On the sunny spring day of 15 April 1989, four young men went along in high spirits to watch Liverpool play in the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground. There they were plunged into hell.

Nick Braley, Richie Greaves, Tim Knowles and Adrian Tempany are all survivors of the horrific crush in pen 3 of Hillsborough’s Leppings Lane terrace, which killed 96 people and injured hundreds more.

On 26 April 2016, the four were at the converted court in Warrington for verdicts they never really believed would come: the jury at the new inquests determined that the 96 people who died were unlawfully killed, due to South Yorkshire police failings and the criminal gross negligence of the officer in command, Ch Supt David Duckenfield.

The jury rejected the lurid testimony from South Yorkshire police officers, who had accused Liverpool fans of having caused the deaths themselves, alleging they were drunk, late and uncooperative. This time, unlike the first inquest in 1991, the victims and survivors, many of them friends and family of the people who died, were finally exonerated completely.



But the euphoria of the verdicts, and contemplation of a new year free of false blame for the first time, have not dimmed the anger survivors still feel towards the police. The IPCC is expected to send files to the Crown Prosecution Service early this year in relation to possible manslaughter and other offences for the 96 deaths, and potential perjury and perverting the course of justice by South Yorkshire police officers in the alleged cover-up that followed.

Hillsborough: ‘Finally, we got justice’ Read more

For the survivors, the worry before the 26 April inquest verdicts had been intense, after the police had sought to blame supporters again, and the coroner, Sir John Goldring, had given the evidence sufficient credence to put it to the jury.

“To be labelled a murderer of our own fellow fans, which is how I felt we were, was disgusting,” reflected Braley, who was a 19-year-old student at the time. “We have lived with that all our adult lives; we were the accused. If the jury had believed the police lies, that mud would have stuck to us.”



“It was very, very stressful,” said Greaves. “It reached the point where my wife said she wanted me back; she felt she’d lost me.”

Greaves, 23 in 1989, who now runs a courier company in his native Heswall, said the verdicts lifted a weight of 27 years.



“I couldn’t even bear hearing the word Hillsborough. The verdicts brought a massive relief and sense of vindication; I feel more confident as a person now. Not to have that burden, that accusation that we were the cause of people dying.”

Braley, Greaves, Knowles, Tempany and many others have as adults insistently borne witness to the truth of what happened, and applied their professional skills to campaigning against the police’s lies.

Tempany, who was 19 in 1989, has written an acclaimed book, And the Sun Shines Now, about Hillsborough and English football’s subsequent commercialisation. His account is searing, telling of the horror he endured, trapped as people died around him, and how his trauma was deepened due to the police blaming the victims.



“I know one survivor who killed himself, two others who tried,” he said. “People were on the edge before the verdicts and if it had gone wrong, they would have been distraught.”



After the indomitable justice campaign which led in 2012 to the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report comprehensively overturning the police narrative, and the high court quashing of the first inquest, the survivors were shocked to learn late in 2015 that Goldring was putting to the jury the question about whether supporters should be blamed.

The lord chief justice, Igor Judge, when he quashed the first inquest, had dismissed the police story as a “falsity”, and warned that he would “deprecate” the new inquests turning into an “adversarial battle” like the first. However, neither he nor Goldring actually had the authority to enforce that in new proceedings, and the police chose to rerun the old allegations aggressively. Then, Goldring framed the question for the jury very widely, asking if there was “any of the behaviour of football supporters which caused or contributed to the dangerous situation at the Leppings Lane turnstiles” – or which “may have caused or contributed” to it.

Knowles was 17 at Hillsborough, one of 10 young men there who were friends growing up in Formby. Three of their group died: Gary Church, then 19, Simon Bell, 17, and Christopher Devonside, 18. Knowles was particularly close to Devonside and his family; they were studying the same A levels, both wanted to be journalists. Knowles grew up to fulfil that ambition, despite his trauma, making a career in journalism, including working for the Guardian.

Of the question put to the jury, he is still exasperated: “The police case was always to deny their failings and claim that we killed our friends. Here the coroner was inviting the jury to find that, even that we ‘may have’. So it was a realistic prospect that after everything we had been through to overturn the lies, these new inquests could see that officially established. And we would have been labelled with that all our lives.”

They were also outraged that Goldring was proposing “football supporters” could be blamed, without any actual people having to be identified for any specific alleged misconduct – and with none of those accused legally represented.



Deeply alarmed, in January, Braley, Greaves and Knowles applied to Goldring for “interested party” status, to be represented. They were substantially helped by Tempany, campaigner Jim Sharman, and Chris Lightbown, a former Sunday Times journalist who, after the disaster, remained close to some of the bereaved families.

“I still feel very angry,” said Knowles, “that Goldring was allowing ‘football supporters’ to be blamed, but they were a nameless mob again, nobody identified and given the right to be represented. This was continuing how the false case was made in the first place, by dehumanising football supporters.”



Goldring turned down their application. He stated via the inquest’s solicitor that the three survivors had no right to be represented, because there had been no accusation made against them personally. He argued it was a “fallacy” to believe that all supporters were being potentially blamed, when the question was about “only some” of them. Their solicitor, Lochlinn Parker, replied that it was “plainly correct” that all survivors were included in the question, because not a single individual had been identified, so it was being asked about everybody who had been at the Leppings Lane end.

Goldring said the survivors’ case, challenging the police, had been argued at the inquests anyway because some of the bereaved families, who were legally represented, included relatives who had been at the match with those who died. So none of the survivors who applied, nor “football supporters” as a group, were to be represented and allowed to defend their good names.

Tempany has repeatedly emphasised the devastating impact a finding of culpability would have had on survivors. He wrote in his book that some, traumatised already for years, would have killed themselves. Before the verdicts, the group suggested to the inquests’ organisers that medical and mental health professionals should be on hand but that request was turned down, too.

Then, on another sunny day in April, the inquests’ jury revealed that they had seen through the police case. To the question about “football supporters” causing or contributing to the dangerous situation, they answered, simply and definitively: “No.”



Tempany recalled that they felt euphoric, that “poison had been drained from us, a weight lifted off”. But Braley said he still felt great anger at the ordeal they were forced to go through, the “unbelievable stress” before the verdicts, and it took time for him to savour the feeling of exoneration. They are looking ahead to the first year of their adult lives relieved of their burden, but as the Independent Police Complaints Commission concludes its mammoth investigation into possible criminal offences leading to the 96 deaths, and the alleged police cover-up, they do want prosecutions.



“You cannot be responsible for the deaths of 96 people, and instead label innocent victims as being guilty, have police officers telling such lies, without being held to account,” Braley said. “We have the truth established, finally. Now we want justice to be done.”

