On 15 April 1989, I was at home watching an FA Cup semifinal between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool. I was an articled clerk at that time, very excited about equality and justice, but on that day, I was just a football fan cheering on Liverpool, who were my second team after my beloved Newcastle United.

I joined in with ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, but quickly it became obvious that something was terribly wrong. I watched, horrified, as I saw people at pitch level being crushed against the mental pens keeping them away from the pitch. Broadcasters didn’t have the rules that they rightly have now against showing horror and death, and I remember clearly a young woman with her face crushed against the metal barrier, turning blue; young men trying to pull others to safety.

Most people know something about the Hillsborough disaster: the unforgivable wrongs done to those who died and their families, and that the people of Liverpool still carry unhealed scars – and for good reason.

Adding pain upon pain, was the press coverage at the time. The Sun, four days after the tragedy, carried a front page claiming to tell ‘The Truth’ about the Liverpool supporters – falsely blaming them for the tragedy, saying they pickpocketed the dead and injured, and urinated on beaten-up police officers giving CPR.

I suppose a question I may be asked is: why choose Hillsborough for my desert island judgment, when no one was ever found guilty, in the criminal sense, of the deaths? The answer is because the disaster has impacted my whole life as a lawyer. Like many others, it has given me the drive not to give up even when justice is initially denied, as happened here.

In 2014, a second inquest began into the deaths. It was to hear evidence for an incredible 276 days. It would never have happened but for the amazing campaign group, Justice for the 96 (as it was then – Andrew Devine, who lived with devastating injuries until his death at the age of 55 on 27 July 2021, was held to be the 97th victim of the disaster at his inquest), which would not give up. The campaign fought tirelessly to overturn the original 1991 inquest’s ruling of accidental death.

In 2016, the six women and three men on the inquest jury reached their verdict of unlawful killing, and exonerated the dead and the survivors of any and all culpability with a list of findings against the police and ambulance services. The families packed into the courtroom and the overflow rooms cheered and someone shouted: ‘God bless the jury!’ I was working in Sweden when the outcome appeared on my news alerts. I immediately went to watch the news. Outside the court, the families held hands, cried and sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. I cried with them, as did everyone who had dashed along with me with me to witness it.

The bereaved families never doubted that the 97 deaths were caused by the actions of the South Yorkshire Police and the ambulance service, and they were going to have to fight on. They held each other together and they were supported by a coterie of stellar lawyers, like Michael Mansfield KC, who worked pro bono with the families for years, starting in 2008 and who represented 77 of the bereaved families between 2014 and 2016; like Liverpool solicitor Elkan Abrahamson, who represented 20 of the families, much of the time pro bono; like solicitor Marcia Willis Stewart, who was lead lawyer for 77 of the families.

This was a hugely courageous campaign by the Hillsborough families and their hero lawyers. They refused to give up, even when the police and the ambulance service fought them tooth and nail, instead of accepting that they had got it wrong and lives were lost as a result.