A Lament for the Leppings Lane Lost
Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet
A Lament for the Leppings Lane Lost
Walk on, pitch forward to battle for the past;
Orgreave, where the police charged the summer sun
and it all led to this fate for the Leppings Lane lost.
The coking plant is gone now, the slag is grassed,
but not the wounds of the truncheon’s greedy tongue;
walk on, pitch forward to battle for the past.
From Orgreave to Hillsborough, bias unabashed,
cured statements; police chief smokes his gun,
and it all led to this rage for the Leppings Lane lost.
This battle-sharp shock troop, whiplashed
on coal men’s backs, the baton beating run,
yet walk on, pitch forward to battle for the past.
Verdict – unlawful killing, the final redact
of Liver red in the blue pens of the overrun,
and it all bled to this pain for the Leppings Lane lost.
Shoulder to shoulder, can we march this back,
from Hillsborough’s end to where it began?
Walk on, pitch forward to battle for the past,
and chant this lament for the Leppings Lane lost.Listen to the Andy Selman’s musical accompaniment and Adrian reading the poem
It was Sunday April 16th 1989 and I woke up at my wife’s (then girlfriend’s) flat in Wanstead, London. It was the first time I had stayed over and it was in the days before the 24 hour news cycle and mobile phones. We were early in our relationship and so quite caught up in ourselves. When we finally turned on a TV on the Sunday I was horrified and deeply upset by the news of the events at the FA cup semi final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough, the ground of my favourite team Sheffield Wednesday.
Wilma was taken aback at my reaction, until I told her that I had been going to Hillsborough since I was 7 years old and never felt that it was in anyway unsafe. Apart from in the 70’s when as a teenager the hooligan element had been prevalent and meant that football fans developed a bad reputation and the grounds installed the (what were to become lethal) fences to keep fans off the pitches.
My father had taken me to watch Wednesday in the 60’s when the height of crowd trouble was to throw the seat cushions, that one could purchase to make the hard wooden seats more comfortable, were hurled on to the pitch when the Owls were relegated. Hillsborough had become a place that always reminded me of those fond times with my father who died when I was 11.
Expert from
A Poem Of Grudging Self Acceptance
Being bred in South Yorkshire
was like putting on an overcoat,
that I began to grow into
at my first football match,
Man United against Sheffield
Wednesday, five four to us and
fifty thousand men moving
and cheering, reeking of fags
and Bovril.
Over the years that initial shock and horror has given way to a growing anger, as a denizen of Sheffield, at the behaviour of the Police, the judiciary, the media, and Shefield Wednesday as a club. I read and absorbed the deep upset and agony of the Liverpool fans and the families of the 96 who then became the 97 - 21 years later when Andrew Devine died as a result of the injuries he sustained that day. The brilliant documentaries and dramas, especially Anne the ITV production starring the inimitable Maxine Peake as the Hillsborough campaigner Anne Williams who lost a son in the disaster, had fuelled my feelings. (Watch Here)
When I was writing A Sheffield Traipsing I knew I had to face and address in my own heart and mind this terrible disaster and subsequent miscarriage of justice that blighted both Sheffield and Liverpool as this was part of the city’s history. I purposely walked from what I think is a poorly executed memorial outside Hillsborough (especially when compared to the ones in Liverpool) out to Orgreave.
Why Orgreave? This, to my mind is where much of the trouble started.
The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between pickets and officers of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and other police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant at Orgreave, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It was a pivotal event in the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike, and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history.
Wikipedia
95 pickets were arrested and charged with riot - carrying a potential life sentence if found guilty. None of these cases held up in court and the accused were acquitted.
In October 2012, a BBC One regional news and current affairs programme, Inside Out, broadcast a 30-minute film about the events at Orgreave. The programme reexamined the evidence that the South Yorkshire Police had deliberately attempted to co-ordinate arrest statements in order to charge the miners with riot. Following the programme, the SYP referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
Wikipedia
This alleged doctoring of statements which South Yorkshire Police seemed to get away with, was a tactic then employed again after the Hillsborough disaster. My walk between these two sites led to the poem above. It has taken so much suffering and effort for the families of the 97 to get a degree of justice, though no one has ever been prosecuted for the unlawful killing of those innocent fans. I contend in the poem that so should there be a public inquiry into the events of June 1984. The two events are connected by tragedy and the painting of ordinary people trying to protect their rights and dignity as some kind of enemy within.
I hope my angry poem is one small cry in groundswell of cries for justice for the victims of both Orgreave and Hillsborough. Knowing that justice delayed is justice denied.
As a footnote to this I think that instead of white seats in the Leppings Lane end of the stadium they should be red and no one should ever sit in the them as a reminder of the empty seats at so many dinner tables in Liverpool.
