Hillsborough Untold: Aftermath of a disaster

by Norman Bettison

  The courthouse had been described to me by my lawyer who had sat in from time to time. Even so, I was seriously impressed by the set up. The witness box faced the jury and three images were simultaneously transmitted to more than a dozen television screens strategically hung from the ceiling so that everyone present had an easy view. The images were a close-up of the face of the witness answering questions; a simultaneous transcript of the questions and answers given; and, where relevant, a copy of the document under discussion. It was the most technologically efficient courtroom I had ever encountered.

  There were public galleries at either ends of the cavernous room with seating for 150–200 people. The galleries were full on day two of my evidence, when cross examination was due to begin, but less packed on the other three days. The galleries enclosed the pit of the court, which had four quadrants, the witness box and the jury box opposite each other across the narrower plane of the room, the Coroner to the right of the witness and the left of the jury. Opposite him were four or five rows of counsel. I counted sixty-seven barristers on the list representing nineteen interested parties to the proceedings. The legal teams representing the bereaved families dominated the first two rows – there were thirty-two barristers arranged in four separate teams, which represented different groups of families.

  This was an imposing parade of legal horsepower. When considering that the court sat, in this fashion, for around 300 days over a two-year period, it can no longer be said that the ninety-six people at the heart of the inquisition failed to get the respect and attention they were due. Finally, after twenty-seven years of waiting, this was a thorough process that has at long last provided the challenge, and answers, that the families of the ninety-six were looking for, and deserved.

  My own cameo contribution to the coronial proceedings had nothing to do with providing answers about the cause or circumstances of deaths of any of those individuals. Even though I was on hand in 1989 and had something to say. That wasn’t why I was invited to appear.

  I wasn’t summoned, either, because there was any suspicion that I had some responsibility or accountability for those deaths. I hadn’t been involved in the planning or the command of the fateful police operation.

  I was there, at the Warrington Court for four days, because I had become a symbol of something that had been mythologised over a quarter of a century. Some people genuinely believe that there had been a conspiracy within South Yorkshire Police that started as soon as the disaster occurred. A conspiracy to deflect the blame away from the force and place it instead on the fans. I had, through fate and circumstance, become the most recognised name whenever this tale of conspiracy was retold.

  I was there to be tested. I was ‘on trial’.

  In the inquisitorial procedure adopted by this court I was first of all examined by counsel to the inquest Jonathan Hough QC. I was told by my own counsel that he would ‘play with a straight bat’ but had an obligation to identify and ask all the searching questions that any interested party might have about my actions and motivations. That is the way that it transpired.

  I was then cross-examined by two of the counsel representing the different families groups, Peter Wilcock QC and Mark George QC. The final examination was by my own counsel, Paul Greaney QC. His role was to ensure, on my behalf, that the jury had a broad understanding of the evidence I could give.

  This thorough and comprehensive interrogation under oath was transcribed and runs to 282 pages. The transcript can be easily found online and is therefore in the public domain. It is a permanent record of my responses to any questions that have been raised about my integrity and it addresses some of the myths that have been created around my name.

  Twelve months had passed since the IPCC had last made contact. And so, in June 2015, after I had been tested so thoroughly at the Coroner’s Court, my solicitor, Nick Holroyd, wrote to the IPCC. He asked that they take the opportunity to review the sworn evidence that I had given over four days at Warrington. He also asked that the commission review my status as a ‘suspect’, which is how they had described me as long ago as October 2012. Within hours of receiving the enquiry, Mr Mahaffey, the head of the Hillsborough investigation, responded. He did not indicate whether he had, in fact, taken the opportunity to review the 282 pages of transcribed evidence, but said:

  Sir Norman Bettison’s status to the IPCC remains that of suspect. It is our intention to further interview your client and I would hope that this process can be completed before the end of August. I have copied in Sharon Dalton [the person who conducted the previous interviews] … to make the necessary arrangements.

  I heard nothing more from the IPCC after this communication. There was no further interview, as promised, before the end of August 2015. It was in September 2015, therefore, that I decided I ought to write my own account. I had information to add to the Hillsborough narrative and the IPCC did not appear to be interested in hearing it.

  Following a further prompt from my solicitor in June 2016, in which he sought to know the timetable for the long-promised further interview, the IPCC wrote to apologise for the passage of twelve more months in which there had been neither contact nor update from anyone on the investigating team. It seems that there had been a change of senior investigator since Mr Mahaffey’s assurance about an impending interview and there was no longer, in the mind of the new head of investigation, an intention to interview me further at this time. It was this revelation that caused me to decide that my account should be published. That, and the fact that three other books about the disaster were published in the summer, each asserting, confidently, that the existence of a police cover-up had now been firmly established.

  This book might be the only way in which my own account of the Hillsborough aftermath will ever be heard. By the Crown Prosecution Service as well as by the public.

  There is an old saying: ‘It never rains but it pours.’ There is nothing quite like notoriety for attracting other, unexpected and undeserved, opprobrium.

  So far, over the last few chapters, I have described how it has felt to be caught up in a witch hunt. That has been in the context of what I have come to call ‘the main event’ – i.e. the accusation that I conspired with others to cover up the true causes of the Hillsborough disaster. Once my name became attached to this allegation, it opened the floodgates to other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

  As in a biological context where a toxic agent depletes the immune system, so it follows in a social context. I have been a cop for forty years, a very senior one for nineteen. I have been trusted and lauded. I have never been accused of any wrongdoing. My integrity credit rating has been high.

  What this credit worthiness ensures, in a contemporary social setting, is that one’s motives are not often questioned. If ever they are, at times of controversy, then others seem prepared to stand up to support, explain or sometimes defend one’s actions.

  It has been fascinating for me, as a psychologist, to experience what happens once a toxic virus is introduced into an existing, stable social environment.

  The popular narrative has insinuated that a police force acted abominably a quarter of a century ago. I was a member of that police force and employed on the relevant project. Ergo, I am abominable. A virus of suspicion and loathing quickly spreads.

  It is easy to see how medieval crowds could be inspired into a mob armed with torches and pitchforks. The modern-day equivalence is the internet with its trolls and bloggers.

  Most of the social immune system crumbles at this point. Family stay true. Indeed, relationships become stronger in adversity. A few friends, some unexpected, stand up to the accusers, but their punches don’t land. Most others adopt a position of self-preservation, a perfectly natural and instinctive behaviour that has served organisms well throughout evolution.

  A lot of friends have remained close in a spirit of silent scepticism about the popular narrative. They matter to me. A few, wary of the taint, have avoided me.

 
; With a depleted immunity people can say anything they wish about you, cast all manner of aspersions, and there is no available countervailing response. There is always the retreat to defending one’s own corner at every verse end, but remember the learned lesson from a previous chapter – no one wants to hear from a scapegoat. Only an ability to take a longer-term perspective can fend off a debilitating sense of persecution.

  The first thing to find its way through the lowered defences was the narrow and self-contained IPCC investigation into my conversation with Fraser Sampson, the Police Authority Chief Executive, about my proposal to refer myself to an appropriate investigative body at the start of the hue and cry. Having agreed to put the proposal, on my behalf, Mr Sampson later chose to interpret my request as an attempt to improperly influence the Police Authority.

  Deborah Glass, the Deputy Chair of the IPCC, at the time of responding to those demanding my head, said that my proposal to self-refer was a serious matter of concern and chose to deploy scarce and valuable resources to investigate it. I am still baffled by that response.

  This was not a criminal matter and there could be no sanction against me, but I agreed to be interviewed. The investigator had completed his task by mid-December 2012. It was quite straightforward. Fraser Sampson and I were more or less agreed on the facts. The real question was about my motivation.

  The investigator, Steve Reynolds, reached the conclusion that my conversation with Mr Sampson had not amounted to gross misconduct. That view was shared by Moir Stewart, the Director of Investigations at IPCC Headquarters. He wrote an email to Deborah Glass, the Deputy Chair of the IPCC, when he became aware of an intention to amend the findings, to caution her against changing Mr Reynolds’s conclusion and linking this standalone investigation to the wider Hillsborough allegations that had recently arrived on her desk.

  Deborah,

  As Steve states we met with Helen and David and, having considered the evidence, did not feel it stacked up to gross misconduct. I am not sure we can use the wider context of Hillsborough. The H investigation has not yet started and so we only have allegations against Bettison – not findings. To then use these against him in this case seems premature. The Panel’s Report is just that and not an investigation and Bettison was not interviewed.

  Notwithstanding the conclusions of the investigator, and the advice of her Director of Investigations, Ms Glass had her Headquarters staff rewrite the investigator’s ‘final’ report. Which is ironic really, given the nature of the most serious of the allegations against South Yorkshire Police from twenty-seven years ago that she was about to begin to investigate.

  This altered report was published in March 2013, three months after the investigator had concluded his task. Ms Glass had consulted lawyers representing the Hillsborough Family Support Group before publication, although why that was necessary, or even appropriate, I cannot fathom.

  The foreword to her report, in my opinion, serves to illuminate a prejudicial view and it ignores the advice from her Director of Investigations:

  The Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath have become synonymous in the public consciousness with allegations of police attempts to cover up the truth, manipulate messages and deflect blame. Sir Norman is facing investigation into allegations that he played a key part in this … Given the effect that those allegations have had on the public perception of him and policing generally, his attempt to manipulate and manage the perception of the referral of complaints about him is particularly concerning.

  Ms Glass concluded, in direct opposition to the investigator’s original report, that the IPCC did find a case to answer for gross misconduct, discreditable conduct and abuse of position in making that eleven-minute call to Fraser Sampson. She further concluded that my action, in seeking the permission of my Authority to self-refer, would so undermine my position as Chief Constable as to have made it untenable. If a disciplinary panel were able to consider these matters (they couldn’t as I was no longer employed) then, her report states, dismissal would be justified as an appropriate sanction.

  Of course, the report which was sent out to the media, with an accompanying statement from Ms Glass saying that it was now ‘for the public to judge him’, had the anticipated effect. A headline and editorial in The Times stated, categorically, that the IPCC had concluded that I had behaved disgracefully and would have been sacked if I hadn’t gotten out from under. The editorial, drawing on what they saw as ‘IPCC coda’ in Ms Glass’s foreword, deduced that retiring had been a despicable act of cowardice on my part. A perception that I had been desperately trying to avoid by fighting to remain in post until after the IPCC had concluded their more substantive investigation.

  A BBC2 documentary on Hillsborough broadcast the following week had no time to change the programme but added a closing statement which informed the viewer that an IPCC investigation into my post-disaster work had found a case to answer for discreditable conduct. Obviously written by an under-pressure programme editor who had no time to read what the report was actually about but had picked up, from the foreword, Ms Glass’s gratuitous link to the broader Hillsborough allegations.

  Whilst the IPCC are entitled to decide that there is a case to answer in any matter of complaint, they are not entitled to decide how the case would have been disposed of in lieu of a proper hearing. Ms Glass had concluded that dismissal would have been the appropriate sanction. Even the IPCC Chair, Dame Anne Owers, advised against this approach. In an email sent on the day before publication, she told Deborah Glass: ‘We should not have prejudged the outcome of a hearing.’ But it was too late, the report was already out for consultation with the lawyers of the Hillsborough families and it couldn’t be changed.

  Shortly after this report was published, the commission, in an unconnected case, was rebuked in the Court of Appeal for doing precisely what Deborah Glass had done on this occasion. Lord Justice Beatson, in that case, reminded the IPCC that they had no power to be both judge and jury as well as investigator.

  I obtained legal advice that indicated a fair chance of success in having the report overturned at Judicial Review, but it would be a pyrrhic victory. The report had encouraged loose newspaper reports that damaged my reputation. But, as that was already fish-and-chip paper, why risk a considerable financial outlay to simply achieve the rewriting of a report that would be republished and reported upon all over again? It is sometimes wiser to turn the other cheek.

  Next up on the list of associated indictments arose from a rather bizarre convergence of fates. Another public outrage about historical police events had been triggered, single-handedly, by an ex-Metropolitan Police undercover officer called Peter Francis. Interviewed for a Channel 4 documentary, Mr Francis alleged that he was tasked by his Metropolitan Police bosses to infiltrate those close to the Stephen Lawrence Campaign for Justice, including Stephen’s family, in the aftermath of Stephen’s murder in the 1990s. It was a claim intended to shock. I watched the Channel 4 programme as it was broadcast, in the summer of 2013, and saw no connection to anything in my own professional orbit or knowledge. I was surprised, later, to read that Mr Francis, having made such a shocking allegation on television, was not prepared to furnish any details of his alleged tasking to those undertaking a proper investigation of his claims.

  Notwithstanding Mr Francis’s reticence to be more specific in his accusations, his disclosures on the Channel 4 programme created public indignation at a level similar to that achieved by the Hillsborough cover-up story. He even, in the Channel 4 interview, referenced Hillsborough as a comparable example of police corruption. There is now a judicial inquiry, under Lord Justice Pitchford, examining the historic role, tactics and conduct of police undercover units. It will run and run.

  None of this affected me, or so I thought. Just one of the actions that was initiated by Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, in the light of Mr Francis’s disclosure, was to call for all forces to search their records for any undercover work undertaken in relation to the
Stephen Lawrence Campaign for Justice and the Macpherson Inquiry into his murder.

  When West Yorkshire Police checked their Special Branch records, they found that a Special Branch officer (not an undercover officer) had notified me, in 1998, about the antecedents of a man who was due to attend a public meeting in Bradford chaired by Lord Justice Macpherson. I was at that time Assistant Chief Constable in West Yorkshire Police with a specific responsibility for policing in Bradford, which was still recovering from a recent history of riots and violent disturbances.

  Lord Justice Macpherson had concluded his London-based hearings into the murder of Stephen Lawrence by late 1998 and embarked on a tour of UK cities with a significant ethnic mix to learn about local police and community relationships and to test out, in the provinces, his inquiry’s emerging recommendations for London. Such public meetings in these strife-torn cities in the 1990s were potential flash points. Hence the briefing up to me as the ACC responsible for tranquillity in Bradford. It was nothing to do with Stephen Lawrence, his family or the campaign in his name. Less still was it anything to do with undercover policing.

  Here again, however, there was no preparedness on the part of anyone looking at these documents to attach a benign interpretation to the motivation behind them or even to suspend judgement. Some ex-colleagues of mine were overly cautious given the toxicity around my name and raised the documents, without context, with the Police and Crime Commissioner’s office.

  They were subsequently referred to the IPCC by Mark Burns-Williamson, by now West Yorkshire Police’s elected Police and Crime Commissioner. He could have simply forwarded them with a short media comment if he wished to be seen to be open and transparent. He chose instead to issue a two-page press statement and appear on the local evening news to declare that