Editing Simon Heffer (section)

==Hillsborough comments==
Heffer said in 2012 that he wrote the first draft of a ''[[The Spectator|Spectator]]'' editorial in 2004 regarding the death of [[Kenneth Bigley]], which said in part:
{{blockquote|The extreme reaction to Mr Bigley's murder is fed by the fact that he was a Liverpudlian. [[Liverpool]] is a handsome city with a tribal sense of community. A combination of economic misfortune – its docks were, fundamentally, on the wrong side of England when Britain entered what is now the European Union – and an excessive predilection for welfarism have created a peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche among many Liverpudlians. They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it. ... They cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society. The deaths of more than 50 [[Liverpool F.C.|Liverpool]] football supporters [[Hillsborough disaster|at Hillsborough in 1989]] was undeniably a greater tragedy than the single death, however horrible, of Mr Bigley; but that is no excuse for Liverpool's failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon. The police became a convenient [[scapegoat]], and ''[[The Sun (United Kingdom)|The Sun]]'' newspaper a whipping-boy for daring, albeit in a tasteless fashion, to hint at the wider causes of the incident.<ref>{{cite magazine |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Bigley's fate |url=http://www.spectator.co.uk/2004/10/bigleys-fate/ |magazine=The Spectator |location=London |publisher=Press Holdings |date=16 October 2004 |access-date=27 April 2016}}</ref>}}
These comments (sometimes incorrectly attributed to the then-editor of the ''Spectator'', [[Boris Johnson]]) were widely circulated following the April 2016 verdict by [[Hillsborough disaster#Second hearing|the Hillsborough inquest's second hearing]] proving [[unlawful killing]] of the 96 dead at Hillsborough.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Doré|first1=Louis|title=The truth about that awful Boris Johnson 'quote' on Hillsborough|url=http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-that-awful-alleged-boris-johnson-quote-on-hillsborough--Z1SY2Me2WW|access-date=29 April 2016|work=indy100|date=26 April 2016|archive-date=29 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429090744/http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-that-awful-alleged-boris-johnson-quote-on-hillsborough--Z1SY2Me2WW}}</ref> Johnson apologised at the time of the publication, saying: "That was a lie that unfortunately and very, very regrettably got picked up in a leader in the ''Spectator'' in 2004, which I was then editing."<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Hillsborough: Boris Johnson apologises for slurs in 2004 Spectator article |url=http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/hillsborough-boris-johnson-apologises-slurs-3334849 |newspaper=Liverpool Echo |date=13 September 2012 |access-date=27 April 2016}}</ref>