Hillsborough: The Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel has just been published. This 400-page document investigates an incident which occurred on 15th April 1989 at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. On that awful day a soccer match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest had to be abandoned when the Leppings Lane stand became overcrowded. The ensuing crush led to the death of 96 Liverpool football fans.

This terrible loss of life and the unbearable grief of their loved ones have been compounded over the past 23 years by a deliberate and systematic attempt to cover up what happened. That much is clear from the report released today.

One of its most startling findings relates to the fact that written statements made at the time by police officers and members of the South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service were altered. Why? The answer is emphatic:

“Some 116 of the 164 [police] statements identified for substantive amendment were amended to remove or alter comments unfavourable to SYP [South Yorkshire Police].”(1)

In other words, our supposed custodians of law and order – both then and since – have been more interested in their own image and reputation than in finding out what went so catastrophically wrong.

And this, I argue, is why a so-called “academic” subject such as History is so vital to a democratic and viable society. Compare the contemporary example set out above with this quotation from The Historian’s Craft by Marc Bloch:

    One of the most difficult tasks of the historian is that of assembling those documents which
    he [or she] considers necessary... Despite what the beginners sometimes seem to imagine,
    documents do not suddenly materialize, in one place or another, as if by some mysterious
    decree of the gods. Their presence or absence in the depths of this archive or that library
    are due to human causes which by no means elude analysis. The problems posed by
    their transmission, far from having importance only for the technical experts, are
    most intimately connected with the life of the past, for what is at stake is nothing less
    than the passing down of memory from one generation to another.

Bloch had no need to restrict his attention to “the life of the past”. Because “the passing down of memory from one generation to another” occurs in the here and now. The Hillsborough disaster is history. But its living legacies are life, truth and justice in the present. These qualities should be our memorial to ten-year-old Jon-Paul Gilhooley who, together with 95 fellow supporters, became the innocent victim of official incompetence, misconduct and suppression on that fateful day in April 1989.

____
Notes

(1) Hillsborough: The Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, September 2012, HC 581, London: The Stationery Office, p. 339.
(2) Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 57-59.

“Nothing like commemorating an event to help you forget it.”

So wrote Art Spiegelman in his cathartic book, In the Shadow of No Towers (2004). This monumental tome is an analogue to the Twin Towers that Spiegelman saw vanish from the place this self-styled “‘rooted’ cosmopolitan” calls home.

I am reading Spiegelman’s book to help me write my own work of memorialisation under the provisional title, “Forked no lightning: remembering and forgetting in the shadow of Big Ben”.

Half-way through In the Shadow of No Towers, Spiegelman recalls feeling asphyxiated by the flag-waving nationalism that characterised the “mind-numbing 2002 ‘anniversary’ event” (p.5). A year later the same date left him railing against the exact same “jingoistic strutting” (p. 10).

So perhaps Spiegelman was right to argue that there really is nothing like a good (or bad) commemoration to help you forget something?

Then it struck me: today is Tuesday 11th September! It’s gone 9 pm as I write, which means that almost an entire “9/11” has passed by without comment from family, friends, colleagues, strangers or those hourly BBC Radio 4 news bulletins that punctuate my day.

“The unmentionable odour of death offends the September night”. So wrote W.H. Auden in his poem “September 1st, 1939”. In 2003, Spiegelman asserted that this odour “still offends as we commemorate two years of squandered chances to bring the community of nations together” (p.10).

Many more chances have been missed since then. But at least the air seems to have cleared. Indeed, the breeze is so brisk that it appears to have blown away the cobwebs of 9/11 entirely. I guess we’ll just have to wait for a nice round number before we start remembering again...

And with that thought I slide my battered copy of In the Shadow of No Towers back into the oblivion of my bookcase. A lot of dust is destined to gather before a frisson of nostalgia prompts me to reach for it once again on 9/11/2021.

_________
Supplemental 1

I stand corrected. BBC Radio 4’s “The World Tonight” at 10 o’clock has just referred to the anniversary of 9/11. It did so in relation to the Stars and Stripes that was hanging at half-mast at the US Embassy in Cairo. Why was this mournful flag mentioned? Because protestors stormed the compound, tore it down and replaced it with an Islamist banner. They were angered by the imminent release of the film Innocence of Muslims. This appears to have some connection to Florida Pastor and part-time religious book burner, Terry Jones.(1)

I do hope that news of this depressing incident doesn’t reach Art Spiegelman. It’ll simply confirm his despairing belief that “brigands suffering from war fever have since hijacked those tragic events…” (p. 4).

___
Note

(1) For the background to this story and its deadly consequences see Matt Bradley and Dion Nissenbaum, “U.S. Missions Stormed in Libya, Egypt”, The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444017504577645681057498266.html

_________
Supplemental 2
12/09/2012

This affair becomes more tragic with every passing hour. Reports from Libya indicate that at least four consulate staff - including US ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens -  have been killed. What a tragic act of pseudo commemoration._

Everything great about Britain can be summed up in just six letters:

                BBC
                NHS

The first of these two trios was in considerable jeopardy when James Murdoch’s chum, Jeremy Hunt was the UK’s Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport.

It comes as absolutely no surprise to learn that Hunt has been relieved of this role in today’s cabinet reshuffle.

Hunt’s unique leadership skills and flair for text messaging should have propelled him into the obscurity of the back benches. Instead, Prime Minister David Cameron has promoted him to Secretary of State for Health where he replaces another colossus of the political stage, Andrew Lansley.

The idea of the NHS being run by Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt is all the inspiration I need to give up biscuits and take up jogging.

There is, however, one minor benefit of Hunt’s promotion. During his appearance at the Leveson Inquiry he sat half-hidden behind the big desk like some penitent public school boy. It looked as if his arms had been amputated. Keep that image in mind when savouring the flamboyant body language he will display as our guardian of the NHS.

Meanwhile, Hunt’s successor as culture secretary is Maria Miller. She is one of the very few women to hold a front line post in Cameron’s cabinet. This means that she has been asked to double-up as "minister in charge of women and equalities". What on earth would Shulamith Firestone make of all this?

Prior to taking up her new briefs, Maria Miller was the Minister for Disabled People. During her tenure she instigated the financially-motivated closure of most Remploy sites (factories which provided work from many hundreds of people with disabilities).

Therefore, the first questions the UK’s Museums Association should ask Ms Miller is what steps she intends to take to:

• enhance accessibility for people using museums;
• improve the diversity of those working in museums;
• boost the visibility of disability in museum collections and exhibitions.

Her response to such questions will indicate whether those working in the cultural sector can begin to put Jeremy Hunt out of their mind (until they get really sick, of course)._

Going over to "the other side" is a risky business.
But it sometimes pays off...

Alfred Kubin (1877-1959)
“The Other Side”
Nottingham Contemporary
21st July - 30th September 2012
_

“The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space
on which we map them for our own convenience.
None of them was ever more than a thin slice,
held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time;
remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment;
and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.”

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Volume I,
translated by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff