Justice for the 96!

Felicity Dowling on the verdict in the Hillsborough inquest

The 96 Liverpool Fans were unlawfully killed, says the Hillsborough jury. The police were culpable. The fans were not at fault.  The stadium was at fault. The response of the police and ambulance services were at fault. People could have been saved had the ambulances reacted better.

Some justice then for the 96 after so many years.

Our people cared as best they could for their injured without adequate assistance from the emergency services.

The Hillsborough verdicts marks the latest stage in a decades’ long campaign for justice for the 96. This has been one of the longest running campaigns in Liverpool’s history.

The jury proceedings themselves are the longest jury procedure in British legal history. The jurors have given up two years of their life to this.

Every one of us is some mother’s son or daughter. Our common humanity is the basis of all human rights, all safety regulations. Our family members went to a football match and died because of gross incompetence from the police and the ground management.  Liverpool Football fans were not worthy of their full attention.

The horrors of the match and of the deaths and injuries were massively compounded by the SUN smears of our dead and those who tried to help them, a campaign we know was linked to the highest offices in the land, and abetted by false statements from the police. In the honour of our dead never buy the Sun.

The police who conducted this event were from the same force that fought the miners on Thatcher’s instructions. They believed they could dismiss our people with impunity.

Many of our struggles are long and difficult; none more so than this. But the truth is now out in the open.

Justice.