Prosecutions Not Apologies

Apologies are not likely to suffice. The air is thick with them right now.

Mealy-mouthed shit-eating sorries from the likes of Kelvin MacKenzie or Boris Johnson just won't cut it. Platitudes from the police or empty phrases from the chairman of the FA count for nothing because talk is cheap.

For the best part of the last two and a half decades, talk has proved a lot cheaper than acknowledging their roles in a tragedy that claimed 96 lives and destroyed many more. The narrative created by this tragedy manages to be both complex in its detail and incredibly straightforward in the fundamental truths it reveals.

For 23 years, the victims' families were made to wait for the truth. There have been many opportunities since 1989 to set the record straight and there has always been a sense of inevitability about the outing of this truth and yet these ordinary decent people were made to wait 23 years. What a shameful and disgusting thing to do.

There's plenty of blame to go around: from the press, the police, central and local government, through to the footballing authorities at club and governing level, all  have sought wheedle their way out of accepting their role in this festering injustice perpetrated on the victims and their families, the club's fans and indeed the whole city of Liverpool.

As far back as 1978, safety engineers commissioned by Sheffield Wednesday Football Club had found that "the stadium failed to meet minimum standards under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 and established in the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (known as the ‘Green Guide’), 1976."

And just in case you were in any doubt as to why this situation was allowed to continue: "There is clear evidence that Sheffield Wednesday Football Club’s primary consideration was cost and, to an extent, this was shared by its primary safety consultants, Eastwood & Partners." Cost; meaning money to them, but a much higher price to be paid a little further down the line.

But if the warnings of the engineers weren't enough, in 1981 during the FA Cup Semi-Final between Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers, disaster was only narrowly averted on the Lepping Lane terrace. After serious congestion at the Leppings Lane turnstiles and crushing on the confined outer concourse resulted in the opening of exit Gate C to relieve the crush.

"What followed was a serious crush on the terraces in which many people were injured and fatalities narrowly avoided." This was to prove a grim but bloodless dress rehearsal for the 1989 FA Cup Semi-Final, the main difference in 1981 being  that "at that time lateral fences did not divide the Leppings Lane terrace into pens, and fans were able to move sideways along the full length of the terrace; others escaped onto the perimeter track through the narrow gates in the perimeter fence."

Hillsborough was not used again for FA Cup semi-finals until 1987 as a result of the 1981 near miss. In the interim, the Leppings Lane terrace was altered significantly yet the changes did not lead to a revised safety certificate. "The introduction of further lateral fences created two central pens accessed via the tunnel beneath the West Stand. Recommendations to feed fans directly from designated turnstiles into each pen, thus monitoring precisely the distribution of fans between the pens, were not acted on because of anticipated costs" to the football club. There's that word again, cost....

As it turned out, the police, by their apparent paralysis as the crisis unfolded and then by their self-serving disinformation in the aftermath, actually proved worse than useless. If no criminal charges are proffered against the 'high-ups' for this one, it will merely underline the top-down corruption that blights our society and thereby gives succour and encouragement to those who would preach a gospel of frank disrespect (at the very least) for the would-be forces of law and order...

Sir Norman Bettison is the highest ranking serving officer who was present on the day and then went on in the days following the tragedy to serve on the force's internal inquiry team. If you'd like to read Sir Norman's self-serving statement as he tries to absolve himself and cling on like grim death to his job as chief constable of West Yorkshire police click here.

And as we're talking about the police, that brings us neatly onto the press, particularly the sections of the press which support the Tory party. Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, characterised most succinctly by Danny Baker on twitter as a "disgusting little fucker", offered his "profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool" but that has fallen on predictably deaf ears.

Hillsborough campaigner Trevor Hicks, who lost two daughters in the disaster, branded MacKenzie's apology "too little, too late", calling him "lowlife, clever lowlife, but lowlife".

And then there's our lovable old Bofo the clown, who now has a handy little part-time job as Mayor of London which he cheerfully uses to sabotage his old chum Dave in Number 10. 

Before he got this biffo mayor thingummy,  Boris Johnson was editor of the Spectator and in 2004 he sanctioned this leader comment. "The deaths of more than 50 Liverpool football supporters at Hillsborough in 1989 was undeniably a greater tragedy than the single death, however horrible, of Mr Bigley; but that is no excuse for Liverpool's failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon."

One would assume that even a buffoon of Boris's magnitude would at least have read the leader piece in the magazine he was nominally running. Because if not, it raises serious questions about his competence as a public figure. An editor who doesn't his read his own magazine hardly inspires professional confidence. This, by the way, is the man who wishes lead the Conservative Party once he's offed Cameron. Marvellous!