The Government will be ordered to release potentially revealing and incendiary documents relating directly to their response to Hillsborough.
Then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was briefed extensively about the tragedy, which resulted in the deaths of ninety-six football supporters, on April 20th 1989 in the company of her cabinet where it was discussed at length. Soon after she was involved in several consequent meetings. The information from these meetings has finally been deemed in the public’s interest by Information Commissioner Christopher Graham who admonished the cabinet for ‘unjustified and excessive’ delays after the BBC used the Freedom of Information act to request their release two years ago.
The government must now make these papers publicly available within thirty-five days unless they decide to appeal.
The Cutter believes they are unlikely to take the latter course of action and it is to be expected that the bereaved families of the victims that April day may now at last find out if there was indeed any cover-up in the immediate aftermath of Hillsborough.
There is a belief in some quarters that the recent hacking scandals centring on Rupert Murdoch and NI – the publishers of The Sun newspaper that printed those disgusting lies that blamed Liverpool fans for the events of that day – may now become an influential factor in the government’s response to this ruling and their possible concessions to transparency. It is speculated by some that Cameron and his colleagues may use yesterday’s dictate as on opportunity to distance themselves further from Murdoch by emitting shock and outrage at the findings and being compliant throughout.
If it does indeed play out like this then it would be a macabre irony that NI would be indirectly responsible for truths to finally surface that they themselves distorted twenty-two years ago.
JFT96.