:00:04. > :00:08.This is Hillsborough, the home of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club.
:00:08. > :00:16.On 15th April 1989, it was the scene of the worst disaster in
:00:16. > :00:21.British football history. Though 23 the Hillsborough disaster,
:00:21. > :00:24.particularly on Merseyside, has never gone away. That's despite the
:00:24. > :00:27.fact that a judicial inquiry made it crystal clear that the 96 deaths
:00:27. > :00:34.were the direct result of terrible mistakes made by the senior police
:00:34. > :00:36.officers who were in charge that day. For the past two years, a
:00:36. > :00:41.panel of independent experts has been examining every official
:00:41. > :00:46.document from around the time of the Hillsborough disaster. On
:00:46. > :00:52.Wednesday, the panel releases its report. Only then will we discover
:00:52. > :00:55.if they've found any new and significant information. Tonight,
:00:55. > :00:58.we hear the stories of some of those most intimately involved, as
:00:58. > :01:08.we try to find out if we can ever really know the truth about
:01:08. > :01:13.The clock was locked on 3.06. As sun shone down upon the pitch.
:01:13. > :01:23.Lighting up faces etched in pain. As death descended on Leppings Lane.
:01:23. > :01:31.
:01:31. > :01:35.Between the bars an arm is raised. Amidst a human tidal wave.
:01:35. > :01:38.What I regret is not being with my son when he most needed me. I
:01:38. > :01:43.resent everyone who done wrong to James. It's took me a long, long
:01:43. > :01:51.time to understand the anger, cos I was angry. They were angry with me,
:01:51. > :01:54.I was angry with them. They are accusing me of basically killing
:01:54. > :01:58.people. When I saw the headline "The Truth",
:01:58. > :02:01.I was aghast because that wasn't what I'd written.
:02:01. > :02:04.So is the lingering anger over Hillsborough a case of grieving
:02:04. > :02:07.families who can't get over the deaths of their loved ones? Or are
:02:07. > :02:14.families of the dead, in fact, fully justified to still be furious
:02:14. > :02:16.about the lies told in the On 15th April 1989, Hillsborough
:02:16. > :02:22.was the chosen neutral venue for the FA Cup semi-final between
:02:22. > :02:25.Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Thousands of Liverpool fans made
:02:25. > :02:30.their way across the Pennines. Many journeys were delayed by huge
:02:30. > :02:35.traffic problems on the M62. One of the 96 Hillsborough victims who
:02:35. > :02:39.made the journey that day was James Aspinall. Only 18, James had just
:02:39. > :02:45.started his first job after after leaving school in Knowsley. He
:02:45. > :02:53.travelled to Sheffield with his friend, Graham Wright. Both died.
:02:53. > :02:57.The thing I do regret is not saying to James, "Be safe". The last thing
:02:57. > :03:00.I done for James was put his cross and chain on. I'd bought him a few
:03:00. > :03:04.weeks earlier, a chain for his 18th birthday, and he couldn't always
:03:04. > :03:09.put the clasp on himself. And that morning going out to the game he
:03:09. > :03:12.just said to me, "Mum, will you put me chain on for me please." And the
:03:12. > :03:19.last words I remember saying to James were, "You'll have to learn
:03:19. > :03:23.how to do this yourself, James, Dave Kirby is a writer and a
:03:23. > :03:26.fanatical Liverpool fan. In the '80s, he followed his team across
:03:27. > :03:31.the country. On the day of the disaster, he made the 80-mile trip
:03:31. > :03:35.from Liverpool to Sheffield. It was the second year in a row that
:03:35. > :03:39.Liverpool had played in an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough. It was
:03:39. > :03:43.a lovely day like today. Sun shining. 12 months previously, we'd
:03:43. > :03:47.been there before. Very similar circumstances. We'd played
:03:47. > :03:50.Nottingham Forest in the semi-final of the FA Cup. You see this tunnel.
:03:50. > :03:53.And you can see a bit of the pitch through this tunnel and you just
:03:53. > :03:57.automatically think you go down that tunnel and disperse inside.
:03:57. > :03:59.But little did you realise that when you got in there, it was a pen.
:03:59. > :04:03.A complete and closed pen. John Wilson was a young South
:04:03. > :04:05.Yorkshire police officer in 1989. While events were escalating at
:04:05. > :04:09.Hillsborough, John was elsewhere in the stadium doing the paperwork for
:04:09. > :04:12.an arrest he'd made earlier that afternoon. With all officers being
:04:12. > :04:15.scrambled to the Leppings Lane end, John found himself without a police
:04:15. > :04:21.radio, having to react instinctively to the horror that
:04:21. > :04:24.was unfolding. We got to know that something was going wrong and I
:04:24. > :04:29.think the intimation was that it was some trouble, as in fighting,
:04:29. > :04:31.or whatever it was. The official inquiry by Lord Justice Peter
:04:31. > :04:34.Taylor confirmed that the Police Commander, David Duckenfield, had
:04:34. > :04:36.ordered that Gate C be opened to reduce a potentially life-
:04:36. > :04:42.threatening crush that had developed by the turnstiles outside
:04:42. > :04:44.the ground. But Lord Taylor found that rather than helping the
:04:44. > :04:50.situation, Duckenfield's fateful decision actually led to the
:04:50. > :04:54.disaster. The rush of fans who went through the gate made for the most
:04:54. > :04:57.obvious entrance to the Leppings Lane terrace. Thousands of fans now
:04:57. > :05:00.tried to enter through a narrow tunnel at the rear of the terrace
:05:00. > :05:06.into two already overcrowded central pens. Within minutes, fans
:05:06. > :05:09.were dead or dying. We got to the tunnel entrance and it was fairly
:05:09. > :05:12.full, but you could see people starting to come away and you could,
:05:12. > :05:21.as you walked down the tunnel, we struggled to get through, you could
:05:21. > :05:28.see bodies on the floor of people. Now obviously they appeared dead at
:05:28. > :05:31.that stage, so we walked down the tunnel. As we're walking down the
:05:31. > :05:34.tunnel, people saying, you know, words to the effect, "It's your
:05:34. > :05:41.fault," effing and blinding and I didn't really understand why at
:05:41. > :05:45.that point. People were screaming. The unmerciful screaming. That's
:05:45. > :05:49.what lives with you years later. The screams that you're hearing and
:05:49. > :05:53.things that you see. But you started realising that something
:05:53. > :05:57.terrible was going on. But the police still didn't react. It was
:05:57. > :06:01.so bizarre. Because the fans that day, they reacted quicker than the
:06:01. > :06:05.authorites. These days, Mark Edwardson is a reporter on BBC
:06:05. > :06:08.North West Tonight. But on the day of the match, he was a young
:06:08. > :06:13.Liverpool fan with a prized semi- final ticket for the Leppings Lane
:06:14. > :06:17.End. He found himself in midst of the deadly crush. I was stood face
:06:17. > :06:22.to face with this bloke who I didn't know, I hadn't gone to the
:06:22. > :06:26.match with. I just ended up being face to face with him in this crush.
:06:26. > :06:30.We were chest to chest. We were nose to nose. And I was getting to
:06:30. > :06:34.a point where I didn't want to breath out because I was worried if
:06:34. > :06:39.I breathed out, I wouldn't be able to breathe in again. I realised
:06:39. > :06:43.that down by our legs, there was more space. So I started to sort of
:06:43. > :06:47.wriggle down. And I'd only gone down a couple of inches, and this
:06:47. > :06:52.man, and I know it sounds trite, but I kind of owe my life to, just
:06:52. > :06:56.screamed at me straight away. He knew exactly what I was going to do.
:06:56. > :07:00.He could see I was going down. And he just screamed. "Don't effing do
:07:00. > :07:03.it. Don't effing do it. You'll never effing come back. Stop.
:07:03. > :07:07.Stop!" And he was wasting his breath, he might have thought it
:07:07. > :07:10.was his last breath as well, to stop me from doing what I was. And
:07:10. > :07:14.that was it. That's when I realised if I'm going to do something about
:07:14. > :07:18.this, I've got to at least stay up. Because that's actually the only
:07:18. > :07:22.way I'm going to stay alive because if I go down, the gate will close
:07:22. > :07:26.over the top of me and that would have been the end. That would have
:07:26. > :07:31.been absolutely the end of me. He realised that, and I thank him to
:07:31. > :07:35.this day because without him it could have been a different story.
:07:35. > :07:38.The police were like rabbits in the headlamps. There were about six or
:07:38. > :07:41.seven officers by the fence. And you had reporters taking pictures
:07:41. > :07:44.of the carnage and stuff, but there was no-one reacting. It was
:07:44. > :07:47.horrendous. And there were people in the stands behind pulling them
:07:47. > :07:57.up. Everyone knew there was something catastrophic going on,
:07:57. > :08:00.
:08:00. > :08:03.And the next thing, we're going down this tunnel which seems like a
:08:03. > :08:06.cave, it seems really dark and all these people are coming out, and
:08:06. > :08:15.there are bodies on the floor and it doesn't really register at first,
:08:16. > :08:19.and it didn't register for some time after the incident. So then we
:08:19. > :08:23.got through the people in the tunnel and started to go down the
:08:23. > :08:27.terrace, which was still pretty full. As we went down the terrace,
:08:27. > :08:30.obviously there were bodies on the terraced area and we made our way
:08:30. > :08:40.towards one individual who was on the floor, one youngish lad, who I
:08:40. > :08:41.
:08:41. > :08:44.can't really remember a lot about, apart from some of his clothing. I
:08:44. > :08:47.remember him, and a colleague of mine was already there, trying to
:08:47. > :08:50.revive him, giving him mouth to mouth and all that, so I got down
:08:50. > :08:54.to do the same, so we were both chest compressions, mouth to mouth
:08:54. > :08:58.and while we were there I know people were throwing coins down and
:08:58. > :09:01.we could hear people effing and blinding, swearing, shouting. There
:09:01. > :09:11.were people up there who were obviously really upset and really
:09:11. > :09:13.
:09:13. > :09:17.angry. In retrospect, that's understandable. We were then
:09:17. > :09:22.assigned to move bodies from the terrace terrier and through the
:09:22. > :09:25.perimeter gate around the pitch. We moved about 15 people. There was
:09:25. > :09:28.another man that I remember quite distinctly from that day, although
:09:29. > :09:32.I've no idea who he was or what he looked like. And that was because
:09:33. > :09:37.in the crush, I'd got turned round so I'd got my head to the back of
:09:37. > :09:40.the pitch and he was behind me. He was up against one of the crush
:09:40. > :09:46.bars in the pen. To describe his words as harrowing is really
:09:46. > :09:51.understating how horrific it must have been for him. He was pleading
:09:51. > :09:54.to me to give him some space. I was back to back with him. He was
:09:54. > :09:57.pleading with me to give him some space and saying, "I'm having a
:09:57. > :10:01.heart attack, I'm having a heart attack. You've got to give me some
:10:01. > :10:05.space. I'm dying." Of course by this stage I couldn't move. Nobody
:10:05. > :10:11.else could move. This is a football match, where things like that don't
:10:11. > :10:14.happen, I'd never seen anything like that. I was almost 29, I'd
:10:15. > :10:19.never seen anything like that, you know. I'd seen dead people before
:10:19. > :10:23.I'd joined the job, but never in circumstances like that. Can you
:10:23. > :10:26.remember anything about the people you were having to move? Not a
:10:26. > :10:29.thing, can't, just predominantly they were male, and from what I can
:10:29. > :10:37.remember they were male, obviously looking back now they were male,
:10:37. > :10:43.but other than that, can't remember a thing. I don't see faces, don't
:10:43. > :10:47.see features when I look back, it's just a...blank face. You don't see
:10:47. > :10:50.a nose, a mouth, eyes, you just see a blank face. I can't put any
:10:50. > :10:56.features on people's faces, I can't distinctly remember the kid I tried
:10:56. > :11:01.to revive, you know. I've looked on my statement and that refers to
:11:01. > :11:11.clothing and I think he'd got light coloured hair. Would you like to be
:11:11. > :11:42.
:11:42. > :11:45.I'd like to know the... I'd like to For Margaret Aspinall, there was
:11:45. > :11:51.still the gruesome duty of visiting her son at the makeshift morgue
:11:51. > :11:56.that had been set up at Sheffield Wednesday. And you were waiting,
:11:56. > :12:01.and someone offered me a cup of tea. And I said, I just want to see my
:12:01. > :12:05.son. Please take me to my son. He's my son. I want him to know that his
:12:05. > :12:15.mum's here. OK, OK, calm down. I eventually get called through to
:12:15. > :12:15.
:12:15. > :12:24.this room. And I remember there was this blue curtain. A glass
:12:24. > :12:27.partition. And they just said to me, are you ready? And I said, ready
:12:27. > :12:36.for what? I just want me son. And they pulled the curtain back, and
:12:36. > :12:41.my son was there. I said I need to cuddle him and they said they can't
:12:41. > :12:46.let me go in to give him a kiss, to cuddle him. And I said I need to go
:12:46. > :12:49.in and cuddle him. I need to go in to see my son. I need to take him
:12:49. > :12:53.home. I've got his coat. I'll take him home. And someone, I don't know
:12:53. > :12:59.who, said, "Mrs Aspinall he does not belong to you no more. He
:12:59. > :13:02.But even as the disaster was unfolding, an alternative version
:13:02. > :13:06.of the truth was being spun by senior South Yorkshire police
:13:06. > :13:09.officers. The police match commander, David Duckenfield, lied
:13:09. > :13:17.to a senior official from the Football Association, saying it was
:13:17. > :13:24.the Liverpool fans who'd forced the The BBC weren't alone in reporting
:13:24. > :13:27.this erroneous version of events. 74 football supporters are reported
:13:27. > :13:32.to have been crushed to death at the FA Cup semi-final at
:13:32. > :13:34.Hillsborough this afternoon. Hundreds more were injured. Fans
:13:34. > :13:44.rushed through a broken turnstile, crushing Liverpool supporters at
:13:44. > :13:50.
:13:50. > :13:58.It happened on the day that a false story was being manufactured by the
:13:58. > :14:05.police. David Duckenfield was telling the FA executive in the
:14:05. > :14:11.control room that the fans had pushed their way in and forced
:14:11. > :14:17.their way in. Of course it was bowled on. They were drunk, they
:14:17. > :14:22.did not have tickets, it was not their fault. That was the seed. He
:14:23. > :14:27.knew. It was called by the judge an outrageous lie. It was an
:14:27. > :14:30.outrageous lie but the lie has stuck. Can you understand the
:14:30. > :14:36.bitterness of the Liverpool fans, especially when it emerged that
:14:36. > :14:41.senior officers like David Duckenfield had effectively covered
:14:41. > :14:45.up parts of their actions? He did not help, did it? No. I think it
:14:45. > :14:50.was found that David Duckenfield lied. He tried to blame it
:14:50. > :14:54.immediately on the Liverpool fans. That was a massive error. There was
:14:54. > :14:59.going to be a backlash. There is no doubt that the vast majority of
:14:59. > :15:03.people that turned up came to a game of football. Just as the
:15:03. > :15:07.police turned up simply to police a football match, not to hurt anybody.
:15:07. > :15:12.On Merseyside, it is the accusation that somehow the disaster was the
:15:12. > :15:16.fault of the fans themselves that has always cut particularly deep.
:15:16. > :15:21.The most notorious article to appear in the week after the
:15:21. > :15:25.disaster featured on the front page of The Sun, headlined 'The Truth'.
:15:26. > :15:30.Such was the anger that 23 years on following its publication there are
:15:30. > :15:35.still many on Merseyside who refuse to buy The Sun as a result. Harry
:15:35. > :15:40.Arnold is the journalist who wrote the article. Now semi-retired, he
:15:40. > :15:44.has never previously spoken on camera about what happened.
:15:44. > :15:50.involvement began. I think it was four days later when the
:15:50. > :15:55.allegations began to emerge. In newspapers, as in television, if an
:15:55. > :16:00.allegation is made, it is your duty to report the allegation. But at
:16:00. > :16:05.the same time to give the other side the opportunity to respond.
:16:05. > :16:12.The allegations included suggestions that France had
:16:12. > :16:19.urinated on victims on a level below them. -- fans. That a young
:16:20. > :16:29.woman who was dead had been abused. And fans were generally accused of
:16:29. > :16:34.behaving in a drunken, disorderly fashion. It will always be very,
:16:34. > :16:40.very difficult to know whether any of the allegations were true or
:16:40. > :16:45.partly true or totally untrue. But they were allegations and that was
:16:45. > :16:53.how I wrote them, as allegations. There was no drunkenness. It was
:16:53. > :16:59.all a myth. It laid the blame. The drunkenness was exposed as a myth.
:16:59. > :17:03.The majority of fans were not drunk or not even worse for drink.
:17:03. > :17:10.think the worst allegations, the strongest allegations, came from a
:17:10. > :17:16.news agency. What makes me believe strongly that it came from a news
:17:16. > :17:18.agency is that it appeared in other newspapers. The famous St Mark
:17:18. > :17:24.Twain and Winston Churchill, that Allied get round the world before
:17:25. > :17:31.the truth has put its trousers on. -- lies get round the world. If you
:17:31. > :17:35.want to make sure a version is remembered, you get in first.
:17:35. > :17:39.not see Liverpool fans urinating on any police officers and I did not
:17:39. > :17:43.see any Liverpool fans stealing money or picking money up, stealing
:17:43. > :17:49.money from dead people or picking many of that had fallen out of
:17:49. > :17:55.people's pockets. I did not see that. As far as I'm concerned, I
:17:55. > :17:59.did not see it, so it probably did not happen. But on The Sun, Kelvin
:17:59. > :18:04.MacKenzie the rather controversial editor at the time, like to write
:18:04. > :18:08.his own headlines. He wrote the headline 'The Truth'. The reason I
:18:08. > :18:14.know that, I was about to leave the newsroom when I saw him drawing up
:18:14. > :18:20.the front page. I saw the headline, 'The Truth'. I was aghast. That was
:18:20. > :18:26.not what I had written. I had never used the words this is the truth
:18:26. > :18:29.about the Hillsborough disaster. I had merely written it, I hope and I
:18:30. > :18:33.still believe, in a balanced and fair way. I said to Kelvin
:18:33. > :18:39.MacKenzie that you cannot say that and he said why not? I said we did
:18:39. > :18:42.not know what was the truth and this was a version of the truth. He
:18:42. > :18:48.brushed it aside and said don't worry. He was going to make it
:18:48. > :18:52.clear that this is what some people are saying. I walked away thinking,
:18:52. > :18:56.well, I am not happy about the situation. But the fact is that
:18:56. > :19:02.reporters do not argue with an editor. And in particular, you do
:19:02. > :19:07.not argue with an editor like Kelvin MacKenzie. Talk about
:19:07. > :19:11.kicking us when we are down. That was our hour of need. We were
:19:11. > :19:21.looking for compassion and understanding. And then they came
:19:21. > :19:21.
:19:21. > :19:26.out with that despicable, obscene, rancid for third. Some broadsheets
:19:26. > :19:30.went with it, but it was The Sun. Picking pockets of dead people,
:19:30. > :19:35.urinating on them, it was so bizarre and far-fetched. It was
:19:35. > :19:42.designed to cast a smear and that is what it did. Its long mad and
:19:42. > :19:49.mud sticks. That story with my name on it headlined 'The Truth' was the
:19:49. > :19:54.unhappiest episode of my career. I had to use the material in front of
:19:54. > :19:58.me, and I stress that they were allegations. But what made it all
:19:58. > :20:03.go terribly wrong was when the editor put those two words on the
:20:03. > :20:07.front page in huge letters, 'The Truth'. He has never been able to
:20:07. > :20:12.live that down, but as I did not write the headline, I have been
:20:12. > :20:17.able to live with it, albeit unhappily. We approached Kelvin
:20:17. > :20:22.MacKenzie to get his response, but he declined to comment. Lord
:20:22. > :20:25.Justice Taylor's report into the tragedy was unequivocal. It was
:20:25. > :20:30.mismanagement by senior officers of the South Yorkshire police that was
:20:30. > :20:34.the prime cause of the disaster. But no police officer has ever been
:20:34. > :20:40.convicted of any crime as a result of what happened. For some of the
:20:40. > :20:45.relatives of the dead, that is very hard to take. How do you describe
:20:45. > :20:50.justice? What do you mean by justice? What I mean by Justice is
:20:50. > :20:54.accountability. Somebody being responsible and being held to be
:20:54. > :20:59.responsible for the death of 96 people. It is not about vengeance.
:20:59. > :21:03.It is not an eye for an eye. It is the truth of Hillsborough. Instead
:21:03. > :21:08.of blaming the fans and the people that died, put the responsibility
:21:08. > :21:12.where it rightfully belongs, and that is accountability to me.
:21:12. > :21:17.Accountability is absolutely vital and it applies, as I say, to every
:21:17. > :21:21.single occupation. Whatever decisions to take, the BBC takes, I
:21:21. > :21:26.take, I have to be accountable. I can't say, I am sorry, I cannot do
:21:27. > :21:30.my job if I have to explain what I have done. They absolutely do.
:21:30. > :21:35.Taylor Report was fairly clear in that it said the bulk of the
:21:35. > :21:40.responsibility lay at the hands of senior officers at the time. They
:21:40. > :21:46.had made mistakes in opening the gates. When that Taylor Report came
:21:46. > :21:53.up, what was your reaction to that? Anger. I thought it was not our
:21:53. > :21:58.fault. It was not what we had done. I had got into the defensive sort
:21:58. > :22:02.of mine said. They hated me, I hated them. But over the years I
:22:02. > :22:07.have been able to think, hang on, looking at this logically, I can
:22:07. > :22:11.understand their anger. You can understand why the finger was
:22:11. > :22:18.pointed at us, but it became personal. When they said the police,
:22:18. > :22:23.they said me. That is how you felt? Yes. So in turn I was against them.
:22:23. > :22:29.I had got my back against the wall, this is not my fault, I did not do
:22:29. > :22:36.anything wrong. I did not kill 96 people. But it is only over the
:22:36. > :22:41.years, very, very recently, that I have come to accept, like I said,
:22:41. > :22:45.that things did go wrong. What is the point of us blaming each other?
:22:45. > :22:53.What is the point of us hating each other? It did not change a thing.
:22:53. > :23:00.It does not bring people back. I think now is the time, and maybe I
:23:00. > :23:04.am being a bit optimistic, really for reconciliation. Not for us to
:23:04. > :23:12.hate each other and fight against each other, but just to sit down
:23:12. > :23:18.and say, well, this happened. Mistakes were made. Events came
:23:18. > :23:23.together to create a cataclysmic event. Which we will hopefully
:23:23. > :23:25.never see again and what we have never seen before. South Yorkshire
:23:25. > :23:29.police in 2012 is barely recognisable from the police force
:23:29. > :23:34.of the 80s under the command of the then Chief Constable Peter Wright.
:23:34. > :23:38.Reforms began and his successor, Richard Wells, and from 2004 the
:23:38. > :23:42.man in the hot seat in South Yorkshire was Meredydd Hughes.
:23:42. > :23:45.Three years ago it was Meredydd Hughes who initiated the plan to
:23:45. > :23:48.have an independent panel of experts review every official
:23:48. > :23:52.document from the time of the tragedy. The panel reveals its
:23:52. > :23:58.findings on Wednesday. But many remain suspicious that some
:23:58. > :24:04.documents may have gone missing. Do you think this set of documents is
:24:04. > :24:09.complete? Do you think everything is in there? It is a hard thing.
:24:09. > :24:14.That is a question that is hard to answer. People have asked if we
:24:14. > :24:20.have trust in the independent panel. Yes. But that is a different thing.
:24:20. > :24:24.Why have trust in other people to hand over everything? Has anything
:24:24. > :24:27.been shredded? I do not have that trust. I do have the trust in the
:24:27. > :24:36.panel that what they have got they will scrutinise and looked at
:24:36. > :24:39.properly. But it is the difference -- a different scenario that
:24:39. > :24:43.everything has been handed over. I don't have that trust and that is
:24:43. > :24:49.because of what we have gone through 423 years. As far as I know,
:24:49. > :24:53.every document is there. It is the role of the Bishop of Liverpool to
:24:53. > :24:57.satisfy himself that the documents are used correctly. It is one of
:24:57. > :25:06.the reasons why I stepped forward to do it voluntarily. I have no axe
:25:06. > :25:09.to grind and I have no interest in hiding anything. I am wondering in
:25:09. > :25:14.400,000 documents the extent to which the panel have been able to
:25:14. > :25:24.identify whether they have been given everything. What assurances
:25:24. > :25:24.
:25:24. > :25:30.have this sort? -- have they sought? Secondly, are they dogmas
:25:30. > :25:34.that they have not got? And thirdly, or are they going to allow the
:25:34. > :25:38.public and the families to see everything or will it be edited?
:25:38. > :25:43.People are still talking about Hillsborough 23 years later. It is
:25:43. > :25:47.not going away. It has been a bit of a blight. It is an event of
:25:47. > :25:53.history. The force get on with its day-to-day work. Apart from a
:25:53. > :25:56.handful of officers who were here at the time, there is not a sense
:25:56. > :26:03.of collective guilt around the events of the past. I don't think
:26:03. > :26:06.any of us could function of that was the case. I come from South
:26:06. > :26:11.Wales where the police force managed and delivered the Aberfan
:26:11. > :26:14.disaster response. I am sure that mistakes were made that day in the
:26:14. > :26:20.60s and the response was not as effective as it could have been,
:26:20. > :26:25.but by the time I joined that force in 1979, it does not live in a
:26:25. > :26:30.memory in quite that way. Meredydd Hughes is right, at
:26:30. > :26:37.Hillsborough is simply an event of history. But Hillsborough and its
:26:37. > :26:44.pain and its memories remains very much, not just in Merseyside but
:26:44. > :26:48.deep within his own force. Perhaps the best he can say is that the
:26:48. > :26:55.release of these documents might just be the start of a new chapter.
:26:56. > :27:01.Have you spoken about this before? To anybody? Over the past few years,
:27:01. > :27:05.yes. I have been to councillors. I am not ashamed to say it. I have
:27:05. > :27:10.been to councillors and I have discussed the situation with them.
:27:10. > :27:17.I have discussed what happened and why. And how I personally get
:27:17. > :27:22.through it. To an extent, that has helped. I don't think it will ever
:27:22. > :27:27.be forgotten. It is just how I deal with it personally now. What I
:27:28. > :27:32.regret is not being with my son when he most needed me. I resent
:27:32. > :27:40.everybody who did wrong to James. I was there when he took his first
:27:40. > :27:47.breath. I regret that when he most needed me, I was not with him, on
:27:47. > :27:53.his last breath. But that is the memory I have got of My beautiful
:27:53. > :27:56.son, going off that morning. I am sorry, I apologise to all the
:27:56. > :28:01.families for this, because when I talk about James I feel as though
:28:01. > :28:09.I'm forgetting the other 95. None of them deserved to die, but you
:28:09. > :28:18.have asked me about James and I have got to answer truthfully. I
:28:18. > :28:22.just wish I had been there for him. Was he asking for me in his mind? I