IAN HERBERT: First Hillsborough now the Post Office. Yet again, those in power fail to see scandalous injustice

It’s no consolation, of course, that some of the most scandalous injustices of modern times have generated some of the most searing moments of drama-documentary television.

It was a Thursday night in December 1996 when ITV broadcast Jimmy McGovern’s Hillsborough - conveying, amongst so much else, the scene in a Sheffield street, where Trevor and Jenni Hicks wave off their daughters, Sarah and Vicki, to the Leppings Lane stand, never to see them again. Heartbreaking. Unforgettable.

It was the journalism which gave that film its greatest significance. McGovern had asked a brilliant World in Action investigative journalist, Katy Jones, to work with him. She found new witnesses, including a video technician, Roger Houldsworth, on duty in the police control box at the ground on the day of Liverpool’s FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest.

Houldsworth said he had witnessed, through one of the police’s own video cameras, trained on the stands, that the Leppings Lane pens were already full when senior officers catastrophically decided to let another 2,000 people into the ground.

Footage from that video camera mysteriously disappeared before the public inquiry into the disaster, chaired by Lord Justice Taylor, where police said it had not been working properly and was little used on the day. This, Houldsworth’s evidence proved, was a blatant lie.

Much like Fujitsu whistleblower Richard Roll, in the Mr Bates v the Post Office case, Houldsworth shied away from publicity. Much like Alan Bates himself, Hicks became the leader who calmly and methodically pursued the authorities. Much like the Post Office’s Angela van den Bogerd ignoring the evidence of systemic failure placed before her, South Yorkshire chief constable, Peter