OFFSET YOUR WORLD CUP TRAVEL WITH GREENERTRAVEL
Date: 30th April 2026
Numbers and names
By Donald C Stewart
89, 97, 15 and 19, 37, Victoria Hicks, Sarah Hicks.
Numbers and names.
Headlines are created because numbers become significant, but names get lost.
89, 1989.
A different time, perhaps, but also a point at which the world stopped. Anybody who knows Tam Cowan from Off The Ball, and his JFK moments, will understand what I say when 1989 became a JFK moment.
When the Twin Towers came down. I know where I was. I was sitting in a rehearsal room when an ex-student text me to ask me to look at what was on the television. When Dunblane happened, I know exactly where I was. I was standing in the offices of the Scottish Child Law Centre, where I worked, when my then wife called me to tell me of what had happened at Dunblane. Heysel, I was in a pub on the south side of Glasgow, meeting with people when it was on the television.
Hillsborough, I can’t remember where I was. I think, if my memory serves me some kind of justice, that I heard about it long after it had happened. When I mean long after, I mean later on in the day in a bulletin on the news somewhere, which makes it slightly less memorable because I cannot find the immediate reaction I had.
1989 was indeed a different time. Margaret Thatcher was still in power. The South Yorkshire Police, who were responsible for what happened at Hillsborough, were protected by the government at the time, as a thank you for the work that they did during the miners’ strike some four or five years earlier.
We know that now. We didn’t know that then.
What happened during the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster was that policemen were directed to rewrite their notebooks. Lies were told by people in officialdom, and a cover-up monumental in its scale was started, perhaps only beaten by what happened on Bloody Sunday in 1972. Both serve as a stain upon the British state that has not been wiped out.
97
Ninety-seven people went to a football match and did not return. The following day those lies created by the police and officialdom were spread across the country.
A few years ago, I tutored a man of a similar age to myself who was doing his A-level English who had been a policeman at Hillsborough. He did not talk to me about what had happened but pointed me towards a documentary which he was in, where he had a three or four-minute piece talking to a reporter about the effect that it had. He was very candid about the effect this duplicity had on his family and his life. What was more poignant was he recognised it was a fraction of the effect that it had on the families in Liverpool.
15 and 19.
Two sisters, one 15-years old, the other 19, Victoria Hicks, Sarah Hicks, went to that game and didn’t come back. Mum, Jenni, has fought for the Hillsborough Law ever since.
37 years.
The fight for a law to reach the statute book which would guarantee candidness in public figures in circumstances that would include events similar to Hillsborough has lasted 37 years. The current government says that concerns have been raised regarding how it would be effective in the context of national security. I’m quite sure there are reasonable reasons why people have raised these issues. Sometimes people don’t understand what happens in the House of Westminster where bills go through proper scrutiny in the committee system. It is where issues like these should be raised, discussed, debated and gone through so that what we get is a law fit for purpose. Dare I say there are other bills which go through without any such filibuster.
In fact, a government spokesperson was reported by the BBC as saying the bill would fundamentally change the balance of power to ensure the state always acted for the people it was supposed to serve, which would not have been possible without the family’s strength and determination. Seems that is still not enough.
Victoria and Sarah Hicks’ mother Jenni exhibited that strength and determination when she said, “the sad thing is we’re still arguing about the Hillsborough law.”
As to what was happening, with the way it was going through Parliament, she challenged, “come on Prime Minister, if there is a problem with this, tell us what the problem is and let’s try and sort it out because it just can’t go on and on. It’s time to move forward and get on with our lives now. But until the Hillsborough law is settled and implemented, that is not going to happen.”
She’s right.
In memory of Victoria and Sarah and those campaigners who have, in the 37 years since the 15th of April 1989 lost their own lives, it is important that the Hillsborough Law is not lost in the melee of politics that is attempting to deal with the moral uncertainty of global geopolitics. To build a society that can deal with the trauma of its past it has to face it, face up to it and bring people in who’ve been most affected by it to strengthen our resolve to make things better for ourselves.
As we head to the ballot box on the 7th of May what would strengthen us? What would give us the opportunity of getting the Hillsborough Law through and making sure that we had candour in our public services? Is there something that the Scottish Parliament could do that would be different to what the British Parliament is attempting to fudge? I don’t know.
We should not be beyond ourselves contemplating what is the right thing to do no matter where the impetus for that comes from.
Numbers and names. Numbers can get lost because they’re blase. But names we should never forget. There are 97 whose names should be tattooed on the eyelids of every policymaker to ensure that they never forget why change is necessary. Problems that come along with the Manchester Arena bombing, Covid, the Grenfell fire, nuclear test veterans, the Horizon Post Office scandal, those affected by the infected blood scandals and the 1994 Chinook helicopter crash, we should have the courage of the survivors and families. Survivors and campaigners for each of these support the Hillsborough Law, so Prime Minister, what’s the issue? if there is a problem with this, tell us what the problem is and let’s try and sort it out because it just can’t go on and on. It’s time to move forward and get on with our lives now. But until the Hillsborough Law is settled and implemented, that is not going to happen.
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