Truth Will Out

I watched the TV all yesterday afternoon, with a mixture of horror and fascination, as the scale of the cover up surrounding the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989 - was laid bare for all the world to see.

The main reason we now know what actually happened, all those years ago, is down to the families of the 96 victims and an Independent Hillsborough Panel – comprising people with real integrity who were interested only in establishing the facts and finding out the truth.

In the past, the lickspittles of the establishment always held sway - aided and abetted by a tribal 'canteen' culture which required everyone to close ranks and allowed  inconvenient issues to be swept ruthlessly under the carpet.

Which recalls the old saying: ‘Evil triumphs when good men do nothing’ – though many of the public servants involved in this scandal did much worse than sit on their hands - or just look the other way.

At one of the live news conferences yesterday – Charlie Falconer, a senior minister in the last Labour government – observed that every public authority involved in the Hillsborough Disaster failed miserably in its duty to protect the public or - to put it another way - to act in the wider public interest.

Instead, these public authorities acted in their perceived self-interest by deliberately withholding information, redacting and censoring documents, doctoring vital witness statements and generally lying through their teeth – by heaping the blame onto innocent victims and their families who only sought to clear their loved ones' names.

The cowards that they are – but the truth is 'bad guys' got away with this for 23 years and would still be escaping justice today - were it not for the determination of the  families who refused to be intimidated into just giving up and walking away.

I take my hat off to them – one and all.

I heard one of the family members at their press conference – who said that the police trade union (the Police Federation) sat down with senior management and helped to concoct the ‘cock and bull’ story - that ticketless and drunken fans were responsible for what happened on that terrible day.

Another family member commented that various public authorities had, over the years, used and abused their access to effectively unlimited public funds - as a means of frustrating and delaying the families’ campaign to finally get to the truth.

Not only should these people hang their heads in shame – they should now feel the full force of the law - which is what they truly deserve.

I also listened to a Westminster MP who said that the same thing could not happen today – that Hillsborough was 23 years ago and so much has changed since 1989.

Now I don’t agree with that observation – which I think is both foolish and naive.

Because in my experience people in great positions of power will always behave in this way - if they think they can get away with it, if they think they cannot be found out - or held to account.

To my mind similar issues are involved in the fight for equal pay - where instead of operating on the basis of full and open disclosure - certain employers have provided only partial information, or even censored vital documents on occasion - ever willing to spend public money and dig ever deeper into the public purse.              

In Scotland public authorities denied low paid workers their rights to equal pay for years and years – a right enshrined in a landmark 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement as well as the law of the land.

Yet while this was happening the trade unions failed to stand up effectively for their members - compromised, many would say, by their close political connections with the council employers.

Yet councils up and down the country operated blatantly discriminatory pay arrangements favouring traditional male jobs which remained completely unchallenged – until Action 4 Equality Scotland arrived on the scene in 2005 at which point things finally began to change.

Even now one council - South Lanarkshire Council - refuses to explain its pay arrangements and refuses to comply with a decision of the independent Scottish Information Commissioner that it should publish this information – a decision which was subsequently upheld by three senior judges in Scotland’s highest civil court, the Court of Session.

South Lanarkshire Council is appealing the decision of the (independent) Scottish Information Commissioner and the judgment of the Court of Session – which many people, myself included, consider to be a terrible waste of public money and an abuse Scotland’s Freedom of Information regime.

The issues surrounding equal pay are not matters of life and death – as they are for the families of the 96 people who died in the Hillsborough Disaster.

But there are still big issues of principle involved in the ongoing fight for equal pay.

Including  the requirement for public bodies to act openly and transparently - in the interests of the wider public and the people they claim to serve - instead of having the  facts dragged out of them inch by grudging inch.