Families of people killed in 1989 disaster respond to Ukip leader’s admission that claims about losing close friends at match were false

Bereaved families of Hillsborough victims have reacted with dismay after the Ukip leader, Paul Nuttall, was forced to admit that claims on his website about losing close friends in the disaster were false.



Margaret Aspinall, the chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose 18-year-old son, James, died in the disaster, described the admission as “appalling”.

“There’s a lot of people who survived that day who did lose personal friends. It’s devastating for them because they’re still suffering and for the guy now to backtrack is appalling,” she said.

Nuttall’s admission came in an interview with Liverpool’s Radio City News on Tuesday. The interview followed his denial that he had lied about being a survivor of the disaster which claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool fans at the FA Cup semi-final in 1989.

Asked about claims that he had not been at the match on Monday, he said: “I feel bloody angry, angrier than I’ve ever been, and I thought I had seen everything in politics ... It’s upset me personally, it’s upset my family.”

Aspinall said: “I’m trying to be open minded about this and hoping that soon we will find out the facts about whether he was there or not.”

Charlotte Hennessy, who was six when her father, Jimmy, died in the tragedy, said Nuttall’s admission was an “insult”. “It doesn’t matter whether it was a close personal friend or not, he’s still using one of the 96 – that’s somebody’s loved one – for his own personal publicity,” she said.



“He’s saying: ‘My family’s upset by this and I’m really angry,’ but he’s giving absolutely no consideration to the families. When he says things like this and he throws Hillsborough back out there, it’s us families who are disturbed from our daily lives trying to move on from Hillsborough and trying to deal with the verdicts. It’s us that has the backlash of all of his pathetic interviews and allegations.”

Sue Roberts, secretary of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose brother Graham died at the match, said she had found Nuttall’s admission hard to understand.



“Anybody who was at Hillsborough, that was bad enough anyway,” she said. “To have actually lost close personal friends or, worse still, family members – it’s the thing that’s defined our lives for the last 28 years.

“People are still tormented by their loss. To actually try and say that you’ve lost close personal friends and then to backtrack and say I didn’t, I can’t understand how anybody could be that cruel and callous.

“This latest hurtful statement that he didn’t lose close personal friends – people have now got to come forward.”

Steve Kelly, a member of the Hillsborough Justice campaign whose brother Michael died in the Leppings Lane end, urged the under-pressure Ukip leader to provide further evidence if he was at Hillsborough that day.



“He’s claimed that he can back all this up. Well, if that’s the case, that’s all he’s got to do to clear his name,” he said.