Anthony McIntyreconsiders the latest judicial verdict in the Hillsborough disaster case. 

The injustices that have sought to puncture the quest for truth surrounding the events of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster 32 years ago continue to pop up like a police stinger.

This week in a Salford Court two former senior police officers along with the South Yorkshire Police's erstwhile solicitor were told by a judge that they had no case to answer. Justice William Davies himself prevented the case going before a jury for deliberation: "I have concluded that there is no case fit for the jury's consideration." Alarmed. perhaps, by what the 2016 inquest verdict had demonstrated - that a jury can return a damning indictment of the state's apparatuses and operatives - the judge was determined that no jury was to get sight of the evidence in this case.  

Standing in the dock were then Chief Superintendent Donald Denton and Detective Chief Inspector Alan Foster, accompanied by Peter Metcalfe. The men were charged with two counts of perverting the course of justice by amending officers’ statements taken in the wake of the disaster. In all, it was alleged that they were responsible for changing 68 police statements, 58 of which the prosecution claimed were amended for the purpose of removing "references to failings on the part of SYP.”

The three defendants were obviously culpable of the wrongdoing of which they were accused but according to the judge, wrongdoing in this instance did not amount to guilt of law breaking. Witness statements taken for Lord Justice Taylor's 1989 inquiry were held to be inadmissible as evidence in a court of law.  Judge Davies ruled that at the time of Taylor there was no duty of candour required from police officers or solicitors: basically they were free to go along and lie as much as they liked. They have been doing it ever since.

The original statements had been taken in the days following the mass police unlawful killing. As the statements were being procured the Police Federation on the direction of the chief constable began briefing the press with scurrilous and mendacious smearing of the fans. Against that backdrop, there was no way police witness statements implicating their own force were going to escape being tampered with. There was only ever one goal in mind - cover up. The relatives have always known it. And so, Margaret Aspinall, whose teenage son James died at Leppings Lane, described the Salford outcome as a “cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.”

After 32 years of campaigning the relatives of those unlawfully killed are faced with what is for them the crushing reality of the legal fiction that there were 96 deaths yet no one caused their death in so far as everyone involved and the role they played, are known, yet no one has or will be made legally accountable. Everybody thus far brought before the courts has had the case against them thrown out with the sole exception of Sheffield Wednesday’s former secretary, Graham Mackrell, convicted of a turnstile safety breach that did not directly contribute to the crush. Not one of the police officers who unlawfully killed the fans has ever been convicted. 

I am not surprised at the verdict, even less so at its injustice. It has been the story all along. Truth has come in spite of the police, the state, the judiciary and not because of them. It was my view that the inquest verdict following on the heels of the Independent Hillsborough Panel Report was likely as good as it was going to get for the Justice campaign. While the temptation is there to press forward there is always the potential to lose ground with verdicts that push back against the damning logic of police culpability as the state fights a rearguard action aimed at retrieving lost ground. 

The Salford case allowed the barrister for Metcalfe, Jonathan Goldberg, to launch the first salvo in a post-trial battle of falsification through revising the narrative. In an act of despicable mendacity Goldberg took to Radio 5 live to repeat the well refuted lie of Hillsborough:

Of course my client who’s accused of covering up criticism of the police. What he in fact did was cut out criticism of the Liverpool fans whose behaviour was perfectly appalling on the day, causing a riot that led to the gate having to be opened, that unfortunately let the people in who crushed to death the innocents as they were. Complete innocents who were at the front of the pens who had arrived early and were not drunk and were behaving perfectly well. But as always it’s the innocents who suffer unfortunately. But these families have been wound up with just these awful political statements that had no basis in reality. And over 32 years there’s never been anything like it, it’s a complete conspiracy theory that’s a nonsense. This was cock up, not conspiracy.

Appalled, 22 MPs wrote to the BBC Director General alleging a failure of duty on the part of the interviewer by allowing the smear to go unchallenged. The interviewer, Adrian Chiles, later apologised for failing in real time to refute the “evil nonsense” spouted by Goldberg. There was no riot. There was no appalling behaviour by Liverpool fans. Goldberg is a malodorous piece of silk made from a sow's ear.

Margaret Aspinall, describing the verdict as an "absolute mockery" went onto claim that, "we’re always the losers no matter what the outcome today.”

Truth is, they are not the losers. They have made their case and won outright in the court of public opinion. Everybody knows that South Yorkshire Police unlawfully killed the fans. They got away with it in the courts but nowhere else. 

 ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

96 Unlawfully Killed … Yet Nobody Killed Them

Anthony McIntyreconsiders the latest judicial verdict in the Hillsborough disaster case. 

The injustices that have sought to puncture the quest for truth surrounding the events of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster 32 years ago continue to pop up like a police stinger.

This week in a Salford Court two former senior police officers along with the South Yorkshire Police's erstwhile solicitor were told by a judge that they had no case to answer. Justice William Davies himself prevented the case going before a jury for deliberation: "I have concluded that there is no case fit for the jury's consideration." Alarmed. perhaps, by what the 2016 inquest verdict had demonstrated - that a jury can return a damning indictment of the state's apparatuses and operatives - the judge was determined that no jury was to get sight of the evidence in this case.  

Standing in the dock were then Chief Superintendent Donald Denton and Detective Chief Inspector Alan Foster, accompanied by Peter Metcalfe. The men were charged with two counts of perverting the course of justice by amending officers’ statements taken in the wake of the disaster. In all, it was alleged that they were responsible for changing 68 police statements, 58 of which the prosecution claimed were amended for the purpose of removing "references to failings on the part of SYP.”

The three defendants were obviously culpable of the wrongdoing of which they were accused but according to the judge, wrongdoing in this instance did not amount to guilt of law breaking. Witness statements taken for Lord Justice Taylor's 1989 inquiry were held to be inadmissible as evidence in a court of law.  Judge Davies ruled that at the time of Taylor there was no duty of candour required from police officers or solicitors: basically they were free to go along and lie as much as they liked. They have been doing it ever since.

The original statements had been taken in the days following the mass police unlawful killing. As the statements were being procured the Police Federation on the direction of the chief constable began briefing the press with scurrilous and mendacious smearing of the fans. Against that backdrop, there was no way police witness statements implicating their own force were going to escape being tampered with. There was only ever one goal in mind - cover up. The relatives have always known it. And so, Margaret Aspinall, whose teenage son James died at Leppings Lane, described the Salford outcome as a “cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.”

After 32 years of campaigning the relatives of those unlawfully killed are faced with what is for them the crushing reality of the legal fiction that there were 96 deaths yet no one caused their death in so far as everyone involved and the role they played, are known, yet no one has or will be made legally accountable. Everybody thus far brought before the courts has had the case against them thrown out with the sole exception of Sheffield Wednesday’s former secretary, Graham Mackrell, convicted of a turnstile safety breach that did not directly contribute to the crush. Not one of the police officers who unlawfully killed the fans has ever been convicted. 

I am not surprised at the verdict, even less so at its injustice. It has been the story all along. Truth has come in spite of the police, the state, the judiciary and not because of them. It was my view that the inquest verdict following on the heels of the Independent Hillsborough Panel Report was likely as good as it was going to get for the Justice campaign. While the temptation is there to press forward there is always the potential to lose ground with verdicts that push back against the damning logic of police culpability as the state fights a rearguard action aimed at retrieving lost ground. 

The Salford case allowed the barrister for Metcalfe, Jonathan Goldberg, to launch the first salvo in a post-trial battle of falsification through revising the narrative. In an act of despicable mendacity Goldberg took to Radio 5 live to repeat the well refuted lie of Hillsborough:

Of course my client who’s accused of covering up criticism of the police. What he in fact did was cut out criticism of the Liverpool fans whose behaviour was perfectly appalling on the day, causing a riot that led to the gate having to be opened, that unfortunately let the people in who crushed to death the innocents as they were. Complete innocents who were at the front of the pens who had arrived early and were not drunk and were behaving perfectly well. But as always it’s the innocents who suffer unfortunately. But these families have been wound up with just these awful political statements that had no basis in reality. And over 32 years there’s never been anything like it, it’s a complete conspiracy theory that’s a nonsense. This was cock up, not conspiracy.

Appalled, 22 MPs wrote to the BBC Director General alleging a failure of duty on the part of the interviewer by allowing the smear to go unchallenged. The interviewer, Adrian Chiles, later apologised for failing in real time to refute the “evil nonsense” spouted by Goldberg. There was no riot. There was no appalling behaviour by Liverpool fans. Goldberg is a malodorous piece of silk made from a sow's ear.

Margaret Aspinall, describing the verdict as an "absolute mockery" went onto claim that, "we’re always the losers no matter what the outcome today.”

Truth is, they are not the losers. They have made their case and won outright in the court of public opinion. Everybody knows that South Yorkshire Police unlawfully killed the fans. They got away with it in the courts but nowhere else. 

 ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

3 comments:

  1. Anthony

    I firmly believe that what happened at Hillsborough was not so much an accident as a plan which went wrong. I know that ground and the Leppings Lane end and policed correctly the tragedy of that day would never have occurred. In 1976 Man Utd played Derby County in the semis and, like Liverpool thirteen years later, we had the smaller end despite having more supporters. United fans took over half of Derby Counties end, but in 1989 with more segregation things were a little more difficult. Now, go back to your school days, infants, and testing how much liquid could be put into a milk bottle before overflowing. When one was full logic told us, even in our formative years, to put the rest of the liquid into another bottle, easy. Easy that is unless your name is David Dukenfield who, seeng the centre pen was full to and over the limit did not think of opening the adjascent pens which were half empty!! Now, this is not rocket science unless a script was written before the incident, a script written to ensure a crowd safety issue arose. If that was the case it was murder, premeditated murder. If there was a plan to create an incident, which granted got out of hand, it will never be proven. What happened after Hillsborough was all seater stadia at much higher prices were introduced. This was despite the Taylor Report, looking into what happened, exhonorated terracing as being the cause. Therefore there was no need whatsoever to get rid of terracing, in the case of newspapers like the Sun blaming the dead fans, and grounds could have kept their popular ends and cultures. The problem with this outcome was without all seater stadia the huge increase in profits would not have come about by fans having to pay through the nose for seats. This was a view, not uncommon at the time albeit cynical, held by many fans of various clubs. "Unlawfully killed" is a cop out, a way of escape for the establishment, and Duckenfield? Well he'd served his purpose!!

    Caoimhin O'Muraile

    ReplyDelete
  2. AM
    Another though about that Saturday. If my memory serves me right, the supporters of Nottingham Forest came on the pitch from their end, the "Sheff Wed Kop" trying to help. Standing on the higher end they would have had a birds eye view of what was happening. They tried to take the hoardings which surrounded the pitch to use as stretchers. Why then, did the police deploy their forces across the centre of the pitch preventing the Forrest fans helping? By the time these oppossition fans were offering assistance it was obvious this was not a crowd disturbance in its usuall way, there was no crowd trouble as the tabloids tried to make out, paticularly the Sun!

    Caoimhin O'Muraile

    ReplyDelete
  3. I anonymously visited a psychic in Cork today. It may make an interesting short article. What do you reckon ?

    ReplyDelete