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In an amazing victory for persistence and the truth, along with a terrifying reminder that we live in a society where it’s possible for the authorities and the newspapers to collude to create a mendacious take on events despite there being tens of thousands of witnesses (and for that lie to persist for over a quarter of a century) the Hillsborough inquest revealed that the 96 Liverpool fans were unlawfully killed.
That was a long road to justice and there was predictably a lot of celebration on social media. Kathy Burke tweeted a long quote purportedly from Boris Johnson in the Spectator, accusing Liverpudlians of playing the victim and refusing to acknowledge drunken fans’ part in the death of the “more than 50” Liverpool supporters (for me the weirdest thing about the quote is this strange and very low guestimation of the number of people who were killed. They know it was 96, which if you’re insensitive enough to round up or down you’d certainly say “almost on hundred”. To say “more than 50” seems to be attempting to make it seem less of a serious loss of life than it really was. And why not just say the actual number?).
Amazed to see this callous appraisal of the situation from such a prominent politician I did a knee-jerk RT. Something I usually try to avoid. With justification as these memes and quotes and reports of celebrity deaths are often erroneous.
It seemed unlikely five seconds later that this would have been a genuine piece of journalism so I did what I should have done before I RTed (and what journalists and policeman should also be doing) and tried to check the source. Twitter being what it was I didn’t need to though as I was quickly informed by a man called Steve G that the piece was written by Simon Heffer and that Boris was the editor at the time. Now, this is quite an important distinction as obviously an editor doesn’t have to agree with everything that is printed in their publication and it would be weird if they did as even the most biased newspaper allows difference of opinion in its contributors.
Admittedly it’s a grey area as if you dig deeper the piece is from an editorial and doesn’t have a journalist attributed to it, but one would assume that the editor had written it or that it at least reflected his views. But if you’re on the side of justice and truth and if you’re right (as in this case) then you can’t afford to allow mendacity or even underhand selectivity to come into play. And you don’t need to. Johnson almost certainly agreed with those words and I believe he took responsibility for them and even apologised eventually.
But the point is I should have done all this research before I RTed it, because otherwise I am working in the same basic place (though in admittedly a much smaller capacity) as those that spread rumour, lie and cover-up as fact in 1989 and beyond.
Be truthful and fastidious, even if your opponents are not. Or you become the same as them. Much worse and more unfair and inaccurate tweets have shot round the world in an instant because people want them to be true. We all have a responsibility to try to not add to the conflagration of mendacity.
The way I found out about the Hillsborough disaster shows how much the world has changed in the last 27 years. I was in my last year at University and was finally starting to work out how not to repel every woman I met (and I was nearly 22 at this point tragically). I had briefly snogged an Australian tour guide at a staff party on a recent trip back to Cheddar Caves (she had then been pushed off a wall by Ben Harrison- the dick- in a prank gone wrong, and bumped her head so our romantic endeavours had been cut short that night) and unbelievably she had agreed to come over to Oxford on her weekend off to see me. Even then I hadn’t been sure if we were just going to be sight-seeing as friends or if she’d really turn up. Indeed she wasn’t on the train she said she’d be on and as it was the 1980s there was no way to find out if she’d missed it or wasn’t coming. I waited til the next train and there she was. Anyway it quickly became apparent that we weren’t just going to spend the weekend as friends (or if we were then we were going to be extremely close ones) and we ended up staying in my room for all of Saturday afternoon and not emerging until Sunday morning.
I am not sure that anything like this had really happened to me before this and I was pretty pleased with myself. And to be fair, I still am. We went out in search of food and Sunday papers and it was in the newsagent that I discovered the terrible news. It’s unimaginable nowadays that you would find out such big news, almost a day after the thing had happened, by looking at a newspaper, but I still recall the shock and horror that exploded through my youthful post-coital smugness. My new friend, oblivious to the import of the headlines or my reaction to it, pointed at one of the front pages and brightly chirped, “Look, it’s Kylie."
