Twenty years ago...
...I remember sitting in a car, listening, appalled, to the news that nearly a hundred people had died at a football match in Sheffield.
It seemed absurd. There had not been a fire. People had simply died because they were crushed against the fences (fences designed to stop fans from accessing the pitch - a measure that had become all but universal at football grounds during the hooligan-ridden 70s and early 80s).
96 people were killed. All they wanted to do was watch a game of football.
I moved to Sheffield about a year later, and even though it hadn't been a Sheffield team or fans involved (it was a cup tie at a neutral venue, between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest), it became immediately clear that Sheffield was scarred; that the name Hillsborough meant, for most people outside the city, only one thing.
Dead. Piles of the dead.
But it was twenty years ago. Today, I read this news piece: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090415/tuk-minister-jeered-at-memorial-service-6323e80.html which includes the following:
"Culture Secretary Andy Burnham was repeatedly booed and jeered when he delivered a message from PM Grodon Brown that the country would never forget the 96 Liverpool supporters who died at the FA Cup tie on April 15, 1989.
But the 25,000-strong crowd - angry at a perceived failure to bring those responsible for the tragedy to account - interrupted, chanting: "Justice for the 96." "
OK, the minor point is that this Government was not in power 20 years ago and had absolutely nothing to do with the regulations in place at the time; nor, indeed, with the inquiries that followed the disaster. It happened eight years before this regime came to power, and eighteen years before Gordon Brown himself became Prime Minister.
The major point, though, is this:
There were failures in the policing that day - tragic and stupid failures. NO apparent attempt was made to dlay kick-off because of the large number of fans who hadn't got into the ground. Gates were opened that should not have been opened, funnelling people into areas they should not have been funnelled into. There was, without doubt, incompetence.
But the police didn't push anyone into that ground.
The only people who pushed, and shoved, and elbowed and trampled their way to get in to see a football match were other Liverpool fans.
There will NEVER be true justice for the tragic death of 96 of their own until those fans accept that fact.