Hillsborough Untold: Aftermath of a disaster

by Norman Bettison

  I can address this issue confidently. I knew of the process. My own account was amended. I never, at the time, saw anything done as part of this process that caused me any concern.

  On the other hand, given that this is one of the key issues that attracted such opprobrium after the publication of the Hillsborough Panel Report, and given that the Independent Police Complaints Commission has been investigating these matters for more than four years and is still to conclude that investigation, I should be circumspect in discussing any particular allegation in detail.

  In general terms, the emendation process was initiated by Hammond Suddards lawyers, not by the force. It was in response to an urgent and late request from West Midlands Police to furnish self-prepared factual statements for the Taylor Inquiry. Both the original account and any amended version remained available to West Midlands Police. Lord Justice Taylor, and counsel to the inquiry Andrew Collins QC, now the Hon. Mr Justice Collins, a High Court Judge, were each aware of the process. The original and amended accounts were preserved and catalogued in the force archives and the practice was reviewed, in 1997, by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, a High Court Judge.

  Those general and uncontroversial facts alone might put a slightly different emphasis on the practice than the one which has been created since the Hillsborough Panel Report. A little more detail that is already in the public domain may explain more.

  On the day after the disaster, West Midlands Police were asked to conduct an independent investigation into the causes of the disaster and any criminal offences arising. A day or two later, the Deputy Chief Constable asked that everyone in the force be made aware that West Midlands Police were undertaking the investigation and that anyone who had anything to do with the Hillsborough disaster should prepare an aide memoire on plain paper to support their recollections when later seen by West Midlands Police investigators who would be taking statements.

  West Midlands were not quick in getting out to see officers for statements.

  On 26 April 1989, Mr Wain and his team, of which I was a member, were tasked by Mr Woodward QC to provide a summary of the available evidence from South Yorkshire police officers only. Mr Wain considered the aide memoires to be the only means by which the task could be fulfilled in the time available. He had copies of them proactively collected and gave additional information to any officer who had not yet produced an account about what was required. This requirement, based entirely on Mr Woodward’s proposals, sought the inclusion of any opinions and any fears and concerns felt by any officer. Copies of the aide memoires, or self-prepared accounts, were dutifully collected and used for this limited internal purpose.

  Then, on 7 May, only eight days before the start of the public inquiry and after the self-prepared accounts had been used by the Wain team to furnish the summary for Mr Woodward, West Midlands Police asked for self-prepared statements from a significant number of South Yorkshire Officers. West Midlands claimed that they had neither the time nor the resources to complete the urgent task themselves.

  Peter Metcalf, the senior lawyer from Hammond Suddards, took the view that what was in his possession was not a statement obtained for this new stated purpose. Furthermore, officers had been invited to write all kinds of things not normally associated with a fact-only statement for the purpose of judicial proceedings. He undertook to vet the aide memoires to determine what was needed in order to meet the requirement of the West Midlands Police.

  My own account, for example, had referred to my being crushed at Leppings Lane terraces as a spectator in the early ’70s. That was a fact and could stay in if I wished it to once I understood the new purpose that was envisaged for my account. The account went on, though, to proffer my unsupported opinion about the inherent danger of the Hillsborough stadium design. That was comment and pure speculation, not fact, and Peter Metcalf suggested that it should be removed from the statement that I provided to the Taylor Inquiry. I agreed the amendment without demur. I understood the reason. I suspect that that is the way that many of the amendments were secured.

  This vetting and emendation exercise was intense. It involved lawyers reading scores of accounts each day and handing their advice on each one to a team of officers working under the direction of Chief Superintendent Don Denton at force Headquarters. It mostly took place once the Taylor Inquiry had started and so there was a time pressure on Mr Metcalf and Chief Superintendent Denton to complete each day’s tasks for urgent delivery to West Midlands Police and to the counsel to the inquiry, Mr Collins QC, by close of business each day. I was, by this time, working at the public inquiry, at the beck and call of Mr Woodward QC and Mr Limb, the counsel team. I had no involvement with the exercise of transposing aide memoires into statements.

  That describes the context of what was going on. I witnessed no clandestine plot involving a conspiracy at South Yorkshire Police Headquarters to tamper with evidence destined for a public inquiry.

  It would have been better if West Midlands Police had taken their own statements. It would have been better if there was more time to complete the exercise. It might have even been better to let the original account go in, complete with comment, hearsay, opinion, emotional content and finger-pointing, to let the inquiry sort out with any particular witnesses what was admissible and what was not. Even then it could have only been done with the permission of each officer, because the original request for an aide memoire did not envisage its use at judicial proceedings.

  These alternative ways of responding to the West Midlands Police request were not followed. Mr Metcalf has conceded, to both Lord Justice Stuart-Smith and the recent Coroner’s Inquest, that there were a handful of accounts where he suggested that content be removed that in retrospect should have stayed in. There are also a small number of examples where police officers fulfilling Mr Metcalf’s recommended changes appear to have gone further than he was suggesting. Those, and maybe other discovered examples, are now, quite properly, subject to forensic investigation by the IPCC.

  Lord Justice Taylor makes it clear, though, in his interim report that he can be satisfied, as one of the leading and most experienced judges of his generation, that he had heard sufficient and reliable testimony, in both oral examination and written statements, to draw conclusions about the causes of the disaster.

  To have called more evidence would have prevented me from presenting an interim report in the required time and would not have added significantly to the relevant evidence I have been able to take into account. I should like to thank all those who made it possible for this hearing to take place so soon after the event and for the evidence to be efficiently presented to give a full and fair account of what happened in all its aspects without irrelevancy.

  Lord Justice Taylor’s sixty-page interim report is a model of analytical report writing. It is clear, well-argued and succinct. It manages to cover the various and complex features of the disaster in a concise fashion.

  As mentioned earlier, ‘the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control’ is the oft-cited partial sentence from paragraph 278 of Lord Justice Taylor’s interim report. I agree with that assessment. However, the words that precede that familiar quote are relevant too: ‘Although there were other causes…’

  Lord Justice Taylor documents these other causes in his erudite report. It suited the popular narrative then, as well as now, to ignore or pass over them quickly. People are generally more comfortable with binary explanations of things and events than they are with complexity. The media delivers black and white; heroes and villains; saints and sinners. It makes news easier to digest.

  The press headlines on 5 August 1989, the day after the interim report was published, were all one-way and pretty one-dimensional:

  The Daily Mail, on its front page, had ‘Damned: Police bear the brunt of the blame’.

  The Independent led with ‘Police blamed for Hills borough’.

  This same newspaper also had a cartoon on the front page, drawn by Colin Wheeler, wit
h three mock police epaulettes arranged as a representation of the rank structure of South Yorkshire Police. On the Constable’s epaulette, in place of insignia, was the word ‘guilty’. On the Inspector’s it said ‘more guilty’. And on the Chief Superintendent’s it said ‘most guilty’. The cartoon might raise a smile, perhaps, with anyone who was not one of the Constables or Inspectors at Hillsborough, who bore a deep and traumatic sense of guilt about their inability to avert the disaster or rescue the victims from the impenetrable cages.

  In order to understand the psyche of the South Yorkshire force at that particular time, it is necessary to understand the impact that this media reporting had on the individual, junior, members who had been involved on the fateful day. Forget, for this exercise, the Chief Constable – he had offered his resignation and it was right for him to do so, as the symbolic head of an organisation that had failed in its responsibilities. Forget Chief Superintendent Duckenfield – he was in command at Hillsborough and his actions and omissions had been directly, and properly, criticised by Lord Justice Taylor. Chief Superintendent Duckenfield was suspended from duty on the publication of the Taylor Report pending a criminal and disciplinary inquiry and, by then, he was a professional outcast. Forget people like Superintendent Bernard Murray and Superintendent Roger Marshall, the commander outside in Leppings Lane – they could all take care of themselves and each had direct access to legal advice.

  Imagine, just for one moment, how this reporting was received in the family home of the Constable who was the officer on the gate of Pen 3 – the 81-centimetre-wide gate that quickly became clogged with the tangled bodies of the dead and dying. Or the Inspector who was there in charge of a serial of officers behind the Leppings Lane turnstiles, with no view of the terraces, but who could, with the right instruction from match control, have easily and quickly blocked off the tunnel to prevent overcrowding and ninety-six deaths. Imagine how it felt to the 1,100 other men and women who were involved that day, the majority of whom had done their professional best in an appalling situation.

  The popular narrative was driven by the media and the media had made two significant errors in their initial reporting of Lord Justice Taylor’s judgment, which have persisted to this day in folklore. Firstly, the ‘other causes’ aspect of Taylor’s definitive account was absent, left on the sub-editor’s table, or at best indistinct. Secondly, there was a fallacy of definition common in the reporting of policing matters. The failure of individual officers is frequently ascribed to the police as a body.

  Lord Justice Taylor had spoken of a failure of commanders to control and respond to the situation when discussing blame. The press reporting, and the popular narrative, transposed this to a simpler message: ‘the police were to blame’.

  It is not unique in general conversation and media reporting for the specific, e.g. the racist attitude of an individual officer, to be reported as a generic problem, e.g. the racist police. However, when the context of such generalisation is the Hillsborough disaster, from which many officers were personally traumatised, the assertion of generic blame was to have a devastating impact within the force.

  Officers, such as the Constable at the gate to Pen 3 and the Inspector behind the terrace, and many others who were directly involved, assumed that this would mean a homicide investigation into their own actions and omissions. West Midlands Police were in charge of the inquiries and so no assurances were available from within the force. Anxiety, self-blame and anger were common and widespread psychological responses amongst the junior ranks of the force.

  It was against that context that I was set one of my final tasks arising from the Taylor Inquiry. I was tasked by the Deputy Chief Constable, Mr Hayes, to produce a compilation video to demonstrate all the aspects of the disaster in which the junior ranks had played a part. It was to be shown at a meeting being organised by the South Yorkshire Police Federation.

  The Police Federation is the trade union for the ranks of Constable, Sergeant and Inspector, who pay a monthly subscription for membership. The Federation is charged with two statutory functions. The first is to protect the welfare of their members. The second is to work with the force management to ensure its efficiency and effectiveness. The Federation generally has a full-time secretary and Chairman in each force and then elected representatives at each work place and for each of the three ranks, who come together on a regular basis to form what is called a joint branch board.

  South Yorkshire Joint Branch Board intended to hold a meeting to address the anxiety created amongst its membership by the popular narrative that was abroad since Lord Justice Taylor’s Report. The Chief Constable had agreed to ‘address the troops’ so to speak, but then delegated the responsibility to the Deputy, Mr Hayes.

  Each officer who had been at Hillsborough would be recalling the disaster through the narrow window of his or her personal experience that day. I therefore produced a video, on Mr Hayes’s instruction, that would take the audience through the day from build-up at the turnstiles; opening of Gate C; overcrowding in the pens; the rescue effort; and finally to their gruesome duties in the gymnasium. The material was drawn, primarily, from three main sources – the inquiry compilation video produced by West Midlands Police and shown at the Taylor Inquiry, the BBC images, and the CCTV footage recovered from cameras at the stadium, which depicted the crowds at both the 1988 and 1989 semi-finals (many junior officers had been given the same duties at both).

  Chief Superintendent Mole introduced me to a training video that he had come across, that had been produced by another force prior to the Hillsborough tragedy, called ‘Plan for disaster’. He felt that the front end of that video, which included details of previous football tragedies, would be a useful and contextual addition to the compilation.

  I went along to the Federation meeting. I had no knowledge of who would be there. It was their meeting. I recognised the full-time secretary and Chairman of the Joint Branch Board, Paul Middup and Bob Lax, who were conducting the meeting. Other members of the Joint Branch Board were present. Mr Hayes was there, of course.

  Then there were some people I didn’t recognise: two lawyers retained by the Federation to represent the interests of the junior ranks; a member of the National Police Federation Executive Board; the editor of a national Police Federation magazine; and a Member of Parliament and his secretary.

  Michael Shersby was a Conservative Member of Parliament who was paid a retainer by the National Police Federation to represent the interests of the junior ranks in Parliament. It was typical of similar arrangements of that time adopted by trade unions, which commonly sponsored MPs. The Federation, unlike some trade unions, is non-party political and it changed its retained member whenever the government changed, making sure they always had someone from the party in power who was able to champion their cause.

  The Chairman of the South Yorkshire Police Joint Branch Board opened the meeting and, amongst his welcoming remarks, he said that he wanted to give Michael Shersby information that may be helpful to him. He introduced Mr Hayes, who made it clear that the force had accepted, unequivocally, the findings of Lord Justice Taylor. He said that the Chief Constable had agreed to him speaking on his behalf to do two things. Firstly, to enable everyone to have a better understanding of what happened at Hillsborough, including a video and photographic presentation. Secondly, to spend time listening to junior officers’ fears and frustrations.

  I played the video, which had no narration from me and showed photographs and diagrams of the engineering features of Hillsborough Stadium that had been scrutinised, and found to be sub-standard, at the Taylor Inquiry.

  My overriding impression of the meeting was that it created an opportunity for catharsis. There was some unseemly rhetoric from the floor about the contribution of the fans to the crush at the turnstiles. Individual officers and their federation representatives were very emotional and raw about the emerging popular narrative that implied that it was they, the junior ranks, who had each been complicit in
the deaths of ninety-five people. The force Welfare Officer was present so that she could pick up the pieces afterwards with any officer who might, at the meeting, exhibit signs of stress and anxiety. On the evidence of what I saw that day, she would not be short of clients.

  After the meeting, Mr Hayes had lunch with the Joint Branch Board and their invited guests, including Mr Shersby. I was not present. Mr Shersby asked Mr Hayes if the same video, photographs and diagrams might be shown to a number of MPs who were then active in the consideration of the Football Spectators Bill. Mr Hayes consulted the Chief Constable, who decided that I should be tasked to do that.

  On 8 November 1989, I visited the Houses of Parliament on the instruction of Mr Hayes. At a meeting called and chaired by Mr Shersby, in one of the committee rooms there, I fulfilled my task. There were just twelve Members of Parliament present and two left midway through the presentation. There were few questions and, ultimately, little interest.

  My full-time employment on Hillsborough matters had ended before the visit to London. It had come to a natural conclusion after the Taylor Inquiry was over. I returned to my day job in the Career Development Department at Headquarters after what had been an absence of three months. Occasionally I was given additional tasks or responsibilities because of my grasp of the findings of the Taylor Inquiry.

  I was the secretary of a task group, for example, which met occasionally under the direction of the Deputy Chief Constable, to implement the recommendations of Taylor. There are five professional football teams, and associated stadia, in South Yorkshire. The senior officers responsible for each stadium were called to a series of meetings at Headquarters to understand, discuss and roll out the recommendations emerging from the Taylor Inquiry. The group ensured that the force was ideally positioned to ensure the safety of spectators at football matches in the future.