The Hillsborough memorial service at Anfield had always been a subdued and respectful occasion: around 10,000 mourners on the Kop, gathered to stand with the families on the hardest day of their year. The 20th anniversary, on 15 April 2009, was different. Visitors had been laying flowers, scarves and messages beneath the Eternal Flame since dawn, some having travelled from as far afield as Australia. An hour before the service began the Kop was full and the three other stands were swelling fast. By the time the families walked from their meeting point in the Centenary Stand to seats at the front of the Kop, 29,000 people inside Anfield were on their feet, giving them the loudest of ovations. Two decades on, with a new generation born and grown to adulthood, the wounds were still gaping and the anger still raw at the absence of any admission of guilt from above.
The players of 1989 took their seats behind the families to warm applause, furrowed brows and downcast expressions hinting at the mental scars of a group of athletes who had been forced to become bereavement counsellors. They were joined by members of the current side, among them Steven Gerrard — who lost his 10-year-old cousin Jon-Paul Gilhooley in the disaster — and Jamie Carragher. Ninety-six candles were lit in the Kop goalmouth and the names read out by clergy. The two-minute silence was broken only by babies’ cries, and outside the ground, where the city’s buses, trains and ferries had come to a standstill, church bells signalled its end.
Andy Burnham — Scouse-born, an Evertonian, and then secretary of state for culture, media and sport — had been invited to speak by Margaret Aspinall, who lost her 18-year-old son James at Hillsborough and was by then chair of the Family Support Group. No MP had ever been allowed to speak at the service before. “We had never allowed an MP to speak at the service because we hadn’t really had any meaningful support from any of them. But I wanted to give Andy a chance,” she said.
Burnham knew the risk he was taking. Gordon Brown’s Labour government had nothing new to offer the families, and it had been in power for 12 of the 20 years since the disaster without doing anything to facilitate calls to unearth the truth. He agonised over whether to accept the invitation, his main worry being whether he could get through a speech without breaking down. On the day of Hillsborough he had been at Villa Park, watching Everton play Norwich in the other FA Cup semi-final.
He began well. Describing Britain’s worst sporting disaster as “man-made” and praising the actions of the fans that day, he drew nods of approval and a ripple of applause. But when he told the Kop he brought a message from the prime minister that the victims would never be forgotten, pockets of the stand began to boo and jeer. There was a shout of “When do we get justice?” and a scream of “Hypocrite”. It was the first time such a thing had happened at one of these memorial services, and it stopped Burnham in his tracks.
Then, from the back of the Kop, came a chant of “Justice for the 96”. It spread across the stand and then across the whole of Anfield — an answer to the easy soundbites of a government that had ruled out the possibility of a fresh inquiry. Burnham nodded at the Kop with an “I get it” expression. Aspinall, sitting directly in front of him, recalled: “I was on eggshells throughout Andy’s speech. When the Kop began chanting for justice our former chairman Trevor Hicks looked at me as if to say: ‘What have you done, Margaret? Let’s say something.’ But I thought: ‘No, let them carry on, don’t say anything. Let the Kop tell the government and the country how angry we all feel.'”
Her instinct was vindicated. The scene of a cabinet minister being barracked during a memorial service led every news bulletin for the rest of the day and made every front page the following morning.
Burnham later reflected: “When the first justice chants rolled off the Kop, I was not surprised, as I half-expected them. And, actually, I wanted the country to hear them. The people on the Kop that day were right to barrack me. I don’t hold anything against anyone who shouted at me. It helped me find the political courage to do something.” He urged Gordon Brown to heed the Kop’s calls and, despite some cabinet opposition, the prime minister backed him. By the end of 2009 a Hillsborough Independent Panel had been set up, appointing experts to scrutinise hundreds of thousands of unseen documents relating to the disaster.
Its final report in 2012 laid bare a litany of calamitous mistakes by police and emergency services, showed how dozens of lives could have been saved and revealed a massive cover-up. David Cameron apologised to the families and to Liverpool fans from the floor of the Commons; the original inquest verdicts of accidental death were quashed and new inquests put in place. In 2016 they returned 96 verdicts of unlawful killing and exonerated the fans of all blame.
“We would never, ever have got the verdicts of ‘unlawful killing’ without the support of the Kop,” Aspinall said. “The fans played a vital part over the years in supporting us and getting accountability. But the turning point definitely came when those chants of ‘justice’ came at Andy Burnham. That day the Kop changed everything.”
Five years later Burnham was invited back to address the 25th anniversary service. This time he was not met with snarls and chants of “hypocrite” but with a banner reading “Thank You, Andy Burnham”. “Five years ago things changed, not because of me but because of all of you,” he told the Kop. “You made your voices heard and thank God you did. Your voices carried off this Kop into every living room in the land and into the heart of the establishment. I knew you were right and they were wrong. With that chant of ‘justice’ the dam burst. You were asking the most profound question about our country and how it is run. How can it be that an entire city shouted injustice for 20 years and no one was listening? What was your call five years ago is my call today; justice for the 96.”