Hillsborough justice campaigner dies of cancer

Hillsborough justice campaigner Anne Williams has died after fighting cancer.

Williams, 62, whose 15-year-old son, Kevin, died at Hillsborough, was one of the loudest voices throughout the campaigners’ efforts for justice.

It was her fight to get her son’s inquest verdict of accidental death overturned that is credited with leading to fresh hearings for all 96 supporters who died.

She defied doctors’ expectations to attend her last public appearance at the Hillsborough memorial service at Anfield on Monday.

Williams was diagnosed with terminal cancer in October but, despite her ill-health, she carried on her campaign and attended a hearing at London’s Royal Courts of Justice in December when the original inquest verdicts were quashed.

Speaking after the historic hearing, which she attended in a wheelchair, she thanked Attorney General Dominic Grieve for being “a man of his word” in pushing for the new inquests.

“I’d like a corporate manslaughter verdict in the inquest, it’s the least for what they have done,” she said. “God willing, I will be here, it has been a long wait to see justice.”

Referring to the cover-up that shifted blame away from the authorities and on to the victims, she said: “I can’t forgive them the extremes they went to. Why didn’t they just give us the truth?”

She missed out on seeing the start of the new inquest process by a week as a pre-inquest hearing will be held in London next Thursday to decide the timing and location for the new inquests.

Williams was an early chairman of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and later independently established Hope For Hillsborough (For Justice) in an effort to secure a fresh inquest into her son’s death.

On three separate occasions, an appeal was made to the incumbent attorney general for a new inquest, only to be rebuffed three times. The European Court of Human Rights rejected the case in 2009.