basic cover up

Reading David Conn’s piece on Hillsborough, I ran across this:

Hillsborough was a scene of horror. Supporters were mostly laid on their backs, rather than in the recovery position, some with clothes covering their faces, even though no qualified person had determined they were dead. There were literally piles of bodies at the Leppings Lane end, and bodies left lying around elsewhere. Only 14 of those who died were taken to hospital, a fact Ann Adlington, solicitor for the Hillsborough Family Support Group, describes as "shocking".

In August 2006, Anne Williams, whose 15-year-old son Kevin was killed at Hillsborough, applied to the European court of human rights, arguing that the inquest into her son's death was "insufficient" due to the 3.15 cut-off.

Over years of tireless campaigning, Williams tracked down people who had helped Kevin, including Derek Bruder, an off-duty police officer, and a woman special police constable. They had testified that Kevin had signs of life up to 4pm; Bruder felt a pulse, and the SPC said Kevin had opened his eyes and said "Mum".

You get the impression that if there had been an open pit handy everyone would just have been thrown into it, dead or alive, the earth bulldozed over them and the remains smoothed over by a car park. As things stood, that process was saved for the investigation – a cover up in its most elemental and resilient form.

Comments

[Alex]

I always thought the thing about assuming everyone was brain-damaged by 3.15pm (i.e. kick-off) was deeply, deeply sinister in a Freudian sort of way. Revealed all sorts of unconscious prejudice.

[ejh]

I don't actually know what the coroner's reasons for making that assumption were. (I mean the reasons they gave, not the reasons they didn't give, which I'm quite prepared to speculate about.)