IT MAY have taken 20 years, but a chink of light may finally be opening up for the Hillsborough campaigners keen to uncover and then publish the genuine truth about what happened on that fateful day in Sheffield.

The clamour is growing, within days of the moving 20th anniversary commemoration at Anfield last Wednesday, for files containing hitherto hidden details about the Hillsborough investigation to finally be disclosed.

And now Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is adding to the pressure by calling on South Yorkshire Police to waive the normal 30-year rule of confidentiality with regard to certain documents, and publish them a full ten years earlier instead – in other words, as soon as possible.

Hillsborough Family Support Group spokesman Trevor Hicks welcomed the manoeuvres as “a little late, but welcome”. But he and all the campaigners concerned have been patient so far, and are prepared to be the very models of patience in the future – “we’ve been waiting for 20 years, so what’s a little bit longer?”, as he said.

Can it really be true, for instance, that, following a meeting headed by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a day after the disaster, instructions were given “that the police are not to be blamed”?

We need to know the answer – and the answers to much more besides. And, thanks to the dogged determination of the Hillsborough campaigners, we could well be on the verge of finding out.

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