APRIL 20 — One of Great Britain’s most famous and most popular exports — the English Premier League — marked a significant anniversary last weekend with all games kicking off seven minutes later than originally scheduled in memory of the Hillsborough tragedy.
The events of April 15, 1989, when 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives due to overcrowding in one section of Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium as their team faced Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final, were one of the darkest moments in the UK’s recent social history.
That black afternoon 25 years ago came during an era of widespread football-related hooliganism as gangs of young men used their kinship to their favourite team as an excuse to embark upon weekly alcohol-fuelled rampages through the cities of the country.
However, as a regular attendee of football matches throughout that period, I can also firmly attest that the extent of the hooliganism “disease” was often wildly overstated. Although there were notable exceptions, violence and disorder were largely easy to avoid unless you went looking for them, and the vast majority of “trouble” took place in pubs and backstreets rather than inside the stadia.
When, therefore, the Hillsborough tragedy was initially vaguely blamed upon an outbreak of hooliganism among the Liverpool fans, it never sounded like a convincing theory to anyone who went to matches.
The strongest adherents to this line of reasoning was the country’s biggest selling (but lowest quality) newspaper, The Sun, which claimed drunken supporters were responsible for the tragedy under a headline screaming: “The Truth.”
The initial inquest into the disaster effectively absolved the various local and national authorities who were responsible for staging the event.
That decision outraged the families of the victims, who have ever since embarked upon a long, committed and tireless campaign for the real truth – rather than The Sun’s version – to come out and justice to be served.
Gradually, they are winning the battle. In December 2012, the accidental deaths verdict was quashed in a High Court review, opening the doors for a new full-scale inquest which is still underway.
Ultimately, the real cause of the tragedy was inefficient management of the situation by a variety of stakeholders and it appears those accountable may finally be held to justice for their procedures and actions.
Perhaps even more disturbing, however, is the increasing evidence which strongly suggests that the day’s events were followed by an ugly collusion between the police, the government and the media to shift the blame towards the supporters and absolve the relevant officials of their responsibilities.
If that was a one-off incident, it would be bad enough. But that is clearly not the case because another ongoing court case into an unrelated scandal more than a decade later has again exposed the unholy alliance that existed – and probably still exists – within the UK’s corridors of power.
Schoolgirl Milly Dowler went missing in March 2002, prompting national headlines and a sadly unsuccessful appeal for her return. Her body was eventually found six months later, but that was far from the end of the matter.
In 2011, it emerged that reporters for The News of the World, the country’s most popular Sunday newspaper not surprisingly published by the same Rupert Murdoch-owned media empire as The Sun, had hacked into Dowler’s phone in an attempt to find clues in the hunt for her – and that the police were aware of this intervention.
Once this revelation was made, it quickly unfurled a dazzling array of spectacular malpractice within the newsrooms of the country’s leading tabloid newspaper. Although the use of phone-hacking and private detectives by newspapers had already been investigated a few years earlier, the Dowler revelations exploded the matter into an altogether new level of scandal.
The News of the World was disbanded and its former editor, Rebekah Brooks, is now the most high-profile of seven defendants accused of perverting the course of justice by concealing important evidence during the police investigation into the original phone-hacking scandal.
Again, the saga has uncovered a sordid stream of information about the depths of corruption and collusion among and between the police, government and media. One of Brooks’ co-defendants is Andy Coulson, another former News of the World editor who later served as Communications Director to Prime Minister David Cameron. It has now been revealed that Coulson had a long affair with Brooks.
The trial has also revealed how, when the phone-hacking scandal broke in 2011, Brooks received messages of sympathy and encouragement from both Cameron – who apparently appointed Coulson upon the recommendation of Brooks – and former prime minister Tony Blair, who apparently offered to act as her “unofficial advisor.”
The list of moral depravities goes on and on.
Although the final verdicts into Hillsborough and the phone-hacking scandal have not yet been reached, the levels of cynical, back-scratching entanglement they have exposed between the UK’s most powerful media executives, politicians and police officials is sordid to behold, especially in a supposedly advanced, open and transparent country.
We can only hope that the publicity surrounding these cases will dissuade future occupants of positions of power from sinking to the same depths of self-serving sleaziness; but it’s probably wisest not to hold our breath.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
