It is hard not to share the Hillsborough families' sense that events continually conspire against them.

Appalling enough to lose a loved one in Britain's worst soccer stadium disaster.

Bad enough to have to suffer months and years in the public spotlight as you fight to cope with your loss.

But when you believe those largely responsible for the tragedy have eluded justice, the anguish must be double.

The memorial to the dead at Anfield, Liverpool

The Hillsborough families are often accused of allowing obsessive grief to cloud their judgement.

Why not put the past behind them and let the wounds heal?

Surely no disaster has been more investigated, analysed and reported upon?

And was it not enough that the Taylor Report confirmed their passionately held view - that it was largely failings by South Yorkshire police which set in chain the events that led to the Hillsborough?

The families are used to all this. They wearily maintain that there IS evidence of criminal conduct, that such evidence has been suppressed and that individual officers should be held accountable for what went wrong.

That belief has driven their campaign ever since the Crown Prosecution Service decided a case could not be mounted, and - more pertinently - the Hillsborough inquest returned a verdict of accident deaths on the victims.

The families of victims lobbied Jack Straw

The campaigners have tried every door in their efforts to open up the issue of criminal liaibility.

They lobbied Jack Straw. They secured a "scrutiny" of the evidence by Lord Justice Stewart Smith - but no subsequent prosecution.

They engaged the support of TV dramatist Jimmy McGovern who produced a powerful, sympathetic account of their experience.

They have held fund-raising concerts and launched a Charter, signed by 96 prominent supporters, calling for justice for the victims' families.

While doing all this they have watched as South Yorkshire police officers have pursued their own case for compensation through the courts.

Some have already won settlements for the post-traumatic stress they suffered dealing with the tragedy.

Four others, less closely involved, have fought their employers to the House of Lords and await a decision which might open the gates for 17 more of their colleagues.

Double standards claim

No relative of the victims who was not in - or literally just outside the stadium - on the day of the disaster has won compensation, no matter what they saw or heard on radio and TV that day.

Some have already won settlements for the post-traumatic stress they suffered dealing with the tragedy. Four others, less closely involved, have fought their employers to the House of Lords.

The Hillsborough families say double standards are being applied.

Police officers, they argue, choose their careers, aware that they may be exposed to death and tragedy. They are trained to cope with it.

The Hillsborough families did not choose to be exposed to such suffering, least of all when it involved their own loved ones.

Nothing to hide

The final insult - as far as the families are concerned - was the appointment as Chief Constable of Merseyside of a former South Yorkshire police officer.

Norman Bettison has declared he has nothing to hide about his role after Hillsborough and is willing to meet the families. They have so far rejected any meeting with him that is not open, at least to the Press.

Next Monday, the Hillsborough families return to court in Leeds, determined to press on with a private prosecution of two of the senior officers who were on duty during the tragedy.

They hope the magistrate will finally set a date for a trial in the New Year.

But there lurks the possibility that the Crown Prosecution Service may take over the case and terminate it. Or that, at some stage before a trial, the defence may seek a ruling that the prosecution is an abuse of process.

Though they have always sought to try another door whenever they have been thwarted, the number of doors left to knock on are surely diminishing.