Rehashing failed police claims about Hillsborough is not free speech. It is cruel and wrong

For families of the 97 people unlawfully killed at Hillsborough it is yet another traumatic blow that the Bar Standards Board (BSB) has cleared Jonathan Goldberg QC of misconduct over his inflammatory little speeches about the disaster that he made last year. During the decades since they lost their loved ones owing to the gross negligence of South Yorkshire police families have been forced to fight relentless police lies and cover-ups about the cause of the disaster, and many legal letdowns.

But contemplating Goldberg’s repetition of the original 1989 police case, that the victims, Liverpool supporters themselves, were to blame for the disaster, and the BSB’s self-important, tin-eared exoneration, it is striking how forcefully the families did succeed in establishing the truth. It is increasingly important now, given the disturbing impulse of some football fans to disrespect the 97, the incalculable human suffering, and subject Liverpool supporters to hateful chanting.

Goldberg made his comments when his client Peter Metcalf, South Yorkshire police’s solicitor in 1989, was acquitted by a judge’s direction of perverting the course of public justice for advising that police officers’ accounts of the disaster be amended. Outside the court, then in a BBC radio interview, Goldberg portrayed the acquittal of Metcalf and two former police officers as a finding that there was no cover-up, and said Liverpool supporters’ behaviour on the day had been “perfectly appalling”.

But Metcalf’s acquittal was based on a somewhat narrow ruling by the judge, Mr Justice William Davis, much criticised by families. Davis dismissed the prosecution mainly on the basis that Lord Justice Taylor’s official inquiry, to which the amended statements