There are some things in life that you could never forget. Like scrapping with your bare hands to wrench advertisement hoardings off the wall to be used to stretcher the injured, dead, and dying to the other end of a football pitch on a nice and sunny April afternoon.
I have a vivid memory of a man coming close to me in an agitated state and screaming down my left ear to get a move on [what he said was packed with expletives] “there are people dying down there.” For years afterwards I felt a certain shame that my efforts had not been adequate to the task. Now I realize we were going as quickly as we could and that the man was panicking and breaking down. I continue to refuse every invitation to panic.
I was talking to an auntie on the phone about fear and catastrophism in the present age. I made the point that even if death is almost certain, in no wise does panic ever make the situation better, nearly always worse. I mentioned this incident in Leppings Lane to her and she surprised me by saying that she never knew about the extent of my involvement that day … I presume people know, even if I haven't told them. Surely somebody in the family must have told them … I didn't say much about the day for a very long time afterwards. In fact, I said next to nothing, other than to damn the lies and calumnies, then the duplicities and complicities, that came thick and fast from the establishment in the days and then years after, up to and including Blair and Straw.
I shot this video at the end of the Hillsborough Vigil, St George's Hall, Liverpool, 27 April 2016. As the night descends to end the day, the crowds go home to the sound of Peter Hooton and The Farm singing All Together Now.
The day before, April 26, 2016, the jury at the new inquest into the Hillsborough disaster returned landmark verdicts which brought truth for the, then, 96 victims of the disaster, their families, survivors and campaigners, with the promise of justice in the future. I joined with fellow Liverpool supporters and Hillsborough campaigners at the Shankly Hotel to listen to the verdict as it was announced. The photos are from that day, as we ventured outdoors to lay flowers at the Hillsborough memorial and visit St George's Hall to see the words "Truth" and "Justice" spelled out in red.
After more than two years of proceedings, the six women and three men of the jury concluded that each of the supporters who lost their lives had been unlawfully killed.
The jury also stated that fans had played no part in causing the tragedy at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on April 15, 1989.
As someone who was present on the terraces that day in Leppings Lane, and who played a role in organising the recovery, I simply say that the Liverpool football supporters had told the simple truth, plain for all to see, all along, and were not just the victims that day, but the heroes.
The verdicts prompted an emotional outpouring, beginning inside and outside the court at Birchwood Park, and continuing to the civic event that was held the following day at St George’s Hall, Liverpool. Thousands of people joined together to remember the 96 who lost their lives (now 97) and pay tribute to the families, survivors, and campaigners who sustained the fight for justice over three decades.
I've had the odd achievement in the course of my very odd life, and many more misadventures and missed opportunities , too, let it be said. I would be very proud to be remembered as one of the Liverpool family who fought for truth and justice out of love.
Here's the public statement I wrote as a matter of permanent record St Helens Town Hall 29 April 2016
In standing close together, shoulder to shoulder, side by side, year after year, the Liverpool family of friends have shown the world how to challenge and change a system that's morally wrong. The actions of the Hillsborough campaigners will live on as an inspiration for all those who thirst for truth and justice in the world. They have given an example of solidarity, love, loyalty, care, compassion, courage and resilience that will endure for so long as human beings remain in touch with their core humanity. They have shown how togetherness in a just cause can change the world for the better. This is not just a case of ‘sticking together’. It matters a great deal with whom we join with and the reason why. The cover-up lasted for so long because powerful people stuck together and had the weight of existing institutions on their side. But their cause was unjust and those institutions were corrupt. The Liverpool families and fans have shown the extraordinary things that supposedly ‘ordinary’ people can do if they stand together in a just cause and never give up hope, hope in themselves, hope in the world. An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Justice for the 96 is justice for all people. The families and fans took on immense odds, but never flinched. Because they had truth and justice on their side, and never let the calumnies and injuries they suffered turn them away from their innate goodness. Good people with right on their side. Their actions have written another chapter in the history of the great city of Liverpool. Here is a place where the soul of man and woman never dies, but takes flight on its own wings and soars high. They will be remembered for their contribution to bringing about a better world, a world in which the innate goodness of each and all is enabled and not denied, a world of truth and justice. A world very different from the world of today. But a world that that the Liverpool family has shown to be within our reach.
As a Hillsborough survivor, I can tell you why we refused to give up and carried on against seemingly impossible odds for over a quarter of a century. It wasn’t just the truth. The truth we knew from the first. We wanted everyone to know the truth, of course. And we wanted justice. We wanted the record, distorted by lies, insults and abuse, to be set straight. But more than even those things, we acted out of love. The victims of Hillsborough were loved and are loved to this day. All of them. Those who died. Those who went to a football match, never to return. Those who went to the game. Those who stayed at home. Those who suffered. Those who grieve. All those affected for life. Different experiences, but each a unique part of a collective suffering. The fight for truth and justice was a fight taken up out of love. Love is life, the ultimate source of hope in humanity. And, unlike the system we fought, we never lost faith in either.
Never lose hope. Throughout history, in particular times and places, the ways of oppressors, deceivers, murderers seem irresistible. Such rulers appear invincible. It’s an illusion. Their power crumbles. Love, truth and justice prevail and endure as the innate goodness of the world and of people. Love incarnated through the way of truth and justice is the only way to live right and live well. This is not the survival of the fittest as the mightiest in terms of institutional power and monetary wealth. It is the survival of the most loving, of people who are rich in their relations, each a member of the other. The Liverpool family of friends have shown us the way.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
‘When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.’
- Gandhi
That's where my statement ended. I have no idea who, if anyone, will read it decades from now. But truth and justice exist independently of time and place in order to judge, criticize, and order temporal institutions and authorities.
My recollection of the tragedy written in 2014
A short, sixteen minute read of my memories of that day here
As for justice, I merely ask to whom or to what do we appeal in order to satisfy our thirst and hunger when the laws, leaders, and institutions of time and place fail? I have spoken with more than a few people over the years who told me that they lost their belief in God that day. I said it went the other way with me. I lost any faith I had in authorities and their claims to serve the public good. I retained a belief in the ideal and came away with a determination always to hold temporal authorities to it. We are dealing with all-too human frailties and failures, and still find resolve in the transcendent source and end of all things in the hope that all we thought life could have been is not beyond redemption. If we don't have that, then what do we have other than power and chance, the one as meaningless as the other. I affirm other possibilities. The alternative renders life null.
Basically, the issue is one of transcendentalism vs conventionalism or constructivism. Either there are transcendent standards or there are not. If there are not, all that there is and all that there ever can be is an endless and ultimately meaningless cycle of power/resistance. Those absorbed in that cycle won't see it that way. On the contrary, they will think themselves fighting for the highest values and ideals, which just happen to be their own. The idea that there is an objective reality that is at least potentially accessible, and a truth about it which is at least potentially discernible, is now considered somehow to be a small c conservative belief. Self-styled 'progressives' maintain that since there is no objective reality, truth can only be a personal or group construct, based on power and projections of power. We are now seeing how that plays out in a 'post-truth' society - an endless cycle of submission to power or assertion of power, all relative to power relations in 'society.' Far from being radical, this reduction to power spells the end of the left in that it entails the end of universal human values in an unwinnable game of irreducible game. Dress it up in all the fancy names of deconstruction you like, but it is a reduction to the sophism of Thrasymachus: 'justice is the interests of the strongest.' And the strongest won't necessarily be you - to whom and what will you then appeal when on the receiving end of an injustice? And who or what will care if there are no grounds?
I went on to study philosophy at PhD level, defending truth, reason, and justice against fashionable attempts to 'deconstruct' these things in the academy and reduce them to power. That deconstruction may seem to be radical but really isn't. A 'post-truth' society of arbitrary, self-created standards liberates the strong and gives the rich and powerful licence to do as they please. If it is true that power is all that there is and 'everthing is political,' (as I have heard leftist friends claim), then politics divides between winners and losers, with no standards beyond the strongest arm, loudest voice, or deepest pockets. Those who succeed in defending and advancing their interests are the ones who get to define truth and justice, and those who lose their life, liberty, and happiness have no say in the matter. I learned what that loss entails that day, and in the decades that followed. I learned, too, that victory on these terms is also empty. 'Where there is nothing, both the Kaiser and the proletarian have lost their rights.' (Max Weber).
Either there are transcendent standards of truth and justice or there are not. If truth and justice are merely projections of power, and the belief in objective reality, truth, and morality a mere delusion or rationalisation of a power claim, then there is nothing for it but to advance one's self- or group interest in an endless cycle of power/resistence. Feel free. It is utterly arbitrary and ultimately pointless.
Truth be told, I didn't learn about the standards of truth and justice at university when studying philosophy, quite the opposite. I found myself defending those notions against the academics whose fashionable deconstructionist nonsense sought to 'problematize' and relativise objective or transcendent standards, under the pretence of unmasking power, projection, and rationalization. Of course, there are false fixities that need to be historicized rather than naturalized, and asymmetrical power relations that need to be rendered amenable to contestation, challenge, and change, as opposed to being concealed and preserved by way of rationalization. But critique and contestation, surely, have to be advanced in the name of something substantively good, otherwise we are merely exchanging rival power claims. Some are beginning to question why Foucaultian academics have failed to apply Foucault's insights into the bio-political panopticon to the contemporary authoritarian turn. There is no mystery. Like the marxists before them, they are academics first and foremost and Foucaultians not at all. Such people have no interest in unmasking power as such, only the power that lies in the hands of the people they dislike, power which they want for themselves and their ilk. We shouldn't be remotely surprised given the absence of objective or transcendent standards of truth and justice. This arbitrariness has plunged the world into its current madness. When it comes to truth and justice, I don't turn to academics who have a vested interest in rendering everything 'problematic,' unstable, and relative to power. Instead, I learned to trust the good senses of 'ordinary' people, whom I saw become experts in law and forensic science in taking on the establishment and its servants. The 'ordinary' uneducated, uncertified Liverpool families took on and beat the authorities to get the truth that was being buried out into the open. That they didn't receive justice indicates not that justice doesn't exist or is a mere function of power, but that the institutions of time and place are much less than ideal in being implicated in a power dripping from head-to-toe in the blood of innocents. I stand with 'ordinary' people with the root of the matter in them against credentialed elites and experts working within the prevailing institutional world.
I write in more depth on these philosophical issues here.
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