27 Years to Open the Floodgates
- PCJ
- May 2, 2016
- 3 min read
You cannot help but be inspired and feel a shiver down the spine at the scenes of
thousands singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Yes, I know we’ve heard it so many times; we’ve seen so many vigils; we’ve followed the battles and watched the documentaries. I even remember the docu-film made in 96 when I was still at school. Even back then, and that young, I remember discussing the film and it raising more questions than answers - which of course, was the point.
I’m sure that many people will be exclaiming that “lessons must be learnt” but I am sick to death of hearing that phrase. It is used every time someone senior - usually in public office - monumentally screws up, or behaves in a manner of corruption and dishonesty, that such a phrase is bandied around like it is a catch-all shrug of the shoulders. We don’t need lessons to be learnt. Decent people, honest people, good people do not need to LEARN:
That lying is wrong
Changing statements to hide the truth is wrong AND illegal
Printing unsubstantiated libellous accounts is immoral
Blaming innocent people for the errors of those in public office is horrendous.
And it strikes at the very heart of what we believe in. The UK sticks its nose up at countries that do not herald a “democracy”. We stare aghast at countries that do not uphold our values of equality and “human rights”. We even send armies and jets and bombs to other countries and physically attack them just because they don’t do what we think they SHOULD do… ...and yet back home, with our robust legal system that is a thing of great envy for many countries in the world, we still make the deaths of 96 innocent people take 27 years … TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS to be recognised even just to have been unlawful. If there are any convictions (I say IF, because frankly,. I will believe it when I see it) it will probably be 30 years by then.
Our legal system is robust. Should you ever wish to read through CPS Guidance materials you would be quite shocked at just how well thought out it really is in many places. How clear it is, and how specific. It even makes appropriate allowances to ensure that the most vulnerable in society don’t get inadvertently caught up unjustly.
And yet we seem incapable to enacting it. It falls down, fails, and betrays its own robust nature by being applied by a small number of corrupt, highly paid, privileged people who can usually afford exuberant defences should they ever come a cropper. Over the past decade I have learnt more about our legal system than most people would care to know...and even though I still have a great respect for it, I have a deeply felt distaste for the irony that a system which was created to protect the innocent often fails them…
...because it is run by the guilty; administered by the corrupt; and monopolised by the self-serving politicians who insult us by besmirching every injustice with the exclamation that “lessons must be learnt.”
Well, 27 years on, and the relentless fighting led by the late Anne Williams who sadly died in 2013, has finally punched through. She lost her son in 1996, but she never gave up the fight. She lost her own battle just 3 years ago and never got to see the verdict this week But something tells me that if she was still with us, Anne Williams would be saying that this is not the end: this is the beginning.
Twenty Seven years to open the floodgates: now it’s time to flush out the dirt.
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