Shelagh On How Liverpool Fought Back Against Hillsborough Lies
27 April 2016, 14:16 | Updated: 25 August 2016, 07:04
Shelagh Fogarty joins James O'Brien in the LBC studio to talk about how Liverpool had to fight back against slurs made against it in the wake of Hillsborough and other news stories.
Home Secretary Theresa May today paid tributes to the families of the Hillsborough victims and the survivors of the tragedy.
Just before she did, Shelagh joined James in the LBC studio to pay her own tribute to her hometown of Liverpool.
Shelagh told James: "On the evening of the tragedy, at a South Yorkshire Police press conference, the then Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, Peter Wright, put right the lie that David Duckenfield had told about fans forcing the gate...that lie ran around the world for 27 years.
"I cannot explain that to you James. Wilful desire for Liverpool people and Liverpool fans to be "wrong 'uns."
Shelagh then talked about a fly-on-the-wall BBC crime series set in Merseyside, with a trailer that claimed Liverpool was a city where "crime was practically a career option".
So how did the city manage to survive that kind of slur?
Shelagh continued: "You have to remember always that a city is two things, isn't it?
"It is a physical place and it's the people in that physical place.
"The particular lie about these individuals was not going to be taken by the people who love them.
"People would write off a city. They might try, Liverpool or any other place, because it's not the place, it's the people."
