Walk on, with hope in your heart

Today our thoughts are first and foremost with the families of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.

Today will be difficult for them.

It marks 25 years since 96 innocent men, women and children were killed at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield. It marks 25 years since the orchestrated campaign to denigrate the memory of the deceased began. And it marks 25 years of totally preventable pain, anguish and heartache for the families of the victims and the survivors of that fateful crush.

Too often we perhaps forget that their grief and trauma is played out in front of a watching world and privacy is something rarely afforded to them when it comes to the events of that day.

I’m proud of the solidarity that the Labour Party has shown the campaign for truth and justice over the last 25 years, although I am naturally frustrated that we did not act sooner to expose the full horror of Hillsborough. Andy Burnham, Maria Eagle and Derek Twigg’s actions in setting up the Hillsborough Independent Panel will forever be remembered by a grateful city. Their actions were historic.

Today also gives us the chance to reflect on the extraordinary contribution of dedicated Merseyside MPs who over the course of the last quarter of a century campaigned alongside the families and survivors. They have worked tirelessly on behalf of their constituents and they have endured the frustrations of those campaigners that were silenced and challenged every step of the way.

A number of experienced MPs stood shoulder-to-shoulder alongside many in the 2010 intake to lobby for new inquests to quash the original verdicts of ‘accidental deaths’. In December 2012 that particular facet of the campaign came to a close with the High Court ordering new inquests to begin under the auspices of Lord Justice Goldring. The fresh inquests, which began on  31 March 2014 in Warrington, have already proven to be a remarkably powerful reminder of just how enormous a human tragedy Hillsborough was.

The pen portraits of the victims, which have been read to the Jury by the victims’ families, reveal an array of talented individuals. The depictions are far from the image of the victims that certain sections of the establishment used as a smokescreen to deflect blame away from themselves immediately after the disaster.

In 1989 when the Hillsborough campaigners and the people of Liverpool made allegations of suspected collusions between the police, senior politicians and the press, we were ridiculed.

In  today’s Britain, when we consider events such as the phone hacking of a murdered schoolgirl’s telephone; the seemingly endless number of girls abused by Jimmy Saville at the BBC for decades and the surveillance of the family of Stephen Lawrence, we should recognise the claims of a quarter of a century ago and ponder why it took so long to uncover the real story of the Hillsborough disaster.

In fact, as we gather for the commemorative service for the 25th year, it is both interesting as well as encouraging, to now hear some of the conversations on tube trains in London, on buses in Leeds or in bars and restaurants in Leicester.

It’s no longer the faint, lonely cries of Liverpudlians of alleged malpractice on the part of organs of the state and British establishment. It is now the majority of the country that knows about it, accepts what really happened and who are appalled by the injustice of it all.

It feels for the first time, that Liverpool is isolated no more.

This anniversary is also symbolic in what is demonstrates about the British criminal justice system.

Hillsborough has uncovered a dark underbelly within the mainstream of British society. Despite a general harbouring for a more equal and democratic existence, for many years there has been an unquestionable imbalance in the pursuit of truth with one version peddled by those in authority who have time, money and resource behind them, versus the authenticity of ordinary people fighting to expose wrongdoing and corruption.

For too long the wrong version of the truth has been allowed to win on the basis of the wealth of the proponents of a particular version rather than on the merits of their version of events. I say this with confidence because in the case of Hillsborough, absolutely nothing which was revealed in the HIP report in 2012 was new evidence. It had existed for more than two decades but was never published or used in a criminal court.

I hope that its eventual publication will be a ‘line in the sand’ kind of a moment; where the thirst for real truth is promoted instead of the favouritism that is often shown by the British judicial system to cases, which are well-connected, well-funded and well-resourced.

The legacy of the 96 is, in many ways, still to be fully appreciated. I believe history will judge it positively. It is one of police reform, political modernisation and ultimately a more meaningful concept of justice. This is a legacy that will outlive the families and campaigners but one which has positively changed this country forever.

That’s why  today matters.

Gerry Marsden’s anthem of Anfield, calls on us to “Walk on, with hope in your heart”, and that is exactly what we will continue to do, until at long last, we finally achieve justice for the 96.