Rage

Apropos the very fine Hillsborough documentary mentioned yesterday, it would be remiss of me not to record the fact that in addition to being alternately bewildered and moved by the unfolding of events I found myself angry to the point of enraged regarding the lies told by those in power, mainly officers of the South Yorkshire Police, in order to blacken the reputation of the Liverpool fans as part of a cowardly strategy to somehow avoid the blame that was so richly theirs.

I never read the Sun's notorious The Truth article, being here in Singapore at the time of the tragedy, but I did pick up from the newspaper coverage here a sense of some degree of hooliganism having taken place which contributed to the disaster. Even then it struck me as odd that I hadn't seen any sign of misbehaviour when watching events unfold on the telly. Nobody cut the feed from the cameras in the UK so we got to see everything as it dreadfully panned out live. I took it that the reports about some fans urinating on the police must have been referring to stuff taking place quite far from the pitch. All I could see were the fans helping the fallen, improvising stretchers and doing their damnedest to provide some kind of help.

And now I know that's all I could see because that was ALL that was taking place. And, do you know, I'm getting angry again just thinking about this. So I'll break off here. How the families of the bereaved coped with all this with no chancing of breaking off from it for almost three decades I cannot imagine.