Anne Williams was born on the 6th of February 1951 and would come into the public spotlight aged 39 after her 15 year old son was killed at a football match. The mother of three from Formby, Liverpool worked part time in a newsagents, but in her fight for justice she became a de facto expert in the workings of the British and European legal systems. She had no legal training but to hear her speak you would have thought she had been practising law for years. With the other families of the 96 people who died at Hillsborough, the worst stadium-related disaster in British history, she levelled several legal attacks at the first Hillsborough inquest, questioning the credibility of its findings. Being refused a judicial review of the coroner's rulings in 1993, she then presented her case to four Attorney Generals, was turned down three times, and in 2009 an application to the European Court of Human Rights was rejected as out of time.
However Anne and the other families fought with remarkable implacability and unity against the police campaign, the flawed inquest and other legal processes that had left not one person or organisation accountable for 96 people dying at a football match. She thankfully lived long enough to savour the day the inquest was quashed in a damning judgment of the high court on 19 December 2012, including the ruling that the 3.15pm cut-off was "not sustainable". To see the truth about the disaster fully established, with the report of the Hillsborough independent panel chaired by James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool, confirming the facts she had known all along and refused to see denied changed everything for Anne. In its wake, she resubmitted her case to the Attorney General.
By the time she was brought to the High Court in her wheelchair, to see the original inquest verdict of accidental death quashed, she was suffering from terminal cancer,
Anne had two other children, Michael and Sara, and three grandchildren, and knew how much the disaster affected the siblings and wider family. She went to live in a hospice before moving in with her brother, Danny, and his wife Sandra, for whose care she told friends she was very grateful. Stricken by the cancer, pale and frail, Anne was determined to be at the Strand, where she arrived at the court in a wheelchair, accompanied by Danny.
Anne sadly died of cancer at the age of 62 on 18 April 2013
In December 2013, in honour of her long campaigning for justice for her son Kevin and all the victims of Hillsborough, she was posthumously awarded the Helen Rollanson Award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards. The honour was presented to her brother Danny, son Michael and daughter Sara by Alan Hansen who had played for Liverpool on the day of the tragedy. She received a standing ovation from the gathered crowd who obviously recognised her as a shining example: an everyday person embodying the extraordinary power and depth of human love.
Finally, in April 2016, Liverpool fans were exonerated of any blame in the disaster at Hillsborough.
see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2020/11/a-liverpool-exemplar-alfred-waterhouse.html
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