Phil Scraton

In 2012-13, Scraton received the Queen's University Vice-Chancellor's inaugural award for research impact.[8] In 2013 his research was runner-up in the Times Higher Educational Supplement's Research Project of the Year award.

In 2016 the Mayor of Liverpool announced that Phil Scraton was to be awarded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool for his long-term work, spanning three decades, supporting the families' campaign for justice. He received the award in September 2016. Two months later, along with Margaret Aspinall, Chair of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, he was awarded Campaigner of the Year by the Political Studies Association.

In December 2016 he declined an OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours list stating that he 'could not receive an honour on the recommendation of those who remained unresponsive to the determined efforts of bereaved families and survivors to secure truth and justice'.[5] He also stated that in his 'scholarship and teaching' he is 'a strong critic of the historical, cultural and political contexts of imperialism and their international legacy' and proposed that people's contribution to society should not be connected to 'British Empire'.

Funded in 1989 for three years the Project was based at Edge Hill University. It published two major reports, Coleman, S., Jemphrey, A., Scraton, P and Skidmore, P Hillsborough and After: The Liverpool Experience (Liverpool City Council, 1990) and Scraton, P., Jemphrey, A and Coleman, S No Last Rights: The Denial of Justice and the Promotion of Myth in the Aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster (Alden Press/ Liverpool City Council, 1995).

The latter was a 375-page analysis of the legal procedures, including the first inquests, and the media from the immediate aftermath onward. It exposed and condemned the institutional structures and operational procedures, from the investigation of Hillsborough through to the accidental death verdicts. The authors argued that the outcome had constituted a 'grave miscarriage of justice, denying the bereaved their rights.

The same investigating officers had served all three inquiries into Hillsborough thus compromising their independence, the families did not receive legal aid and had limited disclosure of evidence. The report revealed a range of other systemic failings, most significant being the Coroner's imposition of a 3.15pm cut-off on evidence - a time when some who died were still alive. Effectively this inhibited examination of evidence relating to the effectiveness of the rescue and treatment of the fans. It presented 87 recommendations for handling the aftermath and legal processes following disasters.

In 1997 the newly-elected Labour Government established an unprecedented judicial scrutiny of all documentation pertaining to the disaster and its aftermath. It was headed by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith. Scraton attended personal hearings with several families and made three extensive submissions to the Scrutiny including his disclosure of the 'review and alteration' of police officers' statements. At the time had accessed and researched all police statements in their original and altered form in the House of Lords Reading Room. Stuart-Smith concluded that the reviewed and altered statements had no significant impact on the legal processes or their outcomes. He stated he was 'satisfied that Lord Taylor’s Inquiry team were in no way inhibited or impeded by the exclusion of material from the original statements' and that 'the allegation made by Professor Scraton of irregularity and malpractice is not substantiated'. Scraton was highly critical of the Stuart-Smith scrutiny, describing its lack of rigour as a "debacle".[4]

Scraton's book Hillsborough: The Truth is now widely accepted as a definitive account of the disaster and its aftermath.[7] The book focuses on the inadequacies of the police investigations, official inquiries and inquests, revealing the extent of the systemic review and alteration of South Yorkshire Police statements. It also details the treatment of the bereaved and survivors in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, and the "inhumanity" of the body identification process. At the time of its first edition (1999), the book was described by Liverpool playwright Jimmy McGovern as a "brilliant achievement"[4] and The Independent stated that it told "a scarcely believable story of incompetence and mendacity".[4] Two new editions were published, in 2000 (following the private prosecution of two senior officers), and 2009 (detailing the previous decade's campaign for justice). Reflecting on the work of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, a fourth edition was about to be published in 2014 when, at the new inquests into the deaths of the (at the time) 96, the Coroner imposed stringent 'contempt of court' regulations on publications and broadcasting. Following the conclusion of the inquests in mid-June 2016 a revised fourth edition was published, including three new chapters on the work of the Panel, its political impact and the new inquests.

Following the 20th anniversary of the disaster in 2009 and the intervention of the then Minister of State for Culture, Andy Burnham, the Labour Government committed to the full disclosure of all available documents relating to Hillsborough, appointing the Hillsborough Independent Panel to manage the process of the disclosure, conduct research into all released documents and publish a comprehensive report explaining the Panel's work and how its findings added to public understanding of the context, circumstances and aftermath of the disaster. Scraton was appointed as a Panel member, led its research team based at Queen's University Belfast, and was primary author of the Panel's report.[8] The detailed, 400 page Report delivered 153 key findings in 11 comprehensive chapters. It revealed the full extent of institutional failings that led to the disaster, their contribution to the tragic events as they unfolded and the full extent of the failures in investigation and inquiry that followed. This included the purposeful review and alteration of police statements by the South Yorkshire Police, first disclosed in the 1999 edition of Hillsborough: The Truth, and also the in-house alteration of South Yorkshire Ambulance Service statements.

Speaking in October 2012, Scraton said the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel – which also disclosed that 41 of the (at the time) 96 who died had the potential to survive had there been a more effective response to the emergency – showed "just how wrong he (LJ Stuart-Smith) was."[9] The Panel's Report is available on-line, live linked to the Hillsborough Panel's archive.

In the wake of the Report's publication, Scraton was commended in Parliament by Andy Burnham, Shadow Health Secretary, as contributing, ‘a huge service not just to the Hillsborough families but to this country’. He anticipated that the unique research ‘approach, with the emphasis on disclosure, not adversarial argument, [provides] a model for resolving other contested issues arising from our past’. The Report's findings led directly to: the quashing of the 96 inquest verdicts of 'accidental death' and the ordering of new inquests by the Attorney General; a full investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Authority; and a full criminal investigation.

In 2013 Sir John Goldring was appointed as Assistant Coroner for South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to conduct the new inquests. In late March 2014, following five preliminary hearings, the new inquests were convened before a jury in a converted office block on Birchwood Industrial Estate, Warrington. On 26 April 2016 the jury returned a majority verdict of unlawful killing in respect of the then 96 victims.[10] In its narrative verdict the jury made 25 criticisms of the public authorities and private organisations involved, the majority against the South Yorkshire Police. Throughout the longest inquests in legal history, two years, Scraton was seconded to the Hillsborough families' legal teams.

Scraton's research contributed significantly to the ESPN/ BBC two-hour documentary, Hillsborough, directed and produced by Dan Gordon. It was shown internationally in 2014 to widespread acclaim, and was short-listed for an EMMY. The following year, it won Most Outstanding Factual Program at the Australian ASTRA awards. Updated after the verdicts of the new inquests, it was released in May 2016 and broadcast on BBC2, receiving excellent reviews and a massive public response. In 2017 it won the Writers' and Broadcasters' Guild Award for Best Factual Documentary and in May 2017 it won the BAFTA for Best Single Documentary. His work also contributed significantly to the S4C/Rondo Productions documentary Hillsborough: Yr Hunllef Hir winning the Celtic Film Festival 'Spirit of the Festival' Award in 2018.