Bex Goes Blogging: April 2009

The Willow Foundation, founded by Arsenal goalkeeper, TV presenter and all-round good egg Bob Wilson and his wife Megs, is a national charity that provides special days for seriously ill 16 - 40 year olds.

I can't imagine how it must feel to discover that you, or one of your loved ones, might not have much time left on this earth, how every moment must take on an unbearable extra significance. I do know how it feels to wish you'd had one special moment, one window of time when life could have been savoured together, a mental and emotional snapshot of sunshine, free of the shadow of illness. I have also seen what a difference this opportunity can make in the lives of the sick and, when the worst happens, in the grieving process of those left behind. For many people though, it must seem an impossible dream - financially, logistically out of reach, in the midst of the grinding minutiae of day to day existence.

That's where Bob

and Megs come in. The Willow Foundation, founded in memory of their daughter, Anna, who died aged 31, five years after her initial diagnosis, exists to provide precisely that opportunity - Special Days. Remarkable people, bringing remarkable relief to remarkable people.

Equally remarkable is the fundraising adventure being undertaken by Suzanne Meiklejohn. Currently resident in sunny Majorca, on 29th January, 2010, Suzanne will be going 'from Med to Sled', joining a week long arctic expedition 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Her goal is to raise £10,000 for the Willow Foundation. If Suzanne's fundraising acumen matches her sheer courage in taking this expedition on, I suspect she'll raise much, much more than that.

So, visit Suzanne's website and have a look. You can donate online, you can follow her blog (also to be found further down this page in my 'recommended blog section') and you can spread the word. If you can only do one of these things, that's fine.

Just make sure you do. :)

On this day 20 years ago, 96 people – men, women and children - went to watch a football match. None of them came home. I watched on my television, a fifteen year old football fan unprepared in every way for what I was seeing. The following year, on a school exchange trip, the German woman with whom I was staying told me that she had watched the same scenes and wept. She cried again when telling me this. Yet still I could not comprehend. In the twenty years between then and now, I have watched and read everything I could on the subject of Hillsborough - the documentaries, Jimmy McGovern's excellent dramatisation, the websites, the reports but I still don't understand:
how could this possibly happen?

Of course, like every football fan of my generation, I understand the logistics –
a lack of crowd filtering outside the Hillsborough ground meant that crowd levels became dangerously high;
a crush was developing and lives were endangered;
the order was given to open the gate at the Leppings Lane end to allow people in en masse, thus easing the pressure;
the tunnel leading into the central pen was not closed off, meaning that this human tide swept directly down it, into an area that was already full;
the fences between the terraces and the pitch prevented any release of pressure onto the pitch;
almost a hundred people were crushed to death as a result and many more were injured, all in the plain sight of everyone else in the ground.

So, I suppose my question is not ‘how’ but ‘why’: why did so many people die when it was so preventable? Why did individuals, paid and positioned for the sole purpose of safeguarding the wellbeing of ordinary people on a day out, fail so spectacularly to make the right decisions – initiate crowd filtering outside the ground, delay kick off, close the Leppings Lane tunnel, take immediate action when the message came through from fans all over the ground – “people are DYING in there”, allow the forty empty ambulances outside the ground onto the pitch to give life saving treatment?

It seems that Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, the officer in charge, lacked experience and didn't show the leadership required but he wasn’t the only official there – there were many, many small failures amongst the emergency services at Hillsborough that day. My fear is that at the heart of the issue was a dreadful and frighteningly casual attitude towards football fans: get them in, let’s get this over with and then we can all go home. But 96 people never went home again.

The youngest victim, Jon-Paul Gilhooley, current Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard’s cousin, was 10 years old – these people were not hardened thugs, bent on causing mayhem. They were families, friends, young and old, off to watch their beloved Reds compete on FA Cup semi final day; and having the temerity to assume that they were safe in the hands of those policing the event.

If you have never done so, take some time today to read a little, watch some footage. You’ll see police officers outside the ground reacting aggressively to those trying to alert them to the developing crush. You’ll hear accounts from those within the ground being told by officers to ‘sit down and shut up’ when alerting them to the obvious crush in the Leppings Lane end. You’ll see and hear about officers attempting to push people back over the fences as they tried to escape the crush, and then preventing fans from carrying the injured to waiting ambulances - in case they were really trying to 'get at' opposing supporters. You’ll also see fans fashioning stretchers from advertising hoardings, reaching down from the upper tier to pull people out of that pen, holding and supporting each other in the midst of their grief and confusion.

You’ll see and hear how Liverpool Football Club reached out to the injured and bereaved in the following days, weeks and months – players attending every single one of the 96 funerals, making countless hospital visits, throwing Anfield open to all; even operating a counselling service at the ground. A mile of linked scarves from Goodison to Anfield; a carpet of flowers covering the Anfield pitch; a million visitors paying their respects; You’ll Never Walk Alone at Liverpool cathedral. It was, and is heart breaking.

It has been said many times in the last week that the legacy of the Hillsborough 96 is the creation of 26 new, all seater stadia, the elimination of terraces from the top tiers of British football, the removal of fences around the pitch and the general improvement of safety and comfort in today’s football arenas. While this is true, it's too easy. It seems bitterly ironic to me that many of the Hillsborough survivors, and countless more just like them have been priced out of the game they love as a result. The attitude towards football fans has not really changed. It has just been given a shiny new face.

The real legacy could, and should be the public acceptance of responsibility for 96 avoidable deaths. We live in a compensation culture today; how ironic then, that the Hillsborough bereaved have not even received the compensation of “I’m sorry. We made the wrong decisions and accept responsibility for the consequences of those decisions”?

It’s not about needing someone to blame. It’s about seeing clearly that the death of ones children at a football match could have been avoided, but being unable to hold anyone accountable for failing in their duty of care. The officer in charge on the day retired some years ago on medical grounds; therefore it is not possible to challenge his decisions and actions that day. Many police officers present at Hillsborough have been given financial remuneration in recognition of the unbearable scenes they witnessed that day. While, undoubtedly, many were professional and did the best they could, others contributed to the death toll because of their attitudes to those in danger. How could it be, then, that the innocent, the survivors, the bereaved, have not been given even similar recognition? In their twenty year battle, the Hillsborough families have been fighting a faceless, amorphous body, intent only on avoiding responsibility.

It’s time someone put their hand up and turned their face to the light. That’s the only legacy that is truly worthy of the Hillsborough 96.

When you walk through a storm,
Hold your head up high,
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm,
Is a golden sky,
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on,
With hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone.