridiculed. But this does nothing to lessen the need for that apology. Closure cannot come without it because it is one thing to know what happened, and see that it is plain to all dispassionate witnesses, and quite another to wait so long for such a concession from those who out of self-interest tried hardest to deny it.

Leader, the Times: Hillsborough was more than a failure of policing. It was a dreadful collision of football culture and policing techniques that had tried but failed to control it. That culture involved drinking, violence and abuse. It had found lethal expression four years before Hillsborough at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, when Liverpool fans were not victims but aggressors. Mercifully, it has changed. The most important single upshot of the Taylor inquiry has been mandatory all-seater stadiums for top-level English football.

Henry Winter, the Daily Telegraph: Apart from Lord Chief Justice Taylor and the Anfield board, just about everyone in authority has now let down the Hillsborough families. They will never give up the fight, alleging the police were guilty of a cover-up as well as gross negligence on the day. ·