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Just weeks after she lost her 18-year-old son James at Hillsborough, Margaret Aspinall met then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Liverpool Cathedral.

The Hillsborough Family Support Group chairman still remembers the moment clearly.

She told the ECHO: “She said there were 750 police officers on duty on the day of the disaster.

“I asked her ‘please, tell me what they were doing, then?’.

“She said to me ‘Their job, my dear, their job’.

“That moment never goes out of my head.”

She added: “After she said that I asked ‘well, how come 95 people died if they were doing their job?’ and she said ‘I think I had better step away because you are so angry’.

“I knew then we were going to have one hell of a job.”

Almost 25 years after the 1989 disaster new inquests into the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans at the FA Cup semi-final began in Warrington.

The new hearings included information which was never heard in the original inquests, held in 1990 and 1991, due to the cut-off time of 3.15pm imposed by the coroner Dr Stefan Popper.

Margaret, who attended most of the 267 days of evidence of the new inquests, said: “All that documentation, all that video coverage that we’ve seen in the court was all there all them years ago.

“To have the struggle to get the release of documentation, for freedom of information, it’s a disgrace on the country really.

“Families should have had that immediately and this could have all been done and dusted 20 odd years ago.

“People talk about the cost of these inquests. Yes, these inquests come to a great, great deal of money and it’s sad that the taxpayers are paying for all of this.

“That angers me, They should not have had to have paid again - but this is not the families’ fault.

“The families knew we should have had it all those years ago and this needn’t have cost the country what it has cost.”

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She added: “That should never happen, ever, again.

“I think that’s what the families are so determined on - that people hear the truth.

“I mean, it’s unbelievable what we’ve listened to, it’s just unbelievable that that could have gone on in 1989.”

More Hillsborough reports in our dedicated channel here