Hillsborough, after 20 years

Something interesting I read over the weekend that sort of overlaps with this.

I suspect that by “metropolitan” you mean “London-based”, which is not the case for Kelner: he’s been based in Yorkshire for years (and was at the time of Hillsborough).

You say “There are lots of good reasons not to shut up after 20 years. Not only has there been no apology from the police for their actions, but many things haven’t changed.”

Kelner writes: “The Taylor Report led to all-seater stadiums, people not getting crushed on terraces, the Premier League, prawn sandwiches, and poor people being priced out of live matches. And obviously those responsible for the hideous policing errors that contributed to the tragedy were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, or were retired on full pension and advised to keep very schtum indeed. I cannot quite remember.

“Had the coverage dealt with this issue, there might have been some point to it…”

As far as I can tell, you and he agree on the substantive issues; the difference is that he thinks that the BBC’s programme was an inadequate response to them. It seems odd to dismiss his piece as “utterly cynical”.

A couple of my inadequate links fixed up: the press pack (really very useful indeed) and the Telegraph piece.

Well said Chris.

I’ll point to Mike Bracken’s piece, also in the Guardian. For sake of disclosure, he’s a friend of mine — not a journalist, nor someone really used to writing for wide publication. As he says, there are many people who have bottled up that day for the past twenty years, and many who have only recently begun to talk about it. That, in itself, has shaped the narrative and the cultural memory around Hillsborough.

I’m uncomfortable with Kelner’s piece, though one of his comments in the subsequent thread about the catechism of cliché surrounding pre-match memorials was spot on. The discomfort is with his dismissive suggestion that the facts and legacy of Hillsborough are settled, or can be deduced to some extent from what has happened to football post-Taylor and post-Premier League, which is clearly not the case.

I’ve read plenty of attacks on towns northern, southern and international over the years, but barely anything comparably negative on Liverpool

???? What other town in the UK actually had a quasi-racialised caricature of them stuck up on TV for most of the 1990s?

You have the mentality that propels every pointless conflict, suicide bombing and machete-genocide in the world

Somewhat daft also.

???? What other town in the UK actually had a quasi-racialised caricature of them stuck up on TV for most of the 1990s?

Glasgow. But, to be fair, that was propagated by actual Glaswegians.

@15 err, Enfield’s Scousers was a parody of (Liverpool-made) Brookside’s ridiculous depection of Liverpool life, not of the city itself. Suggesting that it’s a racialised caricature is on a par with accusing Sasha Baron Cohen of racism for taking the piss out of yoof TV with Ali G. Which I know people have done, but they were missing the point too.

We don’t do this for the victims of the King’s Cross fire or Piper Alpha

Do what, precisely?

‘sfunny, though, because Radio 3 and Radio 4 both had Piper Alpha programmes last year for the 20th anniversary, and the papers certainly didn’t ignore it. (Including ones in the north of England: for what it’s bloody worth, offshore work wasn’t and isn’t restricted to Scotsmen.)

Is it possible that when people are marking a tragic event, others might just shut up and not whine about every other event getting equal time (mandated and policed by… ? Who?) If you care more about the other events, become involved yourself in organising a commemoration. Or is this an English stiff-upper-lip don’t want to acknowledge Unpleasantness reaction?

After twice as many people have died and others rendered homeless or bereaved in the recent bushfires in Victoria (Australia), there are already murmurs of just get over it already! Really, what is it with the anglo culture!?

I’m afraid that John Band has a history of behaving in this aggressively tactless manner and I don’t think there’s much can be done about it.

Why does Hillsborough get remembered in this way, when other disasters generally don’t? Well possibly because in those other disasters there was not a concerted and continuing attempt to smear the people who died as not only the authors of their own misfortune, but as thieving, drunken hooligans. Not the victims of King’s Cross, not the victims of Piper Alpha. Not even, as it happens, the victims of Valley Parade or other football stadium disasters (Ibrox, the recent Ivory Coast diaster, and so on). Any number of nightclub fires, where, almost inevitably, doors turn out to have been locked and chained: similarly fires in hostels. Not far from where I live, the Biescas disaster some years ago. The deaths of the Chinese cockle pickers off the Lancashire coast not long ago. So many African would-be immigrants, drowned trying to reach Italy or Spain. Many dreadful incidents of many different types.

Everybody understands, however difficult it may be to accept it, that sometimes there are disasters and large numbers of people die, in anguished and anguishing circumstances. Very often the authorities are culpable to some degree or another and people’s distress at the deaths is likely to be exacerbated by the failure to prosecute those responsible and quite often to cover up for them. (This is true of nearly all the specific instances I mention above.) This happened with Hillsborough in a very big way, but as I say, in itself that’s not so unusual. But the smear campaign against the dead, the deliberate unleashing of prejudice and dissemination of lies, the mobilisation of all sorts of prejudice against the victims – I can recall nothing that’s been even close to this. Nothing. A huge mountain of lies, insinuations and sheer outright prejudiced hatred, which is still being added to.

If this weren’t the case, It’s quite likely that the grieving and the marking of anniversaries would not have quite the same prominence as it has. It would still be large and significant, because we mark in particular those tragedies which seem to touch us, and this one touched two large and particular groups: people who are from Liverpool and people who are football supporters. If I were not in the latter group in might well not have the same impact on me, but as it happens, I am, and as it happens I was at a football match that day in Shrewsbury and I can still recall listening to the radio on the way home and the death toll going up and up. It doesn’t affect me more because I thought the people who died were any more human or important than the people who died on Piper Alpha or the people who were killed in the July bombings in London (as it happens, of those two events I’m more affected by the latter, as I was travelling to work in London that day). It’s just that they were closer to me. And there’s an awful lot of people in the same situation.

But mostly, you know, it was the lies, and the acceptability of the lies, the way it’s considered all right to repeat these lies and the way it’s considered acceptable to attack people for grieving. That’s what gives this one event its particular magnitude. That’s why if you talk to many people from Liverpool, or many people who were involved in football supporters’ organisations at the time, you’ll notice how angry they still are. Because from too many people, there was no respect for them and no respect for the dead.

I’d refer you specifically to comments in the Sheffield Star this week and generally to any number of internet and personal discussions.

Well, I was about to come and defend myself, but I think other people have covered the points I wanted to. I’m still not quite sure how I could have got it in the neck re North and South and Scotland. Since when was Scotland in the bloody south?