97th Hillsborough victim to be awarded Freedom of Liverpool
Andrew Devine, who died in July, will be posthumously awarded the honour
The 97th victim of the Hillsborough tragedy, Andrew Devine, has been nominated to receive the Freedom of Liverpool.
Andrew sadly passed away in July this year due to complications resulting from life-changing injuries following the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in April 1989.
Andrews’s name will join the other 96 victims of the tragedy, who were posthumously awarded the city’s freedom in September 2016.
Screenwriting legend Jimmy McGovern has also been nominated for the civic honour.
Jimmy’s nomination is in tribute to his multi-award winning career, having famously created TV dramas such as Hillsborough, Cracker, The Lakes, The Street, The Accused, Moving On and most recently in June this year with Time, starring Stephen Graham and Sean Bean, which was supported by the Liverpool City Region Film Production Fund.
Andrew and Jimmy’s nomination, along with one for the Y.M.C.A, will be heard in Liverpool Town Hall at a Full Council meeting on Wednesday, December 8th.
Jimmy’s nomination cites his unrivalled contribution to British TV, Film and Theatre over the past 40 years in a wide-ranging career, as a writer, co-writer and producer, that also includes the launch of the Channel 4 soap Brookside in 1982, the 1994 film Priest, and the 2007 slavery play, King Cotton, which was commissioned for Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture.
The 72-year-old grandfather-of-four, and lifelong Liverpool FC fan, is also cited for placing the pursuit of truth and justice at the heart of his writing, most famously 25 years ago in the 1996 docu-drama Hillsborough.
The ITV programme examined the build-up and fall out from Britain’s worst footballing tragedy in which 97 people were wrongfully killed at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final. The BAFTA-winning drama is heralded as the catalyst for the victims’ families pursuit to successfully overturn the findings of the original inquest.
Jimmy’s passion to explore faults in society and the legal system has continued throughout his career, as portrayed in the BAFTA-nominated 1999 drama, Dockers, about the Liverpool dockers strike, and was again on display in the recent drama Anthony, which reimagined the life of murdered black teenager Anthony Walker.
Once the nomination is accepted by Full Council, Jimmy will then be invited to accept his Freedom of Liverpool next year.
At that special occasion he will be formally presented with the honorary title, and will join a roster of famous honorary “Freemen” such as: The Beatles; the Merseybeat poets Roger McGough, Adrian Henri and Brain Patten; entertainers such as Sir Ken Dodd, Roy Castle and Gerry Marsden; footballing giants like Sir Kenny Dalglish and Bob Paisley, businessman such as the founder the Littlewoods Empire and former Chairman of Everton FC, Sir John Moores and, most poignantly, the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.
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