20 Years And Still Going Strong
By John Christie
October 12 2009
It’s now twenty years since the Hillsborough disaster, but the open wounds for the families who lost their loved ones will never heal until justice is done. In justice we mean the day the guilty men in control of the police on that day stand trial, not only for their pre-match organization, but their actions and lack of leadership during the disaster and after the 3.15 cut off.
In the aftermath, the following day in fact, the sun newspaper launched a wicked, terrible assault on the people of Liverpool. Accusations were made that the fans caused the deaths by turning up mob handed, drunk, without tickets, and storming the gates, under the heading the "truth". Days later they charged fans of picking the pockets of the dead and urinating on bodies. It was a pack of lies, with no substance of evidence to back any of the allegations up.
As the city sought to bury its dead and defend itself from the scurrilous lies, the sun tried to kick it again at its lowest point with the headline "self pity city ".
To this day you will find it very hard to find a sun reader in this city.
The subsequent enquiries of course cleared the fans of all the smears laid down by the sun, and the blame was laid at the door of the police and the ground itself. The lies though have stuck and to this day we have to defend our name from people who still want to believe the suns lies.
Why is it that national newspapers are so very quick to besmirch our good name? I believe it's political, we have always had an anti establishment streak running through us. Our people have always organised into unions, and never been frightened to fight against injustice.
We went to war with Thatcher and her despicable government, and didn't take a backward step despite her vindictive slashing of 70 000 jobs in the region. So is it surprising the likes of the sun (Thatcherite lackey) was so quick to attack the people of Liverpool?
John Pilger of The Guardian has it right.
"Liverpool doesn't suffer from historical amnesia. Although its pantheons of the slave trade and the industrial age have been made fit for tourists, the cobbles restored and swept litter free, the past remains defiantly the present. As a keeper of the secrets of the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people, Liverpool has few equals. That is why it excites such prejudice, even hatred, and why the unfashionable resistance of its people endures.