SIR – The (new) Hillsborough report will at first sight mystify many of today’s generation and perhaps cause them to wonder how it was that so many police would conspire together to protect themselves and divert the blame for the Hillsborough disaster onto the victims Only a few years before the disaster, the South Yorkshire Police (and many others) had been engaged in violent and long running battles with the National Union of Mineworkers.

As a consequence, it is my view, that the police came to see themselves (and were very much supported in their view by the Thatcher government) as ‘Soldiers of the Establishment’ in a class war.

By contrast, Liverpool under the Thatcher regime was a hot bed of working-class militancy. It was the days of Derek Hatton and ‘The Boys from the Black Stuff’ and ‘Gizza Job’.

So when the new standard bearers of the working class movement met the South Yorkshire Police, the blatant cover-up which followed, becomes easier to understand – but a national disgrace nonetheless.

It’s only taken 23 years, but perhaps some of the chickens of the Thatcher era are coming home to roost at last.

Christopher Hindle, Osterley Grove, Bradford