Jimmy McGovern's dramatisation of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster
both investigates the police actions which caused it and explores its effects on
the victims' families, skilfully using the dramatised documentary form to weave
together public issues and private emotion.
Founded in investigative journalism, Hillsborough dramatises court
transcripts and documents new evidence which debunks police statements, for
instance the supposed lack of decent video surveillance. Hillsborough overtly
takes the families' point of view, punctuating the unfolding drama with the
later statements to-camera of Hillsborough relatives (as played by actors).
McGovern was energised by the passionate response of Hillsborough families to
his 1994 Cracker story 'To Be A Somebody', in which the traumatised Albie raged
against lies told about the disaster. Given the news currency of the families'
campaign for truth, and McGovern's high profile, ITV fast-tracked Hillsborough
onto screens in December 1996.
In the opening sequences, McGovern introduces young, passionate football
fans, dismantling the myths about drunken 'yobs' stealing from and urinating on
the dead, as told by the police and spread by The Sun. The police's stories
directly contradict the official Taylor inquiry, which firmly concluded that the
police were to blame.
For McGovern, as for Albie, these myths showed the politically-motivated
animalisation of working-class groups by governments since the 1984-5 Miner's
Strike - indeed, the metal fences which contributed to the disaster were
introduced to cage all football grounds in the period. According to McGovern in
a 1996 South Bank Show, the derisory compensation offered proved that the state
saw the working-class as worthless and expendable.
Hillsborough's impact lies not in polemic but in its raw human drama. Far
from airbrushing the families, McGovern achieves his typically strong and
nuanced characterisation, showing the dissent within the families' justice
campaign and the very human effects of trauma, recrimination and grief.
Historical record and drama interact with tremendous power in a scene in which
the camera moves from Trevor Hicks' (Christopher Eccleston) public face on a
television screen to the next room in which Hicks begs his wife to wash their
dead daughters' bedding. Clinging to their memory through smell, Jenni
(Annabelle Ansion) accuses him of not caring enough; this scene and the marital
breakdown it dramatises are almost unbearably moving.
It is testament to McGovern that newspapers cited Hillsborough as a factor in
a new inquiry set up in 1997, although the families' search for accountability
goes on.
Dave Rolinson
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