The cause came back home to Sheffield last Saturday, when Mick Jones of The Clash performed at a Justice for Hillsborough gig at The Leadmill, with Pete Wylies (sic), Jon McClure and The Farm. Jones performed The Clash songs for the first time in 20 years to raise awareness of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. The gig is part of a six-date Justice Tour that is picking up supporters as it goes through the UK; in Manchester, the Stone Roses joined the group of musicians to show their support and in Sheffield, Jon McClure also joined the bill last minute.
The official version of events on that fateful day in 1989 have been disputed by the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, enforcing the feeling that police should have been blamed for the overcrowding that led to the human crush. Persecution of Kelvin Mackenzie and the boycotting of the Sun are also big parts of the campaign; claims that Liverpool fans urinated on dead bodies and stopped authorities from aiding the injured splashed in the front page of the tabloid and Mackenzie’s retraction of his apology in 2007 make the Sun’s “biggest ever mistake” still very relevant to families and friends of the victims, the survivors and Liverpool FC fans. These claims, and others, were also published in other newspapers but the Sun not only printed them as fact but also in an extremely sensationalized fashion, disrespecting those who had lost their lives that day. In 2003, with the efforts of the Campaign, the boycott of the tabloid went national with an eight page spread in the Guardian about the fight for justice.
Survivors and victims’ families can also count on the Hillsborough Justice Campaign’s help in recovery; they provide legal advice and counselling. The charity’s website is also the home of survivor’s stories and relevant articles that have helped raise awareness of the disaster.
Jon McClure, from Reverend and the Makers, came onstage thanking everyone for coming out to get justice for Hillsborough. A known politically outspoken musician who has protested against the Iraq war and the BNP, McClure opened the gig with the classic Heavyweight Champion of the World, played with a solitary acoustic guitar. The audience, still settling down, sung along nostalgically; the Leadmill was curiously diverse in age, ranging from the very young looking teenagers to a much older crowd. The atmosphere was amicable, as if everyone was old friends and had come to Sheffield for a reunion.
Kristy, in her late forties, had driven all the way from Essex with her husband and daughter. She was a student in Liverpool at the time of the disaster and lived near Anfield, the stadium that is home of Liverpool FC.
“We watched the news in the morning, and I lived in Anfield – that’s an area full of students. And we started seeing loads of people flooding the streets, walking towards the football grounds, it was incredible. It was so sad, the sadness of the whole city that they felt they needed to come to the football grounds.”
Nostalgia and remembering simpler times before the disaster seemed to be the subject of the night as Kristy remembered the first time she ever saw the Clash live in 1985 and reminisced over The Farm’s fame in Liverpool at the time. She also pointed out that many of the t-shirts being sold that night encouraged the boycotting of The Sun and many news agencies in Liverpool still didn’t carry the tabloid newspaper.
“It’s really good that Mick Jones is doing this, for some one as big as him to come out and do this, it just shows how important the cause is,” she said...
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