A mother’s legacy

Yet the unforgivable scale of these failings – and subsequent cover-up by South Yorkshire Police – would not have been established without the tenacity and perseverance of individuals like Mrs Williams who refused to be silenced by a legal system which paid scant regard to the disaster’s victims and their grieving relatives.

It was particularly poignant that she died just days after attending an emotional memorial 
service to mark the disaster’s 24th anniversary, and in spite of the ravages of terminal cancer.

This defiance embodied the campaigner’s spirit and it is a desperately sad refection of the legal process that betrayed Anne Williams, a mother who simply wanted to know the truth about her son’s death and who was cruelly denied this most basic of rights.