The Truth. At Last.

Yesterday (26/4/16) in the UK the second Coroners Inquest into the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster came to an end.

It concluded that 96 football fans had been unlawfully killed in a crush during the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest football clubs. That match was played on the neutral ground of Sheffield Wednesday football club's Hillsborough stadium just outside Sheffield on April 15th 1989.

As with every other British person of my age and older I still have vivid memories of that day. Much to his annoyance my father had to pick my sister from a dance class or birthday party at around the time of kick-off. Getting to ride in the front seat of the car was still super exciting so I went with him. As we were waiting for my sister to emerge we were listening to the game on the car radio.

Just six minutes after kick-off the game was suddenly stopped. Amid the confusion and horror of the radio commentators you could almost feel his terrible realisation seep across the whole nation that something had gone horribly wrong. The only thing I can think to compare it to is the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terror attacks on the US because although British people were used to terror attacks this was just so unexpected.

Then the dance class ended and I went back to the vital business of being 7 years old.

As a result I can't talk about the Hillsborough disaster with the same authority as some current event that I was fully engaged with. Instead I have to piece together my understand from what was recorded at the time and what old people have told me since. This is rather like looking at an exhibit in some sort of macabre museum.

The first problem of the day was that Britain's national railway company - British Rail - refused to provide the three so-called "Football Special" trains usually used to transport fans from Liverpool to matches in Sheffield. Instead they only provided the one.

This forced many Liverpool fans to travel by road instead - including on special buses chartered by the club. The main M62 Motorway running between Liverpool and Sheffield was partially closed due to roadworks which increased traffic congestion and therefore the journey time. As a result many Liverpool fans - including those whose journeys had been co-ordinated with the police were late arriving at the stadium.

Obviously if you know that there are people travelling from one location to another along a pre-determined route at a specified time it is very easy to obstruct that route in order to delay them. However traffic congestion is certainly nothing new on Britain's roads and most of the time it is nothing more than just traffic congestion.

Knowing that a large number of Liverpool fans would be arriving late to the match the police match commander - Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield - who has powers similar to a god over everything that happens at a football match should have simply ordered that the kick-off be delayed by at least 15 minutes to accommodate them.

This is obviously slightly annoying for the people attending the match and those watching it on TV but it is was far from an uncommon event. The recent Tottenham v Manchester United league match on April 10th (10/4/16) had its kick-off delayed due to traffic congestion.

With kick-off not being delayed the late arriving Liverpool fans all rushed to enter the stadium via the turnstiles at the Leppings Lane end of the ground. With fans entering the Leppings Lane road outside the ground much faster than they were able to pass through the turnstiles this caused a dangerous crush to build up all along the road.

What the police should have done is put in place crowd control measures to break up the crowd and avoid the crush. Even something as simple as putting a series of three crowd control barriers in a triangle formation can significantly break up a crowd so you get several small, safe chokepoints rather than one large, dangerous one.

From my training as a football crowd control steward I know that this failure is simply unacceptable. However my job as a football steward and therefore my training only existed as a direct result of the Taylor Report on the Hillsborough disaster. As such it is possible that the police at the time may not have known about this type of measure.

They should have known though that they needed to do something. The 1988 FA Cup semi-final had also been played between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough stadium. On that occasion 13 people had been injured in a crush at the Leppings Lane entrance. The stadium had a record of crushes at the Leppings Lane entrance dating 8 years to 1981.

In response to the crush outside the ground Duckenfield ordered Exit Gate C to be opened allowing the fans to quickly enter the ground in large numbers without having to pass through the turnstiles. In itself this was not a bad decision because the crush outside was starting to present a serious threat to life and the opening of Gate C relieved the pressure saving lives.

However Gate C sat right opposite the entrance tunnel to terrace Pens 3&4. From his position in the control box in front of banks of CCTV monitors Duckenfield should have been able to see that Pens 3&4 were already dangerously overcrowded. Therefore before opening Gate C he should have close the tunnel leading into those pens either with barriers or a line of officers. This would have forced the fans arriving through the gate into the other 5 Pens avoiding the crush.

Even after the match had been stopped and dead bodies were being carried from Pens 3&4 onto the pitch Duckenfield failed to declare a major incident. As a direct result only three ambulances were dispatched to treat the injured during the crucial first hour. Dozens more stood parked up outside the stadium.

The police's response to this multitude of failures was simply to lie about it on a grandscale in an effort to cover up their actions.

One of the first things that happened was that all police officers on duty that day were gathered together and their notebooks were confiscated from them by senior officers on the orders of Duckenfield.

A British policeman's notebook is very different from the sort of thing you would use to scribble down a shopping list or tear out a page to give someone a telephone number. It is a legal document similar to a witness statement given to a Court. Each individual officer is responsible for every word written in, crossed out or otherwised changed in their notebook and have to be able to swear under oath that it is a truthful record of events.

As such this confiscation of police notebooks by senior officers represents a criminal offence of the seriousness of perjury or otherwise attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Having confiscated all the notebooks the senior officers told all the juniour officers want they were going to write in their witness statements. The officers were then held - rather like in an exam hall - to write their statements together. The few officers who dared to write the truth simply had their statements changed later by more senior officers.

Again that represents a serious criminal offence similar to perjury or otherwise attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The lie the police set out to tell was that they had heroically battled to do their job of protecting the public. However they had been overwhelmed by drunken, thieving, lying, scum of the earth hooligans who had been trying to force their way into a football match without paying.

To this end one of the first things the police did in the morgues was not to try and identify the dead so their next of kin could be informed. Instead they took blood samples - even from children - and tested them for alcohol in the hope they could prove they had been dangerously drunk. Once the victims had been identified rather than informing the next of kin the police checked to see if any of them had criminal records that could be used to discredit them publicly.

Almost immediately the police took their lies to the press. In the days following the disaster both Duckenfield and the Conservative MP for Sheffield Irvine Patnick briefed local reporters assuring them that the police's version of events was the truth and all other accounts were lies.

Four days after the disaster the national "The Sun" newspaper picked up on the local reports and ran an extremely controversial frontpage on April 19th (19/4/89). This is widely available on Google and other image searches.

At the top of the page The Sun ran the headline; "The Truth" against a black background alongside the slogan "Gates of Hell." This was a reference to the opening of Gate C. Beneath that on a contrasting white background they ran a photograph of Patnick alongside his version of events. The main points of that lie were that fans had beaten up and urinated on police officers who were trying to help the injured and had stolen from the dead.

As I think you need to have worked as a newspaper sub-editor to pick up on the subtly of that page layout  The Sun quickly became a lightening rod for all the anger over the disaster and against the police cover-up. To this day I don't think you can buy a copy of The Sun in Liverpool even if you wanted to.

Of course it didn't help that The Sun had supported Margaret Thatcher throughout the 1980's and itself had defeated the printing Trade Unions in the 1986 Wapping Strike.

Obviously it is not possible to properly judge the Hillsborough disaster without looking the wider political and social context in which it occured. That truly is like looking back into another world.

For example if you wanted to make a telephone call in 1989 you had to go inside a building an use a giant plastic telephone that was physically attached to the wall. If you wanted to get some news you had to wait for one the three scheduled news broadcasts on one of only four TV channels or wait for the following day's newspaper.

The big political difference though was the Cold War. It is hard to overstate just how serious and all consuming this was.

Recently a Cold War spy drama called "Deutschland 83" was broadcast on British TV. That centred around a NATO military exercise called "Able Archer." The Soviets became convinced that the exercise was cover for a pre-emptive nuclear strike against them and prepared to launch a pre-emptive strike of their own.

That actually happened. Although I doubt the fate of the world really rested on the actions of a dashing young spy NATO and the Soviet bloc did come within hours of all out nuclear war over the Able Archer exercise.

Politics in Britain during the 1980's were of course dominated by radical Conservative Party Prime Minister Maragret Thatcher.

Thatcher's big economic idea was the policy of Moneterism. This centred on keeping a section of the population unemployed and poor in order to control inflation.

Within months Britian moved from almost full employment to more than three million unemployed. The city of Liverpool was particularly hard hit because the local economy was based on the docks importing and exporting goods to the US in the west. With the UK moving to do more trade with Europe in the east Liverpool's docks were simply on the wrong side of the country unable to attract business.

Obviously the section of the population - often the young - that had been written off to be forever unemployed were not happy about this and the 1980's saw wave after wave of urban rioting. One the first and most brutal of these riots took place in the Toxteth district of Liverpool between July 3rd and 27th 1981. Although they never used them in an effort to quell the violence the police were issued with and authorised to use teargas. This is the only time that has ever happened on the UK mainland.

Thatchers other defining policy was to defeat the National Union of Miners (NUM) Trade Union. During the 1970's the Soviet Union had supported the NUM to bring the UK to it's knees as a possible pre-cursor to invasion. By cutting off the supply of coal through strike action the NUM were able to disrupt Britain's energy supplies and by extension all economic activity. The NATO countries of course tried doing the same thing to the Soviet Bloc particularly through the Solidarty Trade Union in Poland.

In the early years of her rule Thatcher built up huge stockpiles of foreign coal to sustain the nation through one big final battle with the NUM. This battle broke out in 1984 and lasted through 1985. All the news footage used to illustrate the miners strike comes from pitched battles that were fought in June 1984 between the police and the strikers Orgreave coking plant. This is located just outside Sheffield.

While all this was going on the Northern Irish Troubles that began in 1969 were continuing. By this point the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) had developed the tactic of using bombings to kill significant numbers of the British Armed Forces. As with everything else Thatcher reacted to this by using increasingly aggressive tactics.

On November 8th 1987 (8/11/87) PIRA carried out a particularly nasty bombing against a Rememberence Day service in the North Irish town of Enniskillen. The purpose of the bombing was to collapse a building on to a crowd of gathered mourners. It killed 12. Possibly in response to this Thatcher authorised the British Army to assassinate suspected members of PIRA under what was known as the shoot-to-kill policy.

This became public knowledge when members of Britain's SAS special forces killed three PIRA members in broad daylight in Gibraltar on March 6th 1988 (6/3/88). On August 20th 1988 (20/8/88) PIRA carried out the Ballygawley bombing against British soldiers in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. With 8 soldiers killed this was the second most deadly attack PIRA ever carried out. Months later the infamous Broadcast Ban was introduced.

Thatcher's last big idea was the Poll Tax or Community Charge with was introduced on April 5th 1990 (5/4/90). Rather than being a tax on what you earned or what public services you used the Poll Tax was something you had to pay simply for the privelage of living in the UK.

It was met with widespread opposition which saw even little old ladies with no previous interest in politics being prepared to go to prison rather than pay. Although it didn't play a major role in having the policy scrapped the opposition to the Poll Tax was symbolised by a massive riot that happened right in the centre of London's governance district on March 31st 1990 (31/3/90).

As we've seen from places like Egypt when hardcore football fans put their differences aside to join in with popular protests they can bring down governments and dictators. The police lies told in response to the Hillsborough disaster had the effect of marginalising football fans who quickly became protrayed as the enemies of decent hardworking British people.

The narrative of thugs from Liverpool attacking the good, honest police brought back memories of both the 1981 and 1985 Toxteth riots. This served as a metaphor for all the growing numbers of unemployed people who were opposed to Thatcher and uniting against the Poll Tax.

The narrative of South Yorkshire police battling to protect the public from radicals and extremists brought back memories of the so-called Battle of Orgreave in 1984. This served as a metaphor for all the Trade Unionists who were opposed to Thatcher and uniting against the Poll Tax.

Like the city itself supporter of Liverpool football have strong links with Northern Ireland's Catholics. They are almost the official partners of the Scottish club Glasgow Celtic. The so-called Old Firm rivalry between Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic is basically the Northern Irish Troubles in microcosam. The Troubles began with the suspension of the Northern Ireland Parliament which is based at Hillsborough Castle.

As such the conspiracy theory has always been that the Thatcher government planned and carried out the Hillsborough disaster.

This was done in order to spread divisions within British society to prevent a British Revolution that would not have only brought down Thatcher but also the entire system of government and possibly the Monarchy.

15:50 on 27/4/16 (UK date).