How did I feel as I watched Cameron make a speech none of us
really believed we would ever hear? Shock of course. I think all of us were
shocked. But here’s the thing. I very much doubt if any of us who were there at
Hillsborough twenty three years ago were shocked at any of the contents of the
speech. Why would we be? Almost everything that was revealed was something we
knew already. Fair enough, we didn’t know the precise details, but we saw what
happened in real time. It was played out in front of our eyes.
One of my abiding memories of the disaster was the reaction
of the Nottingham
Forest fans. They were
packed into the Kop, a good 120 yards from where the life was being crushed out
of 96 souls on the Leppings Lane .
It took them only a matter of minutes to suss out that something catastrophic
was going down at the other end of the ground. What did they do? Like all the
fans that day, they did the right thing and climbed the fences to rip off
advertising hoardings and leg it across the grass to help out their fellow fans
as volunteer stretcher bearers. So what did the cops do? They formed a line
across the pitch complete with snarling dogs to stop the Forest
lads getting to where help was needed. They formed a cordon.
Why? Was every one of those coppers intrinsically evil? I
very much doubt it. They did it because they were told to do it. Whoever was
calling the shots ordered them to form a line and hold a line. And cops like
soldiers are hard wired to follow orders. It always seemed only logical that many
of these cops would have had a lot to say about the orders they were given once
the dust had settled and the debriefings got under way. But we never got to
hear how they felt because they had obviously been gagged. All Cameron did was
put a number on it – 168 – and reveal how these guys had indeed made their
opinions known only for those opinions to be deleted from the official version
of the day.
It was the same with the ambulance issue. I can clearly
remember thinking why in the name of Christ is there only one ambulance on the
pitch? There was no logic to it. Hillsborough is close to the centre of the
fourth largest city in Britain .
It has to be close to a hospital. It’s a Saturday afternoon so the roads will
be quiet. And let’s face it, British ambulance drivers are generally pretty
shit hot when it comes to getting from A to B in a hurry. So if one had made it
from ambulance station to stadium, then why not more? It made no sense. What
did make sense was the fact that there was a line of thirty or forty cops
complete with dogs trying to contain the dying from those trying to keep them
breathing.
The drunkenness thing? That was always sickeningly obvious.
Football fans back then were just viewed as caricatures. Thatcher was hell bent
on the idea of making it a legal requirement that we should only be allowed to
travel to and from games on the condition that we carried an ID card. There
were no other groups in late 80’s Britain who were deemed so bad as
to deserve such special treatment. Released prisoners? Nope. Known IRA members?
Nope. Those convicted of public order offenses and assault? Nope. Any Tom, Dick
or Harry who was deluded enough to want to get in their car and go to watch
their team? Absolutely. That is how bad the State was sure we were. We were
rabid, uneducated, violent, drunken hooligans who needed to be treated
differently to everyone else. That’s why we were locked into cages. That’s why
we herded round town by Alsatian dogs and police horses.
So it came as no surprise when they played the stereotype drunken
mob card as their trump. Of course they said we were all pissed out of our
heads and hell bent on wreaking havoc. That is how we had been portrayed for
years. It was an effective lie to tell because it was a lie that the country
had been spun for years and years. Of course the thing was down to us. How
could it not be? I mean look at who we were. We were football fans. We were by
and large young and male. We were from the North. I doubt if one in twenty of
us would have ever have voted for Thatcher. And we were from Liverpool, that
endlessly pesky city by the sea that had been sticking two fingers up at the
establishment from John Lennon to Derek Hatton to ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’ We
knew only too well what the press would say. We were Yosser Hughes. It was
always going to be our fault. Blame it on out of control, drunken Scousers.
Christ they must have been so pissed off when the autopsies failed to reveal
the expected sky high levels of blood alcohol in the bodies of the victims. No
wonder they covered that bit up. My experience of being a young man following
Liverpool through the 1980’s has always made be feel a kinship for anyone
unlucky enough to be a young Asian male in the years after 9/11
So, no. I wasn’t shocked by the revelations. I doubt if any
single person who was in the ground that day was shocked by any of the detail.
Except of course for the unforgivable fact that 41 may have lived if given
medical care in time. That really was a shock.
What was truly and utterly shocking was the fact that the
Prime Minister of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland
was actually saying it. That was quiet frankly unbelievable and almost
unprecedented. And to give the guy his due, he pulled no punches. He just laid
it all out. The families and fans were right. The Establishment was wrong. What
was done was an utter disgrace and we are truly sorry.
Wow.
I can never remember that happening before.
We threw tens of millions at an Enquiry to look into Bloody
Sunday and never even came close to digging out the truth. From time spent in Ireland
researching various books as well as talking to a number of Ex Paras, I am
pretty sure I have a decent handle on what went down that day. And I’m bloody
certain that everyone in Derry knows as well,
but despite everything the cover up managed to hold. There was an apology of
sorts. It kind of ran ‘we might have done something wrong but we’re not really
sure. If we did, then we might have crossed the line a bit, but they were
difficult times.’
Many of the revelations got me to thinking about stuff from
the dim and distant days of my History A level. Christ. Long, long time ago. In
the various discussion forums there was a feeling that this kind of long term
cover up was unprecedented in its duration and magnitude. What a load of crap.
Cover up is one of the areas where Britain has always been a world
leader. Look at the wall to wall hammering the Germans get for World War 2 and
the Yanks get for Vietnam .
You only need to take a glance at the schedule for the Documentary Channel on
any given night to bear out this particular blindingly obvious truth. We
managed to commit a horrendously long list of crimes against humanity during
300 years of our Empire, and yet we barely get slagged off at all. Ah but
surely we weren’t as bad as the Germans and the Yanks and Al Queda. Oh no? 15
million men, women and kids chained up and shipped into slavery to be worked to
death in the West Indies ? The average lifespan
of a slave starting work in on a sugar plantation in Barbados in 1642 was shorter than
that of a Jew getting of the train at Aushwitz Birkenau in 1942. Not a well
known fact. Of course it’s not. Because we’ve covered it up. It’s what we do.
My drift back to A Level History took me to the Amritsar
Massacre of 1919. Those were the days of India being our ‘Jewel in the
Crown’. Not for the first time, the Indians were pretty pissed off with being
British subjects. Five years earlier we had proposed a deal. Tell you what
guys, if you will come over to France
and help us fight the Germans, then we will take a long hard look at a spot of Independence for you once
we’ve seen off the Hun. So they came on board, died in their thousands in the
trenches, and when the survivors went back home they took Spanish Flu with
them. And 17 million died. All of which made it kind of understandable that the
Indians were somewhat agitated when they asked us to hold up our end of the
Independence promise only to be told that it was out of the question. Did we
really say that old chap? I really don’t think so. Surely not! I think you must
have got your wires crossed you dear old thing.
So was time to demonstrate. To get a few mass rallies on the
go. I suppose some subconscious part of my brain must have registered the date
when 15,000 of so Punjabis gathered in a garden in Amritsar
on a sunny afternoon to demonstrate their hopes for Independence . It was 14th April
1919. Almost seventy years to the day before we gathered to watch an FA Cup
semi final in Sheffield .
Our man in charge was Brigadier Reginald Edward Henry Dyer
and he had had quite enough of the jumped up antics of the residents of the
city he had control of. It was time they learned a lesson: the hard way. He
made his way across town to the garden where the rally was in full swing. The
garden was well enough known. It was contained by high walls with only two
narrow gates allowing people to get in or out. A little like the Leppings Lane
End, only easier on the eye. The narrow gates caused Dyer some frustration for
they were not wide enough for him to deploy the two armoured cars he had
brought along for luck. Undeterred, he lined up his fifty Ghurkas and told them
to start shooting.
Later he was asked if it might have been possible to
disperse the crowd without resorting to gunfire. Here’s what he said.
"I think it
quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they
would have come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider,
a fool of
myself."
Well there you go
then. An officer and a gentleman cannot be making a fool of himself. At first,
the Ghurkas took it as written that when Dyer gave the order to ‘fire’ he
really meant ‘fire over their heads and give them a warning.’ So they started
firing over the heads of a rapidly panicking throng. Well you really can’t get
the staff can you? How frustrating it must have been for Reggie. How simple
does an order need to be? He soon put that spot of nonsense right.
"Fire low. What have you been brought here for?"
So they fired
low. They fired 1650 rounds of ammunition. In fact they fired until they had
not a single bullet left. 97 years later and the cover up is still holding
nicely. The official number of dead was put at 379. 1650 bullets fired at point
blank range into a crowd of 15,000? 379 seems on the low side, especially when
it became clear that more were crushed to death in the ensuing panic that were
actually killed by gunshots. The Indians have always been adamant that the real
death toll was between 1000 and 1500, but they have never been able to get hold
of the paperwork to prove it.
The British
authorities in Dehli were able to shove the whole event under the carpet so
successfully that the British press never got a whisper until four months had
passed. However, once the cat was out of the bag an enquiry was unavoidable.
The equivalent rag to ‘The Sun’ back then was ‘The Morning Post’. Was it shock
and horror and how could we do such a thing? Was it buggery. The Post painted
Dyer as a hero of Empire and granted him the title of ‘Saviour of India’. When
he retired a year later and came back home, the paper organised a whip round
from its readers and raised £26,000 for the old boy to retire on. He was given
one or two uncomfortable moments at the Enquiry, but he managed to pretty well
play a straight bat. At one point he was asked if he had made
any efforts to help the wounded and dying.
"Certainly
not. It was not my job. Hospitals were open and they could have gone there.”
Sound familiar?
He was also
quizzed on the issue of his armoured cars and those annoyingly narrow gates.
"Supposing the passage was sufficient to allow the armoured cars to go in, would you have opened fire with the machine guns?"
"I think probably, yes."
"In that case, the casualties would have been much higher?"
"Yes."
Much like those who commanded the South Yorkshire Police at
Hillsborough, Dyer was able to retire in peace. No doubt his £26,000 from the
Post ensured he never had to worry about being able to afford the price of a
stiff gin or two in the club.
The cover up was easy enough to put in place. The dead
Indians were stereotyped as violent terrorists who threatened to tear down the
very fabric of society. Much like football fans all those years later. They
needed to be treated with a heavy hand, not kid gloves. At the enquiry Dyer
confirmed that his orders had clearly demanded that he "was
not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience."[
A bit like the orders passed down to the Paras in the lead
up to Bloody Sunday. And the South Yorkshire
Police? No doubt they were told in no uncertain terms to stand no nonsense from
20,000 visiting Scousers, all hell bent on causing havoc.
In 1997 the Queen visited the park where Dyer had delivered
his own particular version of hell on earth. Surely some sort of apology was in
order. After all, things are different now. The Indians are a vital export
market. Well, they did get an apology? Of sorts.
“It is no secret that there have been some difficult
episodes in our past – Jallianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a
distressing example. But history cannot be rewritten, however much we might
sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness.
We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness.”
Not much of an apology is it?
Which is why I was so profoundly shocked when we were given
such a profound and absolute apology on Wednesday afternoon. And for that,
every one of us who was there that afternoon needs to take our hats off to the
families who have fought long and hard to make it happen. And all those who
stuck by the families. And the Kop. And the Evertonians. And Kenny and Marina
Dalglish. And yes, Sir Alex Fergusson. And all the journalists who refused to
allow the news to become old news. And Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham. And
most of all, the endlessly proud and awkward people of Liverpool .
The city that never, ever backs down.
It takes one hell of a lot to make the British Establishment
back down, give up its secrets and say sorry. Properly.
Well we did it. All of us. We never forgot the 96. It took
us 23 years, but we got there in the end.
Hi Mark, Paul here. Thanks for the blog. May I comment on the Kelvin McKenzie / Sun bullshit "apology". A few months earlier I was witness to and intensely involved in the initial impact of Panam 103 on Lockerbie. While I and a few others were setting up a first aid station in Lockerbie Town Hall, including receiving the first bodies, I took a step outside for air. I was approached by a Sun "journalist" who offered me £50 to sign a statement. Of course I refused. The next day the first stories of "eyewitness" accounts appeared in the Sun of local people robbing the dead in fields. There were no such incidents. Let's not focus our condemnation solely on the red tops, though. A couple of days later, a journalist working for the Guardian, whom I knew from our mutual interest in Green politics, turned up at my door traumatised by what he had witnessed. I gave him some shelter, a cuppa and an hour or so supportive discussion. The next day, page 3, Guardian he published a full report of our conversation about my feelings and my political views about the disaster. This did me no favours locally. He also misrepresented me and never asked my permission or gave me copy preview. Some friend, and so much for the veracity of the press. I hope you can see the parallel I am drawing here with Hillsborough.
ReplyDeleteJust like Hillsborough, we still have never come near the truth about Lockerbie. The media (Private Eye excepted) have never addressed the lies and cover ups over Lockerbie. There are liars (including Mr McKenzie) still raking it in in bucket loads and guzzling the Merlot on the profits of their media one upmanship, while the dead, the grieving, and those of us afflicted by PTSD and suicidality (some by suicide indeed), live on. For me, I will never again trust the media, the police nor ANY politician again, whether local, national or international.
I was told re Lockerbie that I would be cited as a witness. I saw the whole thing, the explosion in the sky, the whole kaboodle coming down, the initial Lockerbie panic, I took and laid down the bodies of the children and other victims in our town hall. I was pre interviewed weeks before the Hague trial took place, and revoiced my doubts about the timings recorded and other "official" details.
Of course I was never called.
Politicians have always lied to protect privilege, and to cever their messy trails to that point of privilege. They always will.
Keep on Blogging , to paraphrase obert Crumb!!! Yours truly Paul Thomas.
Wow.... Two very powerful accounts. Thank God for people like you who by recording your testimony provide the rest of us with the Truth.
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