I'd run this scene through my head so many times that the sense of deja vu was numbing.
For 27 years I’d dreamt of watching a parent who lost a child at Hillsborough stand up in Parliament and slaughter the political class for their gross dereliction of duty.
And there she was.
Margaret Aspinall, in 2016, a fortnight after jurors at fresh inquests had returned Unlawful Killing verdicts on the 96, in Portcullis House, raining guilt down on the assembled MPs, Lords, and party leaders.
“The politicians of this country ought to be ashamed of themselves for what’s happened in their name. We as a nation should be ashamed that our families had to fight for almost 30 years to get to the truth,” she said.
“You have to change things for the good of the ordinary people because if they can cover up 96 deaths what can they do to individuals?”
This doughty, then 69-year-old, said there was a “disease in this country” citing South Yorkshire Police’s role in Hillsborough, the Battle of Orgreave and Rotherham sex abuse scandal, and argued “Hillsborough was bigger than the police. It was political. It went right to the top.
"So it’s up to you politicians to unite and never let the likes of it happen again.”
Watching this pocket battleship passionately and articulately lay down the law to the law-makers, with some of them grimacing at her every word, was life-affirming.
When she’d finished her 20-minute unscripted speech, the long standing ovation she received felt like a thunderclap being released.
How did this mum of five from a Huyton council estate get the strength to speak truth to power so articulately.
Where did all of those mothers who chose to be the ears, the eyes and the voices of the children they lost at Hillsborough get the confidence to take on the Establishment and win?
I thought back to two years after the disaster, in 1991, when another relentless matriarch Anne Williams told me why she would never stop until she got justice for her 15-year-old son who died at Hillsborough.
She’d been told at the Sheffield inquests that Kevin had spoken a word to a Special WPC 42 minutes after he was supposed to have been dead: “I said straight away, ‘It was mum, wasn’t it?” said Anne.
“The policeman nodded and I broke down in tears. I was inconsolable. That word shattered my heart. I felt I had lost Kevin all over again.”
That set Anne on a route to overturn the verdict on her son’s death which would lead her to make three applications to the Attorney General and one to the European Court of Human Rights.
In 2012, the truth was established in an independent report, the Accidental Killing verdicts overturned and fresh ones of Unlawful Killing handed down.
I asked Anne, pictured, in her Formby home 1991 why she was so determined to overturn Kevin’s inquest verdict, and in the decades to come, whenever the Hillsborough campaign hit a wall I’d draw on her answer: “While I have breath in my body I’ll fight that wicked verdict because when you bring a child into this world the words on the birth certificate are accurate.
“When they leave, the least they deserve is the right ones on their death certificate.” That quote gave me the strength to try to pick up mothers whenever the system delivered another kick to their teeth.
Getting to the truth of Britain’s worst sporting disaster was all about working-class heroism, beginning on the afternoon, when the only people trying to save lives were fans who turned advertising hoardings into stretchers.
The decades-long fight for justice was won through the bereaved families refusing to be cowed by the weight of denial from on high.
They let the world know in the face of slurs and criminal indifference that the 96 who died were more than names engraved in cold stone.
They refused to give in to incessant calls to “let it go” from people who failed to understand why they couldn’t. Because they were consumed by the most invincible of emotions: Love.
I won’t meet finer heroes.
Tea-total Skinner was incorruptible
Dennis Skinner is so incorruptible when I first offered to buy him a cup of tea he refused, saying: “It’ll look like a bribe.”
At our 1997 meeting he told me he’d made three vows on entering Parliament: “I refused to pair as I knew Tories needed to be away making money on the side.
“I refused foreign junkets because MPs go on these and get palsy-walsy. And no socialising in the bars. I don’t want to be where there’s an atmosphere of ‘we’re all mates’. We’re definitely not.”
To show how he despised Tories he sang me a song he’d written which included this line about Thatcher: “Stars used to twinkle in her eyes, and now they’re telling lies.” Shame the great class warrior isn’t still around.
Pluck like Donna’s ended the Troubles
I met Donna Marie McGillion a year after she took the full blast of a 500lb bomb in Omagh in 1998.
Her courage shamed me.
There were horrific scars all over her face and arms and small black spots on her neck where shrapnel was still trying to escape.
She wore a mask to stop her cheek from sagging and winced as she climbed from a chair.
But when she spoke all I noticed was the power of her spirit.
It gave her the strength to walk down the aisle seven months after being read the last rites.
She said: “I thought it might be best to go for a quiet wedding but then I thought that would be giving in to the terrorists so we decided not to change anything.”
Her defiance made me realise it wasn’t politicians or repentant paramilitaries who ended the Troubles. It was invincible working-class people like Donna Marie.
Get £5 off Diamonds in the Mud (RRP £20) with offer code XA9. Order online here: https://mirrorbooks.co.uk/collections/coming_soon/products/diamonds-in-the-mud
