Institutional defensiveness plays no part in campaigns for justice, as Jon Robins reports
Six people have now been charged with criminal offences over the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, including the former chief superintendent of South Yorkshire Police David Duckenfield and former chief constable Sir Norman Bettison.
‘To me now this is the beginning of the end,’ Margaret Aspinall, chairman of Hillsborough Family Support Group, told the press last week. As a 28-year fight for justice appeared to be nearing some kind of resolution, the government appointed recently retired Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Martin Moore-Bick to lead the investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire. One hopes that the lessons of Hillsborough have been learned so as to ease the heartache of the bereaved and the survivors of last month’s tragedy.
Duckenfield now faces a charge of manslaughter by gross negligence. ‘We will allege that failures to discharge his personal responsibility were extraordinarily bad and contributed substantially to the deaths of each of those 96 people who so tragically and unnecessarily lost their lives,’ said Sue Hemming, the CPS’s head of special crime and counter-terrorism.
