Hillsborough Untold: Aftermath of a disaster

by Norman Bettison

  One of the projects that I had in train at that time was a review of all Headquarters posts to see which might be civilianised. This was a Home Office requirement arising out of the Conservative government’s ‘Three Es’ programme. The big idea, in the ’80s, was that public services should mimic private industry by reviewing their input costs (mainly people) against the ‘three Es’ of economy, effectiveness and efficiency. Working with me on that project was a bright young Inspector from the Research Department in the force, Clive Davis. I told Mr Davis, sometime after my meeting with Mr Anderson, that I would now be tied up for a few weeks on Hillsborough matters. I asked him to get on with the review of all departments apart from the Radio Control Room at Headquarters, where I had some work in place which I would pick up on my return from this new task. That was my first and, as far as I recall, only conversation with Mr Davis about the force response to the disaster. It was not followed up with any wider briefing to which I invited Mr Davis.

  The fourth-floor conference room was about fifteen metres by eight. It had narrow windows at one of the short ends with an unprepossessing view of a local brewery. The smell of the hops sometimes permeated the walls. It had a number of interlocking tables that were usually arranged as a four-sided meeting facility with an island of space in the middle in the style of a G20 gathering (without the national flags). When I walked into the room that was to be my hermitage for the next few weeks, I found that the tables had been pushed together to form a solid working surface in the middle of the room, with no island of space at their core. Most of the meeting chairs were arranged against the walls of the room with only a few dotted, randomly, around the tables.

  Dominating the working surface was a scroll of paper like a miniature roll of wallpaper. It was rolled out, as if waiting to be pasted, across the work surface. I knew what this was – I had seen them before as an operational Detective. It was an ANACAPA chart. Today, if an investigator wishes to capture a complex and integrated series of events and facts so that they can be analysed and understood chronologically, then they would turn to computer software. This was 1989. The way we did it then was to draw a timeline on a scroll of paper and write, in long hand, who did what, when, where and with whom, across the scroll. We used the process of ANACAPA, a long-forgotten acronym if ever I knew its meaning at all, to assist in all major inquiries. If someone was killed in the drawing room with a piece of lead piping, then the cop in charge would roll out the ANACAPA chart and start writing about where the lead piping was last seen, who had it and who can give that evidence. The more complex the investigation, the longer the piece of paper needed to be.

  Apparently Detective Superintendent Graham McKay, who was the first senior Detective on scene at Hillsborough, and who had harboured the thought for a day or so that he might have to undertake a criminal investigation, had tasked a Detective Sergeant, Peter Carr, with the job of creating an ANACAPA chart. Of course, the responsibility for investigation was subsequently passed to West Midlands and they would probably do one of their own. But, Peter Carr’s early work, drawing on the accounts of anyone so far asked to provide one, was the starting point for our newly defined task.

  Already present in the fourth-floor conference room, and with a head-start on me, were Brian Mole and a Chief Inspector from the Hillsborough Division, David Beal. We would be joined shortly by other middle-ranking officers from other divisions around the force. We had not yet been joined by Terry Wain, who would complete the team and the coverage of the force. Sharing out, across the force, the burden of any extraordinary task was a common feature of resourcing in those days.

  Mr Mole was in charge on my first day in the conference room. He and David Beal were well on with the work of a review of the planning for the event. They were, though, marking their own homework, for the same two officers had been heavily involved in the operational planning of all major events at Hillsborough Division, and had put together and signed off the operational order for the fateful semi-final. It was their operational order that was handed over to Mr Duckenfield, who did not have sufficient time or experience to revise it or to produce one of his own.

  I believe that Brian Mole’s closeness to the event planning might have been the genesis for inviting Terry Wain to head up the team. No one ever told me that it was the case. Whilst he was the same rank as Brian Mole, and with much less experience of football and Hillsborough in particular, Mr Wain was assigned to oversee the task. I think someone had noticed, wisely, that the account that was to be furnished for our lawyers, if it came directly through Brian Mole, might not be entirely objective. If that is the case, then the choice of overseer was inspired. Terry Wain was the Father of the House, amongst the oldest, if not the longest-serving, of Chief Superintendents. He is a blunt Yorkshireman who had a reputation for not suffering fools gladly. He was a task master. He had been a long-standing Detective in previous ranks but he had not adopted any of the short-cut, slick, sometimes maverick, ways of many 1980s Detectives. He would doggedly stick to any task given to him through to completion – so long as the task was an honest one. The thought that Terry Wain might ever be involved in connivance or conspiracy is risible. He was amongst the straightest, but also most strong-willed and conservative, of senior officers that I encountered in forty years of policing. When Mr Wain took over as head of the post-disaster inquiry, the team was complete.

  An early task, prior to a first meeting with lawyers on the forthcoming Wednesday, was to create a document under six headings, which had been provided by Peter Metcalf. Mr Metcalf was a senior partner in the West Yorkshire law firm Hammond Suddards. He and his firm specialised in public inquiry representation and public indemnity litigation. He had some knowledge about how Cleveland Police had responded in an earlier public inquiry about child abuse.

  I am sure that Peter Wright, the South Yorkshire Chief Constable, had not picked out Hammond Suddards, or Peter Metcalf, from the Yellow Pages. I suspect he had not picked them at all. Any forensic scrutiny of the Hillsborough disaster would have consequences for David Duckenfield, and other individuals who were in command; for the force as a whole; for the South Yorkshire Police Authority, which set and raised a budget locally and held the force to account in spending it; and also for the Police Authority’s insurers. At the end of that long line of interested parties, it would be the insurers who would eventually meet any costs arising from litigation. The insurers, therefore, had a significant influence over the choice of lawyers.

  In the first few days that followed the terrible disaster, some things that were done in the name of South Yorkshire Police were wrong. Three of them are seared into the memory of anyone who cares about the reputation of the ninety-six innocent victims of the disaster and of Liverpool football fans in general.

  The first was David Duckenfield’s scandalous lie about the opening of the gate. The second was the eagerness of a couple of police officers to tell salacious and second-hand stories, in a bar on the night of the disaster, which found their way into the press in the immediate aftermath. That was inglorious. The third was the press interviews given by a Constable who was an elected trade union representative. He hadn’t been present at the tragedy but had listened to his junior colleagues who had. His interviews gave what is regarded to be an exaggerated description of the levels of drunkenness amongst the fans.

  As soon as the Chief Constable learned of these three indiscretions he immediately and publicly disassociated himself and the force from those comments. He instructed junior officers to desist from making any comment to the press. Unfortunately, Mr Wright’s corrections did not receive sufficient amplification to be heard above the noise created by the Sun headlines.

  There was a fourth mistake which was, by comparison, simply ill thought through or overly pragmatic. There was a decision taken somewhere between the offices of the Chief Constable and the South Yorkshire Police Authority to retain lawyers approved and briefed by the authority’s insurers to represent the interests of the for
ce as a whole. This created the potential for defensiveness when lawyers subsequently convinced everyone involved that they could also represent the individual interests of David Duckenfield and others at the epicentre of the disaster. These various parties – the Chief Constable, the at-risk officers and the underwriting insurer – may not always have had the same interests. And so it has proved.

  It is these four actions directly and indirectly that serve, even now, to cause the name of South Yorkshire Police to be sullied. But, just as a couple of swallows don’t make a summer, these four regrettable actions do not a conspiracy make.

  Peter Metcalf would probably not recognise any tension between his servicing of the Municipal Mutual Insurance (MMI) company in tandem with his named client, the Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police. He seemed to me a professional and honourable man who would take instructions from his principal client and who would carry out those instructions in a proper manner. He was at the same time, though, having meetings in the margins with a man called Ken Holmes, who would be rightly concerned on behalf of his employer, MMI, about the costs of representation and the potential for multi-million-pound litigation claims.

  MMI, which was incorporated in 1903 to provide insurance to local authorities and other public bodies, would become insolvent in 1993, due to suffering substantial losses in the years 1990–92. The reported £19.6 million compensation arising from Hillsborough fell to MMI during that time. The company, therefore, had every reason to be bothered about who was representing their interests in the aftermath of the disaster.

  Whilst Peter Metcalf did nothing substantive, in my assessment, to compromise the interests of his named client in favour of the purse holder, and whilst the insurers’ written instructions told lawyers to ignore the potential for future claims in representing the force, there was a tone from the first meeting with counsel, on 26 April, right through to the final submission to the Taylor Inquiry on 17 July 1989, that was defensive. David Duckenfield would need to defend his individual position for sure. The insurers, in a proper manner, would need to mitigate their potential losses. But the Chief Constable might have wanted to say something statesmanlike that may not coincide with the interests of others who were now roped together by this decision to employ common representation.

  I have to say that I did not have this thought at the time. Furthermore, I did not witness anyone doing anything that was malfeasant in order to protect the interests of any of those fellow travellers. It is only natural to have reflected upon why South Yorkshire Police, as a body, has been so misunderstood by those who are most aggrieved and hurt by the actions of the people who have represented the force. Those are four things, all occurring in the space of a few days following the disaster, that might individually and collectively help to explain the source of the rancour.

  The first meeting with the lawyers, to which the Wain team were invited, was to be on Wednesday 26 April. There had been an early and ongoing dialogue between Peter Metcalf and the Deputy Chief Constable ever since Mr Metcalf’s engagement in the middle of the previous week. Peter Hayes, the deputy, is a precise and painstaking man. His natural tendency is towards the intellectual rather than to the intuitive. His first degree is in law. Given his background, and his role as Deputy Chief Constable, it was no surprise that he took a lead with lawyers and oversaw the work of the Wain team. Peter Wright had tasked him to do that. The two Peters met on the evening of the disaster and it was agreed that the Chief Constable would deal with all public-facing matters and the politics that would obviously follow. Whilst Peter Hayes would deal, in his cerebral and organised way, with meeting the requirements of the inquiries, inquests and other formal proceedings that might ensue.

  Peter Metcalf had sent to Peter Hayes, on 20 April, six headings under which he needed more information in order to prepare an opening submission to the Taylor Inquiry. First, the force, its history and organisation; second, the general responsibilities that fall to the police for policing sporting events; third, the history of the force approach to such operations and any standing instructions; fourth, the specific planning for the 15 April semi-final; fifth, the details of the staffing, deployment and organisation for the event; sixth, the events which occurred, to be drawn from police officer accounts. It was this shopping list from the lawyers that caused the Chief Officers to realise, after standing down Mr McKay’s investigation team, that they needed a resource to fulfil this and all future requirements of the lawyers. It precipitated my meeting in Mr Anderson’s office, when I was assigned to the task.

  It was assumed by Peter Metcalf that the sixth requirement would probably not be available in time for the 26 April meeting, but he hoped the other five could be. In fact, the sixth requirement, albeit a narrow, police-only perspective on the events that occurred on that day, was substantially available through the work that had been done by DS Peter Carr using his ANACAPA chart. The work was well underway on all six areas before Mr Wain took over the leadership of the task. Brian Mole, already au fait with the planning of the event and by now familiar with DS Carr’s early work, did most of the work either directly, or indirectly through tasking some research here and there. I was given lots of these mini tasks but was given, in my own right, a quite straightforward job – to draft a piece that met the first of Peter Metcalf’s tasks – an account that would explain to the uninitiated the structure and organisation of a police force, and South Yorkshire Police in particular. It took me less than a day. I was carrying out ancillary work and undertaking specific tasks from Mr Mole elsewhere. The working routine quickly settled into a pattern of ten to twelve hours each day, six days per week.

  With section one of the report for the lawyers already in the bag, I broached with Mr Wain, on his first Monday in charge, the question of my day release commitment to the Sheffield Hallam University. I had worked for Mr Wain before so I knew there was unlikely to be any misunderstanding on his part about my commitment to the task in hand, but I also knew that it would be untenable, given what faced us, to take every Monday off. I asked if I might be allowed to go that afternoon to explain the situation and absent myself from the programme temporarily. He agreed.

  The reason I felt it important to explain in person is that I had been struck by a warning given to all students by the course leader in our first week on the programme back in the autumn of 1988. He told us of a typical 25 per cent attrition rate and urged us to ensure continued support from our employers for day release. He correctly pointed out that we would all consider ourselves to be in critical jobs and informed us that he was unimpressed by any special pleading regarding professional commitments as an excuse for being unable to complete a project or the programme as a whole. If I was to successfully complete this postgraduate course, then it seemed important that I should explain myself, in person, at the campus. 24 April 1989 is the last time that I attended the university until very near the end of the spring/summer term.

  I told all and sundry, tutors and fellow students alike, of my recent tasking. Not boasting, as was implied by a witness who was to give evidence about this day, twenty-six years later. I did say that I had been seconded to a team which would pull together evidence for the forthcoming public inquiry, which was due to start in three weeks. I did not say, as it is alleged, that I had been tasked to concoct a story to put the blame for the disaster onto the drunken Liverpool fans.

  John Barry was a fellow student, although I could not recall him when he became prominent, after a round of television interviews, in October 2012. He was a civil servant with the Manpower Services Commission, which had a headquarters in Sheffield. I think his department was paying for one or two people to go through the MBA programme at Sheffield Hallam University. I had nothing in common with John Barry except the business course and, it transpires, our attendance at the same football match. Mr Barry had been at the Hillsborough semi-final and, on his own testimony, he was traumatised, and remains traumatised to this day, by what he saw.

  He a
lleges that I spoke to him in the Fleur de Lys pub after a day at university together. Given that he was absent, suffering the effects of shock trauma, on Monday 17 April, and given that I was absent for the remainder, or majority, of the term after 24 April, it could only have been on that day that a conversation, if there was one between us, took place.

  He said that I told him, in a boastful way, that I had been selected to join an important team that was looking at the disaster. Without the boast and hyperbole that sounds like one of a number of conversations that I had on that day. Mr Barry goes on to testify that I made an announcement, for there was no two-way interaction, no contextual conversation and no response from him, just, he says, my outburst at the bar of the Fleur de Lys as we collected our drinks at the same time. I volunteered, he says, that my specific task was to concoct a story that all the Liverpool fans were drunk and that we were afraid that they were going to break down the gates so that is the reason we opened them. Leaving aside that there is not one scrap of evidence that I ever did any such thing, and leaving aside my denial that I used such foolish words, Mr Barry is also in some difficulty with his timings.

  He says that this pronouncement definitely did not take place on 24 April, which would fit with my recollections of widespread conversations on the theme of my recent tasking. Mr Barry says it happened within a week or two after 8 May. The reason that 8 May is so central to his account is that he was seen by the independent West Midlands Police investigators on that day. They took a statement from him about what he had witnessed in the lead-up to, and the aftermath of, the disaster. Mr Barry had been sitting directly above the site of the crush. Any pro-forma for statement takers has the suggested prompt ‘Is there anything else you want to add about this incident?’ Unless Mr Barry had a good reason for withholding his very serious allegation about me from the Detectives who were undertaking the formal investigation, then he is obliged to place the occasion of my alleged disclosure sometime after his interview with West Midlands Police. I was not in a position to have any conversation with Mr Barry after 8 May because I was not attending university. Furthermore, my work with Mr Wain was completed and handed to lawyers by 9 May. For what it is worth, it isn’t likely that I would have been speaking in the future tense about a task that had already been completed. Mr Barry is mistaken.