As Mayor of Liverpool, I know the city has kept the Hillsborough flame alive for 27 years – finally we have justice

It’s no exaggeration to say there can’t be many families across Liverpool without a friend or relative who was there that day

As well as the 96 people killed, nearly 800 others were injured (PA)

After nearly three decades of being denied either truth or justice, the families of the 96 Liverpool football fans who died at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground in 1989 have finally had their day.

The truth has triumphed. A jury in a court of law has said ‘yes, your loved ones were unlawfully killed’ and ‘no, the fans were not to blame.’ For the families, who have waited so long, this means so much.

For so long their campaign met with a wall of silence from the powerful. The fans were made to carry the blame for the tragedy, while the Tory gutter press was happy to spew bile onto the memories of the dead.

As well as the 96 people killed, nearly 800 others were injured. It’s no exaggeration to say there can’t be many families across Liverpool without a friend or relative who was there that day.

It meant the whole city helped keep the flame of their memory alive all these years and why we have all remained behind the families and campaigners.

This solidarity has been necessary given an establishment cover-up was determined to bury the truth.

It was not until 2012 when the Hillsborough Independent Panel was given access to the files of the police and other public agencies that we were able to shine a light onto what really went on.

We discovered how junior police officers were coerced by their superiors into altering their statements. And how the dead were subject to blood-alcohol tests.

We learned about the briefing operation that was hatched by the police and their political masters that led to the scandalous tabloid media coverage that did so much to blacken the names of the dead and the city of Liverpool.

This corruption of the truth – this deliberate, sinister and determined conspiracy to blame the victims and fans for the failures of the authorities – is almost beyond comprehension, but we do know that it happened. The panel and the inquests have proven that much.

It has been a long journey and there may be further stages to go before full justice is secured. We await the conclusion of two investigations, one of which is led by the Independent Police Complaints Commission into the conduct of officers.

But what this inquest process has established, in a court of law, is what we have known all along: that those who died on April 15 1989 were not responsible for their deaths.

They were innocent people who were killed because of the failings of others.

A wicked conspiracy to lay the blame at their door has been exposed and vanquished.

Truth has won out, at last.

Joe Anderson is Mayor of Liverpool