Watch Liverpool

Posts Tagged ‘hillsborough disaster’

• Barriers to be trialled at Sheffield Wednesday v West Ham
• Margaret Aspinall calls plans ‘insensitive’

A campaigner for justice following the Hillsborough disaster has claimed it is “insensitive” to use crowd control barriers for an FA Cup game at the stadium this weekend. Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James died in the tragedy in 1989 when Liverpool took on Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final, said she could not understand why police were testing the use of the barriers.

South Yorkshire police and Sheffield Wednesday announced on Thursday that they would try out the new barriers for Sunday’s game against West Ham. It was chosen as a trial ahead of the derby match against Sheffield United next month.

Mrs Aspinall, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said: “I am quite disappointed about this. I think it is very insensitive, especially as they are doing it for an FA Cup game. I don’t understand why they are doing this and I am really angry about it.”

She said she felt using the barriers at the same Leppings Lane end where 96 Liverpool fans received fatal injuries was particularly insensitive. Liverpool fans were crushed to death and many could not escape as they were penned in by fences surrounding the pitch.

The barriers have already been used at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane ground earlier this season. South Yorkshire police said they used “a variety of nationally approved tactics to police large events”.

A spokeswoman said: “SYP, along with other police forces throughout the country, have been using crowd control barriers at football matches and other public events for a few years. The barriers are used at other South Yorkshire stadiums, most recently at a local derby, but this will be the first time the barriers have been prepared to be used at Hillsborough.

“The force’s priority is to maintain public safety and the barriers or mounted officers are only used outside the grounds to guide the public safely away from the area.”

Hillsborough disasterSheffield WednesdayLiverpoolWest Ham UnitedFA Cup 2011-12FA Cupguardian.co.uk

Home secretary Theresa May agrees to hand over as many as 300,000 documents on 1989 disaster to independent panel

David Cameron was urged to apologise for the police failures and government cover-up surrounding the Hillsborough disaster as MPs voted for the release of all documents relating to the tragedy.

In an emotional debate the home secretary, Theresa May, gave an unequivocal commitment that all government papers – including uncensored cabinet minutes relating to the deaths of the 96 Liverpool fans in April 1989 – will be handed to the independent panel chaired by the Bishop of Liverpool.

She was speaking in the Commons after 140,000 people petitioned MPs to stage a debate demanding full disclosure of the Hillsborough documents to the panel.

There had been fears the government was trying to prevent publication of some papers after a freedom of information request by the BBC for some documents had been turned down.

But May, emphasising some earlier reassurances from the prime minister, stressed everything would be handed to the independent panel and to the families. She was backed by the former Labour culture secretary Andy Burnham, who had pressed the Labour government to set up the panel, even though one public inquiry published in 1990 had been held into the disaster.

Burnham said it was right that the papers, as many as 300,000, were sent to the panel and the families first rather than to the media in “a haphazard and uncontrolled way”.

He described the handling of the tragedy as a great injustice. “Has there ever been a situation where 96 people died and immediately the public authorities sought to denigrate the victims, their families, their friends and their fellow supporters? That for me is what makes Hillsborough truly unprecedented.”

May told MPs: “Let me say here and now, in this house and on the record, that as home secretary I will do everything in my power. As a government we fully support the Hillsborough independent panel and the process the panel is leading to disclose the documents telling the whole story. No government papers will be withheld from the panel, no attempts to suppress publication will be made, no stone left unturned.” But she said there may be some redactions, including the names of some junior civil servants and the details of the victims’ confidential medical files.

May added: “I want to state very clearly that the government’s position has absolutely nothing to do with attempting to suppress the release of these papers or to somehow hide the truth.”

At the start of the Commons debate Steve Rotheram, the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton and a Liverpool supporter at Hillsborough on the day of the tragedy, battled with his emotions as he read out the names and ages of the 96 victims. Unusually for the Commons, he was clapped by some MPs when he ended.

He urged Cameron to apologise on behalf of the government in the same way he had apologised to the people of Northern Ireland in the wake of the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

He also called on the Sun newspaper to own up that its coverage at the time was wrong by running a full page banner conceding “We lied.”

He described the debate as “a victory for democracy, a victory for people power but it remains be seen if it is a victory for families”. He attacked the “smears” and “establishment cover-up” which led to fans initially being blamed for the 1989 disaster. He also claimed attitudes to the tragedy are still coloured by the way in which the media and the police published lies at the outset.

Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher’s spokesman at the time, was singled out for claiming “tanked-up” Liverpool fans had been responsible for the tragedy by trying to force their way into the crowd.

Hillsborough disasterLiverpoolDavid CameronTheresa MayPatrick Wintourguardian.co.uk

Demand comes as MPs consider e-petition calling for ‘full government disclosure’ over 1989 football ground disaster

The chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group has called on the Sun to reveal the identities of its sources for a notorious story which in effect blamed Liverpool fans for causing the 1989 disaster, in which 96 of the club’s supporters died.

Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James died at the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough stadium, said it was vital, as part of the official disclosure of all public documents relating to the disaster which MPs will debate in parliament on Monday evening, that the Sun should say exactly who was behind its briefing.

Headlined “THE TRUTH” and run on 19 April 1989, four days after the disaster, the newspaper’s story alleged that the disaster followed “mass drunkenness” among Liverpool supporters, and that some fans had urinated on police and on victims, and picked victims’ pockets as their bodies lay on the pitch. The Sun said the allegations had come from unnamed South Yorkshire police officers.

Aspinall said the report was deeply traumatic for families struggling with shock and grief, and “set the injustice in train” as the police prepared their case for Lord Justice Taylor’s official inquiry and the inquest. The latter blamed the supporters for causing the disaster.

As a result of the report, the Sun was subject to a boycott on Merseyside which has substantially lasted until today, despite attempts over the years by the paper to apologise.

In Taylor’s report into the disaster in August 1989, he described the Sun’s stories as “grave and emotive calumnies” and wholly discredited them, saying: “Not a single witness was called before the inquiry to support any of those allegations.”

The then South Yorkshire police chief constable, Peter Wright, dissociated himself from the allegations, but Aspinall said the families had always felt it set public opinion and officialdom into believing that version of events.

“That story, that our children were drunken yobs, came as we were grieving for their loss, and we had to defend their good names,” she said. “It set people’s minds, which you can still see even now, that the disaster was caused by the fans, not by the police losing control. That set the injustice in train, the real truth never came out at the inquest, and nobody in authority has ever been held to account.

“If we are now to discover the real truth, let the Sun tell us who gave them those lies which caused so much damage.

“If the Sun wants to make amends, they should reveal who it was, not allow their sources to hide behind anonymous briefings 22 years later, and help the families to understand what happened.”

MPs will debate the current public document disclosure process in the Commons after more than 100,000 people signed an e-petition calling for “full government disclosure and publication of all documents” following a freedom of information request by the BBC.

The Hillsborough families have campaigned particularly to be told about the briefings South Yorkshire police gave to the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, when she visited Hillsborough the day after the disaster.

Her then press secretary, Sir Bernard Ingham, said later that he “learned on the day” that the disaster was caused by a “tanked-up mob” of Liverpool supporters.

The home secretary, Theresa May, is expected to restate the government’s position, which is a “commitment to full transparency about the Hillsborough disaster through full public disclosure”.

That will, the government has confirmed, include cabinet papers from the time, but it is not yet clear if those discussions will detail the briefings Thatcher received from South Yorkshire police.

An independent panel of experts chaired by James Jones, the bishop of Liverpool, has been set up to examine the huge archive, and write a report setting out how the new material adds to public understanding of the disaster. The intention is to produce “as near to the full story as possible,” Jones has said.

May is likely to say all the papers, including those of Thatcher’s cabinet at the time, should be disclosed first to the panel, who will share them with the victims’ families before they are released for publication.

“The government is happy for all the papers, including cabinet papers, to be released as soon as the panel so decides, in consultation with the families,” a government spokesman said.

Andy Burnham, Labour’s shadow health spokesman, who, with another Merseyside Labour MP, Maria Eagle, initiated the public disclosure process on the 20th anniversary of the disaster two years ago, is expected to support that view.

He said he was already looking beyond the disclosure of documents to an ultimate process of “truth and reconciliation”.

“After Hillsborough, the lie was set early on that Liverpool supporters had forced open an exit gate and rushed through it, when in fact the police had ordered the gate to be opened,” Burnham said.

“What the families of innocent victims were then put through belongs to an era from which we have moved on, when the authorities were able to abuse ordinary people in a sickening way.

“When the full disclosure has happened and the report is written, I believe there should be an appropriate national response and process of reconciliation.

“The prime minister, David Cameron, gave a very dignified response to the Saville report into Bloody Sunday, and offered an unqualified apology for what took place. I believe the Hillsborough families will deserve a response on that scale.”

In his 1989 report, Taylor concluded that South Yorkshire police’s mismanagement of the crowd was “the immediate cause” of the disaster, together with safety failures by Sheffield Wednesday FC, the owner of Hillsborough, and Sheffield city council, which failed in its safety certifying role.

News International did not respond to questions as to whether the Sun would be prepared to reveal the identity of its sources for the story.

Hillsborough disasterLiverpoolHouse of CommonsFreedom of informationSheffieldThe SunNational newspapersDavid Connguardian.co.uk