Hillsborough 1989 Remembered

I had the good fortune to attend the Hillsborough Memorial Match at Anfield on 14th May.

I will update this piece with some more pictures later but here is one of John Aldridge.

Never forget.

England's record scorer, Aldo, narrowly misses

Sorry........sort of

Not perfect but an interesting case study in damage limitation comes in the form of The Express apology over its Dunblane story.

• THE Scottish Sunday Express has enjoyed a long love affair with the people of our nation.

But now we've just got the test results back from the clinic and one of us has got the clap. I think it was that Murray woman who posts drunken pictures of herself on Facebook.

Damn those pesky bloggers. If it weren't for them, we'd have gotten away with it!

On another note, The Sun, vilified on Merseyside, seems to have lifted quotes from the forthcoming documentary on Hillsborough to create the impression that Kenny Dalglish, Bruce Grobelaar and Tranmere demi-god John Aldridge have spoken to the paper. I'd find it very surprising if this is not the case.

Death in the Sun

The closing weeks of the 1988-89 football season produced a mixture of emotions for me as Tranmere's automatic promotion to the old Division 3 was tempered by the Hillsborough Disaster on 15th April 1989.

Much has been written since and today's article in The Observer is a powerful piece coming as it does a single month short of the 20th anniversary of that day in the sun. It tells of a Liverpool fan shunted into the Leppings Lane end of the ground despite having a ticket for the Nottingham Forest end - he was with his Forest-supporting brother - and the ensuing crush:

• Within feet of me people were standing dead, bolt upright. Three men had long stopped breathing and were now staring, with a fixed, almost disinterested expression, into the distance. Their faces were bleached white, but turning blue, their lips a cold violet.

My memories of that day have not faded much. Tranmere were playing away at Hartlepool, Everton in the other FA Cup semi so I plonked myself down in front of the TV with a can of Guinness. News started filtering through of problems at the Liverpool game and television pictures began to show the stark reality of what was unfolding: fans with makeshift stretchers purloined from the pitch side. As Ian Prowse sang,

• Yorkshire policemen chat with folded arms
  while people try and save their fellow fans

The other results - so important to us all each weekend - became meaningless. I had to look up the TRFC result as it had become lost in the ether. I do, however, vividly remember a long-standing Evertonian slumped on the bar of the Stork in Birkenhead, having discovered the news on the way back from his team's victory, and the normal quick banter replaced by knowing silence.

The Prowse song begins with the words,

• Mckenzie's soul lies above the ground
  In that pyramid near Maryland

It refers to Liverpool folklore: James McKenzie,a wicked man who gambled and lost his soul to the devil.

Liverpool has another soundex soulman: Kelvin MacKenzie.

For those of you unfamiliar with this reprobate's role in the history of the matter, he was Editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned titfest, The Sun at the time and was forced into a grovelling apology for printing a story headlined 'The Truth', which falsely claimed that drunken, ticketless fans stole from the dead and urinated on their bodies.

It took until 2004 for a full apology to surface as scum is wont to do in an attempt to rebuild circulation figures for a paper whose name is dirt. Mackenzie - in 2006 - though remained unrepentant:

• "I was not sorry then and I'm not sorry now," Mr MacKenzie told his audience. "All I did wrong there was [to] tell the truth."

This man is still used by the media as a spokesman on newspaper issues. Sky have him reviewing the papers, and yesterday Channel 4 had him lamenting the slow death of local newspapers and said that without them 'liars would get away with it' without any hint of irony!

So, the memory lingers. Nothing has changed over at Murdoch's empire. The Sun routinely prints lies - see The Sun Lies - and the campaign for justice continues.

Further reading can be found as a zip file at The Kirkby Times

Carlsberg 2 The Sun 1

After an early own-goal, Carlsberg (brewers of definitely NOT the greatest lager in the world) has, like Tim Leunig last week, found out that the people of Merseyside don't take things lying down.

Local paper, The Echo are on the case (£6.98 for 18 bottles at Sainsburys):

• RED-FACED Carlsberg bosses have apologised to outraged Liverpool fans for their aborted beer promotion with The Sun.
  The Danish brewer yesterday axed a deal with the tabloid newspaper to give readers a free pint over the August bank holiday weekend.
  Senior figures at the firm, which is the Anfield club’s shirt sponsor, contacted the ECHO and admitted their decision was “naive”.
  They said they were bombarded with complaints from upset Reds as far afield as Norway, Malaysia and Singapore. Keld Strudahl, marketing director of Carlsberg International, said the company hugely regretted the move.
  Vouchers were to be printed in The Sun, still boycotted by football fans in Merseyside over its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster, and then exchanged for a free pint in 13,000 pubs.

It may be difficult for the outsider to comprehend the hostility towards this vile paper but it is very rare to see someone in public with it. Whilst one could probably walk into any working class pub in Britain to find numerous copies folded over to the racing page, it is not common here on Merseyside. Dave in the corner - Daily Star;man with Kwik Save bag - Daily Mirror;Eric the Fish - pretentious broadsheet - but you get the idea.

Further articles on Hillsborough are archived as a zip file on the Kirkby Times site here.