The Poet Laureate has written an exclusive poem for a regional daily after the report into the Hillsborough disaster revealed the truth about the tragedy.
Carol Ann Duffy has written the moving piece for the Liverpool Echo, which was praised by Labour leader Ed Miliband for its “Justice for the 96″ campaign.
She penned the piece to mark the publication of the report by an independent panel which found that police and ambulance service statements were doctored in an attempt to deflect blame for the 1989 disaster.
The Echo published a special edition on the day of the report which was on the newsstands by 5pm.
The report also revealed that the Sheffield-based Whites Press Agency was the source of an infamous Sun story blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush, and that 41 of the 96 fans who might have been saved had the emergency services acted differently.
Ms Duffy is a University of Liverpool graduate and became Poet Laureate in May 2009.
She has since written poems on events of national significance, such as the Royal wedding, the Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee.
Her poem, which was published for the first time in today’s edition of the Echo, reads:
THE Cathedral bell, tolled, could never tell;
nor the Liver Birds, mute in their stone spell;
or the Mersey, though seagulls wailed, cursed, overhead,
in no language for the slandered dead…
not the raw, red throat of the Kop, keening,
or the cops’ words, censored of meaning;
not the clock, slow handclapping the coroner’s deadline,
or the memo to Thatcher, or the tabloid headline…
but fathers told of their daughters; the names of sons
on the lips of their mothers like prayers; lost ones
honoured for bitter years by orphan, cousin, wife –
not a matter of football, but of life.
Over this great city, light after long dark;
truth, the sweet silver song of the lark.
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‘memo to Thatcher’ – thought there would have to be the usual leftie dig at Mrs Thatcher in there somewhere. To try to blame her for the disaster is pathetic. Spoils the poem, too…
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Of course Subbuteo there was absolutely no connection between the fact that Thatcher relied on South Yorkshire Police to win the Battle of Orgreave in 1984 – the decisive skirmish in her prize-fight with Scargill – and the fact that they were allowed to get away with telling a pack of lies about Hillsborough five years later. To suggest otherwise is of course pathetic leftie nonsense.
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Thatcher was the PM at the time. She had access to this information and could have given the Hillsborough families the truth and sought justice. She and the PMs that followed chose no to. But the disaster happened while she was in power. Even if she didn’t order a cover-up, debatable, she was complicit in it occurring and continuing for so long. JFT 96.
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The way the Left are now trying to make political capital out of this human tragedy is verging on the obscene.
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Of course, anyone who voices any criticism at all of Saint Maggie – a woman who passed a law making it illegal for teachers to help gay students in crisis, because to do so would legitimise their sexuality – is a leftie dipstick. She was a lovely woman really. Those greedy little children didn’t need that milk anyway.
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Why is Page Turner bleating on about the Left when it was the Tory Establishment’s obscene lies and cover up that heaped so much misery in the tragedy’s afternath? Nasty Lefties, they’re much much worse than the Big Lie conspirators, aren’t they PT?
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Written by me, 17.9.2012
The 96
There are 96 stars in Heaven tonight,
They’ve been there a while,
But they kept out of sight,
A shadow of shame had diminished their power,
But they’re shining tonight like a meteor shower.
They’ve been vindicated and cleared of blame,
But, it’s not just the Winning, but ‘playing the game’,
They took on their jailers, their lawyers and writs
But this is a city that withstood the Blitz!
Its people are tempered and strengthened by strife,
And, couldn’t exist with this stain on their life,
The Establishment gambled on weaker resistance
But the battles just started,
WE’RE going the distance!
Joe Kelsall 17.09.2012
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