Ashamed as I am to say it, I believed the police, and not the great city of Liverpool, when the Hillsborough tragedy took place 27 years ago.

I believed the police when they said that the fans were drunk. I believed the police when they said the fans had broken through the exit gate. When they said it was all the fault of the Liverpool fans, I instinctively accepted the police version of events.

This was not because I am or was then against Liverpool, or the city’s magnificent fans and unique footballing heritage.

Fans in the top tier of the away end at Hillsborough help those in the crowded lower tier as the crush unfolds

But I had been brought up to support the police. I was taught they were the cornerstone of society. I could see they often did an heroic job.

Just four years before Hillsborough, in 1985, PC Keith Blakelock had been murdered in cold blood on a North London estate. In 1984, WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy.

Endure

Like many others, I calculated that patriotic and brave people like these risked their lives so that the rest of us could live our lives in safety. It was unthinkable to my generation that men and women of such moral stature should lie, cheat and fabricate evidence.

Yet we now know that is exactly what some of our policemen did.

So first and foremost, yesterday’s verdict is a vindication for the families and the friends of dead fans — and an entire community — who for an outrageous three decades have been obliged to endure their grief in the face of smear and innuendo.

At last for them there is justice.

Second, Britain as a society needs to learn some big lessons.

They start with the troubling recognition that some of the assumptions made by decent people about the police force were wrong.

We were right to think that many brave and upright men and women served in the force, helping to maintain the fabric of society. But a significant element of the police were not like that. They were above the law.

We are not talking here about a few bad apples. The South Yorkshire police lied, and lied and lied again over Hillsborough.

Then another police force, the West Midlands, were asked to investigate. Instead of getting to the truth, they actually joined the cover-up.

This points to a deep structural problem. So what went wrong?

Chaos: Hillsborough's Leppings Lane end at 15.07 - when many behind the goal were already dead or fatally injured

The police were a vital arm of the British state in the Eighties as bloody battles were fought against criminals, football hooligans and trade unionists.

Mrs Thatcher needed the police to take on the miners. She was, and is, an icon to Tories like myself.

It pains me to write this, but we should ask ourselves whether she awarded the police a measure of impunity in return.

It is disturbing, too, to learn that investigators are now examining whether behind-the-scenes influence by Freemasons was a factor in the Hillsborough debacle and the alleged cover-up that followed.

Powerful force: Hillsborough match commander David Duckenfield, pictured a month after the disaster, was a Freemason and promoted into a job he couldn't do properly

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has examined records of meetings of Masons from the late Eighties.

The Match commander, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, told the inquests he had been a Freemason since 1975 and, a year after the Hillsborough disaster, rose to become head of his local lodge, a Worshipful Master.

Duckenfield had been given responsibility for the policing of matches at Hillsborough just weeks before that fateful day, on the recommendation of the then-Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Anderson, who had also been a Freemason up until 1985. You may make of all that what you will.

Let’s remember, too, that five years before Hillsborough was the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ — when hundreds of officers clashed with protesters during the 1984 miners’ strike.

At the time it was natural for middle-of-the-road conservative people to believe the police portrayal of those miners as thugs. Evidence has emerged that the South Yorkshire Police may, in the post-battle investigations, have perverted the course of justice by lying through their teeth about the threat of violence offered to them. Three years ago, the South Yorkshire force referred itself to the IPCC over events at Orgreave coking plant, near Rotherham, 31 years ago.

But after analysing hundreds of documents, the IPCC decided not to launch an investigation, even though it found evidence of misconduct, and accusations that miners were beaten unconscious by officers.

It was not only in South Yorkshire, of course, that corruption has been an ugly stain on the police.

A series of special Mail investigations were sparked two years ago by the news that thousands of documents had been mysteriously shredded which related to a police investigation into endemic corruption in detective squads in South London in the Eighties and Nineties.

This paper also examined in depth the failure of the Metropolitan police to investigate properly the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 by a gang of racist white youths.

It was feared that widespread corruption among detectives may well have thwarted justice in that terrible case.

The impression one draws is that something went very badly wrong with the police back then — and it is idle to think that the service has turned its back entirely on the rotten culture that manifested itself after Hillsborough.

Rotten

Too many officers are still at it today. Consider the Hillsborough inquest itself.

It lasted twice as long as it should have done because the South Yorkshire police went on telling the same lies that they told nearly 30 years ago.

Of course the overwhelming majority of today’s police officers are honest and dedicated public servants.

Rush: The scene outside Gate C at the Leppings Lane turnstiles at Hillsborough, where an estimated 2,000 fans were allowed into already packed parts of the stadium

However — and I know that this will sound very shocking — those who spend time in the British courts are horribly aware that a small but disturbing minority of police officers continue to fabricate, misrepresent and cover up evidence in order to secure convictions in court. When the police concerned get caught out, they are very rarely prosecuted.

Sometimes these fabrications concern the most powerful members of society, as happened to the Tory Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell, who was forced to resign from his office four years ago over the so-called ‘Plebgate’ incident at the Downing Street gates.

A police officer was later jailed after lying that he had witnessed Mitchell call another officer a ‘pleb’. Far more often it is the weakest and most vulnerable who are the victims, and have their life ruined as a result.

Let’s return to Hillsborough.

Andy Burnham — shadow home secretary, who has campaigned magnificently for justice to come out — has called Hillsborough ‘the biggest miscarriage of justice of our times’. I believe he is right.

Unflinching

Home Secretary Theresa May (who also deserves congratulations for her role in making sure justice has been done) must now do two things.

First, she must disband the disgraced South Yorkshire police. This is not only because of their role in the original tragedy means it would be better to erase this infamous organisation from the historical record. The conduct of some of their officers in the inquest over the past two years shows that they are unreformed.

Even more important, I believe that Britain would now benefit from a Royal Commission into policing.

The issue of police corruption must be placed under an unflinching gaze.

For we as a nation need a police force which does not cheat, lie and invent evidence that destroys the lives and reputations of innocent people.

This means a new culture and a new set of rules, including a much stronger Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Officers caught forging evidence should no longer be gently allowed to retire: they should be sent to jail. All decent police officers — the great majority — should welcome this. Only the corrupt will resist.

In this age of renewed terror, we need a diligent, resourceful and honest police force more than ever.