Owen Gibson and Helen Carter The Guardian, Saturday 18 April 2009
The front page of Britain’s best-selling tabloid newspaper read “96 Tears” on Thursday, the headline over a story about the previous day’s moving tribute to the Hillsborough dead. Not that many people on Merseyside saw it.
The newspaper, which has a circulation of more than 3m nationally, sold just 8,000 copies in the area on the day of the memorial service at Anfield, which was attended by more than 30,000 people.
Inside the newspaper, still known as “The Scum” in Liverpool, ”lifelong fan” David Wooding, the Whitehall editor, delivered a poignant tribute to the men, women and children who lost their lives. But for those who gathered at Anfield this week, it was far too little and far too late.
At the Albert pub, squeezed next to the ground, football scarves and Liverpool memorabilia cover the walls and ceiling. The entrance of the pub has a poster mocking the front page of the Sun’s notorious splash, which appeared a few days after the tragedy. The tabloid’s masthead appears to be dripping in blood. “The truth,” it reads. “96 dead. Hillsborough 15th April 1989. Don’t buy the Sun.”
Tommy Doran, who works at the Albert, remembers one regular reading the Sun in a corner of the pub. “I went over to him and said: ‘What’s that?’ and he went: ‘The Sun.’ I just ripped it up into pieces in front of him.” Like many others on Merseyside, Doran will never forgive the decision of then editor Kelvin MacKenzie to lead on 19 April 1989 with a story headlined “The Truth” that was anything but. In it, quoting unnamed police sources and a Tory MP, it claimed drunken Liverpool fans urinated on and picked the pockets of the dead, hampered rescue efforts and attacked policemen.
Lord Taylor’s subsequent report into the tragedy later made it clear that it was the decision to open a gate to ease a crush outside the ground and a failure to direct fans away from the central pen once inside that was the main cause. The Sun’s slurs still linger and, according to some relatives of the victims, hampered a fight for justice that goes on to this day.
The hatred they feel for the paper still burns fiercely and the Sun has all but given up trying to repair relations.
Sun reporters know they will never get exclusives from former players who remember the disaster and its effect. Current players such as Steven Gerrard, who lost a cousin in the disaster, are similarly aware of the sensitivities involved.
Some at the paper believe it became the target for the anger of fans partly because of the failure of officials to accept responsibility. Managing editor Graham Dudman wrote two weeks ago: “Despite some members of the Hillsborough Family Support Group publicly accepting our apology, it made little difference on Merseyside where the community has to live with the knowledge that no police officer or ground official was ever convicted for the mistakes that led to the tragedy.” For most, the time for apologies has long gone. Tom Hughes, a Liverpool fan, said: “I would never buy it and people round here won’t buy it again for another 20 years. It has gone too far. There has been the apology from Kelvin MacKenzie then he took it back saying he was forced to apologise. What does that say to people?”
Mackenzie admitted the story was a “fundamental mistake” before a Commons committee in 1993. But at a private lunch in 2006, he suggested he had only apologised because Rupert Murdoch forced him to and was quoted as saying: “All I did wrong was tell the truth … I was not sorry then and I’m not sorry now.”
In 2004, there was a concerted push by the Sun to try to move on from what it called “the most terrible mistake in its history” but many agreed with the Liverpool Echo’s condemnation of it as a “cynical and shameless” exercise.
Dudman went to Liverpool for informal talks with members of the Hillsborough Families Support Group but a formal approach to speak to the group was rejected. “Do you forgive Hitler for what he’s done? Does anybody forgive Pol Pot? We are not God,” said Margaret Aspinall, who lost her 18-year-old son at Hillsborough. “I cannot forgive people like that. And that Sun newspaper, may God forgive them – not me.”
Years of regret
1989 Kelvin MacKenzie ignores the pleas of senior colleagues and plumps for a front page headline reading The Truth, with three sub-headings: “Some fans picked pockets of victims; Some fans urinated on the brave cops; Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life”. MacKenzie is persuaded by Rupert Murdoch to apologise.
1993 Appearing in front of a Commons select committee, MacKenzie said: “I regret Hillsborough. It was a fundamental mistake. The mistake was I believed what a (Tory) MP said.”
2004 After the Sun pays Wayne Rooney a six-figure sum for a series of exclusive interviews following Euro 2004, he is criticised in his home town of Liverpool. In response, the Sun carries a full page apology for “the most terrible mistake in its history” but also claims the campaign has been stirred up by the Trinity Mirror-owned Liverpool Echo.
2006 At a private business lunch at a Newcastle law firm MacKenzie is reported to have retracted his apology: “I wasn’t sorry then and I’m not sorry now because we told the truth.”
2007 MacKenzie, appearing on Question Time, says he shouldn’t have to apologise. “The issue about it is that story has become so caught up in a battle … that actually no matter what I said would resolve the issue.”
