Songfacts®:

• In 1989 a human crush occurred during the British FA Cup semi final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, which resulted in the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans. The incident, which took place at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, became known as the Hillsborough disaster. In the days and weeks following the tragic event, false stories appeared in the press suggesting that hooliganism and drinking by Liverpool supporters were the root causes of the disaster. A Hillsborough Independent Panel was formed to review all evidence and its report published in 2012 concluded that no Liverpool fans were responsible for the disaster, and up to 41 lives could potentially have been saved if the response of the emergency services had been swifter. Finally, public anger over the actions of the South Yorkshire Police force resulted in six people being finally charged with various offenses in June 2017.
  
  Manic's bass player Nicky Wire wrote the lyrics to this track inspired by the tragic event and the cover up by various people in authority. Frontman James Dean Bradfield said of the track: "It's about the 'Justice For The Victims Of Hillsborough' campaign. That campaign fought the entire British establishment to get to the truth, and they finally got there with their ruling.
  
  When the ruling came out of the High Court, we were just about to do a gig at the Liverpool Echo Arena, and Nick had a day down on the waterfront where he just took loads of Polaroids and wrote loads of poetry, as he does. Nick wrote this song in its entirety. I think I'd gone home for tea with the family and by the time I got back, he'd done a guitar solo – which is a bit cheeky. When he gets into the flow of doing a song on his own, it does just flow."
• Nicky Wire told the BBC that the track is a celebration of the defiance and perseverance of those Liverpudlians who lost their loved ones in the Hillsborough disaster. It was inspired by a day on the Everything Must Go anniversary tour when Wire got up at sunrise to walk around Liverpool taking snaps with his Polaroid camera. He explained:
  
  "Sometimes you write a song of a specific moment and that day in particular being in Liverpool, getting up early, walking around the city in the sun and taking Polaroids, realizing all those things like Echo and the Bunnymen and The La's and all those filtered cultures that influenced you when you were young.
  
  It was as much about that as that sense of defiance in terms of Hillsborough and the way a group of people took on the establishment in Britain and through sheer intelligence and hard work actually defeated them. It's a truly staggering effort by the city itself and a group of people.
  
  So it's the story of the morning and how it fades into this celebratory gig that we did as well and if there is a symbol of defiance on the record that is part of it."
• The band had visited the tragedy before. In 1997, the Manics performed at the Hillsborough Justice Concert and the following year they were criticized by police for their This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours track about the incident "S.Y.M.M." (The title stands for "South Yorkshire Mass Murderer").