A Labour councillor whose dad was at Hillsborough on the day of the disaster has urged Wirral Council to back plans to put it on the school curriculum.
As well as adding the disaster to the national curriculum, the Hillsborough Real Truth Legacy Project calls for a dedicated ‘Hillsborough Day’ in the Liverpool City Region, to take place on the nearest Friday to the anniversary of the tragedy.
Cllr Paul Martin wants Wirral Council to support the project. Speaking to the ECHO, he said: “I’m a Liverpool season ticket holder, but this issue transcends football supporters and politics.
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“My dad was there, I’ve seen how it affected him. I was eight when Hillsborough happened, but it affected some of the people i’m closest to.”
Although Cllr Martin’s dad, of the same name, was not in the Leppings Lane end at Hillsborough, where the disaster happened, the Labour councillor said it has stayed with his dad since that day.
Cllr Martin added: “It should never be forgotten. Future generations, my own kids, should know about the cover up, the lies that were printed and the failures of Labour and Conservative governments on the issue.
“This [motion] provides the toolkit for teachers to teach about everything that happened in the Hillsborough disaster and the cover up. It’s important for families to see the falsehoods levelled against the people of Liverpool even today.”
Both the disaster itself and the cover-up were publicly acknowledged and apologised for in parliament by then-Prime Minister David Cameron in 2012, following the publication of the Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP) report.
The HIP report was followed by fresh inquests in 2016 which found that the Hillsborough victims had been unlawfully killed, after hearing two years' evidence. The 2016 inquests explicitly found that the behaviour of Liverpool fans on the day of the tragedy did not contribute to the disaster.
Cllr Martin is putting forward a motion to Monday’s full council meeting at New Brighton’s Floral Pavilion, after a similar move was passed by Liverpool Council in January, calling on the local authority to support the Hillsborough Real Truth Legacy Project, led by Ian Byrne, the Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby, in conjunction with many Hillsborough families and survivors.
The Hillsborough Day would see every primary and secondary school in the Liverpool City Region, which includes Wirral, taking part in a special assembly. The assembly would mark the anniversary and teach children more about the disaster, the cover-up and the fight for justice through dedicated teaching resource packs made available to every school in the City Region by local education leads.
One part of the motion read: “For the sake of past generations, this is something Wirral Borough Council feels it must get behind and calls on all councils in the City Region and beyond to add their support to the Real Truth Legacy Project.”
