In an editorial titled “Police’s Shame”, we are told “THE long history of disgusting failures by South Yorkshire police, its chief now suspended, ought to shut the force for good”. But not the Sun, oh no. And there is more.
“It is not just the blunders at Hillsborough in 1989 and the lies cops told. It’s the brutality against miners at Orgreave in 1984 and the alleged perjury later”. It was the choice of Kelvin McFilth to run the infamous “The Truth” headline, and the choice of others at the paper not to withdraw and apologise later. It was also the choice of Kel and his pals to cheer on the Police at Orgreave, and excuse anything and everything they got up to.
“It’s the blind eye apparently turned to monstrous child abuse in Rotherham over 16 years until 2013”. And the Sun’s 16-year coverage of that is where, exactly?
“It’s the TV coverage they arranged before raiding Sir Cliff Richard’s home”. Which the Sun, along with many other papers, used for several days after the event to boost sales on the cheap by using the event as a stick to beat the BBC.
The fantasy continues with “Police failures and corruption are rife, one chief after another suspended. A third of us don’t trust cops”. Where do you start with this one? That means the Police enjoys a 67% trust rating. A recent survey of attitudes to the press revealed that the Sun enjoyed a positive trust rating of … 8%. And they should call on others?
But do go on. “The leadership crisis is exemplified by London’s abysmal Bernard Hogan-Howe, somehow awarded a new contract despite his multiple disasters”. That’s as opposed to the leadership crisis at the Baby Shard bunker, after the Murdoch press shopped many of its own hacks, and sources, to the cops. And the crisis that may engulf the Sun over phone hacking.
The crisis that can only be compounded by the return of the twinkle-toed yet domestically combative Rebekah Brooks to the top job there. And the ever-present reminder that, after the Sun’s unique shame over Hillsborough, the late and not at all lamented Screws was arguably closed down for less. And what about Leveson 2? Ah, but I forgot for a moment: that’s not just about the Police, but there relationship with the press. Like the Sun.
Rupert Murdoch and his London mafiosi would love to deflect blame elsewhere. But this will not wash. They are guilty as hell on their Hillsborough “coverage”, and there is no use trying to offload and deflect on to the Police. It’s time to Man Up and Own Up.
My guess is that a full inquiry into media coverage (read: lies) of the Hillsborough disaster would lead into areas that would make the establishment shit its pants.
ReplyDeleteThe lies spread too quickly and too efficiently for this to be mere "blunders." It was coldly deliberate, including even some pre disaster build ups in the local Sheffield press about "ticketless fans." Moreover, the truth was known virtually from day one and exposed within months by the Taylor Inquiry, but mainstream media and politicians ignored it for over two decades.
More than one gate was opened, though there has been concentration on only one in Leppings Lane. Which individuals actually opened the gates and what precisely did they do? There were motorway delays. There was a reduction in the police crowd control of Leppings Lane. Why were ambulances delayed in a line outside the ground? And what were so many TV cameras doing outside the turnstile areas - what were they expecting and who sent them there?
The whole thing stinks of a good deal more than even Duckinfield's lies and incompetence. All you need do is view a rerun of Middup's hate-filled diatribe against innocents, precisely the same methods used against the miners.
What power structure is there in this country capable of all this? Which individuals had the power to direct it? And by that I don't mean just the hapless Duckinfield and similar assorted rank and file coppers who failed in their duty. Who has pursued and ruined the lives of those good policemen and policewomen who had the courage to speak out against the lies?
By comparison Murdoch's scum are just a pack of cowardly yapping poodles.
If we had a mainstream media worth its name they would follow the evidence wherever it leads. But don't hold your breath: They've had 27 years to get things right and they simply ran in the direction they were led. But who led them there?
'It’s time to Man Up and Own Up.'
ReplyDeleteIs up down or down up?
I still get confused !
Interesting. But wouldn't you need a motive? Orgreave miners were an obvious and specific target with a clear value in a set-piece, planned attack to 'show who's boss'. But why target a generalised group of football fans? Just for being football fans? Come on.For being scousers? Unlikely. For being working-class? Too vague. And the manner of it? Too many unknowns.
ReplyDeleteDisdain, incompetence, knowing they had Thatcher and her rags to support whatever they did? For sure. Then the abuse of the power they had to control the narrative, to smear the victims, to maintain the lies in order to cover their murderous mistakes? Definitely.
Remember what that top judge said about one of the miscarriages of justice involving the fitting up of Irish men for IRA bombings: that it was more important to uphold the sentences in order to maintain the public's faith in the police, the courts etc than it was to give justice to a few individual innocent men
Would this be the same police force that Thatcher gave Murdoch as his own private army (at taxpayers expense) to defeat the print unions.
ReplyDeleteThis is well worth a read:http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/0de4228e-6af1-35a4-be4d-648a7ea15290
Woodrow Wyatt lying on the floor waiting for Rupert to call should have been the warning to all those who came after. But as many mistreated partners and children can testify - it wasn't.
Given the atmosphere of those times, of overt far right hatred for anybody opposing the nation’s most reactionary government - up to then - do we really need to ask what a possible motive could be? Liverpool was the last politically organised city to oppose the malevolence of the Thatcher crew, a city who three government ministers of the day - Howe, Brittan and Jenkin - wanted to delete references to “a viable economic entity” in a 1981 press release concerning the city. A city from which the Conservative Party were virtually run out of town never to return.
ReplyDeleteThis followed the riots which swept the country that year. But Howe’s, Brittan’s and Jenkins’s censorship – subsequently ignored as too inflammatory – didn’t become public until the papers were released under the thirty years rule. Not that it mattered: all it required was for their wishes to leak out through the Old Boy Network, Westminster and Whitehall and that would be enough for others to do “whatever’s necessary.”
Then the city was subject to unprecedented opportunist media assault over decades, despite the fact those riots actually started in London and St. Michael’s in Bristol. All of which began an extreme reactionary tone so disgusting it is scarcely credible. One of the few things the city was left with was two successful football teams. What would be more natural to the crackpot right than to try to sabotage and discredit even that too?
After all, that kind of mindset was evident in an article by far right wing Nicholas Ridley MP in the Economist of 27th May, 1978, years before the miner’s strike. In it Ridley set out a conspiracy to rig capital figures, choose coal as “a vulnerable industry,” build up coal stocks in readiness, plan to import coal, recruit non-union lorry drivers to cross picket lines, introduce dual coal/oil fired power stations, form a special police squad and cut off money supply to those taking industrial action. All of this is precisely what happened six years later. The result was economic devastation that has lasted to this day in the affected areas – now being visited on almost anywhere else in Britain, for which see current devastation of the steel industry.
The police in Yorkshire, South Wales and the North East were prime instigators of violence against workers trying to defend their families’ livelihood. It created an institutional authoritarian corruption that led to “miscarriages of justice” at all levels of the police force. Do we really need to list them? Small wonder, then, South Yorkshire Police, as hideously corrupted and immoral as any, were up to no good in the recent reconstituted Hillsborough inquest even as late as a few weeks ago. And the Sun newspaper even refused to publish the results of the longest such legal case in British history on its front page.
There are still many, many answers required in the Hillsborough disaster. Some of them might turn out to be more sinister than we want to imagine. A good start could be made with hate-filled Bernard Ingham, now a bitter old man rotting away with his poisonous resentments. There are many other such figures. But who’s going to have the courage to really turn over the stone?
"Mrs May said she would help the force "confront the mistakes of the past"."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-36169123
Mistakes? Past? It's the lies, deceit, and perjury that was the real problem.
From her standpoint:
DeleteI don't know what was said to whom and when, it's been nearly 3 decades and we don't have time to read through it all.
Let's just learn from it !
Erm, surely her mass surveillance tool would be useful in such circumstances?
Maybe it was.
Now, for the rest.