Hillsborough Untold: Aftermath of a disaster

by Norman Bettison

  I had been aware that there was to be a debate in the House of Commons on 22 October 2012 about the Hillsborough Panel Report. The report had been commissioned by Parliament in 2009 and it was necessary for it to be formally received by the House.

  I anticipated that politicians would want to be seen to be rallying to the call for justice. Indeed, the majority of speakers in the debate included in their address a variation on the theme of ‘Now we have the truth. Justice must follow.’ It was a theme set by the Home Secretary in opening the debate and echoed by most other contributors. What I hadn’t anticipated is that I might be singled out and named in the debate. After all, I had been identified as a ‘suspect’ by the IPCC and they had begun a criminal investigation. If, as a result of the attendant publicity, any Member of Parliament had been approached with any testimony concerning me they would surely pass it on to the IPCC for formal investigation. I was naive to believe that might be the case.

  Alec Shelbrooke MP (Conservative), Member for Elmet and Rothwell in West Yorkshire, was the first to have a nibble. Interrupting the shadow Home Secretary’s address, Mr Shelbrooke asked: ‘I am sure that the Right Honourable Lady, a fellow West Yorkshire MP, shares my concerns that the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire is being investigated by the IPCC … Does she agree that in order for the public to have faith in the investigation, he should be suspended?’

  Yvette Cooper MP (Labour), Member for Pontefract and Castleford, was too wily to be caught out like that and straight batted the questioner, who, she had probably deduced, was making a party political point. The Labourled Police Authority had chosen not to suspend me. Mr Shelbrooke, as a local Conservative MP, had condemned that decision in the pages of the Yorkshire Post.

  Mr Shelbrooke was soon joined by Derek Twigg (Labour), Member for Halton near Merseyside. Mr Twigg told the harrowing story about the recent death of Eddie Spearritt, a constituent, who was seriously injured at Hillsborough and who lost his son Adam in the disaster. Mr Spearritt Snr had passed away before he could learn the truth from the Hillsborough Panel. Mr Twigg told the Home Secretary and the House that the Spearritt family are now concerned about the position of Norman Bettison, which needs the closest scrutiny.

  Sensing the early mood in the fevered debate, and the mention of my name on a couple of occasions, John Pugh (Lib Dem), Member for Southport, Merseyside, tried to rein in the witch finders. I had met John Pugh during my time as Chief Constable in Merseyside and, as I did with several of the local MPs, I had explained carefully and truthfully what my role was after the disaster. Mr Pugh struck a conciliatory tone in the debate.

  I do not believe that the world is peopled by saints and sinners, there are many shades of grey, and I dare say that some in South Yorkshire Police were doing the right thing. Many of us will have met a lot of people involved. I think, for example, of Norman Bettison, then Chief Constable for Merseyside, with whom many of us are acquainted … Everyone needs a fair hearing, and there has to be a huge moral gulf between someone putting a gloss on the actions of their police force, and [the act of] incriminating others. That has to be reflected in any subsequent judgement.

  Keith Vaz MP (Labour), Member for Leicester East, who was not traditionally known as a friend of the police service, also tried to encourage the suspension of judgement.

  The Honourable Member for Elmet and Rothwell [Alec Shelbrooke] mentioned Norman Bettison earlier … we should give the IPCC the opportunity to make a judgement on Norman Bettison’s case. I know what the families feel, and I have heard what he [Shelbrooke] has said today.

  The interventions by John Pugh and Keith Vaz did not mollify Mr Shelbrooke. He came back into the debate and made a wild accusation that questions had been recently raised about me applying pressure on people, as Chief Constable, to cause them to change their statements. He said that, whether guilty or innocent, I should now be suspended and not be allowed to retire in six months’ time.

  Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded suspension. Once a Chief Constable has been suspended, his or her authority is compromised and it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to return to duty and regain that authority. Nevertheless, suspension would have introduced some time constraints on the IPCC to complete their investigation, which has now been running for more than four years.

  Some MPs wanted to go further than suspension. Rosie Cooper (Labour), Member for West Lancashire, told the House that many of her constituents would applaud any action taken against Sir Norman Bettison for his role in Hillsborough and, for starters, called for my knighthood to be summarily removed.

  The naivety in believing that I might retire from a forty-year career after an objective and thorough investigation by the IPCC was to become apparent at 7.26 p.m. on the evening of the Commons debate. At this precise time, Maria Eagle MP (Labour), member for Garston and Halewood, was called by the Deputy Speaker. Building upon a general proposition – the by-now widely accepted fact that there was indeed a cover-up and a black operations campaign in South Yorkshire Police after the disaster – she contributed the following: ‘Those who ordered and orchestrated that campaign have had many years of impunity to enjoy their burgeoning careers.’

  I could see where this theme was leading but, even then, I could not contemplate the viciousness of the attack that was to follow: ‘One of the people that I named, in 1998, as being involved in orchestrating it is Sir Norman Bettison … I should make it clear that he has always denied involvement in the black propaganda campaign in public. However, I have a letter…’

  Ms Eagle showed the letter for dramatic effect. I had no inkling of what it might contain. I could not imagine how devastating it would be.

  It is from John Barry, who will swear a statement to the effect that in 1989 Norman Bettison said to him: ‘We are trying to concoct a story that all Liverpool fans were drunk and we were afraid that they were going to break down the gates … so we decided to open them…’ So what Sir Norman denies in public he boasts about in private conversation.

  John who? was my first response. I couldn’t place the name but I would soon know what he looked like. Immediately after the Commons debate, and long before he gave his sworn testimony to the IPCC, John Barry did a round of media interviews, including with BBC News, ITN News, The Guardian, the Daily Mirror etc. He and Maria Eagle’s office had orchestrated a campaign. Ironic really. She would use parliamentary privilege to air the accusation on the floor of the House. Mr Barry was to follow it up with a retelling of the accusation on carefully selected media platforms. I was outflanked and skewered.

  Of course, I was given the opportunity, after all of these media stories had been aired or printed, to say something in response. Another thing that I have learned in this long ordeal is that a response just keeps a story running. A response, two days after the original story, simply gives a newspaper the opportunity to re-hash the original allegation. My response to outrageous allegations would, from now on, be through the formal process of investigation, and through the courts if necessary, not through the media.

  The thread by which my career hung was unlikely to hold the added weight of this sensational accusation. I thought it sensible to pause for twenty-four hours, however, to test how the local winds were blowing. I did not have to wait that long. The Yorkshire Post, on the day following the debate, was condemnatory. A new apparent ‘fact’ – a recent letter supposedly recounting a 23-year-old conversation – and a local MP on the warpath (Alec Shelbrooke) was a boost for the editorial besiegement, which had been running out of steam. My fortune was finally read, however, a few hours later still.

  The fates had conspired to restore my name at the centre of the most prominent local news story on the very day that the four candidates for the forthcoming election for Police and Crime Commissioner were to have a live debate on BBC Look North, a local television news programme. The key issue in the televised debate became the question, put to each candidate, of what they would do about the ‘problem of the Chief Constable’. Three ou
t of the four candidates said that they would, if elected, use their new, arbitrary powers as PCC to suspend me and to require my resignation with immediate effect. Councillor Andrew Marchington, the Lib Dem candidate, was in the minority. He was the only one who said that he would want to consider all the evidence as well as the popular demands.

  Mark Burns-Williamson, the outgoing Police Authority Chairman, was asked about the Authority’s prior acceptance of my retirement with six months’ notice. He said that, as a result of the Parliamentary Debate and the new disclosure, he believed it was the wrong decision. He was one of the three who declared their commitment to an early execution if elected to power.

  I didn’t really need my trusted deputy, John Parkinson, to drive the twenty-odd miles to my home that night to convince me that my course was run. I know he was only seeking to help. I had already realised that any professional and political support was exhausted. I told John to prepare to take over the command of the force – it would be in good hands. I then contacted my ACPO ‘friend’, Craig Mackey, that night, and asked him to convey to Fraser Sampson my intention to retire within the statutory notice period. I was prepared, at the discretion of the Police Authority, to work out that short notice or leave immediately. Either way, I was not intending to leave the decision about my future at the whim of an incoming PCC.

  I knew which option Mr Sampson would support, though I only learned of the Authority’s formal decision by way of their press release. At 12.45 p.m. on Wednesday 24 October 2012, I received a telephone call from Oliver Cattermole, the ACPO press officer, to tell me that BBC online and several Twitter feeds were carrying the story of my immediate ‘resignation’. That wasn’t a word that either I or Craig Mackey had used, but it was a word chosen by Fraser Sampson because he considered it the most accurate legal definition of my offer to retire forthwith. I did not have the stomach to argue the appropriateness of that description, reports of my sudden resignation were simply the crowning insult.

  It was forty years, two months and three days since I had first walked into the Sheffield and Rotherham Constabulary Training Department, which was on the first floor, above the Black Swan public house on Snig Hill, Sheffield. Sergeant Don Jackson had welcomed me and around a dozen other teenagers into the police family. He told us on the first day that there were three things the service expected from us at all times: our commitment, in the face of many challenges; courtesy, in the face of abuse and distrust; and integrity. That, he said, is like one’s virginity: once it’s gone it’s gone. He told us that we followed a proud and distinguished line of police officers and that, every day we were out on patrol, we represented not just ourselves but the service as a whole.

  It was a powerful induction which made an impression on me that lasted for four decades. I had never lost sight of Sergeant Jackson’s three precepts despite the way that I relinquished my vocation in 2012.

  CHAPTER 10

  IN THE SHADOW OF SALEM

  12 October 2012 – present day

  The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is the statutory body that has a responsibility to investigate allegations of wrongdoing that are made in relation to the police. I had sought permission, within seventy-two hours of the publication of the Hillsborough Panel Report, to refer myself to the commission for urgent investigation. That permission was declined by my Police Authority, the body to which I was accountable, who decided that they would make a formal referral themselves. I had duly written to the IPCC on two separate occasions, welcoming their attention and seeking an early resolution of the referred matters. That was more than four years ago.

  The IPCC is the latest in a succession of regulatory bodies created to oversee matters of complaint against the police. The first was the Police Complaints Board (PCB), established in 1977. The PCB had only a reviewing function following the local investigation of complaints by any police force.

  Lord Scarman, in his report about lessons from the Brixton Riots in 1981, suggested that the PCB lacked independence and teeth. It was eventually replaced, in 1985, by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA). The PCA gained new powers of oversight and executive decision-making in relation to complaints and their disposal. Nevertheless, the system continued to struggle to attract public support.

  The inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1999 found that confidence in the police amongst ethnic minority communities remained worryingly low, particularly around the way that their complaints were dealt with. That inquiry recommended a new regulator with the resources and powers to carry out their own investigations. The pressure group Liberty echoed that call and, following a public consultation exercise, the government created the IPCC as part of the Police Reform Act 2002.

  The commission has, over the years, accreted to itself greater and wider powers through legislation and statutory guidance. They now have the wherewithal to decide how a complaint is to be investigated: either by a police force under their active management or by their own staff acting as an independent and self-contained investigatory force. They have the powers of arrest, detention and search. They have the power to recommend criminal prosecution in conjunction with the CPS. They have the power to direct disciplinary bodies to hear cases where the matters under investigation don’t reach the criminal threshold. They have the power to determine the severity level for such hearings. These are awesome powers which put the IPCC on a par with the police forces that they oversee. It does, in my recent experience at the hands of the IPCC, beg the time-honoured question: ‘Who will guard the guards?’

  The IPCC has fought the same battle as its predecessor bodies, to convince a sceptical public that it can offer true independence. They have pledged, and reiterated, over many years, a commitment to put the complainant at the heart of every investigation.

  It is a laudable aim of any investigator. I endeavoured, in my own investigations, to consider the needs and the interests of the complainant throughout the investigation. It is the compassionate and fair thing to do. It would be entirely wrong, however, to go so far as to allow those particular and sometimes partisan interests to interfere with a professional and objective search for the truth.

  The IPCC have not been short of high-profile incidents that have warranted their attention in recent years. The death of Ian Tomlinson after contact with the Metropolitan Police; the shooting dead of Mark Duggan by police firearms officers; and the complaints of police inactivity, or worse, in relation to the sexual grooming of young girls in Rotherham are cases in point. It is the Hillsborough issues, though, that have represented a kind of high noon for the commission.

  After the publication of the Hillsborough Panel’s report, which made no allegations of wrongdoing against any individual or institution, there quickly developed a narrative in the press and Parliament which crystallised into a very serious allegation indeed. That South Yorkshire Police, from the very top of the organisation, had fashioned a criminal conspiracy to cover up the true causes of the Hills borough disaster and to put the blame, instead, onto the Liverpool football fans. A conspiracy, it is alleged, that has been maintained for two decades.

  These are not complaints about the errant actions of individual operational officers. If the narrative were true then it raises concerns about a corruption at the dark heart of policing. If the IPCC have any purpose at all, it is surely to locate and eradicate a canker such as this, and to be seen to be doing so with a single-minded resolve. The public would expect no less of the commission. It is easy to see how Hillsborough might, justifiably, become their crusade.

  Within weeks of the publication of the panel’s report, the narrative of corruption and conspiracy was sufficiently well-established in the public consciousness that a prominent politician such as Andy Burnham MP could appear on Any Questions? on Radio 4 and simply assert that the evidence of the scale of the cover-up by South Yorkshire Police is truly shocking and that it raises questions about the foundation of police integrity in this country. He has, more recently, invo
king parliamentary privilege, accused the South Yorkshire Police force – over many years – of being ‘rotten to the core’. The Prime Minister, Theresa May, in a speech to the National Conference of the Police Federation whilst Home Secretary, listed Hillsborough amongst contemporary ‘scandals’ in policing. No one has been in a position to rebut this political rhetoric. No one has attempted to disagree with this view. It is a view so commonly held that anyone challenging the narrative risks isolation or accusations about their own integrity.

  So there has been no counter narrative from the Association of Chief Police Officers; from the College of Policing; from any free-thinking journalist; nor from the current hierarchy of South Yorkshire Police, who seemed keen at one point to establish their historical distance from the pogrom that was under way. Despite that strategic position, the most recent Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, David Crompton, has himself been swept from office in the wake of the Hillsborough outrage. It is difficult to discern whether he is accused of any misconduct at all. Nevertheless, he is suspended from office by the arbitrary decision of a Police and Crime Commissioner who claims that public confidence in the force demands he be replaced following the recent proceedings and verdict of the Coroner’s Court.

  People who have run the risk of being tarred with the same accusative brush have either kept their heads down or, worse, got behind the witch hunt themselves.

  Typical of its type is a feature article, written for The Times in September 2012, within forty-eight hours of the publication of the Hillsborough Panel Report, by Lord Blair of Boughton. Ian Blair was a contemporary of mine in policing. He left the service in 2008, having been criticised, as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, for his handling of the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting and his lack of openness in the aftermath. He seems to have been rehabilitated as a crossbench peer and eminent arbiter on matters of policing integrity. ‘Hillsborough’, said Lord Blair,