I’ve been following the Liverpool Echo reports on the Hillsborough inquests. Hillsborough, where 96 people went to a football match and never returned home. 15 April 1989. And the inquests are still going on.
I have found it all a bit harrowing today. Perhaps it’s just my state of mind, or perhaps it’s something deeper. Bear in mind, I’m from Bristol, not Liverpool, and I don’t know, nor am I related to, anyone who was involved in the tragedy but in so many ways, it’s all our tragedies, to a greater or much lesser degree. I followed my team, Bristol Rovers, and found myself on packed terraces, being moved unwillingly by the force of numbers. I was once at a near all standing Wembley Stadium when the visiting Scotland fans had taken the place over. High up in the Gods, I recall moving with my feet way off the ground as the push came to shove. And I recall watching Bristol Rovers at the Dell, when Kevin Keegan was playing for Southampton. I viewed the game from what was, quite literally, a cage and a crowded one at that. And even at Ashton Gate, in a packed solid open end for the City v Rovers derby matches. It never got that dangerous at the games I went to, but looking back, well, you just don’t know.
Today I again read about the match commander David Duckenfield, who so far has not come out of this terrible story particularly well. Today, a former officer said, “I though that Mr Duckenfield was a very weak… how can I put it… had got the rank but hadn’t got the experience of what he was doing. His whole persona, the way you shook his hand, he just gave the appearance to me that he was somebody who got on in the police force, you know, academically, as opposed to having the experience of dealing with things.” That resonated instantly with me. I have seen countless instances of similar people parachuted into the various departments in which I was employed, high-flyers, straight from University or perhaps an outside job that impressed the easily impressed senior managers of the Civil Service who often make recruitment decisions on the basis of buzzwords and bullshit. Meanwhile, those on the frontline who have learned their craft and understand the bigger picture got trampled over in the race to the greasy pole. Now that opinion of Duckenfield was an anecdote, but it was no different from the other anecdotes I have read about him through the inquests. In some ways, this was more like a compliment to him and I can’t be more damning than that.
The Liverpool Echo has been there every day at the inquests and their reports, along with David Conn’s of The Guardian, just don’t get any easier to read. Heartbreaking stories of dead and dying supporters being removed from the pitch on advertising hoardings, bewildering stories of police incompetence and, you have to say, negligence, all topped off with an alarming lack of leadership.
I do not know if The Sun is reporting on the Hillsborough inquests although I somehow doubt it and their contemptuous attitude towards the tragedy continued when recently they re-employed Kelvin MacKenzie, the lowlife journalist who libelled and defamed the innocent 96. How can they live with themselves but more importantly how can he live with himself?
If I, a mere bystander hundreds of miles away, cannot get Hillsborough out of my mind, what about the families of the victims? Many of them have had their lives utterly ruined, not just by the deaths of loved-ones, but by the grotesque passage of time that has been allowed to occur since 1989. 26 years of grieving and still no end in sight.
Someday soon, they may finally get some rest, some peace, some closure. Until then, the pain goes on and the guilty men of Hillsborough have still got away with it.
