Walk Alone

Most show trials are for the conviction, but a few are for the acquittal, or for the theatrical collapse. Bringing us to Hillsborough, yet again. Everyone has always known what happened at Hillsborough, because everyone has always been supposed to know what happened at Hillsborough.

Pursuant to the policy of the Government of the day, the agents of the State intentionally killed, as it turned out, 96 of that Government's class and regional enemies, whom the governing party's off the books campaigning media then smeared in the most obscene terms. That State has spent the subsequent 32 years purporting to exonerate itself through its pantomime impersonations of legal proceedings. Message received and understood.

Bringing down and keeping down Liverpool was always as important as bringing down and keeping down the coalfield communities, which are not "former", since the coal is still there. Even more than they resented the highly civilised and highly politicised communities that were sustained by the high wages and the secure employment of the miners, the Thatcher-Blair-Starmer classes despised the fact that the single most important city in the popular culture of Western Europe, and arguably of the world, was somewhere Up North where they talked funny and stood up for themselves. The economic basis of each had to be destroyed. And it was.

Brexit was "Loony Left" when it was advocated by Eric Heffer, Bob Parry, Eddie Loyden and Tony Mulhearn. But now that they were officially right all along, Britain has reentered the world without a West Coast port remotely equipped to the task. Never mind, though. At least all the pop music now comes from London. And at least no one has ever been convicted in relation to Hillsborough. Nor ever will be. Nor ever could have been.