The release of the report into the Hillsborough disaster in which 96 Liverpool supporters lost their lives will not bring closure any nearer for the families in this sorry tale of human tragedy. The old saying that the truth hurts will be sounding out loud and clear for the families of the fallen football supporters. As if the pain of losing a loved one is not bad enough, the revelation that the police and the Sun newspaper covered up and made up stories to protect their own failings will open new angry wounds for the relatives of the victims.
It has been established that the police used tactics such as blaming excessive drunkenness and ticketless fans to deflect blame away from their own shortcomings. It is worth remembering that these are the same forces that manage match days at football grounds up and down the country every weekend. There must be criminal charges brought against those police that altered statements and withheld the truth.
The Sun, like its sister paper the News of the World, must be shut down. The Sun clearly lied to the British public about the behaviour of the Liverpool fans that day and has participated in a cover up on the same scale as the Milly Dowler phone hacking scandal. The Sun tried to blacken the names of the 96 fallen to protect its own reputation. There can be no excuses and an apology will never reduce the hurt done to the families.
The finding of the Hillsborough disaster raises serious questions about how the authorities viewed the ordinary football fan in the late eighties. Has the attitude of those that govern changed? Certainly there is less hooliganism, all-seated stadium make policing and stewarding crowds easier.
However, it is still clear that the assumption is that football supporters are a danger to a civilized society. Football fans on a weekly basis are herded like cattle to and from football matches with most of their civil rights discarded by an overzealous police force that seems answerable to no one. The criminalization of the football fan continues. How often football fans are denied by the police their basic human rights such as Article 10, the Freedom of expression and Article 11 Freedom of association and assembly. The fans and police seem as far apart today as they were in 1989.
We all hope there will never be another tragedy like Hillsborough at a football ground but if the unthinkable were to happen again, have the authorities and the fans more in common now and would the result be any different?
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