Remembering the 97
Today is a day Liverpool never forgets.
Ninety seven people died after the horrific events of 15 April, 1989. Needlessly, senselessly, disgracefully.
For decades after, their families were forced into a second, utterly horrific, ordeal, one full of deflection, denial and institutional self-protection.
Campaigners, including families and victims of the awful events of April 15, have long argued for what is referred to as the Hillsborough Law. At its heart is a simple idea, but one which could change so much: that public authorities should be legally required to tell the truth and act with candour when things go wrong. It shouldn’t need saying but it does.
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, disgusting false narratives and smears were allowed to take hold. Official accounts hid the truth, outright lies were spread, and bereaved families were left to carry the utterly heartbreaking burden of proving what had actually happened to their loved ones.
Subsequent processes over the past nearly four decades, the inquests, the inquiries, eventually, after all too long, established the truth. They also exposed something far deeper and something people in this city knew all along: we live in a system where our public institutions too often protect themselves first.
That pattern hasn’t been confined to Hillsborough. When things go wrong, and even just in day to day interactions with the state and public bodies, families and individuals often find themselves trying to navigate utterly opaque systems where information is withheld, accountability is delayed and justice is denied. The balance of power is grossly uneven and this has to change.
The proposed Hillsborough Law, The Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which has still disgracefully not yet made its way through our parliamentary system, is about changing all that.
Its key principles include a legal duty of candour on public bodies and officials, parity of legal funding for families at inquests, and much stronger consequences for those who mislead or obstruct investigations. It shifts that burden away from victims and their families having to battle to uncover the truth and onto institutions being required by law to provide it.
Critics sometimes try to argue these proposals could add bureaucracy or constrain the efficacy of public bodies, and we’re seeing incredibly disappointing and quite frankly outrageous wrangling play out now with the security services‘ attempts at exemption.
On this anniversary, today as people remember those lives lost, curtailed and consumed by this awful tragedy and its disgusting aftermath, both remembrance and remedy sit side by side. One, which honours those whose died and were harmed in the senseless tragedy; the other, which calls for change so that no family out there has to fight for decades to establish the truth about how their loved ones died.
It should have been passed by this time last year. Yet, another year later, the families are still having to fight for basic accountability of our public bodies.
No more delays, no more false promises, no more hiding from accountability: the Hillsborough Law must be implemented now.
