Mr Davis told the Panorama viewers that I was at that meeting. I have dealt with his allegation already. I attended no such briefing. It is interesting that Mr Davis gave this account to television producers before speaking to the regulatory body that had begun an investigation seven months before the Panorama programme was aired.
The Panorama presenter mentioned my name, liberally, in the first quarter of the programme but, as the narrative was built, and conclusions were drawn, my name and image no longer appeared. I can be sure of that because, naturally, I was watching the documentary more intently than most viewers would have been.
The telephone caller after the broadcast was John Harding, who was then my solicitor – a man of concise communication even when compared with others in a profession where time equals money. If, instead of law, he had gone into medicine, John would be good at surgery but hopeless at bedside manner. Without any greeting or preamble, he said: ‘They seem pretty sure that you’ve done something, they’re just not sure what.’ After a perfunctory word of consolation, which always seemed an afterthought to John’s professional counsel, he hung up.
It had come to this. There existed a narrative about a significant historical event and, like all folklore narratives, it was simple and relatively one-dimensional. It had been fashioned and honed over the years. And now I found myself at the heart of that narrative. The tragedy at Hillsborough revealed a failure of policing. That is true. I agree with that. It was Lord Justice Taylor’s conclusion drawn within sixteen weeks of the disaster. Furthermore, so the popular narrative runs, there has been a conspiracy involving the police and others which has sought to cover up the true causes of the disaster for a quarter of a century. And, moreover, I am now presumed to be one of its chief architects. It must be true, because we all saw it tonight on Panorama.
Eight months earlier, I had no inkling that it might come to this. On Wednesday 12 September 2012, the Hillsborough Panel, after three years of research, were due to publish their report. I had known the publication date for several weeks. I had provided a brief summary of my post-disaster role at the invitation of the South Yorkshire Police team, which would be receiving and responding to the report. They were preparing to address issues that might arise from the report and had raised a question about my role in case they were asked. I was keen to learn, but not concerned about, the result of this significant review.
I travelled from home in Yorkshire to London by an early train that day. It was a dull autumn morning and I had used the journey time to read my papers for two meetings that I was due to attend. I had been Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, the third largest provincial force, for six years; a Chief Constable since I joined Merseyside in 1998; and a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) for nineteen years. I was a Vice President of ACPO, elected by its membership. I was involved in a lot of national policy-making and was often in London for meetings with colleagues or government.
On this autumn morning, I was due first at the Headquarters of the British Transport Police in Camden to take part in ACPO Cabinet. This is a collective of Chief Officers who individually, on behalf of the Association, provide a national lead on various aspects of policing policy. The idea behind Cabinet is that a relatively small number of active members will produce national policy that can be subsequently endorsed by the full Council of Chief Constables. In theory, Cabinet was meant to take the posturing and small-p politics out of operational policy-making. In practice, the heads of the locally independent forces still voiced a range of views when called upon to make a collective decision. One of the roles of the ACPO President and Vice Presidents was to recognise where controversy and equivocation might arise and to try, through bilateral conversations, to reach consensus.
Sir Hugh Orde, the Association’s President in 2012, chaired the Cabinet meeting that morning. I remember it as a meeting that was typical of its kind. A huge agenda where individual colleagues, who may have done a considerable amount of work on a policy area, would present their proposals to Cabinet. Cabinet would give its thumbs up or thumbs down before the proposal could be put to the forty-three independently minded Chief Constables for sign-off. We worked our way through the topics in front of us although it often struck me, at Cabinet and ACPO Council meetings, that we would sometimes spend a disproportionate amount of time on the trivial versus the more significant topics. Association business, as in politics, was often about the art of the possible.
Just before noon, as the agenda was diminishing, my phone had vibrated with an incoming text message. It was from Oliver Cattermole, the head of press and communications for ACPO. It said: ‘Your name has just been mentioned at the Hillsborough Independent Panel press conference. Thought you’d want to know.’
This did not ring any alarm bells, but it was still a surprise. I texted back: ‘In what context?’ The instant reply: ‘In response to a question from an FT journalist about your role post Hillsborough.’ I couldn’t understand the Financial Times point of reference. I knew of one or two campaigning journalists who had pursued a Hillsborough narrative for many years. I came close to meeting one of them, David Conn of The Guardian, in the run-up to the publication of the panel’s report. In the end, my Chief Constable colleague at South Yorkshire, Med Hughes, had agreed that, as the current head of the organisation that had been subject of criticism over the years, he should be the one to respond to Mr Conn and other journalists who were tracking the work of the Hillsborough Panel. But the Financial Times link was out of left field. I texted back to Oliver: ‘What did they say about me?’ and, by return: ‘Nothing substantive. He was a member of a team post disaster etc.’
I cannot say that I felt relaxed. The publication of the Hillsborough Panel’s report, after three years’ deliberation, was likely to attract much publicity. I had not envisaged that my name would be implicated at the time of publication. I still bore the metaphoric scars from the controversy over my appointment in Merseyside and I could see that some of those embers might be fanned into an odd flame. But, at that moment, lunchtime on Wednesday 12 September 2012, I was still relatively unperturbed.
An old friend, a district judge, would email me four days later to highlight my naivety. After I had made some injudicious public comments about my own recollection of the disaster and its aftermath, her email grabbed me by the throat.
‘What are you doing?!’ she demanded. Didn’t I realise that this is likely to become the biggest test of police and judicial integrity ever seen in this country? The politicians had already released the hounds. She advised me to cease making public comments and get myself the best legal representation that I could find. Apart from an immediate exchange of emails, in which I thanked her for her frank assessment and advice, I didn’t hear from her again.
Lots of other acquaintances in the professions, in politics, in journalism and even some in the police service, adopted a similar radio silence. My address book now reveals a clear distinction between friendship and acquaintance. By lunchtime on Wednesday 12 September 2012, it seems that I had become toxic. I was unaware of that transition.
When the ACPO Cabinet agenda was cleared, it was time to make my way across town to my next meeting. I led for the police service on the development and implementation of strategy and policy around preventing extremism and radicalisation. I was due to chair the quarterly meeting of cross-government representatives at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in Victoria Street, next door to Westminster Abbey. There would be, around that table, representatives from education, health, prisons, local government and security services as well as police leaders who held counter-terrorism portfolios. I could not know, as I travelled from Camden, that this would be the last ACPO meeting I would ever chair.
I had hitched a lift with another Chief Constable who had been at Cabinet and who also had a subsequent meeting elsewhere in Westminster. Alfred Hitchcock was the Chief of Bedfordshire. He led for ACPO on youth offending which gave him his pla
ce at Cabinet. Alf had a lovely line when making public presentations. Right at the outset he would break the ice by saying: ‘I know that you all have three questions. The answers are, “yes”, “no” and “girls”.’ A theatrical pause and then, ‘Yes, my name really is Alfred Hitchcock. No, I am not named after the famous film director. My father was an Alfred, as was my grandfather. And finally, I won’t be passing the name onto my kids as I only have girls.’
When travelling through London’s busy traffic alongside Alf, I received an increasing number of text messages. It became apparent that, after the Hillsborough Panel had given their press conference at which my name arose courtesy of the Financial Times, I had then been highlighted again by the President of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, Trevor Hicks. The support group, which had campaigned about Hillsborough for twenty-three years, and which had been very closely involved in the work of the Hillsborough Panel, were given a platform to speak to the press representatives who were assembled in Liverpool Cathedral to receive the panel’s report.
I do not know whether Mr Hicks had always intended to turn the spotlight on me in the post-publication phase or whether he was prompted by the earlier Financial Times question. Whatever the case, it ended up with Mr Hicks naming me, and only me as far as I can see from the transcript of his comments, as a person at the heart of a police cover-up, what he called a ‘dirty tricks campaign’.
Mr Hicks began his indictment with what he must have intended to be a humorous aside. ‘The lawyers have advised me to be careful what I say here. However, I intend to ignore it (audience laughter).’ Having implicated me in his assertion that the Hillsborough Panel Report vindicated the longstanding claims of the campaigning group that there was a conspiracy to cover up the truth about Hillsborough, he said that ‘Bettison, if he has anything about him, he will, I think the term is, consider his position’. And then: ‘If he is anything of a man he will now stand down and go and scurry up a drainpipe somewhere (more audience laughter).’
I didn’t know the detail of this press conference when cocooned in Alf Hitchcock’s car, I just knew that my phone was hot. My own press office in West Yorkshire were on to me. Oliver Cattermole, at ACPO head office, was telling me about national media interest in my position. Kind souls were informing me that they had heard my name on early news reports from the Liverpool Cathedral launch and hoped that all was well. I told Alf what was going on to excuse the fact that I was a distracted passenger who should have been chatting gracefully to his transport provider. Alf, who formerly lived in the north-west and had witnessed my arrival as Merseyside Chief back in 1998, said that it sounded like my Merseyside baptism all over again. He suggested that I shouldn’t worry about it… But I was starting to.
I arrived at the meeting room at BIS with five minutes to spare. There was coffee and a Danish pastry available and I was ready for both. In the legion of government representatives who sat around my quarterly Prevent Strategy group meeting there was no need for anyone from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but they have the best suite of meeting and conference rooms of any government department so we always booked our meetings there.
I made the best job I could of chairing my final Prevent Strategy meeting. I had my phone beside me on the table, which became a distraction. I could not resist, from time to time, checking the growing number of messages about people who suddenly, and unexpectedly, wanted to hear my thoughts about Hillsborough. My instruction to Nigel Swift in the West Yorkshire Police press office and Oliver Cattermole at ACPO was that I had no comment to make and to refer everyone to South Yorkshire Police, where the relatively new Chief Constable, David Crompton, my former deputy at West Yorkshire, would be handling any media enquiries. That seemed a sensible position to adopt. I wish I had stuck to it.
I remember that one of the items on the Prevent Strategy Group agenda was an update on the Channel Programme from its lead, Craig Denholm, Deputy Chief Constable of Surrey. Channel is a scheme, with a line of separate government funding from the Home Office, to which the police and other government agencies can refer individuals who demonstrate a vulnerability to radicalisation. Under the auspices of Channel, Craig’s team would identify appropriate interventions that might prevent someone from developing into a fully-fledged home-grown terrorist. Channel, which I had nurtured from its early trials, had become a key part of the national response to the growth of extremism. It is even more relevant today with the pull of Islamic State and other global terror groups.
By September 2012, I recall that we had passed a significant number of interventions mark and Craig was updating on progress. Firstly, to report that Channel seemed to be effective because, in its formative years, there had been not a single Channel client who had gone on to commit a terrorism-related offence. Secondly, we were striving to get Education and Health to see the benefits of the programme and to encourage more referrals from teachers and mental health practitioners who were in the front line of witnessing a shift to radicalism amongst individuals in their respective client groups. In the early days their practitioners were reluctant to be seen to be profiling their flock. I rehearse this episode in what was, by now, the closing act of my forty-year career to remind myself that there is more to my policing history than Hillsborough.
I boarded the train at King’s Cross to travel home. I was due into Wakefield just after 8 p.m. I had earlier rung my staff officer, Sam Millar, and asked her to put a copy of the Hillsborough Panel’s report in my car – I left a spare key in the office. She told me that it was 395 pages and so I asked her to highlight the report for me wherever I was mentioned by name or wherever the work of the so-called Wain team was discussed. I reminded her of my media position – all enquiries to be passed to the press office in South Yorkshire.
I sat, confused, on the train. I didn’t know how I had ended up in the position of being a lightning rod for the anger about Hillsborough and I didn’t, at that stage, know what had been said about me by Mr Hicks in his rhetorical remarks. Nor, perhaps more importantly, by the Hillsborough Panel in their formal report. I would come to learn these things later and also, with the benefit of hindsight, work out for myself why I was in the crosshairs. On that journey through the darkening evening, when offices were closed and my staff were off duty, I was alone with my thoughts. I did the Times Sudoku puzzles and I remember thinking it a bizarre activity in which to be engaged whilst in the eye of the storm. Without access to the internet, I just could not think of anything more productive to do.
I had rung ahead to Gillian, my wife, to warn her of the interest in our name and to let her know that I had a night of reading ahead of me. I told her that I would eat on the train. The phone rang at about 6.30 p.m. It was Nigel Swift, the head of West Yorkshire Police’s press office. Apparently, staff from the Yorkshire Post, the biggest circulation newspaper local to us, had been ringing constantly during the afternoon. First of all, asking for, and now demanding, a comment from me.
My relationship with the Yorkshire Post and other local papers had always been transparent and clear. I would seek to use the medium of the newspapers to promote the work of a police force and a public service of which I was proud. I did not expect them to print everything that we hoped, nor in a fashion that we wished. In fostering this relationship, I wrote regular op-ed feature articles on issues of current concern. I tried to inject an element of controversy in my writing, such as when I wrote about the ‘Health and Safety Taliban’ getting in the way of the emergency service ethos or the ‘Drinking to Oblivion Culture’ that was prevalent in our cities. Right up until 12 September 2012, I like to think that I had a good relationship with the Yorkshire Post. I was on friendly terms with its editor, Peter Charlton, and with Tom Richmond, who, as well as being deputy editor, was also its business editor and racing correspondent.
It was not an overly cosy relationship, and no amount of bonhomie or exchanged tips for the Grand National could corrupt our respective positions. I had said to bo
th Peter Charlton and Tom Richmond that if the Yorkshire Post ever caught West Yorkshire Police with its metaphorical pants down then they should report it. And they often did! In the pre-Leveson days, local Chiefs and local editors could be trusted to manage the boundaries of what each of them recognised as a symbiotic relationship.
Nigel Swift told me that the Yorkshire Post was furious about the fact that I had pulled down the shutters. He had fended off the junior reporters but now faced the wrath of the relatively newly appointed, and London-based, political editor, who was threatening all kinds of story lines in the face of my reluctance to comment. Nigel told me that there had been an editorial meeting at the Post and that Tom Richmond had been deputed to ring me personally. I was to expect his call. I perhaps shouldn’t have taken it.
The deputy editor was as angry as I had ever witnessed. His colleagues hadn’t appreciated the stonewalling throughout the day. He pointed out that Trevor Hicks, who had lost two daughters at Hillsborough, and who deservedly had the world’s sympathy, had named me as implicated in a conspiracy to blame fans for causing the deaths and thus suppressing the truth that the police were to blame for the disaster. (Remember that I had not, in fact, heard precisely what Mr Hicks had said at this stage.) He went on to say that he believed it was in my best interests to make some sort of comment – any comment – rather than continue with my ostrich-like position. He said two things that caused me to reflect. Firstly, he said that the media would crucify me without some countervailing response. Secondly, he pointed out that this was an allegation about me personally, not about me as Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, and I therefore had to respond. I told him that I would reflect overnight. The deadlines for the morning editions were closing. I can remember saying that I wouldn’t be ‘railroaded’, which, even as I said it, struck me as ironic given that I was sitting in a packed train carriage.
Hillsborough Untold: Aftermath of a disaster Page 17