What happened after the Hillsborough disaster was a total negation of any normal human response to death on such a huge scale.
The news of what had happened that day came on a Saturday when a play I had produced was having its last performance. The whole , mostly young cast at the University theatre along the Strand were stunned but many of them had already heard such comments as.
"Oh well the scoussers were drunk obviously" As the only northerner present I attempted to try to explain why this rush to judgement should not be made. But minds were already made up even whilst lamenting the horror of it.
That people died in such circumstances was bad enough. To then compound it by the lies and the cover up was to make a dreadful situation unbearable...the police and the Sun newspaper joined in to slur the dead and to place blame on them.
Thank God it has now been brought into the light due to the courage of those in Liverpool who worked so hard to get the relevant documents released.
The real lesson though is still to be learned I think...it's is not to categories people in groups...so that you get stereo typical statements like these
Scoussers are violent drunken thugs
Jews are mean with their money.
Black people are just out of the jungle.
The list could be a very long and depressing one..but the message must always be the same.....people are people...they may share racial characteristic on a superficial level but they must each one be judged on who they are really are. Whether they be truthful, gentle, clever, sad, ......do they laugh or cry or both when overtaken by disaster.
Our gene pool is a wonderful thing....we all have traits from every other race in our make up....please stop categorizing people according to their race, their colour and the town they happen to support in football..
The odd racist remark. " Pakkies smell". " Damm southerners are effete". Throw away remarks really but they do huge damage. Stereo typing people according to their race, colour or creed isn't just lazy thinking.
. It kills.
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2 comments:
Good post Jean.
I fully share your thinking on this and indeed every other occasion where the unthinking and the uncaring combine to judge people or events, purely on hearsay or bias.
At the very least both sides of an argument or second-hand story should be heard, before the rush to judgement.
It is good that at last the truth of this appalling event has been made public.
This is the issue of our culture and society, we so like to categorise or label everyone. We want to put people into places where we can feel a sense of superiority to them.
I was born and brought up in East London so the assumption is that I'm a Cockney Wide Boy or Spiv. Not sure whether I ever fitted into that category, albeit, my London accent when I joined up made it obvious where I was born.
Now, 46 years later Jen says that I sound a bit posh :(
I don't think so, but than I don't normally listen to myself. I suspect that life and a very mobile Army career and mixing with so many others has rounded off the edges and allowed me to pronounce my Aitches :)
But communication is important in life, particularly Orally and clear speech and diction is something more of us could do with. But labelling someone who has it as posh is a mistake.
You can take the boy out of the East End, but not the East End out of the boy.
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