Hillsborough Untold: Aftermath of a disaster

by Norman Bettison

  On Thursday 13 September 2012, I made my last public statement about Hillsborough until now. I dictated it over the phone that morning whilst a passenger in the car driven by my wife, en route to our shortened weekend in Sussex. It was only ten lines long and it was expressed in language that could not be misinterpreted or misrepresented. Ironically, its purpose is generally misunderstood, although I don’t mind. It is referred to widely in the press as ‘Bettison’s apology for continuing to blame the fans’. If it serves that purpose for anyone who was genuinely upset by reading or, more likely, hearing an account about my previous comments, then so be it. I am pleased.

  It was intended, though, as a clarification and reinforcement of my core message in the previous text. The core message was that South Yorkshire Police, and others who had a crowd safety responsibility at Hillsborough, were to blame for the disaster. I was expressing regret not for mentioning the fans in my statement, for I did so only to absolve them from blame, but for the misunderstanding that has been an additional burden for some of the bereaved families to bear for a quarter of a century. Their apparent belief that I, and others who have a connection to South Yorkshire Police, continue to shrink from the truth.

  Prior to this book, these were my last words on the causes of the disaster. I stand by them.

  Let me speak very clearly. The fans of Liverpool Football Club were in no way to blame for the disaster that unfolded at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989. I formed this clear view on hearing all the evidence that was presented to the Taylor Inquiry, having sat through every day from its beginning, just four weeks after the tragedy, to its conclusion. The evidence was overwhelming. The police failed to control the situation, which ultimately led to the tragic deaths of ninety-six entirely innocent people. I can be no plainer than that and I am sorry if my earlier statement, intended to convey the same message, has caused further upset. My role was never to besmirch the fans. I did not do that. I am deeply sorry that impression and slight has lingered for twenty-three years.

  I usually like to drive but I was content, that day, to be driven by Gillian all the way to our hotel on the Sussex/Surrey border. It was in a village called Chiddingfold, which suffered, in 2012, from being a mobile phone blackspot. I received no calls once we had arrived at about 5 p.m. I watched no news on TV. We met our friends but there was no laughter. I sat and ruminated. I went to bed at ten. I was tired but did not sleep.

  My natural inclination, as a strategist and as someone with forty years’ operational experience, was to try to figure some way out of this terrible bind that I was in. It was surely just a question of formulating the right plan.

  I hadn’t yet received the district judge’s email, which was to arrive a couple of days later, which highlighted the political target on my back and which I seemed to have inadvertently, and clumsily, overpainted in even brighter colours. I hadn’t yet realised what I now know and which I am strangely at peace with: there are some forces in life that create just too great a current to swim against. The skill is in recognising them, conserving one’s energy, and allowing the current to take you to a point where a foothold is once again possible. That night I was staring at an unfamiliar painted wardrobe in an unfamiliar hotel room weighing up several different options that might lift the uncomfortable finger of suspicion from me. I didn’t yet realise that I was still swimming against the tide.

  CHAPTER 9

  IT’S NOT PERSONAL, IT’S JUST POLITICS

  15–24 October 2012

  As soon as I began to hear traffic on the busy A283 that passed beneath the hotel bedroom window, I got up and showered. If I had slept at all it was only fitfully. I felt numb but the shower was invigorating. I went downstairs alone to find breakfast and to get away from the feeling of being locked in an unfamiliar hotel room with only my locked-in and circular thoughts. I was surprised to discover the Saturday newspapers were already laid out on the bar beside the dining room. I easily found prominent stories in three of them that named me and a couple that carried my photograph. The Daily Mail had a double-page spread with a banner headline over my image that read: ‘The Masters of Cover-Up’.

  It must be a common experience for celebrities to sense the gaze of recognition from strangers even when engaged in pastimes away from their public performances. I guess that feels OK so long as the recognition arises from a positive or neutral predisposition. I wasn’t used to that phenomenon at all. It seemed, this weekend, as though everyone I met had already read the papers and recognised the guy from room six – You know, the one who was responsible for the Hillsborough disaster…

  I have discovered three truths, over these last few years, about media impact, particularly in the context of newspaper reports. Firstly, people hardly attend to anything unless it affects them personally or they identify a connection with the story. Secondly, people quickly forget a lot of what they read. Life is fast and the media output is vast these days. People don’t have the time or the motivation to remember. So far, so good for anyone who may wish to assert their right to be forgotten. The downside of this imperfect attention and memory is that the fragments that do stick in people’s remembrances are generally simplistic and exaggerated – probably as a justification for choosing to commit something to memory at all in this booming, buzzing world. Thirdly, therefore, where the media have been critical and, for me, since 12 September 2012, that has been a recurrent theme, then people tend to exaggerate the reason there might be for any criticism.

  A good friend of mine, an athlete, was jogging with her running partner sometime after this initial firestorm. Her pal, who is described as intelligent and well-read, said: ‘Your friend Norman Bettison is in a spot of bother, eh?’

  My friend asked: ‘Why, what do you think he’s supposed to have done?’

  ‘Well, he was the Chief Constable when all those people were killed at Hillsborough?’ she replied.

  ‘That was twenty odd years ago,’ she countered. ‘How old do you think he is?’ and carried on jogging.

  The young owner of the hotel brought me a pot of tea and I knew that he had seen the papers. He stared a little more intently than is normal or comfortable for the purpose of breakfast service. Of course it might just have been my paranoia for I have had to learn, since this time, to temper my reaction to being stared at. I had already decided on my course of action before the waiter’s stare; before I had seen the newspaper headlines; before I had even come downstairs. I had certainly resolved my next step before I tested it on the first of my friends to join me at the breakfast table.

  Vincent is a commercial lawyer. He listens carefully. He is wise and gives only considered responses. Furthermore, he is prepared to disagree, diplomatically, and will give his reasons why. He is always worth listening to. I told him that I had decided to seek to refer myself to the regulatory body that investigates the conduct of police officers. I couldn’t do it unilaterally, as my disciplinary authority was the West Yorkshire Police Authority, but I would ask for their permission to do so on Monday. I shared with Vincent the fact that my Chairman had told me that the Authority were playing it long and would meet next week to determine any action. I needed to do something more immediately to address the current trial, and judgement, by media.

  Vincent thought it a sensible option, pointing out that MPs do that all the time, though I was seeking neither his advice nor approbation on this occasion.

  After breakfast, Gillian and I headed for Goodwood. I had not been able to get a phone signal since arriving in Chiddingfold and the same was true that morning. I was driving, so, with no hands-free facility in a 45-year-old car, I asked Gillian to keep checking for a signal on my phone so that I could pick up any messages.

  We were just outside Chiddingfold, beyond the golf course, at around 9.50 a.m., when the phone rang for the first time since 4.49 p.m. the previous day. The caller had been trying for some time, apparently, to get through. It was Elaine Shinkfield, office manager at the West Yorkshire Police Authority, who, throu
gh my wife as call handler, asked that I get in touch as soon as possible with Fraser Sampson, the Chief Executive and solicitor to the Authority. At 9.56 a.m., I found a driveway to safely pull off the road and made that call. I had intended that Fraser would be my point of contact on Monday morning to advance my plan to refer myself for formal investigation. I had done nothing wrong twenty-three years ago and I wished to encourage an appropriate and independent third party to get to work as quickly as possible to confirm that. Although this was Saturday morning, I saw no problem in having that conversation now.

  At 9.57, I began a call that would last eleven minutes and twenty-six seconds. I told Fraser that I wished to obtain the permission of the Police Authority to refer myself for investigation. He told me that an extraordinary committee had been convened for 11 a.m. that morning to consider the storm which was raging, and that was why he had been trying to contact me. I asked him whether, in his opinion, they would take a decision to refer me to the IPCC that morning. It is typical of Mr Sampson’s tendency to keep his cards very close to his chest that he gave me an equivocal, and lawyerly, answer. They may do, he said, but on the other hand they may take stock of the situation and arrange to meet as planned later next week to decide on a course of action.

  On that basis I asked him to put my proposal to the committee; that they give me permission to refer myself to the IPCC today, and that we coordinate press statements thereafter. He said he would do that and let me know. He did say that he wasn’t optimistic that they would go along with that proposition.

  One might imagine that the Chief Executive to the Police Authority; a lawyer; a man who had written the seminal text book on police disciplinary procedures, might have demurred if he thought for one moment that I was suggesting anything underhand or even inappropriate. One might think that he would refuse to convey that message and perhaps chide me for even suggesting it. He made no such attempt to dissuade or discourage. After the Police Authority’s extraordinary meeting, at 12.46 p.m., he sent me a text. It read: ‘Norman – sorry just off phone with MBW [Authority Chairman, who wasn’t at the meeting]. Members were unanimous in all aspects and weren’t impressed with the suggestion at all. Mark [Chairman] should be calling v. soon’.

  I found out from a Police Authority press release that the extraordinary committee had decided to refer me to the IPCC themselves. That was fine, that is what I wanted. They didn’t do that until Tuesday. Whilst I had been proposing to make the referral that afternoon, the decision in principle and the method and timing of the referral are the prerogative of the Police Authority.

  So, by mid-afternoon on Saturday 15 September 2012, I knew that I would be referred to the independent regulatory body that investigates police wrongdoing. There were no conduct matters disclosed by the Hillsborough Panel Report and so the only thing that the Police Authority could refer were matters of public complaint that had repeated Mr Hicks’s broad assertions that I was a member of a dirty tricks campaign. There were public complaints, too, that had been received by the Police Authority following my press statements over the previous two days.

  Reflecting on the way the Saturday had panned out, I was content. I had risen with the idea of self-referral. That proposal had been put, on my behalf and without hesitation, by the Police Authority’s Chief Executive. The Special Committee had rejected the proposal and instead taken the decision to use their discretion to refer what matters they could to the IPCC. I accepted their authority to do so and welcomed the eventual outcome.

  That should have been an end to that particular matter and I genuinely believed that it was. Three weeks later, when the political mood had turned against me and I was resisting attempts by my Police Authority to unseat me, Mr Sampson recommended to the Police Authority that a further indictment should be added to my charge sheet. His legal advice to the Police Authority was that my suggestion, on 15 September, to refer myself to the appropriate regulatory body, may well have amounted to ‘an attempt to influence improperly the decision making processes of the West Yorkshire Police Authority’. Mr Sampson wrote to me on 11 October 2012 to formally notify me that this would be the position adopted by the Police Authority and that this further matter had been referred to the IPCC for investigation.

  Mr Sampson had broken off personal communication with me some days prior to this letter. If, however, we had still been talking, I might have asked, mischievously, if he was also being referred for aiding and abetting my ‘interference’. As it was, there were so many other slings and arrows flying in my direction at that time that I adopted an attitude of ‘throw it on the cart with the rest’.

  I was staggered when, after stepping down from my post on 24 October 2012, the IPCC declared that they intended to continue to investigate the so-called ‘interference’, which they described as a ‘serious matter’. It wasn’t. Ninety-six people dying at a football stadium is a very serious matter. Allegations of corruption and cover-up are serious matters. My eleven-minute telephone conversation with the Chief Executive and solicitor of my Police Authority in the midst of a media feeding frenzy was not serious, although I had misjudged how it might be turned against me.

  What I had certainly misjudged is the appetite amongst some, following a hue and cry, to run the quarry to ground by any means possible. The tone of the IPCC press announcement about how they intended to set about the task of responding to the public concern about the contents of the Hillsborough Panel Report would leave me in no doubt about their desire in that regard. But that would be later on. There was still some water to flow under the West Yorkshire Police Authority bridge before then.

  It is hardly a novel observation to point out that some politicians don’t always reach judgements or initiate action from a purely moral basis. Their position on a particular issue is occasionally taken on pragmatic or propitious grounds. The politically expedient thing to do may sometimes emerge slowly. Little weights of public opinion are added to the scale one by one until a sharp and urgent correction is required to restore the political stability.

  On 13 September 2012, the day after the publication of the panel report, I know that I had the genuine sympathy of Councillor Mark Burns-Williamson, the Chairman of my Police Authority. He had been briefed that there was nothing in the report that indicated any wrongdoing on my part. He had heard of Mr Hicks’s personal attack but that wasn’t creating any wash on his own political shore. He was a Labour councillor in Wakefield, elected on a comfortable majority. We had worked together closely for six years. He had asked me to stay on as Chief Constable at the end of my five-year contract in January 2012 and had given his full support to my serving a further three years’ extension that would have enabled me to bridge the old political machinery – the Police Authority – with the new – the Elected Police and Crime Commissioner. As the favourite to win that election, he wanted the organisational constancy that I could offer.

  He knew Gillian, my wife, through work-based social events and I had gotten to know his partner, Caroline. He naturally felt for both of us, and our family, when I told him of the press siege at home.

  Cllr Burns-Williamson continued to have regular conversations with me. On 15 September, when I told him that I had spoken with Fraser Sampson about self-referral, and later that day when he rang to confirm that the special committee, in which he had played no part, had decided to refer me themselves. On 17 September, we talked about an already-scheduled Police Authority meeting that would take place on Friday 21st. Cllr Burns-Williamson invited me to address the current controversy after the completion of normal business. It would be, he said, ‘below the line’, which means that it would not be the subject of public report. I hadn’t asked for confidentiality, he wanted it for political reasons – to keep a lid on it. Throughout the first nine days, the politically expedient thing to do, for a local politician, was to carry on and hope the heat subsided.

  When there is a full Police Authority gathering, the members meet in camera and without any record, before the
meeting proper. This pre-meeting is an opportunity for the Chairman to influence the vote before any debate. I have often, tongue in cheek, said to my Authority, following a quick and unanimous decision in the formal session, that I appear not to have been at the right meeting that day.

  Police Authority meetings are rarely the subject of television coverage but there were at least three networks represented with cameras and reporters at the meeting on the 21st. I just had time to hear a local news broadcast before I had to leave for the meeting. Cllr Burns-Williamson had spoken to reporters on his way in to the pre-meeting. He had given me the ‘football manager’s endorsement’ – the one that seems always to be followed by the chop. Asked about my position, Cllr Burns-Williamson said that, at this time, the Authority had confidence in the Chief Constable to continue to lead West Yorkshire Police. I know Mark Burns-Williamson, and his political approach to controversy, sufficiently well to be sure that he believed that was the case going into the pre-meeting. He wouldn’t have said it otherwise.

  I was surrounded by the press pack on my way to join the Police Authority after their pre-meeting and felt emboldened by Cllr Burns-Williamson’s comments. When asked by the waiting reporters whether I would be resigning that afternoon, I replied that I was meeting my Police Authority and that, as far as I was concerned, it was business as usual. I wasn’t the first and I won’t be the last to misread the ‘football manager’s endorsement’.