The Race for the Narrative

This is the text of the talk David Standard gave at CORLA’s Litigation at Sunset event on 16 September 2026, in a session on disaster litigation alongside a keynote from Michael Mansfield KC, lightly edited for publication.

Four days after the Hillsborough disaster, the Sun announced on its front page, across more than four million copies, in large bold letters: “The Truth”.

Underneath, it claimed some fans had picked the pockets of victims, urinated on the police and beaten up an officer giving the kiss of life.

The news agency behind the story told the Evening Standard that the allegations were made “unsolicited, by ranking officers in the South Yorkshire force to three different experienced senior journalists.”

It wasn’t one stray rumour. The Police Federation, with the Chief Constable’s informal support, set out to publicise its version of events.

On the morning the Sun’s front page appeared, the secretary of the South Yorkshire Police Federation told a meeting that “putting our side of the story over to the press and media” was his priority.

None of the allegations were true.

And that was four days later. The briefing by the police had begun within hours of the disaster, while families were still identifying their loved ones.

I’m not a lawyer. I do PR and communications. For twenty years, at both Irwin Mitchell and Leigh Day, my job was to stand between victims of disasters big and small and the press, to give them a voice or protect them from intrusion.

So here is what victims need in those days, weeks and months immediately after disaster.

A voice. Someone between them and the media onslaught. Someone who knows the rules the press plays by and whom to trust.

And someone keeping a record of who came, what was said, and what was promised.

When a disaster strikes, those responsible think about their reputation from the first moment.

The victims do not. They are burying someone, or at a hospital bedside. Most of them want to avoid the spotlight altogether.

But the narrative is the first thing on the minds of those with everything to lose, and it’s critical to the media.

The first statements, on or off the record, shape perception. I call it the race for the narrative.

And those responsible for tragedies are nearly always the winners of the first lap, because for a while they’re the only ones in the race. With Social Media, this doesn’t change; it just makes the need more urgent, and there are numerous more races to be run.

That narrative doesn’t stay in the newspapers or on these platforms.

It hardens into public opinion and seeps into a disaster’s history.

So, by the time lawyers are instructed, they don’t inherit a clean slate. They inherit a story written while their clients were grieving.

This is nothing new.

Aberfan, 1966. A coal tip engulfed a village school and killed a hundred and sixteen children. One month later, the Sunday Mirror’s front page branded the village with “quarrels and greed” over the disaster fund.

The headline drowned out the village’s own voices, and a row over money became part of Aberfan’s story.

The Post Office. When an independent report set out bugs in Horizon in 2013, the strategy, in the communications director’s own words, was to “contain coverage”. It lasted “little over twelve hours”. He called that “highly satisfactory”.

Infected blood. More than thirty thousand infected, more than three thousand dead. In 1983 a health minister’s press release said there was “no conclusive proof” that AIDS could be transmitted in blood or blood products.

The department’s own advice at the time said it was likely. The inquiry called that line indefensible. It gave false reassurance.

Grenfell. Twelve days after the fire, the panel maker said: “Our product is one component in the overall cladding system; we don’t control the overall system or its compliance.”

Seven years later, the inquiry found “systematic dishonesty” among the firms that made the panels and insulation, and that this panel maker had kept selling its product on a fire safety claim “that it knew to be false.”

So what links them? In each of these cases, the public line ran against facts the institutions under scrutiny already held. Hillsborough’s match commander knew police had opened the gate, yet told the FA the fans had forced it. The Post Office knew its system had bugs. The government knew the blood carried a real risk. The panel maker knew its safety claim was false.

Not one of them was racing to discover what happened. They were racing to bury what they already knew.

The victims and their families were right. Time after time. And it took years, sometimes decades, to prove it.

So here is the gap. In the first three days after a disaster, victims have no independent voice by default. And it isn’t only a voice they need. It’s a buffer against a media frenzy that hits them at the worst time in their lives. Councils coordinate welfare. Individuals and charities help. But no one represents the families in this fight for truth.

Lawyers can only act once they’re instructed. But the need for every kind of support is there from day one.

There is now an Independent Public Advocate, but she can’t act for a disaster’s victims until the Justice Secretary declares a major incident in writing, and then chooses to send her.

The state decides when independent help begins, and the state is often the party under scrutiny.

And her role is limited. She has no power to compel disclosure. Nobody has an enforceable right to her help. And her statute gives her no express role with the media.

So who fills the gap? It’s difficult to suggest a remedy given the limitations on lawyers to approach.

In the first three days, the families need a voice that speaks for them collectively, and a body that can lobby for them. An association can do both, if it is built.

So let me speculate. First, can we find that voice collectively? A panel of member firms and communications people, on call, alongside the Independent Public Advocate.

Today the Advocate waits for a minister to declare a major incident and send her. But when the state could be in the dock, the state should not hold the keys to the victims’ advocate.

The emergency services already declare major incidents at the scene, under their own joint doctrine.

Let that declaration deploy the Advocate automatically. The ‘victim’s panel’s job on day one would not be to speculate about what happened. It’s to be the buffer. To stand between the families and media intrusion whilst enabling the media to do their job uncovering the truth. To stop the story being told too soon and to correct false claims.

Second, to lobby for victims’ rights. The Hillsborough Law bill is in the Lords now. Committee stage starts next month. It needs a coordinated proposal aimed squarely at what victims of disasters need in those first three days.

Widen the duty of candour. As drafted, it reaches public bodies, their direct contractors and firms with health and safety duties to the public. Whether it reaches a manufacturer that sold panels into the supply chain on a claim it knew to be false is, at best, arguable. It should not be arguable.

Keep a record for the families. Those responsible start theirs on the day: every statement, every briefing, every line to take.

The families should have one too, from day one: who said what, to whom, and when.

And one rule, written down: the families are told first.

Air crash law, in America and here, already says families should hear the investigators’ findings before the public does. No law says that for a football ground, a tower block or a Post Office counter.

And not every disaster has a day one. Infected blood and the Post Office came to light slowly, over years. That is where a wider duty of candour should do the work: the moment an institution learns its own facts are wrong, the families should be told the truth.

That is the bit that’s missing: the first three days, and the first days after the truth comes out.