Hillsborough justice and Syrian elections (E388)

Thirty-two years on from the Hillsborough disaster, which killed 96 Liverpool football fans through police incompetence, could justice be finally served? Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is calling for a new law to ensure a police cover-up of this magnitude never happens again, while the police forces involved have agreed to pay compensation to over 600 survivors and their families.

Adrian Tempany is a Liverpool supporter and journalist and has written for the Guardian, the Observer, the Times and the Financial Times. He followed Liverpool FC around the country in the 1980s and was at the Leppings Lane End on that fateful day in 1989. We invited him on to tell us about what he witnessed and his thoughts on the aftermath.

Winston Churchill won the war in 1945, but in the subsequent general election that same year, the British people voted him out of office. No such fate for Bashar Assad, as he just won the first Syrian election in over a decade with 95% of the vote. To be fair, the Syrian war isn’t quite over yet. Parts of the country remain occupied and when Britain’s war was still going on, there were no meaningful elections in the country. There were by-elections but they were stage-managed: the big parties didn’t contest each other and only the cranks and the occasional oracle actually got elected against the wartime coalition. President Assad won the election but no oracles stood against him. So, were the elections a genuine endorsement of a ruling family now in power for over 50 years? Joining us from Syria is esteemed human rights lawyer, professor at the University of Pittsburgh and author Dan Kovalik.

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