Phil and Hilda Hammond were both 40 when their elder son, Philip, then 14, went off to the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough and their lives were changed irrevocably. Life had never been easy. Phil grew up in Liverpool's tough Dingle neighbourhood; he overcame losing his?right leg in a work accident, then married Hilda, a nurse, and become manager of the Lark Lane postal sorting office. They had Philip ? "a joy, always," they smile ? then another beloved son, Graeme, two years later. They proudly bought the semi-detached house in Aigburth, a leafy Liverpool suburb, where they still live now. At that time, Phil always says, his life, with Hilda and the boys, was "complete".
Now, after a momentous week in which the Hammonds and the other families robbed of their 96 loved ones by the multiple failures surrounding the Hillsborough tragedy have finally seen the truth accepted, Phil and Hilda are both 63. For years, Phil was the chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG), battling for truth and justice over how his son and the others died, mounting private prosecutions of the two senior South Yorkshire police officers on duty that day, who were not ultimately convicted. Then in 2008, when Phil was in the HFSG office, filing a receipt for posting some campaign wristbands, he banged his head on a shelf, and it caused a brain haemorrhage. He was in hospital for a year. Hilda gave up her work after 39 years to nurse him back to active life. Now his memory is back, he is beginning?to walk, and he can feel his left arm again.
The Hammonds were in the Anglican cathedral on Wednesday, Phil in a wheelchair, when the expert panel chaired by James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool, presented its report to them and the other Hillsborough families. After Professor Phil Scraton, who substantially authored the report, explained the panel's findings, which condemned the police, Sheffield Wednesday and other bodies for their failings, and vindicated the defamed supporters and the families' case so completely, the families applauded. Dr?Bill Kirkup, the panel's public health?expert, explained that the original pathologists' opinions were insupportable, and that 41 people might have been saved after 3.15pm on the day had the medical response been decent. As they heard the panel's findings, three family members fainted. Hilda, given her professional expertise, says she worked out at the time that Philip was alive after 3.15pm, so she believes he must be one of the 41.
And then, when David Cameron stood to make his statement about Hillsborough, Phil says: "You could have?heard a pin drop in there." As the?prime minister's speech developed into?that "proper apology" for a "double?injustice," people began to gasp.
Sitting in his conservatory yesterday, gazing out over the neat back garden, Phil says: "That's the first apology we?have had from anyone in the government for 23 years. And although the panel did a very good job, much of their findings are not new. The Taylor Report established in 1989 that Sheffield Wednesday's ground was unsafe, that the FA hadn't even asked the club whether it had a valid safety certificate. Taylor, found that police failures caused the disaster, that the fans ? like my son, a lovely, well-behaved boy ? did nothing wrong and had their names besmirched.
"It isn't new that the South Yorkshire police lied and covered up afterwards and changed all their statements ? we had most of those, and I went through them myself, night after night here in this house, to prepare for the private prosecutions, 14 years ago."
Nevertheless, he says, he was "made up in a way on Wednesday. It's something we've wanted: for the government to recognise the truth of what happened. I'm glad we have come to where we are now, that the country finally understands the truth and what the families were fighting for. We do now feel that those responsible should be brought to justice. But it has taken a?very big part of my life."
The Hillsborough disaster has had a terrible toll. Several parents who lost their children in the horrific crush at the?Leppings Lane end of Sheffield Wednesday's ground, have already died,?while others are ill, or feel prematurely aged. As Margaret Aspinall, whose then 18-year-old son Kevin died and who took over as HFSG chair from Phil, said last week: "The families have not had the lives they should have had."
The Hammonds feel this keenly; that Graeme, just 12 years old when he lost his older brother, suffered too much.
Phil was always a red, supporting Liverpool, and Philip was brought up with football, playing for a good local youth club, Aigburth People's Hall, and, when he was old enough, going to watch Liverpool at Anfield with Phil. "He was a great lad," Phil remembers, "a?great person to know. I used to go and watch him and Graeme play football and cricket and they were the happiest days of my life."
In 1989, Phil and Hilda agreed that Philip could go to Liverpool's semi-final against Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough with a friend from the Boys' Brigade, on one of the designated coaches travelling across the M62 and over the Pennines. It was the first time Philip had been to watch Liverpool play away from their Anfield home. The Hammonds always remember that before their son left, excited, for the big day, he scrubbed and cleaned his golf clubs, ready to play a round the next day.
They did not know any of the details; all they knew was that Hillsborough was considered a fit ground to host such a prestigious match on a spring day of brilliant sunshine. They did not know, that Sheffield Wednesday had no valid safety certificate ? in breach of the Home Office Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds ? it was 10 years out of date. Or?that in key ways directly related to the horror that unfolded ? principally the division of the Leppings Lane terrace into fenced-in "pens" with too-narrow exit gates and no way of counting how many?fans were inside ? the ground was?unsafe.
Phil was at home that afternoon, watching the snooker on telly, when it was interrupted shortly after 3pm and the BBC went to the unfolding turmoil at Hillsborough. "I just had a feeling that Philip was in trouble," he recalls of his instinctive reaction. "It was a gut feeling; I can't explain it. I just knew."
The dreaded news was delivered by Phil's brother, Brian, who had driven across to Sheffield. "He's dead," Brian told him when he arrived home. "I've had to identify him."
They barely remember the next few days, a blur of uncontrollable grief, a parent's worst nightmare, the breaking of their complete family life. The senseless waste of young life, at a football match, of all things.
Hilda recalls how innocent they were, how trusting in the authorities, how they had always taught Philip and Graeme respect for the police.
"I believed there must have been?a?terrible accident," she says. "And?I assumed, when I could begin to?think about it, that the cause would?be identified and anybody responsible would be made to face up?to?it."
They never saw the Sun on that infamous day, just four days later, when Kelvin MacKenzie's paper splashed those stories we now know were fed by senior South Yorkshire police officers, to besmirch the fans, under that headline: "The Truth". The Hammonds were still consumed in their private catastrophe then, when the whole of Liverpool felt defiled. Now, she says: "That slur on the fans was the most heartbreaking thing when we found out. To know my son as an upright, lovely boy; he was in awe of authority. And to think that people all over the country and the world thought they were drunken hooligans who somehow caused their own deaths."
They began to feel deeply uneasy, with other families, that an attempt was being made to mount a cover up. Phil believes it began even as people were dying, when Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, in command at Hillsborough on the day, lied. Duckenfield said supporters had rushed a locked large exit gate to get into Leppings Lane, when in fact he had ordered it to be opened to relieve a crush outside. Phil says it was "set" then, the police case, to blame the fans and avoid their own culpability.
Lord Justice Taylor saw through that, ruling that it was Duckenfield's "blunder of the first magnitude" in not directing incoming supporters away from the already overcrowded "pens" that was "the prime cause" of the disaster.
"That should have been the moment we are having now," Hilda says. "Taylor established the truth, in August 1989, 23?years ago. Nothing could bring Philip back, but his and the fans' good name would be restored, and we thought those responsible would be brought to book and lessons would be learned. But," she says, still aghast, "somehow they disregarded it."
The inquest followed. The Hammonds dropped 12-year-old Graeme at his uncle Brian's at 7am each morning before driving to Sheffield to attend every terrible day. They were horrified, with all the families, by the coroner's conduct of it, and that "cut-off" of 3.15pm on the day of the disaster, beyond which he took no evidence. Only now, with the panel's analysis, has that decision been rendered untenable. The Hammonds were distraught at the jury verdict of accidental death.
A judicial review of the inquest decisions failed. Duckenfield and the second in command, Superintendent Bernard Murray, had disciplinary charges brought against them, but both retired first. The director of public prosecutions ruled that nobody should face criminal charges. In the civil case for negligence brought by the families, the South Yorkshire police, Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield City Council, which was responsible for granting the safety certificate, paid damages, without admitting liability.
Long years of burning injustice, twisting their grief, followed, until Jimmy McGovern awoke public consciousness with his ITV drama-documentary, Hillsborough, in 1996. The HFSG raised money with a concert at Anfield, then brought the private prosecutions. Phil, with HFSG's solicitor, Ann Adlington, flogged through all the documents, and Philip's empty bedroom gradually filled with files detailing the failings that killed him.
The jury at Leeds Crown Court acquitted Murray, but failed to reach a verdict on Duckenfield. Hilda told Phil it had been a victory to get the police to court, and the HFSG objected to the judge's summing up, but Phil felt he had let Philip and the other families down.
"After that, Hilda thinks I had a mini-breakdown," he says, his eyes filling with tears. "I used to go over to the field where Philip played football and sit there, for hours, to be with him. I never wanted to leave.
"In the end, Hilda and Graeme brought me back to myself."
They had exhausted all legal avenues. It took until the 20th anniversary three years ago, for the process to begin that led to the panel's conclusive report this week. Following the Guardian's exposure of Hillsborough's enduring injustice and changed police statements, the then Labour ministers Andy Burnham and Maria Eagle initiated the process of police and other bodies releasing all their documents. On Wednesday, the Hammonds were relieved, and regretful that it had taken so much struggle. Graeme feels that it's sad that Phil, because of his accident and resulting disability, could not play a more active role this week, after all his work to drive the campaign on.
Hilda feels that too, but, she says: "Philip's been in heaven all this time looking down on us. And he knows what his father did for him."
That was the Hillsborough families. They never gave up on their loved ones, in the face of suffering nobody should have to bear.
link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/sep/15/hillsborough-14-year-old-son-died
The horrifying detail of the Hillsborough cover-up has dominated the news this week. But what of the human cost of that terrible day? Phil and Hilda Hammond have waited 23 years for an apology for the death of their son
Source: http://www.indiacitys.com/our-14-year-old-son-died-at-hillsborough/
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