'They’re going to try and wear me down. But... I’ll wear them down before they wear me out.'
Over the last week or so, my partner and I have watched the drama Anne (it's only four episodes, so catch it here if you haven't seen it already). It's about the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 and the aftermath, which spanned more than thirty years. Maxine Peake plays a fictitious version of the real-life campaigner Anne Williams, whose 15-year-old son Kevin died at Hillsborough and who fought for the remainder of her own life to uncover the truth about what happened.
I'm not really a football person, however I think every socially-minded person should take something of an interest. I've always been fascinated by the impact sport can have on social campaigns - particularly in the last couple of years, with the work provided by political activist and footballer Marcus Rashford. When I was a child, I remember first learning about Hillsborough (the disaster itself happened four years before I was born) and as I grew older I learned a bit more about how much the blame was shifted away from the police and onto fans who the press derided as being drunk hooligans. However, it's only been within the last week or so that I've realised that sheer scale of this, and how long the families fought to get justice. (The legal campaign itself actually only finished last year, and there's still one further aspect to it, which I'll outline below.)
Truthfully, I have rarely come across a drama which moved me so much. My partner and I write a political TV drama series, so we are extremely difficult viewers to impress! Nearly everything we've watched over the past few years, we've criticised quite significantly even if we've generally enjoyed it. With this, I have very little to criticise. Maxine Peake's performance was absolutely spot on, the best role I've ever seen her in by miles (she's an incredible human being even aside from her acting; she's done some extremely good work for socialist campaigns in the past). I think especially given that we follow her character in this for 24 years, she portrays the way in which her character ages over time exceptionally well (if I could level one small criticism at the programme it's that this can't always be said for the other actors, but I'm really nitpicking there). I really felt a sense of injustice at the way the families of the 96 (now 97, as the latest victim only died last year) were constantly finding themselves jumping through hoops and getting nowhere, as the system was determined to protect the powerful. I think that's a societal phenomenon that we've all tasted something of at some point in our lives, but rarely as consistently and to the extent of the Hillsborough families.
The drama has inspired me to find out a lot more about Hillsborough, which I think is probably the point of it. On my previous blog about the Colston Four, I talked about how successful activism is often retrospectively changed to become less grassroots, more of an establishment success. In the Hillsborough case, we have another aspect to this, which is our tendency to focus more on the horrors of the tragedies themselves than the failure on the part of authorities to prevent it. This happens in many situations, and is most noticeable during conversations about the Holocaust; we talk about the situations at the concentration camps, we talk about people being gassed to death in what they'd been told were the showers, but it's not often that we hear about the increased levels of public apathy towards Jews and other minority groups over the previous decade that precipitated these attacks. I've even heard people argue that likening it to forms of racism we see in modern times is insulting to anyone who died in the Holocaust - which is a complete own goal, because making that public knowledge is vital if we want to prevent it happening. The same is true of Hillsborough. I didn't know a great deal about it before I watched Anne - I probably knew a bit more than the general population because I'm someone who actively takes an interest in social campaigns, so I knew that the police were largely at fault and that the newspapers smeared the people of Liverpool, to the point where you can now no longer buy the Sun in Liverpool because it's boycotted. Watching Anne really inspired me to increase my knowledge - but I think most people probably don't even know that much.
When we talk about Hillsborough, we talk about the horrors of the crush itself - and whilst that is important to reflect on, it's not the only important thing, or even the most important. I think what is of more importance here is that this case really shines a light on the extent to which the powerful will go to protect themselves from accountability. In cases like former Special Constable Debra Martin's (who was with Kevin Williams when he died, and was one of the only police officers to be honest from the start), the establishment will even ruin the lives of people who were formerly part of it, if these people refuse to toe the line and stick to the approved story. We continue to see this all the time. Our present Government was only elected two years ago, and so far has presided over scandal after scandal. Almost no one is ever brought to account for any of it. In some ways, I think it's even worse now than it was in the 1980s and '90s - at least then, there were attempts to appear to be doing one's job properly. Now, it sometimes seems that the general public has become so disheartened by public bodies that public bodies can't even be bothered to put on a façade. That results in less scrutiny and more miscarriages of justice, and will until we as human beings demand a better quality of service from the people who are meant to serve us.
That's all quite depressing. But I think there's also something quite inspiring about this story. It's a story of survival, of victims pulling together and supporting one another through terrible things. This is something that we've seen a real resurgence of over the last few years or so, with movements such as #metoo, Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion. I'm quite excited by the fightback that seems to have arisen in people. Sometimes it feels like it's not achieving enough, and I get frustrated by that myself - but I really hope that the Hillsborough story can give us some perspective on this. The knowledge that people in the past have felt exactly the same way we do is often a comforting one (I think a big part of why so many of us turn to religious texts), especially if their situations eventually improved. In the Hillsborough case, it's especially powerful because most of the victims were working-class - the very people who, in establishment eyes, are meant to just exist and provide capital, not to fight back.
The activist Anne Williams died in 2013, and is survived by two of her three children and a number of grandchildren. She'd played an instrumental part in the decision to order the second Hillsborough inquests, but did not live to see the outcome - which ruled that supporters were unlawfully killed due to grossly negligent failures by police and ambulance services. Despite this ruling, all of the police officers standing trial were acquitted last year on a legal technicality. The Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, has written this very persuasive article arguing for a change in our legal system to prevent this kind of thing from happening again (this is the one further aspect which I mentioned above). It's appalling that the families had spend so much money and fight for this long (in some cases, like that of Anne Williams, for the entirety of the rest of their lives) simply to be told what they already knew - that their relatives had done nothing wrong. Even now, the fact that no one has ever actually faced any kind of sentence for it is something that I think we should all be quite disturbed by. Where is the reassurance that if any of us are victims of a major scandal in the future, that the legal system will be there for us? I don't see that anywhere.
Nevertheless, I think there is a lot to celebrate about the outcome of Hillsborough. The city of Liverpool really proved itself as a passionate and strong community, one that is willing to stand up to the system against all odds. I'm from Bristol and I think similar things about us, but honestly I think Liverpool probably outshines us! The thing I find most inspiring is Liverpool's ongoing campaign against Rupert Murdoch. You cannot buy the Sun in Liverpool even from Tesco, as there's no demand for it. I truly think this is the most effective boycott of the press in the world, and as a result Liverpool tends to be less susceptible to political game playing. You can see in Liverpool's election results that they don't tend to reflect that of the rest of the country - through boycotting the press, the people of Liverpool are able to see more clearly than most of us what is really going on, and they vote accordingly. This extraordinary city proves what can be achieved if ordinary people come together and fight the system - which is something most of us are far more capable of than we believe we are.
I'd like to take this moment to commend the communities in Liverpool for the incredible work they've done battling the powerful in this country, and particularly the activist Anne Williams, played by Maxine Peake in the drama Anne, who fought for 24 years to achieve justice and was largely successful. May she rest in power. I'd also like to thank the writer Kevin Sampson and ITV, for creating such a compelling drama that speaks truth to power, as drama should do and so often doesn't. It's rare to come across a television series so refreshingly honest about establishment bureaucracy and the poison within. May we see more of this kind of thing on television in the future.
Anne was broadcast from 2 to 5 January 2022, and can be viewed here.
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