Even though you may think that I’m dense,
Trying to make some numbers add up,
To see if they’ll make any sense.
They set off to watch FA Cup football,
A semi-final they wanted to catch,
A vital game of the season:
They said it was a killer of a match.
Two were the hours to get to South Yorkshire,
Two more to get into the ground,
Herded like cattle by police horses,
Abused, and given the run-around.
Crammed into standing terraces,
The over-crowding was insane,
They all knew about Hillsborough,
Waiting for kick-off in Leppings Lane.
The push and the crush, then emergency,
Bodies spilling over onto the grass,
The dying piled up everywhere,
An awful disaster had come to pass.
Fifteen after three when it happened,
Twenty-three years since the event,
The denigration of the deceased -
Hard to understand what it all meant.
The Sun said the Scousers were drunk,
The police tried to shift all the blame,
They said it was the fans’ own fault,
And worked hard to polish their own name.
Under thirty years were most of the victims,
We know that forty-five might still be here,
But ninety-six in all died that day,
Cos the ambulances were nowhere near.
Eighty-nine – the year of the tragedy,
When the powers-that-be protected their own,
And stitched up all of the evidence,
Hoping the truth would never be known.
One hundred and sixteen statements were fixed,
Of so many crimes, that was the chief:
Contempt for processes of democracy,
In a cover-up beyond our belief.
Three hundred and ninety-five pages’ report,
Is what it took to force the exposure;
Four hundred and fifty thousand documents,
Just to give the families some closure.
Now Cameron says “profoundly sorry”,
As if that were enough after all this:
We’ve finally forced out the truth,
But what we need now is some justice.
This sorry tale should not have to be told,
And one the Government must not condone.
How could they have treated people like that?
How could they have let them Walk Alone?Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2012
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