After the Hillsborough disaster decision, a final reckoning awaits

A conclusion of unlawful killing was welcomed by the friends and family of the Hillsborough 96. Now they await a criminal investigation

Floral tributes outside Hillsborough the morning after the disaster (PA)

They asked the people who had waited 27 years for justice to form a long queue in a bitter wind on Tuesday morning. There was a calmness and a patience about the steady procession into the court building, where they heard a jury forewoman declare that their loved ones had been unlawfully killed at Hillsborough. Patience and forbearance is something they have grown accustomed to.

Most striking, when the same individuals emerged into the sunshine, to digest the inquest verdict - which found catastrophic police failings on that day in 1989 and no evidence of supporters’ culpability that the South Yorkshire force had so perniciously tried to fabricate – was their utter lack of hatred.

Those families had a very good reason to be vituperative about David Duckenfield, the Hillsborough match commander who viciously claimed that supporters had charged a gate, which he had ordered opened, and killed their own. But vengeance was not in their vocabulary, and they won the day twice over because of that.

They do deserve a fuller vindication, though. Brutal though the Duckenfield lie proved to be, the orchestrated campaign to doctor the statements of those who survived in the Leppings Lane terrace, and of the junior officers who witnessed the unfolding horror, was just as bad.

After the inquest verdict – which is limited to why the 96 who lost their lives died that day– comes the criminal investigation, Operation Resolve, which the Independent Police Complaints Commission will conclude a year from now.

The families and wider world need a full exposition of the cover-up – the cowardly, spiteful, life-changing actions of those in the South Yorkshire police force who thought they could deflect blame. A reckoning awaits.