Interview with Dave Church 10th April 2001

Q Dave you lost your son, Gary, in the Hillsborough disaster, and I'm right in saying that Gary's was the first funeral to take place after the disaster?

A Yes.

Q And shortly after you were horrified to find a photograph?

A Yeah, how it came about was that Maureen's cousin - that's my late wife, Maureen - sent us a letter saying, 'Oh, I see you're in a magazine.' And it turned out, it was News International Advertising and it was Gary's funeral. Gary's, as you said, was the first funeral of the bereaved families. We were quite shocked to see them advertising the funeral, and Maureen and myself and my sister-in-law can be quite plainly seen standing over Gary's grave, and we got on to our solicitor, a certain Rex Makin. We also reported what we found out to the Family Support Group, the chairman at the time was Trevor Hicks, and they just didn't seem interested. Now News International and the Sun especially, were saying at the time that they'd never attack any personal families but they attacked my family - they intruded on our privacy - at the most personal and tragic of times.You can plainly see my family over Gary's funeral, and we wanted to sue them. But that was the first suspicion that Maureen and I had that things are not quite right with this Family Support Group, because there was a golden opportunity on behalf of the families to tackle News International who owned the Sun, and from that day onwards we had our suspicions. And through the actions we took, we were deprived of legal representation at Gary's inquest.

And in all the intervening years, the heartbreak, been all over the country, there was always something mysterious about the loss of Gary, not that he's any more important than any other bereaved families, it's just that there's some...we really felt there was some unanswered questions, and it's only since the stuff that's gone to the library in November that the missing evidence is finally coming about, plus the old evidence that we gathered over the years, and we finally do realize that possibly, and I really believe, that Gary died after 2.15 (sic). His injuries were received after 3.15, it was the lack of medical personnel allowed...not being allowed on the pitch by the South Yorkshire Police that contributed to Gary's death, and I honestly believe that, and that is my whole object now, now that I'm on my own, I've lost Maureen and she wished on her deathbed that we find out what actually happened to Gary. So we have good evidence now, video evidence, and we also have documentary evidence, that was never in Gary's body file which we received in 1997, that indicates that Gary was dragged out, not carried out, dragged out. The lad who was dragging him out was harassed by the police, he was seen to be dropped, this was at 3.21, and he was dragged out by the police and dumped, and nobody attended him, and I have documentary evidence that says that he was alive after 3.21, and I've seen solicitors, and hoping to see a barrister in London to pursue it. I'm not going to give up. I'm now the chairman of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and I see all the injustices that families have been put through, and plus the survivors have gone through a traumatic period for 12 years, been accused all over the world for doing things they never did. And the heroes of the case, as far as I'm concerned, were those friends that helped to save lives by carrying people over to the gym. They must have saved at least, I don't know, 60 maybe, 100 people's lives.

Q I know you feel very strongly that those people, who you rightly describe as heroes, have never been properly acknowledged, and more importantly, that they have vital evidence in relation to those, not just who survived, but those who died, and that evidence was never utilized.

A Yeah, well I believe that evidence has been suppressed. They didn't actually make statements, they made, what do you call now - police questionnaires, if that's the right term to use, as far as I'm concerned, where a crime is concerned, any documentary evidence is a statement, and they have been sitting somewhere and they have to see the light of day. There's two fans helped to carry my lad over to the gym and I'd loved to know who they were. They say that Gary was still alive, because he was still alive, as far as I'm concerned, at 3.25, which South Yorkshire Police put a statement on Gary's body file saying that he was dead, but there's other evidence saying that he was alive. So it's the fans who it's most essential that I should get in touch with, given that Gary was pronounced dead by Dr Bull at 4 o'clock. Somewhere along the line he died, and there was definitely a lack of medical attention, and that's where I'm up to at the moment.

Q So the issue of lack of care which you've long argued is crucial?

A Lack of care, yes, yes. I think, it's also on the video, and this is not compilation tapes made by the police for the British Establishment, this is the actual copy of the BBC master tape that has never ever been shown in a British court, and the suits, or the people who boss, that's what the name for them is, in the BBC, indicated that it will never be shown to the public. Apart from it being horrendous, it shows you what I believe to be, all they were concerned about at the time was to get the game kicked off, and that's why ambulances were getting stopped on the basis that they were frightened by the South Yorkshire Police, what the FA were concerned of, one of the defendants and the club, and Clough, all they were interested in was getting a football match, and they couldn't see people dying under their eyes - they were that concerned about the money aspect of football that death and injury, they just weren't interested.

Q Dave, going back to the fans that assisted, since the documents have been made available to us in the Liverpool City Library from the evidence that forms the Stuart-Smith Scrutiny, I know you've been very surprised, because you've gone through it all, you've researched it all, in trawling through you were very surprised to find the lack of evidence from fans there.

A Yeah. The only statements you see of fans are fans that were crushed in the pens, there was only a couple of them, one of them...well I won't name names, because only very few who were taken to the gym and recovered, but that is in the interests of the British Establishment, the fans we need the statements of are the fans that took the hoardings down, especially the first few minutes when they realized what a tragedy was breaking out, and only those fans that see it, it's quite obvious on the tape of the BBC that they and their actions contributed to a lot of people walking around today that are alive. If they had just sat still like the police did, there would have been more than 96, like I can't really put a figure to it but I should imagine it would be around 150-160, because their prompt action, and it was their prompt action, saved lives on the day, but the professional people were just standing around basically.

Q So obviously it's a cause of concern that when the Labour Government implemented the scrutiny which was supposed to look at the evidence, well we know they shifted the goalposts a few times...

A Can I just butt into that, Sheila, because right from the off, I mean, you were in Room 13 in the House of Commons when I brought it up to Jack Straw, and I just think he's a very weak individual, a second-rate barrister For a start, which puts suspicion in my mind, he couldn't hack it in the real world, he's a very weak character, and to pick him to be a Labour Home Secretary - I've been a member of the Labour Party for basically all my working life and it's only since Hillsborough I've realized they're all in the same pot, basically - is that he goes and picks an extreme right-wing judge, a law commissioner for MI5, he was also involved in the Bloody Sunday in Ireland, which is costing the British taxpayers millions of pounds, you know, to get to the truth of that. So Jack Straw, knowing all this about the character, picks him - of all the appeal judges he could have picked he has to pick an extreme right-wing. I mean, I've had it out with Smith, as far as I'm concerned I'd say if Hitler had won the war he'd have still been an appeal judge to this day, it would have made no difference because he's that sort of character.

Q And you got a hint of that when you and Maureen had your so-called consultation with him and you drew his attention to the character of Stanley Beechey, the West Midlands former head of the Serious Crime Squad, and the evidence around him lying and setting people up.

A It was an ongoing thing, Stanley Beechey. At the time I brought it to Smith, ruffling his feathers a bit, but at the time I did not have all the facts. Since then I've got lots more facts about Stanley Beechey, doing things for fifteen years, it wasn't like he said, that a man's allowed to make a mistake, it wasn't a mistake. There are documents which clearly prove how he framed innocent people who subsequently ended up in prison. Stanley Beechey - this is the guy who was in charge of all the legal documents at Hillsborough - the Taylor Report, the inquest, the mini-inquest, whatever way you look at it, nothing went through to anybody until Stanley Beechey got his paws on it, and that man retired in 1993 on a full pension. Nobody in the police has lost a day's pay over Hillsborough , and you can see the reason why the Home Office, the first few months, they stepped in because they could see right away where the fault lay with the government, the Hillsborough ground had been unsafe for ten years, the FA were up to their eyes in it, Sheffield Labour Council, again up to their eyes in it, Sheffield Wednesday up to their eyes in it, all about making money, soaking the punters. It's the same old story, it's people's lives don't matter, especially the working-class people's lives, and they realized right from the off that they had to cover for the South Yorkshire Police mistakes on the day.

Q Obviously your main focus is on Gary, but I know that as well you have very strong views on the whole aspect of Hillsborough and you do see the broader picture, and I'm quite interested in your views around the formation of legal representation, and in particular the steering committee.

A Well it's very interesting organizing the steering committee. When the legal act was altered, unfortunately for us it was altered in 1989 in April, because Hillsborough happened on 15 April. Before it had to be somebody who's unemployed or on the sick, whose financial position warranted legal aid, and they would be the test cases in normal circumstances before 1st April 1989. Then we had the situation how the British Establishment used the new regulations, used it to their advantage - you had the likes of Trevor Hicks, businessman from down south, he's getting legal aid, and they formed a steering group where money was guaranteed. You had test cases going for pre death trauma which every bereaved family had the right to go to High Court, but it was the Hicks cases that went forward, eventually to the highest court in the land - the House of Lords. It made case law. It also lost and thereby excluded any other families from going forward. My argument with Trevor Hicks is that the cases of his daughters were not the best cases to go forward - there were other families (even in his own group) who had much stronger evidence to indicate that their loved ones had suffered prior to death. Why didn't he allow them to make the test case, to take it to the House of Lords, on good evidence, and we wouldn't be in the position we're in at the moment, and it's not about money, it's about this myth that people died and didn't suffer.

Q Would you like to say about Gary's case?

A Yeah. There's good evidence to indicate that Gary suffered before he died. There's also good evidence to indicate a lot of other young men and women who died on that day really did suffer, and the coroner is quite aware of that, but the coroner got round that, a very crafty move, by saying all the injuries received, if they died they were received before 3.15, I disbelieve that strongly. People were dying all over the place and were really suffering, and that's one of the big myths about Hillsborough that the coroner tried to put over, because he didn't want to discuss why the ambulance, 42 ambulances, 84 staff, not counting St John's Ambulance - 5 of them - were not allowed on the pitch. Only 2 ambulances ever got over the half-way line, that's Tony Edwards' Ambulance and St John's Ambulance, 3.15 St John's Ambulance behind the goalmouth, and South Yorkshire Ambulance about 3.35. And it was Edwards that ran across the pitch and actually really called the match off because he put the sirens on, they took no notice, because he realized, he was one of the few people who did realize that there was a serious thing going on, and yet there was people dying well past...beginning at 3.15, and yet the police were still stopping ambulances going on, saying they were fighting, so the cover-up started from 3.15, and the coroner is quite aware of that and he didn't want the people of the world to know that this is what they were doing to start a football match, but how far they'll go to hide the truth. It's what happened after 3.15 that needs to be investigated.

Q Well relating it back to what you said earlier, you have documentary evidence that Gary was removed from the pens and what happened to him. Do you want to discuss Gary,s injuries in respect of pre-death suffering?

A Well when the scrutiny started, Stuart-Smith was appointed to the scrutiny, which by the way has no basis in law, there's no judge or solicitor or barrister would take any notice of Stuart-Smith's scrutiny, it was a public exercise by the Labour Party who for years had promised the families 'when we get into power' - which is common knowledge now was a whitewash - 'we will get to the truth of Hillsborough ,' and they opted out, like they opted out lots of promises they made to the British working people. The basis of Gary's case is this, when the scrutiny started we sent for the body file. Up to then Maureen and I had never asked the South Yorkshire Police for nothing, because I've always maintained if somebody murders somebody, you don't write to the murderer for evidence, it's common sense to me. But when the scrutiny started, the only time I ever wrote to the South Yorkshire Police was to ask them for the body file. The body file was sent us, only half the body file, parts that should be there are not there, for instance the two fans who were supposed to be carrying Gary over to the gym, that's a glaring example where it's only a part of the body file, somebody, Gary didn't get it, if Gary was supposed to be dead he didn't get up and walk to the gym, did he? If he was injured, he's not seen on any video struggling across the pitch on his own, so these two fans are instrumental in getting Gary to the gym, so their statements, or whatever you want to call them, they're not there. The two policemen, when you read their statements, their original statements, you have to say to yourself, well where they were outside the ground and when they were called, they couldn't have been there if the times were true, don't fit properly, and, of course, with now after 12 years seeing the actual copy of the BBC tape, now I know Gary was brought out at 3.21 by a fan, he was harassed and he was dropped and then he was dragged out by the police and dumped and nobody attended him, from what we could see up to then on the video. The police maintain that Gary was carried out and was dead at 3.25. Now I've got a compilation tape and I can see where they're talking about, the time with Gary getting carried out - first of all there's about five policemen and the lad they're carrying is upside down, he's much bigger than Gary and he's got ginger hair, it's not Gary, but they're telling me that's my son. But now I've seen the BBC video, now I can prove that Gary was brought out and such a good copy that you can see lots of things, but all the compilation tapes as people know who have dealt with Hillsborough over the last 12 years, where they don't want you to see things they blur it, it's a compilation tape, it's to suit them, it's not for people to identify people, it's for them to say that's so-and-so, when it suits them, and that's not so-and-so, when it doesn't...the light, it was a sunny day, it's flaring, and that's why these compilation tapes are nothing, the quality is what the actual BBC tape, and one of the reasons at the court case last year, the criminal case, why the BBC went there with bits of their tape and the BBC ran that tape and it was never handed over as far as I'm aware, to anybody, defence or the defendants, is because the BBC are well aware what the police will do if they get hold of good quality tapes, they will mess about with it.

Q Is it your belief that it's likely that where you can see Gary being dropped, that that's how he sustained his shoulder injury?

A Yes. It's also a combination of West's report...

Q We're talking about Ian West, the forensic pathologist.

A Yeah, sorry about that. Ian West plainly states that Gary could only receive the injuries to his shoulder blade - he broke his shoulder blade - by being dropped. There is no way where Gary was in pen 3, the barrier in pen 3 went down, could he receive those wounds, because when you see it actually what went on that day, which the general public hasn't seen, a great big ball of people, and the myth is that people underneath were dead, and that's not quite true. The ball of people, there was a lot of dead people on top of the people that were alive underneath, this is another myth, this business about falling to sleep is one load of cobblers, and the coroner knew this, it's just that nobody was allowed access to a good tape to see the truth.

Q The relevance of this of course is what should have happened was a stronger case should have gone forward for a pre-death suffering case.

A That's right, yeah, but I told you at the beginning of the conversation that me and Maureen had this feeling that there was something slightly wrong. I suppose all the bereaved families are the same, but we just felt, you know, we felt that there was something about Gary's case, by Gary's friends knocking at the door on the terrible night saying roughly he was dead. They knew he was dead at 8 o'clock on the Saturday night, where we didn't get to know till 2.30 on the Sunday morning, so obviously they were making...they didn't want to look there, they didn't want us to see things or hear things, and now, it's after 12 years, although my late good wife never seen it, I've actually seen the BBC tape, now the problem is, is getting the solicitors to actually take a case for me, that's the problem.

Q I know you, like a lot of others, have very strong feelings around members of the legal profession and certainly your own experience and the experience of other Hillsborough families, how the group representation happened and the steering group of solicitors, the way they behaved.

A Yeah, well the trouble with, as I said earlier on about the legal aid being altered, they were on a good thing straight from the off, and it's quite plain who they were working for, they were never working for their clients, that's quite plain. After 12 years you can see through all the documents as you go through them that they just wanted their money and go. They knew right from the off that they were fighting the British Establishment and they hadn't got the bottle, and apart from that, most of them think they are part of the British Establishment, so the likes of Frazer they can always take me to court. Frazer is a good example, when he's had a business meeting and he knows on the letterhead at the meeting who were there, but there's one person not mentioned, a member of the DPP who's sitting there...

Q Just for the purpose of transcribing, we're now talking about Doug Frazer, solicitor, who was working at Silverman Livermore at the time.

A Yeah. Doug Frazer was the spokesman, appointed spokesman by Liz Steele, she was the chairwoman, she was the chair of the Law Society in Liverpool and she appointed Doug Frazer to be the spokesman. Doug Frazer was at a meeting in January 1990 before the mini-inquest, this was when they were setting up the mini-inquest which supposedly the families were screaming for, the families knew nothing about it, the majority of the families didn't even know what a mini-inquest was, and he's talking to the Coroner about having to bring a certain family in early otherwise they'd go to 'the local hostelry', in other words they'd turn up drunk! He didn't name the family, but he was clearly implying in front of the coroner and other police solicitors that the families were drunkards, that's what he was saying, and he was supposed to be representing the families. It's like when the Sun kicked off, does anybody know when the steering group ever issued a statement defending the families, anybody remember anything going on television representing the steering group, defending the families? The injustices of Hillsborough are unbelievable, which goes to show what I'm trying to say is that working-class people, if the British Establishment decide that they can be killed, they can be killed. Life is cheap, it's no different from any other state in the world, China, Russia, any one state you want to name, this Establishment is no different, a bit more clever, a bit more crafty.

Q If we sort of bring it up to more recent events, last year when the private prosecutions against Duckenfield and Murray took place in Leeds, you were amongst some bereaved and survivors from the Hillsborough Justice Campaign queuing to go into court to attend the proceedings. Do you want to describe the events of that day?

A Well what happened is...I'm just recovering from cancer and I shouldn't really have been there, but I struggled to go, done the best I could, I'd also lost Maureen, I hadn't quite got over it and I was very unwell and it was one of the few warm sunny days that we had. So we arrived at 9.50 and we're in the queue, and next minute people started walking away, and we said, 'What's going on?' 'Oh, it's been cancelled till 2 o'clock, put back four hours.' So the six of us decided, that's 4 bereaved families, one survivor, and yourself, Sheila, decided to walk round Leeds for four hours not knowing what had gone on. So when we went back at 2 o'clock, goes into the court, and previously we'd had an injunction against us on our website and we'd obeyed the injunction, we hadn't broken it at all, so we didn't even at that stage think it was anything to do with us, and, as I said, we're all well-dressed and of the bereaved families, the 3 men especially, are just walking wrecks, we're very ill people. So we sat down, 2 o'clock. We kick off and this judge kicks off, Judge Hooper. It took me ten minutes - not feeling too good and not being very bright on the day, it took me ten minutes to realise that he was talking about us demonstrating with banners, he wasn't going to have it, he was going to put this restriction, and what was amazing was the defence...the prosecution and the defence were all singing from the same hymn book, and I said there's something not quite right here. For a start, there was no demonstration, we were in no fit state to run a demonstration. Apart from anything else, in this country, as far as I was always aware, you have your civil rights, you could demonstrate as long as it's peaceful. And this judge is going to bring this rule in and this law in and that law in, and I couldn't quite believe it. So to cut a long story short, I went out and counted the television cameras, there were 26, but being involved with Hillsborough that long, I knew that 3 of them would be police cameras, so I'd say there were 23 cameras, all television companies from all over the place. There was also a place for the press, there was 50-odd press people there, and then he put a D-notice on them, so the press couldn't even publish...if there had been a demonstration they'd have acted on their right and published it, they'd have took no notice. And since that day nothing has ever been said about this. So what I did then when I got home I got people to help me, we sent letters to the Attorney General, the Lord Chancellor, the Court Circuit, we went through all what we always do, through all the channels, but I knew they wouldn't act. Because I was ill and didn't know if we were going to survive, I decided, instead of making a personal case because the European Commission on Human Rights, it's got to be an individual, I thought I'd do it under the name of the group and my name to go for the petition to the European Parliament, because apart from that day, he was also throughout the court case telling all sorts of lies to the jury, which I don't have to go into at the moment, like, but he was misinforming the jury because he'd been a judge and a DPP years previously. He was misinforming the jury and basically in laymen's terms, because I'm not frightened of any of them, one thing about the Big C you don't get frightened of these people, they bleed like everybody else and eat like everybody else, he was telling basically lies. What makes it so certain that he was lying because he was also a judge for the DPP, he should never have been the judge in that case.

Q Can you just explain that a little bit, Dave, because the general public will be unaware of any previous involvement he might have had in Hillsborough .

A In 1991, the DPP had come back and said there was no grounds for criminal prosecution, and he was one of the judges, so he advised and he had the DPP, he had the papers, he knew basically about Hillsborough , and he knew in 2000, when he was instructing the jury he was actually telling lies because he was making statements like the ground was safe in 1988 and there was no difference in 1989 and there was a lot of difference, and Lord Justice Taylor, Sergeant Higgins, 1988, had stood at the tunnel and stopped people going down, there was crushing, there was over 200 complaints made to Liverpool Football Club. He was well aware of all this and yet he was saying to the jury, apart from that, it's documented that the ground had been unsafe for over ten years, in fact in those ten years, it made the ground a lot more unsafe, and yet the safety certificate was accepted, it was just out of date, it was well out of date, it was an old ground waiting for this tragedy to happen, and this judge knew it.

Q Can I just ask you, were you surprised that those representing Hillsborough families in the Family Support Group, didn't object to him being the presiding judge?

A Well when you talk about the Family Support Group, really speaking, it's a fan club of Mr Trevor Hicks, it's not a family support group. What he says goes, and you disagree and you're out. I mean, I think it was an honour, I was one of the first families to be kicked out. But we'd gone back(at the time of the Stuart Smith Scrutiny) because we thought it was the last chance for the truth but then I realized it was another stitch-up and I think Trevor Hicks was well aware of it. Now he'd made deals with this judge and he gave false evidence himself anyway, watching the documentation that's in the Library, so his statement to the judge, in front of the judge, the judge must have known right away that he was leaving things out when he was in the dock. And my conclusion was that it was just an exercise, just a pure exercise. But you must give the jury its due, this is why Jack Straw and the likes of his ilk are trying to get rid of the juries, it's supposed to be about big insurance companies and big business, the juries are not supposed to understand, and here's a good example where a jury well understood, that's why they never let them off, but everything had been agreed before that even if they'd been found guilty they weren't going to receive a custodial sentence. So it's another example about this so-called Family Support Group, making deals on behalf of families they don't even represent. Making deals on behalf of me and I had no input and no say into it. We'd been kicked out.

Q Just to backtrack a little bit, prior to the commencement of that case in June in this last year, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign was in the process of launching a website as the Justice Campaign believed that the internet was a vehicle whereby the truth could be disseminated to the general public.

A Well what happened with that was that we were called to Leeds High Court, we had an injunction served against us and we were called and my name was brought up and a survivor, Peter Carney's name was brought up for comments we had made on our web site. I wasn't willing even then to concede that I wasn't going to talk about Hillsborough , but I conceded that the website could be put back, but this was all part of the exercise to get Hillsborough all folded up.

Q And it was one day before the eleventh anniversary?

A Yeah.

Q You and another bereaved father, John Glover, were in court being threatened with imprisonment?

A That's right, yeah.

Q By other bereaved families?

A Yeah. This is the tragedy. But I have to say that the last 12 months we've got so much evidence, and it was this group that pursued to get the stuff into the Liverpool Library, even though it's not complete, there's lots of stuff that proves beyond doubt about the whitewash and the cover-up at Hillsborough , and the group has done amazingly well for the two and a half years that it's been going, and I really think at the end of the day we will get Justice for the bereaved families and the survivors of Hillsborough .

Q Twelve years on, you're still fighting for Gary?

A Gary.

Q And you're more confident now. You've always had your suspicions and it's taken a long time to actually acquire a lot of the evidence which backed up your instincts and your suspicions. Nevertheless, you are more confident now not necessarily that Justice will be done but that there'll be a change in the general perception of what happened to people at Hillsborough ?

A Well I believe with the stuff they've got now there'll be a number of books out to prove beyond doubt that this Establishment cover-up at Hillsborough and what it entailed, how corrupt the judiciary really is, it's like lots of institutions, it's clapped out, it's rotten to the core, and it wants overhauling. As for getting into a British court, that is the problem we have, we may have a corrupt system, they don't want you to get Justice, but I believe the people in this country, it will slowly begin to dawn on them because of all the other injustices that are going on, and the corrupt political system that we have, that people of the country will begin to realize that there has been a whitewash and people were murdered at Hillsborough , and lives were destroyed of survivors, and whole sections of the working class were condemned when they should have been praised. But going further abroad, it's getting that myth, it's like the Dunkirk thing, they don't care it was a disgrace that young lads that got killed there through the Establishment again, and they made it into a victory, and the trouble at Hillsborough was the same, the opposite thing, it's the heroes of the day who were discredited and rubbished in the world's eyes and the people in authority that were cowards and just liars. Home Office solicitors and legal people, the Government of the day, the Tory Government, you expect nothing else, but, I mean, we were surprised at the Labour Government. That's going to be a harder job, it will be like the Titanic, different versions, in years to come, but I'm glad to say that in my own case I have the evidence to say what I'm saying is the truth, and if any of this Establishment want to put me in their courts they can do. But I think it's going to be a hard job to convince the world because the myth is so ingrained now, and this Establishment keep pumping it out in documentaries and books and what not, it's going to be a hard job, but I do believe that the working class in this country, it's going to dawn on them that nobody's safe from the judiciary that we have, and the judiciary is definitely not independent of the government, the government wag their tails and they know it.

Q On a personal level, Dave, if 12 years on...

A I won't be here in 12 years.

Q No, 12 years on from the disaster, both you and Maureen have battled, and in Maureen's case she battled till she died fighting for the truth of Hillsborough of Gary's death and others to be brought out, would you just like to say something on a personal level of how, not just the disaster and tragedy of losing your son, but the subsequent cover-up to the disaster, how you feel it affected both your health and Maureen's health?

A Well, we didn't know at the time, we just kept plugging away, there wasn't a week that we weren't involved in Hillsborough and that's gone right from the day of the disaster, and, of course, when you're battling away you don't realize it's taking a toll, you think things are just as they were the following day, but obviously it was wearing us down. But I don't think we'd have done anything...Maureen certainly wouldn't have done anything differently and I wouldn't have done anything differently myself. If there's one thing that's proved to me is that you've got to do it, you might want to walk away from it, that's what they want you to do, but you have grandchildren and you have family and as far as I'm concerned, and I'm proud of it, I'm working class and I don't think any British Establishment has the right to murder our children, and falsify evidence and tell lies. It's bad enough for them getting our kids into uniforms to fight their dirty wars, but to go to a football match and be murdered and then to be discredited and rubbished over and denied access to the courts is unbelievable. So it's been an education as well to pass on, never trust the Establishment, never ever trust, trust your own instincts, you'll probably be proved right - and to be educated to respect authority is just the road they want you to go down. That's all I can say, because if I was starting again I'd do it again.