Justice for the 96

No thread on this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19570810

Really actually making me quite annoyed, and I don't mean based on being an LFC fan, I grew up in Dublin, have no right to solidarity on it. I just find it fucking sickening that the relatives were just steam-rollered and ignored by the state, because they weren't from the sector of society that would cause enough of an outcry, or because they could be dismissed based on who they were or where they came from.

It is ridiculous that it took this long.

So this Irvine Patnick guy. I'd like to hear more from him at this point, shall we say.

That's Sir Irvine Patnick, let's be clear.

Patnick is on the right wing of the Conservative Party. He was against sanctions on apartheid South Africa, voted to reintroduce the death penalty, strongly supported Section 28 and, in a similar vein, opposed reducing the age of consent for homosexuals.

Sir Irvine Patnick OBE!

i think we can all be comfortably outraged that the police are once again revealed to be shamelessly corrupt mendacious cunts

It doesn't matter who you are. Everybody loves Factory Records.

cameron:

But having been through every document – and every government document including Cabinet Minutes will be published - the Panel found no evidence of any government trying to conceal the truth.

At the time of the Taylor Report the then Prime Minister was briefed by her private secretary that the defensive and – I quote - “close to deceitful” behaviour of senior South Yorkshire officers was “depressingly familiar.”

so they didn't try and conceal the truth that the police were liars, they just didn't tell anyone and put it safely in secret government papers which have never been published.

and they just thought "those yorkshire police huh?" "man who are you tellin', those guys sure are some jokers," then did nothing.

Panel says 41 people had potential to survive after 3.15pm. 41.

Andy Burnham for PM.

On the "Who ballot" results thread, mention was made of "So Sad About Us".

Particulary the line "Apologies mean nothing when the damage is done"

Panel says 41 people had potential to survive after 3.15pm. 41.

This is the most shocking part.

Complete cunts, everyone concerned.

not to detract from the scorn towards the police involved in events, but it is pretty shocking that the ambulance staff had their statements fudged too.

Yeah I mean... you expect it from the police.

matt dc otm

also kelvin mckenzie is complete and utter scum

1519: Trevor Hicks says former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie's apology to the families of the victims is "too little, too late. The man is low-life".

that's an insult to low-life

What happens now? Will anyone be held to account?

Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline. I too was totally misled. Twenty three ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium. I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster.

What a great editor.

inquests should be quashed and re-held and everyone be held to account including re-trials

"Boy I've been having fun in this job, everything I hear from official sources is always true!"

And Thatcher should make a public apology

that MP's behaviour is just fucking despicable.

"a senior police officer and a senior local MP "

Name the names in yr apology, or

1534: Chief Constable David Compton: "Some grave errors were made in this case but it would be unfair to widen it out any further."

1537: Chief Constable David Crompton says the police statements were amended after officers sought "independent legal advice". He adds that "people thought it was the right course of action at the time" but concedes time has shown it was not.

Shaggy is not a qualified legal practitioner.

Journalists basically assuming everything that comes from the police is gospel is pretty widespread, it's why elements of the phone hacking scandal took so long to come to light. Especially when you have no interest in asking difficult questions of them.

What a great editor.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/sep/07/hillsborough-disaster-sun

i'm kind of more angry at the professional back-covering by police and politicians who weren't directly culpable for the original horror. it's one thing to lie about yr conduct in order to protect your job - that's despicable, but i can understand the motive, but to continue to promulgate a lie when you have no motive beyond professional solidarity - that's just cynicism at a level beyond comprehension

Fucking Jack Straw needs to apologise to people.

The unredacted documents i.e. the ones that show the police tampered with statements etc were put in the House of Lords by his 1998 inquiry according to this report in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/9537491/New-Hillsborough-inquiry-shows-police-were-in-chaos-as-the-tragedy-unfolded.html

The apparent manipulation of evidence is revealed in documents placed in the House of Lords library several years ago when the former Labour Home Secretary, Jack Straw, ordered that South Yorkshire Police disclose them.

as does the Belfast Telegraph:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/apps/hillsborough-will-the-real-truth-finally-come-out-16209888.html

4. Witness statements from junior South Yorkshire police officers, from the 10 boxes of evidence which former Home Secretary Jack Straw ordered the force to deposit in the House of Lords library

This information has been available in the Lords and Commons libraries and Liverpool library but is little known to those who have not followed the case closely. The statements contain annotations, in two distinct handwritings, proving how the junior officers' testimonies were rewritten to create a version of events at Hillsborough which fits with the force's version of what happened. Criticisms of senior officers were removed. Descriptions of Liverpool fans' rowdiness remained.

Yet despite having requested it and received it, on Feb 18 1998 he said that he had not found his inquiry added "anything significant" and there was no material which should cause the Taylor inquiry, the coroner or the police to reconsider.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/57860.stm

I don't understand the rationale for that at all.

Home Secretary...police...yada yada yada

Straw never one to let the innocent go unpunished as long as it kept the guilty in their place

For me saying Straw should apologise, or for his decision? xpost to Matt

I don't understand the rationale for covering up something that happened before you were elected.

Well quite. Maybe Blunkett (who was MP for Hillsborough, remember) came out of it badly? He and Straw were close IIRC.

Patnick is on the right wing of the Conservative Party. He was against sanctions on apartheid South Africa, voted to reintroduce the death penalty, strongly supported Section 28 and, in a similar vein, opposed reducing the age of consent for homosexuals.

tbh idk that this starkly delineates the right wing of the party - like what percentage of these are applicable to the front bench? most i'd imagine.

Kelvin McKenzie's description of him as "a senior local MP" needs picking out by decent journalists everywhere - he'd only been an MP for about 18 months and only ever held one minor ministerial position in his 10 years in the House.

I'll also add that with the benefit of well over a decade of governmental writing, including for senior ministers, I think Bernard Ingram's brief to the PM

At the time of the Taylor Report the then Prime Minister was briefed by her private secretary that the defensive and – I quote - “close to deceitful” behaviour of senior South Yorkshire officers was “depressingly familiar.”

could be interpreted in more than one way. I could certainly take from it that the police were taking a battering from all directions and their responses and briefings were adopting a siege mentality and a rote writing style. It should also be noted that "close to deceitful" definitely means "not deceitful" if you are briefing a senior figure but that they should avoid taking questions on it (and so don't look for any more information in the briefing notes or the background notes) because although something doesn't feel right there is no reason to doubt it based on the information you have.

Hmm, I'd rephrase that as "make sure you don't know anything about this"...

The statement by PC Maxwell Groome was one of "those most extensively altered" the report found.

The following material was deleted from his original account:"The decision to replace Chief Superintendent Mole before the semi-final needs to come under some scrutiny. This man had many years experience of policing big matches at Hillsborough.

Compared to other semi-finals held at Hillsborough, the organisation of this event was poor, as has been the case for most of the season. Too little notice had been taken of current trends and football intelligence and too much reliance has been placed upon previous information held.

Too many non-operational supervisory officers were in charge of important and critical parts of the football ground.

The deployment of officers around the crucial time needs to come under scrutiny, too many were sat around in the gymnasium whilst others were rushed off their feet."

He also wrote originally: "It was noticeable that the only supervisory officers above the rank of Inspector on the pitch were Chief Inspectors Beal and Sumner and Superintendent Greenwood. Certain supervisory officers were conspicuous by their absence. It was utter chaos."

This was changed to: "On the pitch were Chief Inspectors Beal and Sumner and Superintendent Greenwood."

Nah, definitely not. The vast majority of ministers (and to a fair degree the PM) rely on their briefings for the entirety of their knowledge on a subject. On any given subject they consider it at the time when they need to think about it, which is when they get a brief about it.

Thatcher met with very senior police staff at the time for a face-to-face. By the time the Taylor report came round it's unlikely anything more than an outline brief would have been on the table - at most 2 sides of A4 to a fairly rigid format.

xpost

i can't compete with your civil service experience, but the full passage in the briefing - by someone called carolyn sinclair, not ingham - says:

Leaving him aside, the defensive - and at times close to deceitful - behaviour by the senior officers in South Yorkshire sounds depressingly familiar. Too many senior policemen seem to lack the capacity or character to perceive and admit faults
in their organisation. (I shall be sending you a separate note on today's seminar led by Douglas Hurd on improving the calibre of senior police management).

and, earlier:

The criticism of the police is very damning. The Chief Superintendent in charge is shown to have behaved in an indecisive fashion. To make matters worse, the senior officers involved sought to duck all responsibility when giving evidence to the Inquiry. Their defensiveness apparently infuriated the Judge.

the taylor report also says outright that the officer in charge made statements that were "untruthful" and caused "grave offence and distress". if ministers and advisers knew all that, and they did, then reached for the concept of "close to deceitful", and then took it to mean "not deceitful", well that's exactly the heart of the dilatory and gutless cover-up culture.

one of the handwritten notes on the briefings to thatcher says, "what do you mean by 'welcoming' the broad thrust of the report? the broad thrust is a devastating criticism of the police. is that for us to welcome?"

the taylor report came in the middle of a succession of police cover-ups - birmingham six, guildford four, stoke newington, supergrass scandals - that utlimately lead us directly to the phone hacking scandal today. it's always been about the refusal to hold police to account.

Mirror Ed at the time explains why they didn't run the story, and provides White's justification (from the time) of it
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/sep/12/hillsborough-disaster-daily-mirror

Ah well that's different.

I guess the question then is whether action was taken in removing those individuals. Although if there was already an initiative in hand to improve police standards it's likely that was considered to be enough to rectify the problems.

Thatcher's handwritten note is very interesting, It shows she had read the report but was being advised in a way she thought questionable by the department responsible. That note will have required a briefing to explain those questions to her satisfaction - it may well be that the answer is something along the lines of "the report identifies and justifies the steps the Home Secretary has already taken towards police reform and improvements and will provide useful ammunition to counter resistance from within senior levels of the police force to the proposed process". That's the sort of way I would sell it.

"we're already fixing the system so no problem" feels a trifle inadequate given the number of people that died and the apparently blatant conspiracy to shift all blame for these deaths onto the victims and their families

can't help but feel that if a similar number had died in a crush in a House of Commons bar somebody might've been held to account for example

one of the handwritten notes on the briefings to thatcher says, "what do you mean by 'welcoming' the broad thrust of the report? the broad thrust is a devastating criticism of the police. is that for us to welcome?"

Thatcher's handwritten note is very interesting, It shows she had read the report but was being advised in a way she thought questionable by the department responsible.

Wait, was the handwritten note from Thatcher or to Thatcher? This seems unclear.

It would be from her - typewritten copies go up and annotations come back down.

Yeah, I can see that but there's no real evidence of redaction and a conspiracy of lies until Straw's review in 98 (when it even appears in the Justice's report that changes are found and noted). Up until then the SYC had held those records themselves and only given the initially considered versions to any reports or briefings. The smoking gun for a government cover-up/conspiracy points directly at Straw who, when presented with the exact same evidence used by this panel, though everything was a-ok.

The stuff from the Thatcher era seems to point to senior police officers being crap and not taking responsibility although I need to read it a bit more deeply. It smacks more of still having faith (or trying to) in the police force despite your faith being rocked multiple times. The event happened, there was an inquiry, the Justice in charge concluded based on the information presented to him that x happened. Not sure what else might have been expected to happen.

Trevor Hicks effectively said yesterday he/the families won't talk to the BBC if he appears on their shows again which i think might change things.

lest it needs repeating the Graun blog has been fantastic all the way through this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2012/sep/13/hillsborough-report-reaction-politics-live

not this though http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/sep/13/hillsborough-disaster-sun

The Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson has called for former Conservative MP Sir Irvine Patnick to be stripped of his knighthood after he was criticised in the report.

Sir Irvine, former Sheffield Hallam MP, was identified as being one of the sources for The Sun's story headlined "The Truth", which contained false allegations against fans.

Mr Anderson said he has "brought the Honours system into disrepute" and helped to bring "overwhelming misery" to the people of Liverpool.

Sir Irvine said he was "deeply and sincerely sorry" for the part he played, adding: "It is now clear that the information i received from some police officers at the time was wholly inaccurate, misleading and plain wrong.

"However I totally accept responsibility for passing on such information without asking further questions.

"So many years after this tragic event I am deeply and sincerely sorry for the part I played in adding to the pain and suffering of the victims' families."

Every fucking arsehole apologising and simultaneously pointing the finger at everyone else, what a fucking surprise.

to be fair most of them did get their "info" from the police, in an amazingly similar way to all the other great 70s and 80s miscarriages of justice

I was looking at The Express's equivalent of the 'The Truth' front page, and it's the same stories but there it's all in quotemarks and 'police sources claim'. It actually makes The Sun going in hard look even worse.

yes

warmed my heart i tell you; genuinely warmed my actual heart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IswPkwiPGc

wow

also

http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/mackenzie-hillsborough-lies/2697

as much as as kelvin mackenzie is a worthless fucking degenerate, doorstepping him like that is not great practice

it's probably meant to be ironic or something

MacKenzie sent photographers to break into a psychiatric hospital to ask actor Jeremy Brett, who was a patient in the hospital at the time and who was suffering from manic depression and dying of cardiomyopathy, whether he was "dying of AIDS". The newspaper apparently suspected Brett of being a homosexual and that his mystery illness might be AIDS, which it wasn't.

Could give less of a fuck about MacKenzie's rights in being doorstepped.

wd prefer him to have been kerbstomped tbh

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2207199/Sheffield-Wednesday-sought-compensation-lost-ticket-revenue-month-Hillsborough-Nick-Harris.html

AND it's in that cursive electric typewriter font beloved of Points Of View correspondents in the Barry Took era.

http://i.imgur.com/Cs9Ui.jpg

~unfortunate~

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/steerpike/2012/09/kelvin-mackenzie-unleashes-his-lawyers-on-south-yorkshire-police/

he really is something

Liverpool fans didn’t turn on other media, only the Sun. That has always puzzled me.

Oh piss off - as noted upthread, you just have to look at The Sun's frontpage next to The Express, which had the same story, to see why it was you.

I don't think South Yorkshire Police can be held responsible for Kelvin being a credulous twat who couldn't be bothered to ask the most basic of journalistic questions.

Mackenzie to Leveson last year: “We spent two hours going through the story and I decided that it was true and we should publish it on Monday. It caused a worldwide sensation. And four months later The Sun was forced to pay out a record £1m libel damages to Elton John for wholly untrue rent boy allegations. So much for checking a story. I never did it again. Basically my view was that if it sounded right it was probably right and therefore we should lob it in.”

yeah, i failed an exam after doing two hours of revision and obviously the moral was never to revise again

i am a tad sceptical of Mackenzie's rationale for running the Hillsborough story in the way that he did. he's much worse than credulous.

The innocent ignorant dupe act hasn't worked for any other major Murdoch player so far, except the big man himself, I doubt it'll wash here.

Maybe he should read the wikipedia page on Hillsborough http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster, it might jog a few memories:

As MacKenzie's layout was seen by more and more people, a collective shudder ran through the office (but) MacKenzie's dominance was so total there was nobody left in the organisation who could rein him in except Murdoch. (Everyone in the office) seemed paralysed – "looking like rabbits in the headlights" – as one hack described them. The error staring them in the face was too glaring. It obviously wasn't a silly mistake; nor was it a simple oversight. Nobody really had any comment on it—they just took one look and went away shaking their heads in wonder at the enormity of it. It was a 'classic smear'.

He thought he had the motherlode of stories and couldn't be arsed with niceties like due diligence and fact checking. He deserves all the years of abuse.

I think time has been kind to him.

I think time should have been much more unkind to him.

Remember that front page "The Real Truth", recently run by The Sun?

Remember the beginnings of the thaw between Lpool and the paper?

They can forget it, I reckons.

Mackenzie's "perhaps they singled us out because we were a Thatcherite paper and it was a socialist city" might tell you more about the reasoning behind him running the story in the way he did than it does about Liverpudlians' reaction to it

Indeed. And it's not as if The Sun was the only right-wing newspaper.

"They" being Liverpool, then?

So, all of liverpool owes McKen a apology?

South Yorkshire Police in "we never learn" shocker.

http://www.itv.com/sport/football/article/2013-02-26/watchdog-slam-police-hillsborough-email/

The email read: "One thing is certain - the Hillsborough Campaign for Justice will be doing their version ... in fact their version of certain events has become 'the truth' even though it isn't!!"

"I just have the feeling that the media 'machine' favours the families and not us, so we need to be a bit more innovative in our response to have a fighting chance otherwise we will just be roadkill."

can't imagine why the media machine isn't favouring a group of people found to have consistently lied and defamed the victims of their own mismanagement for 20-odd years

Unlike the media

i know right?

Poor old PC Plod eh?

Ha ok nv strike that one out im in excel nightmareland

The email read: "One thing is certain - the Hillsborough Campaign for Justice will be doing their version

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/62615000/png/_62615863_mmftbmcnultywrap.png

one thing is certain

that's a nice photo

don't recall anything approaching its moody grandeur whenever i searched gis for nult before

Unlawfully killed

Best summing up of the whole thing i've seen, by David Conn who originally wrote the Guardian piece that spurred Andy Burnham into
Doing Something in the first place

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-inquiry-anatomy-of-a-disaster-video?CMP=share_btn_tw

.. and his much longer piece, also from today

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades

read the longer piece earlier, serious level of detail. what a grim saga.

Didn't even know this scumbag was still alive tbh.

D.K.W. the Creator ‏@DavidKWayne Apr 26

Rupert Murdoch worked with the police & govt to libel victims, then he got to dictate how you attend & watch footy ever since

D.K.W. the Creator ‏@DavidKWayne Apr 26

miner's strike was a watershed in working class labour rights, Hillsborough was a watershed in working class consumption

Douglas Murphy ‏@entschwindet Apr 26

2/2 ... where it was clear the morally panicked establishment thought of football fans as scum, animals, which allowed for what happened.

Douglas Murphy ‏@entschwindet Apr 26

one thing that really put Hillsborough in context, for me, was watching 1980s news and documentaries about football fans ... 1/2

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/27/sun-times-front-pages-ignore-hillsborough-verdict

a really good book needs to be written, possibly David Conn will write it. footage of him being applauded by families (and fellow journos?)
was pretty emo; incredible work all round.