Hillsborough, 35 years on: the pain of injustice remains raw as ever

On this spring day, 15 April, the clocks move round to 35 years since that terrible afternoon in 1989, when 97 people were unlawfully killed attending a prestige football match at Sheffield Wednesday’s home ground, Hillsborough.

English football will remember its deepest shame as a different age, the appalling crush on unsafe terraces with fenced-in “pens” for supporters, at a stadium nevertheless deemed suitable to host an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

Richie Greaves, 23 when he survived the crush in “pen” three at Hillsborough, says he has constantly struggled since, and was traumatised by giving evidence at the first inquest, where he was patronised for his Liverpool accent, and ridiculed by barristers for the police, who accused him of misbehaving.

Photograph: John Giles/PAThe failures of the legal system meant it took 23 years before the tide turned with the landmark 2012 report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP), its lead author Prof Phil Scraton, who had worked since 1989 to document the truth.

Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianJust a week later, South Yorkshire police and the West Midlands force, which was brought in to investigate in 1989 but was accused by families and survivors of supporting the cover-up, agreed to settle legal claims for misfeasance in a public office.

Tracey Robinson, whose brother Steven died at Hillsborough, says that her mother, Rose, another original campaigner, was always stoic, and it was only after she passed away in 2019, that they understood from reading her medical records the extent of mental anguish and depression she had suffered.