Hillsborough - Searching for the Truth

This is Hillsborough, the home of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club.

On 15th April 1989, it was the scene of the worst disaster in

British football history. Though 23 the Hillsborough disaster,

particularly on Merseyside, has never gone away. That's despite the

fact that a judicial inquiry made it crystal clear that the 96 deaths

were the direct result of terrible mistakes made by the senior police

officers who were in charge that day. For the past two years, a

panel of independent experts has been examining every official

document from around the time of the Hillsborough disaster. On

Wednesday, the panel releases its report. Only then will we discover

if they've found any new and significant information. Tonight,

we hear the stories of some of those most intimately involved, as

we try to find out if we can ever really know the truth about

The clock was locked on 3.06. As sun shone down upon the pitch.

Lighting up faces etched in pain. As death descended on Leppings Lane.

Between the bars an arm is raised. Amidst a human tidal wave.

What I regret is not being with my son when he most needed me. I

resent everyone who done wrong to James. It's took me a long, long

time to understand the anger, cos I was angry. They were angry with me,

I was angry with them. They are accusing me of basically killing

people. When I saw the headline "The Truth",

I was aghast because that wasn't what I'd written.

So is the lingering anger over Hillsborough a case of grieving

families who can't get over the deaths of their loved ones? Or are

families of the dead, in fact, fully justified to still be furious

about the lies told in the On 15th April 1989, Hillsborough

was the chosen neutral venue for the FA Cup semi-final between

Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Thousands of Liverpool fans made

their way across the Pennines. Many journeys were delayed by huge

traffic problems on the M62. One of the 96 Hillsborough victims who

made the journey that day was James Aspinall. Only 18, James had just

started his first job after after leaving school in Knowsley. He

travelled to Sheffield with his friend, Graham Wright. Both died.

The thing I do regret is not saying to James, "Be safe". The last thing

I done for James was put his cross and chain on. I'd bought him a few

weeks earlier, a chain for his 18th birthday, and he couldn't always

put the clasp on himself. And that morning going out to the game he

just said to me, "Mum, will you put me chain on for me please." And the

last words I remember saying to James were, "You'll have to learn

how to do this yourself, James, Dave Kirby is a writer and a

fanatical Liverpool fan. In the '80s, he followed his team across

the country. On the day of the disaster, he made the 80-mile trip

from Liverpool to Sheffield. It was the second year in a row that

Liverpool had played in an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough. It was

a lovely day like today. Sun shining. 12 months previously, we'd

been there before. Very similar circumstances. We'd played

Nottingham Forest in the semi-final of the FA Cup. You see this tunnel.

And you can see a bit of the pitch through this tunnel and you just

automatically think you go down that tunnel and disperse inside.

But little did you realise that when you got in there, it was a pen.

A complete and closed pen. John Wilson was a young South

Yorkshire police officer in 1989. While events were escalating at

Hillsborough, John was elsewhere in the stadium doing the paperwork for

an arrest he'd made earlier that afternoon. With all officers being

scrambled to the Leppings Lane end, John found himself without a police

radio, having to react instinctively to the horror that

was unfolding. We got to know that something was going wrong and I

think the intimation was that it was some trouble, as in fighting,

or whatever it was. The official inquiry by Lord Justice Peter

Taylor confirmed that the Police Commander, David Duckenfield, had

ordered that Gate C be opened to reduce a potentially life-

threatening crush that had developed by the turnstiles outside

the ground. But Lord Taylor found that rather than helping the

situation, Duckenfield's fateful decision actually led to the

disaster. The rush of fans who went through the gate made for the most

obvious entrance to the Leppings Lane terrace. Thousands of fans now

tried to enter through a narrow tunnel at the rear of the terrace

into two already overcrowded central pens. Within minutes, fans

were dead or dying. We got to the tunnel entrance and it was fairly

full, but you could see people starting to come away and you could,

as you walked down the tunnel, we struggled to get through, you could

see bodies on the floor of people. Now obviously they appeared dead at

that stage, so we walked down the tunnel. As we're walking down the

tunnel, people saying, you know, words to the effect, "It's your

fault," effing and blinding and I didn't really understand why at

that point. People were screaming. The unmerciful screaming. That's

what lives with you years later. The screams that you're hearing and

things that you see. But you started realising that something

terrible was going on. But the police still didn't react. It was

so bizarre. Because the fans that day, they reacted quicker than the

authorites. These days, Mark Edwardson is a reporter on BBC

North West Tonight. But on the day of the match, he was a young

Liverpool fan with a prized semi- final ticket for the Leppings Lane

End. He found himself in midst of the deadly crush. I was stood face

to face with this bloke who I didn't know, I hadn't gone to the

match with. I just ended up being face to face with him in this crush.

We were chest to chest. We were nose to nose. And I was getting to

a point where I didn't want to breath out because I was worried if

I breathed out, I wouldn't be able to breathe in again. I realised

that down by our legs, there was more space. So I started to sort of

wriggle down. And I'd only gone down a couple of inches, and this

man, and I know it sounds trite, but I kind of owe my life to, just

screamed at me straight away. He knew exactly what I was going to do.

He could see I was going down. And he just screamed. "Don't effing do

it. Don't effing do it. You'll never effing come back. Stop.

Stop!" And he was wasting his breath, he might have thought it

was his last breath as well, to stop me from doing what I was. And

that was it. That's when I realised if I'm going to do something about

this, I've got to at least stay up. Because that's actually the only

way I'm going to stay alive because if I go down, the gate will close

over the top of me and that would have been the end. That would have

been absolutely the end of me. He realised that, and I thank him to

this day because without him it could have been a different story.

The police were like rabbits in the headlamps. There were about six or

seven officers by the fence. And you had reporters taking pictures

of the carnage and stuff, but there was no-one reacting. It was

horrendous. And there were people in the stands behind pulling them

up. Everyone knew there was something catastrophic going on,

And the next thing, we're going down this tunnel which seems like a

cave, it seems really dark and all these people are coming out, and

there are bodies on the floor and it doesn't really register at first,

and it didn't register for some time after the incident. So then we

got through the people in the tunnel and started to go down the

terrace, which was still pretty full. As we went down the terrace,

obviously there were bodies on the terraced area and we made our way

towards one individual who was on the floor, one youngish lad, who I

can't really remember a lot about, apart from some of his clothing. I

remember him, and a colleague of mine was already there, trying to

revive him, giving him mouth to mouth and all that, so I got down

to do the same, so we were both chest compressions, mouth to mouth

and while we were there I know people were throwing coins down and

we could hear people effing and blinding, swearing, shouting. There

were people up there who were obviously really upset and really

angry. In retrospect, that's understandable. We were then

assigned to move bodies from the terrace terrier and through the

perimeter gate around the pitch. We moved about 15 people. There was

another man that I remember quite distinctly from that day, although

I've no idea who he was or what he looked like. And that was because

in the crush, I'd got turned round so I'd got my head to the back of

the pitch and he was behind me. He was up against one of the crush

bars in the pen. To describe his words as harrowing is really

understating how horrific it must have been for him. He was pleading

to me to give him some space. I was back to back with him. He was

pleading with me to give him some space and saying, "I'm having a

heart attack, I'm having a heart attack. You've got to give me some

space. I'm dying." Of course by this stage I couldn't move. Nobody

else could move. This is a football match, where things like that don't

happen, I'd never seen anything like that. I was almost 29, I'd

never seen anything like that, you know. I'd seen dead people before

I'd joined the job, but never in circumstances like that. Can you

remember anything about the people you were having to move? Not a

thing, can't, just predominantly they were male, and from what I can

remember they were male, obviously looking back now they were male,

but other than that, can't remember a thing. I don't see faces, don't

see features when I look back, it's just a...blank face. You don't see

a nose, a mouth, eyes, you just see a blank face. I can't put any

features on people's faces, I can't distinctly remember the kid I tried

to revive, you know. I've looked on my statement and that refers to

clothing and I think he'd got light coloured hair. Would you like to be

I'd like to know the... I'd like to For Margaret Aspinall, there was

still the gruesome duty of visiting her son at the makeshift morgue

that had been set up at Sheffield Wednesday. And you were waiting,

and someone offered me a cup of tea. And I said, I just want to see my

son. Please take me to my son. He's my son. I want him to know that his

mum's here. OK, OK, calm down. I eventually get called through to

this room. And I remember there was this blue curtain. A glass

partition. And they just said to me, are you ready? And I said, ready

for what? I just want me son. And they pulled the curtain back, and

my son was there. I said I need to cuddle him and they said they can't

let me go in to give him a kiss, to cuddle him. And I said I need to go

in and cuddle him. I need to go in to see my son. I need to take him

home. I've got his coat. I'll take him home. And someone, I don't know

who, said, "Mrs Aspinall he does not belong to you no more. He

But even as the disaster was unfolding, an alternative version

of the truth was being spun by senior South Yorkshire police

officers. The police match commander, David Duckenfield, lied

to a senior official from the Football Association, saying it was

the Liverpool fans who'd forced the The BBC weren't alone in reporting

this erroneous version of events. 74 football supporters are reported

to have been crushed to death at the FA Cup semi-final at

Hillsborough this afternoon. Hundreds more were injured. Fans

rushed through a broken turnstile, crushing Liverpool supporters at

It happened on the day that a false story was being manufactured by the

police. David Duckenfield was telling the FA executive in the

control room that the fans had pushed their way in and forced

their way in. Of course it was bowled on. They were drunk, they

did not have tickets, it was not their fault. That was the seed. He

knew. It was called by the judge an outrageous lie. It was an

outrageous lie but the lie has stuck. Can you understand the

bitterness of the Liverpool fans, especially when it emerged that

senior officers like David Duckenfield had effectively covered

up parts of their actions? He did not help, did it? No. I think it

was found that David Duckenfield lied. He tried to blame it

immediately on the Liverpool fans. That was a massive error. There was

going to be a backlash. There is no doubt that the vast majority of

people that turned up came to a game of football. Just as the

police turned up simply to police a football match, not to hurt anybody.

On Merseyside, it is the accusation that somehow the disaster was the

fault of the fans themselves that has always cut particularly deep.

The most notorious article to appear in the week after the

disaster featured on the front page of The Sun, headlined 'The Truth'.

Such was the anger that 23 years on following its publication there are

still many on Merseyside who refuse to buy The Sun as a result. Harry

Arnold is the journalist who wrote the article. Now semi-retired, he

has never previously spoken on camera about what happened.

involvement began. I think it was four days later when the

allegations began to emerge. In newspapers, as in television, if an

allegation is made, it is your duty to report the allegation. But at

the same time to give the other side the opportunity to respond.

The allegations included suggestions that France had

urinated on victims on a level below them. -- fans. That a young

woman who was dead had been abused. And fans were generally accused of

behaving in a drunken, disorderly fashion. It will always be very,

very difficult to know whether any of the allegations were true or

partly true or totally untrue. But they were allegations and that was

how I wrote them, as allegations. There was no drunkenness. It was

all a myth. It laid the blame. The drunkenness was exposed as a myth.

The majority of fans were not drunk or not even worse for drink.

think the worst allegations, the strongest allegations, came from a

news agency. What makes me believe strongly that it came from a news

agency is that it appeared in other newspapers. The famous St Mark

Twain and Winston Churchill, that Allied get round the world before

the truth has put its trousers on. -- lies get round the world. If you

want to make sure a version is remembered, you get in first.

not see Liverpool fans urinating on any police officers and I did not

see any Liverpool fans stealing money or picking money up, stealing

money from dead people or picking many of that had fallen out of

people's pockets. I did not see that. As far as I'm concerned, I

did not see it, so it probably did not happen. But on The Sun, Kelvin

MacKenzie the rather controversial editor at the time, like to write

his own headlines. He wrote the headline 'The Truth'. The reason I

know that, I was about to leave the newsroom when I saw him drawing up

the front page. I saw the headline, 'The Truth'. I was aghast. That was

not what I had written. I had never used the words this is the truth

about the Hillsborough disaster. I had merely written it, I hope and I

still believe, in a balanced and fair way. I said to Kelvin

MacKenzie that you cannot say that and he said why not? I said we did

not know what was the truth and this was a version of the truth. He

brushed it aside and said don't worry. He was going to make it

clear that this is what some people are saying. I walked away thinking,

well, I am not happy about the situation. But the fact is that

reporters do not argue with an editor. And in particular, you do

not argue with an editor like Kelvin MacKenzie. Talk about

kicking us when we are down. That was our hour of need. We were

looking for compassion and understanding. And then they came

out with that despicable, obscene, rancid for third. Some broadsheets

went with it, but it was The Sun. Picking pockets of dead people,

urinating on them, it was so bizarre and far-fetched. It was

designed to cast a smear and that is what it did. Its long mad and

mud sticks. That story with my name on it headlined 'The Truth' was the

unhappiest episode of my career. I had to use the material in front of

me, and I stress that they were allegations. But what made it all

go terribly wrong was when the editor put those two words on the

front page in huge letters, 'The Truth'. He has never been able to

live that down, but as I did not write the headline, I have been

able to live with it, albeit unhappily. We approached Kelvin

MacKenzie to get his response, but he declined to comment. Lord

Justice Taylor's report into the tragedy was unequivocal. It was

mismanagement by senior officers of the South Yorkshire police that was

the prime cause of the disaster. But no police officer has ever been

convicted of any crime as a result of what happened. For some of the

relatives of the dead, that is very hard to take. How do you describe

justice? What do you mean by justice? What I mean by Justice is

accountability. Somebody being responsible and being held to be

responsible for the death of 96 people. It is not about vengeance.

It is not an eye for an eye. It is the truth of Hillsborough. Instead

of blaming the fans and the people that died, put the responsibility

where it rightfully belongs, and that is accountability to me.

Accountability is absolutely vital and it applies, as I say, to every

single occupation. Whatever decisions to take, the BBC takes, I

take, I have to be accountable. I can't say, I am sorry, I cannot do

my job if I have to explain what I have done. They absolutely do.

Taylor Report was fairly clear in that it said the bulk of the

responsibility lay at the hands of senior officers at the time. They

had made mistakes in opening the gates. When that Taylor Report came

up, what was your reaction to that? Anger. I thought it was not our

fault. It was not what we had done. I had got into the defensive sort

of mine said. They hated me, I hated them. But over the years I

have been able to think, hang on, looking at this logically, I can

understand their anger. You can understand why the finger was

pointed at us, but it became personal. When they said the police,

they said me. That is how you felt? Yes. So in turn I was against them.

I had got my back against the wall, this is not my fault, I did not do

anything wrong. I did not kill 96 people. But it is only over the

years, very, very recently, that I have come to accept, like I said,

that things did go wrong. What is the point of us blaming each other?

What is the point of us hating each other? It did not change a thing.

It does not bring people back. I think now is the time, and maybe I

am being a bit optimistic, really for reconciliation. Not for us to

hate each other and fight against each other, but just to sit down

and say, well, this happened. Mistakes were made. Events came

together to create a cataclysmic event. Which we will hopefully

never see again and what we have never seen before. South Yorkshire

police in 2012 is barely recognisable from the police force

of the 80s under the command of the then Chief Constable Peter Wright.

Reforms began and his successor, Richard Wells, and from 2004 the

man in the hot seat in South Yorkshire was Meredydd Hughes.

Three years ago it was Meredydd Hughes who initiated the plan to

have an independent panel of experts review every official

document from the time of the tragedy. The panel reveals its

findings on Wednesday. But many remain suspicious that some

documents may have gone missing. Do you think this set of documents is

complete? Do you think everything is in there? It is a hard thing.

That is a question that is hard to answer. People have asked if we

have trust in the independent panel. Yes. But that is a different thing.

Why have trust in other people to hand over everything? Has anything

been shredded? I do not have that trust. I do have the trust in the

panel that what they have got they will scrutinise and looked at

properly. But it is the difference -- a different scenario that

everything has been handed over. I don't have that trust and that is

because of what we have gone through 423 years. As far as I know,

every document is there. It is the role of the Bishop of Liverpool to

satisfy himself that the documents are used correctly. It is one of

the reasons why I stepped forward to do it voluntarily. I have no axe

to grind and I have no interest in hiding anything. I am wondering in

400,000 documents the extent to which the panel have been able to

identify whether they have been given everything. What assurances

have this sort? -- have they sought? Secondly, are they dogmas

that they have not got? And thirdly, or are they going to allow the

public and the families to see everything or will it be edited?

People are still talking about Hillsborough 23 years later. It is

not going away. It has been a bit of a blight. It is an event of

history. The force get on with its day-to-day work. Apart from a

handful of officers who were here at the time, there is not a sense

of collective guilt around the events of the past. I don't think

any of us could function of that was the case. I come from South

Wales where the police force managed and delivered the Aberfan

disaster response. I am sure that mistakes were made that day in the

60s and the response was not as effective as it could have been,

but by the time I joined that force in 1979, it does not live in a

memory in quite that way. Meredydd Hughes is right, at

Hillsborough is simply an event of history. But Hillsborough and its

pain and its memories remains very much, not just in Merseyside but

deep within his own force. Perhaps the best he can say is that the

release of these documents might just be the start of a new chapter.

Have you spoken about this before? To anybody? Over the past few years,

yes. I have been to councillors. I am not ashamed to say it. I have

been to councillors and I have discussed the situation with them.

I have discussed what happened and why. And how I personally get

through it. To an extent, that has helped. I don't think it will ever

be forgotten. It is just how I deal with it personally now. What I

regret is not being with my son when he most needed me. I resent

everybody who did wrong to James. I was there when he took his first

breath. I regret that when he most needed me, I was not with him, on

his last breath. But that is the memory I have got of My beautiful

son, going off that morning. I am sorry, I apologise to all the

families for this, because when I talk about James I feel as though

I'm forgetting the other 95. None of them deserved to die, but you

have asked me about James and I have got to answer truthfully. I

just wish I had been there for him. Was he asking for me in his mind? I