What I've learnt reporting on the Hillsborough disaster and the independent panel's report
You may have noticed Dale Street Associates has not been updated as regularly as normal for the past couple of weeks.
I've spent the past two and a half weeks reporting on the Hillsborough Independent Panel's report, and the scale of the task has left me with little time for blogging.
The report may be 400 pages, but the full story is held within the 400,000 documents that acted as reference points.
I've worked at the Post and Echo for the past five years and thought I had a fairly good understanding of the Hillsborough disaster ahead of the report.
I knew 96 football fans went to a football match, lost their lives through no fault of their own, and that they were hideously smeared and blamed.
I knew the inquests were so flawed as to be more than simply an injustice but an affront to a civil society.
I knew there had been a police cover-up.
I knew the families had been let down time and time again over the past 23 years.
But really I knew nothing.
In my career, which has mainly concentrated on politics, I have read countless government and council reports. It has been the bread and butter of my career.
But the Hillsborough Independent Panel report is of a totally different nature. As Michael Mansfield QC said this report revealed the biggest cover-up in British legal history.
I have found reporting on the report and all that goes with that a profoundly moving experience and at times overwhelming.
In the days after the report was released I'm not sure I was able to fully appreciate the magnitude of the revelations.
The enormity of the whole cover-up and fight for justice hit me as I stood at Goodison park and applauded during the club's tribute to the 96.
One conversation I had with Margaret Aspinall, the chair of Hillsborough Family Support Group, was particularly touching.
The dignity and strength that Margaret (pictured above) and all the families have displayed over their long 23 year fight is truly inspirational. It is hard to convey in words the suffering that the British state and establishment has inflicted on the bereaved.
As Margaret said herself: "At the family meeting (after the report's publication) the pain was written all over their faces."
I don't pretend to know the pain that the families have suffered, it is impossible.
Like anyone who has spent more than five minutes looking into the tragedy, the actions of those that let the families down never stops failing to appall.
Hillsborough will remain one of the most shameful episodes of the Post war Britain. Never forget. Never forget the 96.
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Dale Street Associates
David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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Your piece is an excellent preamble for those who still don't realise just how seismic the Panel's findings were. I will be retweeting this for others to read.
After decades of being told that the allegations of the Hillsborough victims families were exaggerated or without foundation, it has turned out that they were actually significantly understating their case. My respect for them increases exponentially by the day. Revolutions don't have to involve blood flowing in the streets.
Whilst the focus has quite rightly been predominantly on the 96 Reds who died on that dreadful day and the corrosive effect on their families wellbeing, there was also much collateral damage done to so many and it is time that was brought more out into the open. I had a friend who almost died at Hillsborough and actually did die prematurely in 2003 as a consequence of the extreme stress of his experience there. I have no doubt there are many others who have similarly suffered long term psychological damage or had years taken off their lives. Those people deserve justice too.
Well said, Paul. You're absolutely right to raise this issue given the number of extended families and friends who must have all been affected by the tragedy. They've remained silent and dignified over the years whilst having to try and cope with such terrible sadness and loss. Our hearts go out them all.
I've worked at edi companies the Post and Echo for the past five years and thought I had a fairly good understanding of the Hillsborough disaster ahead of the report.