Through the Wind and the Rain Fanzine Archives

Since the editorial is done last, it's handy when there are a few things going on in the final week of putting the fanzine together. -this week has been no exception. The sick comments of Lord Justice Stuart Smith have cast a huge shadow over the whole Justice campaign. personally, I think it was a mistake to accept his apology, even with reservations. A clear message should have been sent to Jack Straw; how dare you foist this arrogant old bastard on us? The families should have used their strength in the media to walk out and demand a fair hearing (which we're surely not going to get now); if the media like anything more than drunken football fans, then it's batty old judges who put their feet in their mouths. They'd have gone to town on him. There is a view held that he is in such an awkward position now that he may come down on our side through embarrassment, but that's not what we want and it's a pipe-dream in any case. It's not easy to know what to do for the best in an instant, and the families have waited for so long, but this bastard should never have been tolerated and he should have been exposed. We can all hope that this is only my cynical claptrap and we're going to get Justice after all, but frankly we've already got more than hope, we've got PROOF and we shouldn't have to sit around with our fingers crossed like this. I haven't been this depressed since '91 and Popper's whitewash.

As if that wasn't bad enough, supporters of standing areas have been sucked into an increasingly hysterical backlash. It doesn't when an obvious chancer like Edwards and a dickhead like Banks are on our side, I'll admit, but the reactions - from Trevor Hicks, Jeff Powell, Peter Millea and the ' Echo' for example - have been much too much. You'll be, pleased to learn that TTW&R for one will not be brow-beaten; we are going to continue this debate as it should be conducted (see page 12 for one of our regular contributor's anti-terracing arguments).

It is something that Liverpool supporters will find very hard to get involved in; after all, the words 'just one disaster' or 'only 96 people' should NEVER pass any of our lips, EVER. This is how the rest of the country will debate the issue, though, and it would be nice to get involved in such talks without being totally demonised by all and sundry. When I hear Trevor Hicks say 'there is no such thing as safe terracing', when Jeff Powell says '.people don't always know what's good for them' and when the Echo outrageously calls us a minority', I know we're winning the argument. There may come a day when these guys realise that scare-mongering isn't going to work with us, we want our say - the say we clearly didn't get when all the changes in football were made 'for our own good'. If we're such a minority, then prove it in a ballot ......... yeah, right, they'd run a mile. At least Jeff Powell knows how such a poll would turn out and isn't kidding himself that he speaks for anybody but the elite, for those who 'know what's best for us' and think we're heartless or thick as two short planks. Well, I'm a big boy and I'd like a say if it's all the same to you. So would thousands upon thousands of other football fans, and we're going to have it too despite every attempt to deny it to us.

There will be people reading this and saying 'what about Hillsborough- how can you, a Liverpool fan, be saying this?'. People who've read the fanzine on a regular basis will know where we stand on the Justice issue, it's possible we could have done more, but we could certainly have done an awful lot less. It is precisely the effect on the Justice debate that concerns me the most; the fixation with terracing/standing areas is allowing South Yorkshire Police and Sheffield Wednesday FC to get off the hook. They will simply claim that they were being asked to control something that is uncontrollable, to keep this terracing safe when 'there is no such thing as safe terracing' in the first place. floor design, poor policing, fences, contempt for football fans, greed (demonstrated by the overcrowding of such areas), poor safety measures and medical facilities - if any of these issues had been addressed with the same zeal terracing was dealt with, then football fans would be a lot happier today ..... oh no, don't tell me you're one of those people who thinks 'everything in football's great nowadays'? Jesus. There will even he fences at the next World Cup, for God's sake.

People stood for the PSG game, and only stood for Celtic became they thought everyone else would again. After that, it was probably sheer pig-headedness that made us ignore the tannoy warnings. It wasn't really a protest, I'm just fed up with taking the weak, defensive line on this issue while the other side becomes ever more generalising, spiteful or hysterical. Edwards may have started the debate, but how sneaky of the other side not to register their protest after PSG, when the vast majority of Kopites stood. Their argument would have been weakened further, that's why. Having accidentally got the debate into the public domain, don't let it be shoved out again.

SK