5 Feet of Fury

New Hillsborough revelations: the war on the UK’s white working class

Can you even imagine if the victims had been black?

Prosecuting the police who cooked up ‘the biggest cover up in history’ at Hillsborough is ‘absolutely essential’, the former chief constable of the force at the centre of the scandal said today.

Richard Wells, who took over at South Yorkshire Police a year after the 1989 tragedy that killed 96, admitted the scale of the conspiracy to pin the blame on the innocent dead and injured had left him ‘disappointed and angry’.

A matter of hours after the disaster in April 1989, officers had already begun a campaign to smear supporters and fabricate evidence to prevent their failures coming to light. (…)

Incredibly, blood samples were taken from the dead, including children, to try to prove that they were drunk and had caused the disaster.

The Panel’s medical expert Dr Bill Kirkup said the original inquest was wrong to say they could not be saved after 3.15pm, because a re-examination of evidence showed dozens were still breathing after that time but lost their lives in the chaos.

‘In total 41 had evidence that they had potential to survive after the period of 3.15,’ he said.