Apologising for someone else’s misdemeanours seems to be the flavour of the day these days. First we had the idiot Blair apologising for slavery – something I believe he has never indulged in himself and therefore is in no place to apologise. Now, some twenty-odd years after the event, we get iDave apologising for Hillsborough.
David Cameron has said he is profoundly sorry for the “double injustice” of the Hillsborough football disaster.
Speaking after an independent report into previously unseen documents about the tragedy, the prime minister said police had failed to do enough and had also tried to blame Liverpool fans.
It is not up to him to be sorry. He cannot be sorry, he wasn’t there and took no part in what happened that day, so has no responsibility, therefore cannot and should not apologise. Consequently, the apology is mere empty rhetoric without substance, meaning, credibility or sincerity. In other words, typical political bollocks.
That said, the Hillsborough nonsense has been gurgling on for two decades with people “wanting answers” when, in fact, the answer has been known all along. There is nothing new here – indeed, we knew precisely what went wrong within weeks (if not days) of the tragedy. So, we have a campaign that is being waged for no good reason other than people just won’t let go of the past. It happened. We know what happened and why. The dead aren’t coming back with the new found knowledge that they might have been saved but for more expedient response at the time. Let it go, for crying out loud and move on. I am as sick of hearing people whinge about Hillsborough as I am hearing Doreen Lawrence incessantly whining on about racism and her son. The past is done, we cannot change it.
And please, can we have no more fake apologies…
Agreed, the apology should come from those responsible, the government were not responsible.
This government may not have been responsible, but previous governments did not exactly move heaven and earth to get to the bottom of the matter. South Yourkshire police obfuscated and the subsequent Taylor report was not thorough enough. Lets not forget that 96 people died that day, half of whom could have lived had the ambulance service done their job properly.
There was some serious arse covering going on that day and hopefully those responsible will now be brought to account.
I have witnessed first hand how the police react to football fans before and after matches. They really do regard law abiding members of the public as untermensch
That said – we knew two decades ago what went wrong. Nothing to see here.
That said – we knew two decades ago what went wrong. Nothing to see here
I must have missed the official recognition 20 years ago. Was I sleeping when Thatcher stood up in the House and admitted that no blame could be attached to the fans? No, I didn’t because that official recognition came only yesterday.
There is a huge difference between “suspecting” that knowing. Before yesterday anyone who had alleged a widespread conspiracy from the police to alter evidence to blame the fans would have been denounced as a “conspiracy nut”. Now we know for sure, thanks to the all the documents being released.
That is hugely significant and I am astonished that you cannot see the significance of it.
Y’know, in response to your rather silly earlier comment I was going to ask why you don’t just blame Thatcher – after all, you really, really want to and then blow me down and you go and do it. This is the point when you lost all credibility.
We have known exactly what happen for two decades (it was pretty obvious from the television coverage at the time) – the fact that we have not seen the documents changes nothing. Yes, it was common knowledge. As I said, nothing new here. Time has long since passed when it should be put to bed.
Y’know, in response to your rather silly earlier comment I was going to ask why you don’t just blame Thatcher
Good thing you didn’t as it would have made you look a fecking idiot. I never mentioned Thatcher nor could anyone who understands simple English infer that I was attempting to blame Thatcher. The blame that ataches to politicians, particularly New Labour, is their timidity in failing to challenge the corrupt and illegal behaviour of the police. And that goes well beyond Hillsborough.
We have known exactly what happen for two decades (it was pretty obvious from the television coverage at the time)
Yeah, yeah, sure you did. You knew that there was an orchestrated attempt to pervert the course of justice just by watching the TV reports. Yeah, and I have roses growing out of my ass.
Bugger all to do with left or right, but you just had to slip it in, didn’t you? I was going to say “why don’t you just blame Thatcher” as a facetious way of dealing with what was a risible comment that didn’t even deserve that much response.
Then I suggest you pluck them. You’ll have to go out and catch it first, though.
LR, *we* may have known, but the official line was South Yorkshire Police 0 Scousers 96.
There is plenty to see here and as a fellow libertarian, it again demonstrates why the State cannot and should not be trusted.
I’m not suggesting that it should be 😉
The apology is on behalf of government as a body, not him personally.
And it’s different to the absurd slavery apology for one simple reason: the relatives of those that died at Hillsborough are still alive, whereas slavery was wiped out in the mid-19th century.
Not sure it makes much difference. Like the eye-wateringly expensive Bloody Sunday enquiry, none of those involved are in a job, no-one will be prosecuted.
Much as I hate to defend the government, it was not directly responsible and only those directly responsible can give a meaningful apology.
I have to disagree. The government, albeit 23 years later, is ultimately responsible for the emergency services. On the day, the emergency services couldn’t handle the situation and lied to the Thatcher government in the aftermath. It is right that the government apologises. And while they are at it the Labour Party should also stand up and aoplogise because for 12 years they did fuck all about it and it was only in 2009 that the current enquiry was established.
And while they are at it the Labour Party should also stand up and aoplogise because for 12 years they did fuck all about it and it was only in 2009 that the current enquiry was established
Absolutely. Labour was so far up the backside of the police to advance its authoritarian policies that it would find it extremely difficult to condemn police misbehaviour over Hillsborough. Blunkett said that his job was to listen to what the police wanted and then give it to them. Anyone with that attitude is unlikely to be receptive to evidence to police criminality. It is not a party political thing betwee Labour and Tory.
However, to answer Longrider’s repsonse to me above, as there is no reply button on his post. The reason I mentioned “right wing dross” because it is self-evidently true that most of those who defend the police on Hillsborough do so from a right wing perspective. That just happens to be the truth. Note I did not say “Tories”.
No one has defended the police – certainly I have not. When someone starts dribbling on about “right wing” they concede any expectations of being taken seriously and I certainly stopped taking your comment seriously at that point. As I said, you might just as well blame Thatcher…
As an aside regarding politicking, I see that Jack Straw is claiming that the government of the day was protecting the police because it was using them for its own agenda. Rich or what?
“The reason I mentioned “right wing dross” because it is self-evidently true that most of those who defend the police on Hillsborough do so from a right wing perspective. That just happens to be the truth.”
To clarify, LR must offer rock-solid, indisputable evidence that what he says is his opinion, is in fact his opinion.
While you can take the standard left wing filth position of being a smug, condescending little prick, whose word is the absolute truth simply because you say it is.
What is self-evidently true is that you’re a hypocritical little cunt and that just happens to be the truth.
[Apologies for the language LR, but this type of thing always pisses me off]
It pisses me off, too – which is why I’ve been somewhat facetious in my replies.
Nothing new here, eh? So you knew that South Yorkshire police perverted the course of justice on an industrial scale? And you did nothing about it? No calls to the CPS?
Saying that all this was known is patent bullshit. Some of it may have been suspected but there was little certainty, as was shown by the extent that the usual right wing dross continued to promulgate the lie that it was drunken abusive fans that caused the problem. What is different here is that all the extant documents have been made available, so that an authoritative assessment can be made. That is self-evidently new and obvious to anyone who has a brain and opts to use it.
Don’t really know why you are objecting to Cameron apologising. He is not apologising in a personal capacity, but on behalf of the British state which permitted this gross denail justice to continue for over 20 years.
Stephen, I’ve read books on Hillsborough and cried doing so. My heart dies at what they have had to go through (I was at a Semi-final the year before so it could well have been me). But we’ve known who is to blame for a very long time. Personally, I thought it was common knowledge as exhibited by a short discussion at my place of work today where even those who have no clue about current affairs knew full well it was a shocking dereliction of duty by the police and other authorities and that the cover up was shameful.
I just cannot see that today did anything but add to what we all know already.
If today lays the thing to rest, then it’s been worthwhile, but I worry intensely that it will keep dragging on and devalue the cause (there were signs of that in the press conference broadcast on radio 5).
The only thing new – to people who you casually insulted as not having a brain – is that the truth has been confirmed as we knew it always would be.
I just worry, and your targeting one political view over another doesn’t help despite Labour being in charge for 13 of the last 23 years, that something pure will turn out to be a base political or class-based campaign.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong. The innocent 96 don’t deserve that as an epitaph.
Personally, I thought it was common knowledge as exhibited by a short discussion at my place of work today where even those who have no clue about current affairs knew full well it was a shocking dereliction of duty by the police and other authorities and that the cover up was shameful
Then you are wrong. It certainly wasn’t “common knowledge” that the police committed a string of serious criminal offences to cover up their mismanagement of the crowd. I didn’t know it and neither did anyone I know. More importantly, neither did the CPS, officially, or it would have been obliged to act.
Rather tired that people say “this was all known” when it self-evidently wasn’t. Particularly the degree to which the police lied in a orchestrated way to blame the fans. That was NOT known.
I thought you libertarian types wanted a small and accountable state. Yet here is irrefutable evidence that the police have been up to no good and you are complaining about its being brought to our attention! Or is it that in common with most Tories, libertaians are happy with a big state when it is cracking working class skulls?
I just worry, and your targeting one political view over another doesn’t help despite Labour being in charge for 13 of the last 23 years, that something pure will turn out to be a base political or class-based campaign
Class based? That’s fucking rich, when over the last 22 years the libels heaped upon the dead fans and their families have been couched almost exclusively in the rhetoric of class hate. But the important thing is that the police officers responsible for criminal acts are tried and sent to jail for significant stretches. Maxine Carr got 3 years for lying about 2 killings – I trust the filth who lied about 96 are jailed for at least that period.
Unfortunately there is a tendency for people to hang onto a tragedy and relive it for the rest of their lives. It is understandable, but it doesn’t mean that we should enable it. The constant demand for questions to be answered, long after they have been answered is a hallmark of such behaviour – 9/11 and 7/7 being other examples of the meme.
Hear hear!!
I was not at Hillsborough but earlier that football season I stood in the Leppings Lane end in a big crowd and was nervous. A week after the disaster I was at the Baseball Ground where Derby County hosted Sheffield Wednesday in a Division 1 match. The crowd control fences that contributed to the death toll at the FA cup semi-final had been removed. There was a big banner saying “Thank you Derby” at the Wednesday end and all were silent for You’ll never walk alone before the kick off. Derby won 1-0 and it was hugely irrelevant.
Perhaps it is also irrelevant for the PM to apologise for something that I completely agree he is not responsible for but how else do we recognise the massive injustice our society inflicted on those who died and those who lost loved ones at Hillsborough? Who else apologises for the manifest failure of the authorities and the subsequent cover up? Yes we have hopefully moved on but the Hillsborough bereaved really do deserve some recognition, some peace and dignity for the deceased that was denied them by those who sought to cover up their own miserable failings.
The more inquiring amongst us may have seen through the lies 20 years ago but it is only today that the majority who take their lead from the mainstream media will have joined us.
I do hope that nobody will try to make party political capital out of this. That would be sad and sordid.
By making sure that it does not happen again. The removal of the fences weeks after the event and changes to crowd management in subsequent years are a legacy. An empty apology is nothing more than that: Pointless rhetoric.
As recently as 9th September – 4 DAYS AGO
A ignorant idiot on OoL was still parrotting the lies put out by the Murdoch press over Hillsborough.
More to the point, and very worrying, is the repeated pattern of police lies – & not just in this case ….
Trust
So, now we all know what a lot of people suspected.
The police in Sheffield, after the disaster in April 1989, quite deliberately lied, to cover their own faults, and attempt to shift blame on to the victims themselves. What is worse, for a time, they were at least partially successful in this aim.
Unfortunately, this is not the only time this has happened, and the question must now be asked: “If there are deaths, and the police are seriously involved from the start, can any of their statement be taken as having any relationship to the actual events, or the truth?”
Here are a few other examples, not in any particular order, in either time, or importance, except to the victims & their families.
The death of Ian Tomlinson.
Probably a case of manslaughter by a police officer, which would have remained completely un-noticed, were it not for the prevalence of modern mobile phones with video facilities.
The murder of Jaun de Menezes
We think we know that the police officers who actually killed de Menezes were acting under what they believed were legitimate orders, but there are other considerations, even apart from the complete organisational chaos & lack of communication on that day.
These arise from the statements made by MetPlod to the press & public, such as:
“He was wearing a bulky jacket/coat .. / .. He was running .. / .. He jumped the barriers at Stockwell .. / .. He ran down the escalator .. / .. He was behaving in a (very) suspicious manner …”
NOT ONE of those statements was remotely true, but they had to be picke apart, bit by bit from other witness-statements.
The cover-up over the murder of Stephen Lawrence
Why did MetPlod prefer to be thought “racist” or even “institutionally racist” rather than admit what was painfully obvious to large numbers of Londoners, that the local police were hand-in-glove with the local gang(s), some of whose members had actually committed the killing? It is highly likely that some local officers were corruptly involved with the aforementioned gangs, but it seemed easier to lie, and to hassle S Lawrence’s companion on that day, rather than to make an arrest for murder.
Note that this is different from the case of the notorious Kray twins, who had managed to wangle high-level political protection, through blackmail, until they actually committed a gun-murder in public, at which point the police were able to successfully “get” the people they knew were violent criminals, but were prevented from touching, up to that point.
The Murder of Blair Peach
By members of the disbanded Special Patrol Group. Beaten to death in a suburban front garden-patch, for being on the wrong grid-reference. The death covered up enough to ensure that the uniformed murderers have escaped with pensions paid for by our taxes.
And many more.
Who shall guard the Guardians?
And can we believe a word they say, under almost any circumstances?
Well, yes, the police have long since abandoned the peelian principles. It will take a scorched earth policy to change that, I suspect.
Has any Liverpool fan ever admitted to turning up pissed and demanding entry to the game? Or have they spent the past couple of decades hiding behind corpses.
Anyone? A single fan in that end who has owned up to their contribution to the disaster?
Dick Puddlecote: “I sincerely hope I’m wrong.”
Doesn’t look as though you are, does it? 👿
As a resident of Sheffield I will have to admit that I, like many of my family and friends, have had my mind changed about Hillsborough. Maybe it was a bit of a ‘social defence mechanism’ – the people of the City didn’t really have an involvement in the events that day – it was neither of the Sheffield team’s game – plus we have to be policed by South yorkshire police every single day of our lives and perhaps by default WANT to think the best of them, but to a man (or woman) until yesterday morning no-one I know believed that there was a cover-up. I always thought that there was a feeling, maybe a subconscious one, maybe tacit, that we couldn’t believe that Liverpool fans came to OUR city and behaved like THAT! Yes, after Heysel it was easy to blame the LFC fans and indeed we were told by our own police that they had been a violent mob unconcerned about the safety of their fellow supporters as they tried to barge into the ground either with or without tickets. However, following yesterday’s revelations the few people I have spoken to about it so far agree with me – that every single person who lied about that day’s events should be punished to the maximum extent that the law will allow. Our city was visited by tragedy 23 years ago, and now the South Yorkshire constabulary, as well as any other complicit persons in our other emergency services or council, have revisited upon us a great and deep shame…
I’ve been asked to delete a comment by the person who made it. As there were replies, I’ve removed those as well – the thread makes no sense otherwise.
Wasn’t the real reason for all the deaths the fact that the barriers on the terraces failed? Is that not the reason that people fell down on top of each other in great numbers?
Not really. People were crushed against the barriers and losing consciousness way before that and that was purely down to too many people being crammed into a limited space with nowhere else to go but forward.
I watched first-hand on the day but there’s plenty of footage online for others to judge and you can clearly see many people trying to climb over the barriers or climbing/ being lifted into the stand above before the barriers collapsed or were frantically ripped down.
So I guess that the falling forward bit was part of the reason people died but not the only reason or even the first instances of death.
The gods only know many would have died if the barriers had stayed up.
I agree about fake apologies.
However there’s a difference between an educated guess and knowing with concrete evidence. We all guessed it was a cover-up, but the detailed scale of the corruption right across the establishment is new. And now we have evidence on which to stick them in the dock – some of whom are now senior Police Officers.
I presume you’re not suggesting Longrider, that criminal actions committed 23 years should no longer be prosecuted, which hitherto had been unknown in its detail and scale?
I’m not suggesting anything of the sort. I don’t seriously expect any favourable outcome, though.
And, it was more than an educated guess. Early inquiries into this were pointing in that direction. As Dick said earlier in this thread – it was common knowledge. Just because we didn’t have a report doesn’t mean that we couldn’t work out what had happened. The only difference here is, possibly, evidence with which to prosecute. I ain’t holding my breath.