Jack Blanchard: Lonely road to truth through shameful lies

So said Trevor Hicks following the publication of a 400-page document which has sent shockwaves reverberating from Merseyside to Yorkshire, to Westminster and far beyond.

His words were delivered softly, but there was steel in the eye of a man who knows what it is to battle on through grief towards an impossibly distant goal.

The past 23 years have been a long and lonely road for the Keighley businessman, who lost two bright-eyed teenage daughters in the Hillsborough disaster. It has been the same for every one of the families of the 96 innocent people who never came home.

Yet their voices never wavered; their righteous demands for justice never faltered in the swirling fog of lies and corruption, of ignorance and derision and sheer apathy which threatened to overwhelm them down the years.

When David Cameron rose to his feet on Wednesday to deliver his Government’s response to the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, the hush that descended on the Commons preluded a watershed moment in British politics.

Hardened politicians gasped audibly at his words; MPs spoke through their tears in the moving debate that followed.

Mr Cameron’s speech was grave, poignant, perfectly judged in its content and its tone. It might just have been his finest hour.

There was no shying away from the devastating implications of what the Bishop of Liverpool and his panel found.

What contrast between Mr Cameron’s sombre compassion and the heartless manner in which the victims, their families and the thousands of traumatised survivors have been dismissed by our leaders down the years.

Look now at Margaret Thatcher’s unquestioning acceptance of the twisted fabrication she was fed by Chief Constable Peter Wright and his motley crew of senior officers.

Think back to Home Secretary Michael Howard’s stony-faced refusal to listen to the pleas of the Hillsborough families.

Shudder at his successor Jack Straw’s blind agreement with the dismal 1997 inquiry, led by a judge who cracked tasteless jokes about Liverpool fans.

All three must hang their heads in shame today – as should everyone else who refused to listen to the justice campaigners.

For there is a deeply uncomfortable truth about Hillsborough which the nation would perhaps prefer to ignore this morning.

Much of what was found by the Hillsborough Independent Panel was already in the public domain, if you knew where to look. If you wanted to see.

It was known within hours that Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield had lied about fans forcing their way through a gate which he himself had ordered to be opened.

It was known within days that Paul Midcup, the disgraceful South Yorkshire Police Federation secretary, was one of several senior people spreading slurs about the victims.

It was known within months that police and authority failings had caused the disaster, and that the fans were not to blame.

And it was known nearly 15 years ago that police statements had been altered.

Through those two long decades of campaigning, Mr Hicks would often cite research which concluded that it takes an average of 26 years to overturn any miscarriage of justice.

It is surely now abundantly clear that we simply do not have the systems in place in this country to bring swift redress to those who have been wronged by the state.

There are no proper mechanisms to trigger in-depth inquiries, no real independence from the Government of the day which often has so much to hide.

Everything is beset by dalliance and delay – the Bloody Sunday inquiry alone took over a decade. The case for a new mechanism to deal with these dark events is now overwhelming.

The message of this week is clear. After truth, then justice.

But after that, surely, must come wholesale reform.