They just won’t stop, will they?
Families of those killed in the Hillsborough disaster have announced they are to seek new inquests.
One of the problems with campaigns is that when they have achieved their objective, like soldiers returning from war, the campaigners don’t know how to stop and let go. Just as Doreen Lawrence just won’t stop plaguing us with her campaigns and the ongoing demands for inquires to tell us what we already know about 9/11 and 7/7. There comes a time when letting go and getting on with life is the right thing to do. Now is as good a time as any.
There may be a case for criminal prosecutions. The CPS will have to decide on that. There is no need for new inquests – two decades on, the time of death of some victims isn’t particularly relevant. We know what happened. We have known for twenty-three years how these people died. Unless an inquest will magically bring them back to life, it is time to let them rest in peace. Please.
LR, if your loved one died in a disaster and the original inquest passed a verdict that was later clearly found to have been flawed, would you also not want a new inquest?
No.
The time of deaths is exactly relevant, it was imposed by the corner to cover South Yorkshire Police’s arses getting them off the hook by giving an ‘accidental death’ verdict. The time imposition prevented many eye witnesses from the emergency services from giving statements testifying to the incompetence and cover-up.
Whereas now we know nearly half of the victims were alive after that time which means their deaths are more likely due to negligence – thus potentially meaning a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ due to the authorities’ incompetence.
If you can’t see how this is relevant to impending prosecutions then I despair…
All of the deaths were due to negligence.
That maybe true, that’s why we need new inquests – the original one found the opposite…
I find it slightly worrying that we keep being told that finally this is the ‘truth’. It smacks of the idea that seems all to common today that there is only one acceptable viewpoint for just about any argument.
I also find it stretching credibility to the limit the new ‘truth’ that the fans were in no way to blame.
The control of crowds is very difficult, everyone involved, crowd and ‘controllers’, can only have a partial picture of what is going on and no idea how everyone else is going to react.
I agree it is time to move on. I doubt if the active relatives have gained anything at all over this last quarter century, they have just inflicted pain upon themselves that has, if anything just festered and grown.
There’s a whole blog post in this comment.
Unfortunately, inquires and reports appear to be all about reaching a predetermined result, rather than the truth. The truth is often complicated, messy and nuanced, rather than the black and white we are expected to swallow.
Football crowds during the seventies and eighties were notorious for their bad behaviour. It was this that led to the erection of fences to prevent pitch invasions. And this had a direct impact on what happened at Hillsborough. Also, that tendency to bad behaviour will have influenced the police on the day, raising tensions. Any bad behaviour they then experienced would have raised those tensions confirming their worst fears. To suggest that these factors had no effect is as wilfully blind as to assume that the fans were all drunk and at fault. To suggest that as the report stated there was no evidence of this affecting events is evidence that it did not happen, is logically flawed as no evidence is not evidence of a negative. None of this alters the duty of care aspect, of course, and that signally failed on the day. No one is suggesting otherwise, I believe.
As for campaign groups, all too often, the outcomes of these is a cure that is worse than the disease. The MacPherson report and its institutionalised racism charge for example. I expect much the same from the Leveson inquiry. Having watched parts of it, I can tell that objective, it ain’t (much as it pains me to defend the gentlemen of the press). It’s a witch hunt. We don’t hang or burn them these days, but we do still like to indulge in the process of ritual humiliation.
The best outcome of Hillsborough has already happened. The removal of the fences and improved crown control. Anything else is revenge and that will result in nothing more than a pyrrhic victory. Sure, there may be prosecutions and convictions. That may well be appropriate. It won’t however, bring the dead back to life.
Far better to bury the dead and move on. Constant campaigning means that people live in that moment in time, never letting go. The grieving process is stalled and ultimately, they damage themselves.
Anything else is revenge
It is no more “revenge” than the 30 year sentence that Dale Cregan will probably get for murdering those who police women earlier this week. It is retribution and that is a legitimate and indissociable aspect of justice and the rule of law.
Well done for completely missing the point I was making. Clearly I was being too nuanced for you.
I also find it stretching credibility to the limit the new ‘truth’ that the fans were in no way to blame
That’s because the result challenges your prejudices that those hairy unruly football yobs just had to be blame “to some degree”. The fact is that although there may have been unlawful behaviour from some fans, it did not in any way contribute to the causes of the accident. The fact that there was violence at football grounds generally is irrelevant because that it why South Yorks police was PAID very handsomely to manage. If it wasn’t up to the task then it should have said so!
The only prejudice here is yours. Recognising that behaviour affects the behaviour of others is simply understanding human interactions. Of course there were elements of the crowd that were hostile and of course the police were expecting a hostile crowd and when the two came together that expectation would have been reinforced. To then say that there was no impact on their behaviour is wilful ignorance and any report that comes out with such a black and white view of events is deeply suspect – much as one that comes out with such cockwaffle as institutionalised racism.
This report came out with the “right” answer and cheerfully ignored the complicated and messy reality that behaviour on the day may well have been affected by the prevailing circumstances of the time.
Unfortunately, I think you may be wrong L-R.
A new inquest is needed, not only to get a new “official” time of death, because the old one was wrong, & needs to be overwritten, officially.
But also, possibly, to get the CAUSE of death changed from whatever the pervious, again probably coorupt & wrong, official verdict(s) was/were.
Messy, unpleasant & time-consuming, yes, but part of the cost of (especially police) officialdom covering-up & lying in the first place.