Hillsborough Untold: Aftermath of a disaster

by Norman Bettison

The Authority meeting proper was standard fare. A little more frosty than usual I thought, but with the press being well represented in the public gallery there could be lots of reasons for the unusual dynamic. I gave the quarterly report on three aspects of force monitoring that were important to the Authority. Firstly, the austerity squeeze was well under way in 2012 and I reported £63 million savings projected for the financial year. Secondly, I was pleased to report that cost-cutting was not affecting performance, with reductions in crime in the overwhelming majority of categories. Thirdly, the force undertakes a monthly survey of public satisfaction and confidence monitored on a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis. I reported at this meeting, which was to be my last after nineteen years as a Chief Officer, that public confidence had never been higher in West Yorkshire. This was timely given the attempts by Mr Sampson over the following weeks to lever me out of my post on the grounds of force ineffectiveness.

  After the normal meeting, there was a break for coffee whilst press and public were cleared for the below-the-line discussions. I stayed put, looking for some feedback from the pre-meeting from either the Chairman or the Chief Executive, who were both sitting, as always, to my immediate right. I would normally expect some clue about the prevailing mood of the members. I received none that day, which was telling in itself. Then the members began to file back into the room.

  Looking around the room, there were sixteen of the seventeen members present. I had people’s attention but it seemed to me as though there was anger reflected in a few eyes. Perhaps, I told myself, it was because of today’s public spectacle. Nobody would have enjoyed running the press gauntlet. In other eyes, particularly those of the independent members, I thought I could detect a kind of sadness. The sort of look the condemned man might get from the more compassionate members of the hanging party.

  I delivered my prepared account. I spoke for twenty minutes about the history, and the previous ‘fallout’, arising from my involvement in the Hillsborough disaster. I used four props: the Taylor Report; the Hillsborough Panel Report; press headlines from the last week alongside the press headlines from November 1998, when I was appointed Chief in Merseyside; and finally my recent press statements. I was keen to read my press statements in full on the basis that most of the members would not have seen them directly and might have been influenced by the misreporting of them.

  There were two or three questions from members. None were substantive. I can only recall one from Councillor Ken Smith, who asked whether I had taken anyone’s advice before issuing my press statement on the previous Thursday. I remember it because the point that he was making was obvious and intended to embarrass. I don’t think it mattered to him what my answer was.

  I left at about 12.45 p.m. to allow members to meet privately. I knew that there was a mood running against me but, as with all things political, the outcome would depend upon how the numbers fell.

  I had a call at about 1.45 p.m. from the Chairman. He wanted to meet me at the Authority offices but suggested that I come at 4 p.m., when the press would have left. I wasn’t surprised by the agenda at 4 p.m., but I was a little surprised by the immediate leap to a conclusion. In the first words uttered at the meeting, Councillor Burns-Williamson asked that I step aside because of the controversy. If I did so, he said, he would be willing to say what a wonderful job I’d done as Chief in West Yorkshire. I said that I had no intention of stepping aside just a week after I had been called upon to ‘scurry up the nearest drainpipe’. I needed to submit myself to investigation in order to clear my name. That is why I had sought immediate and self-referral to the statutory body that could achieve that. Mr Burns-Williamson asked me to reflect on the impact on the force, on the Police Authority and on the staff at the Police Authority HQ, for whom, he told me without intended irony, it had been a difficult day.

  I suggested that, if the Authority thought my position was untenable, they should suspend me pending a full investigation. The Chairman responded that any investigation was likely to take a long time and that the Authority wouldn’t countenance an extensive period of limbo.

  There then followed a cameo that gave an insight into the Authority’s earlier private discussions. Councillor Burns-Williamson (Labour) had asked his Deputy Chairman, Councillor Les Carter (Conservative), to be with him when he delivered the Authority’s edict. Sensing a standoff between me and the Chairman, Councillor Carter proffered: ‘Can’t you see how this will impact on the PCC elections, Norman?’ (Which was honest.) To which the Chairman responded: ‘Les, we agreed that we weren’t going to mention the elections.’ (Which was probably also accurate.) Councillor Carter just couldn’t help himself. The forthcoming election was the elephant in the room.

  One wonderful aspect of the old seventeen-strong, cross-party Authority was that party politics were usually left at the door. In West Yorkshire and, surprisingly, also in Merseyside, characters of different political persuasions would create strong alliances to achieve the mutual aims of the Police Authority. Here, on 21 September 2012, these strange political bedfellows had a common concern that unexpected controversy should not interfere with the Chairman’s subsequent bid for power.

  I asked that Fraser Sampson, as someone who understood employment law as well as Realpolitik, should join us. I told the three of them that I had no intention of stepping aside until there had been an independent investigation of my post-disaster involvement. Resignation would allow the narrative to run that I had escaped the bullets in an act of cowardice. That is precisely what I wanted to avoid. I wanted, instead, to face any accusation. I left them to reflect.

  Whenever a Chief Police Officer hits choppy water with his or her Police Authority, there is a buddy system, within ACPO, whereby one of the Association members will act as ‘friend’ and go-between. It has been found, over the years, to provide the best chance of calming troubled waters. If that fails, then the ‘friend’ continues to be a sounding board for the colleague in the eye of the storm. I had identified a ‘friend’ as soon as the hue and cry reached fever pitch the previous weekend. Craig Mackey, the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolis, is well versed in police disciplinary procedures. He is also a thoroughly decent fellow who tends to make more friends than enemies and has form for finding win/win solutions in tricky situations.

  I told Craig that, whilst I had put the onus back onto the Police Authority at the Friday afternoon meeting, I nevertheless understood the significance of the conversation that I had just had. A Chief Constable, like any Chief Executive, relies for his or her authority on the confidence of their staff – the dressing room, so to speak – and also the confidence of their Authority or Board.

  It seemed, from the conversation that I had just had, that I could no longer count on the latter. I was a lame duck from that point. I asked Mr Mackey to negotiate on my behalf an agreement to retire at the end of an IPCC investigation. I would be prepared to commit to it now. I thought that an IPCC investigation, of my role at least, was possible within a ten-month timeframe. So my opening gambit was a preparedness to go at the end of the investigation, or August 2013, whichever was the sooner.

  I took a call on Sunday 23 September from Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) Roger Baker. Fraser Sampson had contacted him, presumably to try to enlist his help in encouraging me out of the door. Mr Baker was too wise to offer direct encouragement but he did tell me that Fraser Sampson had retained the services of John Beggs QC to help them find a legal means of unseating me. Roger Baker assured me that he had reinforced the need for the Authority to be sure that there was a prima facie case against me and that there was a public interest consideration if they wished to suspend or dismiss me. He said that they hadn’t approached it in that strategic way. Some members had simply turned against me on Friday and they were now resolved to get me out. It was left to the Chief Executive, Mr Sampson, to find the means.

  On the Monday, Craig Mackey put my retirement plan to Mr Sampson. His response was that they were now well
advanced along the avenue of requiring my resignation on the grounds of force ineffectiveness. This was bizarre. Section 11 of the Police Act 1996 had introduced a measure to enable a local Police Authority, in conjunction with the Home Secretary, to get rid of an underperforming Chief. It was a measure that had never been used because one could see, immediately, from the legislation, that there must have been a path that led to that nuclear option. Poor performance; written appraisal; intervention; no improvement are the kinds of steps one would expect to see. Each step presenting an exit route for the failing Chief. I, on the other hand, had on the previous Friday posted the best results the force had seen in recent times against a 15 per cent reduction in budget.

  Craig Mackey was assured, by Mr Sampson, that the Home Secretary’s private office were in support of the Section 11 route and that John Beggs QC was advising on process. Coincidentally, John Beggs is currently the counsel to David Duckenfield and will have recently forced every nerve and sinew in representing his client’s interests. Here, according to Mr Sampson’s account, he was advising on my professional demise. The symbol of the legal profession is, appropriately, blind justice.

  I wasn’t moved by the threat of Section 11 proceedings. The likelihood of success in using novel legislation in a case where inefficiency and ineffectiveness could easily be disproved struck me as evidence of an Authority overreaching itself. It was, however, a clear indication of the degree of determination to get rid of me.

  At 3.45 p.m. on Tuesday 25 September 2012, I took a call from the Chairman. It was a meandering conversation. He first of all hoped that I was OK. He then read out a resolution, prepared by Fraser Sampson, that indicated a lack of confidence in my ability to continue to lead the force. A resolution intended, he said, to be put before the full Authority. He then said that he hoped not to go down the formal route and that this informal channel was open and that I could speak to him at any time about stepping down. I asked about my offer, through Craig Mackey, to go at the conclusion of an investigation or August at the latest. ‘Members think that is too long,’ he said. ‘They are thinking about a more immediate date.’ He concluded the conversation by telling me that he wanted my response in seven days, but it wasn’t clear to what part of his conversation I was meant to respond.

  At 4.30 p.m., I had a call from the HMIC, Mr Baker. He had been told that the Authority had now initiated the Section 11 procedure and the earlier call from the Chair was the trigger. I told him that I hadn’t understood the call in that way. Mr Baker went off to speak with Fraser Sampson and called again to report that Mr Sampson was frustrated that the Chairman appeared to have gone off script. I was told to expect a formal copy of the resolution, which duly arrived from Mr Sampson by email at 5.34 p.m. But no grounds for the no confidence resolution. I chased up with Mr Mackey and Mr Baker. They told me that Mr Sampson would be working up the grounds that night. I wondered aloud with each of them about whether it might not have been better for the grounds to have preceded the resolution.

  I never did get those grounds. Section 11 was a flight of fancy that got airborne, briefly, somewhere between Fraser Sampson and John Beggs QC. The members of the Authority just knew that they wanted shot of me, they didn’t really care how. That could be left to the lawyers.

  The next day saw the staff in the press office at the Authority briefing against me to my own press officer, Nigel Swift. Whilst I trusted Nigel implicitly, the resolution of no confidence was likely to become the talk of the force and, thereafter, as sure as night follows day, the press would have it. Things were coming to a head. Perhaps that was Mr Sampson’s strategy all along.

  I had my last-ever conversation with Mr Sampson at 1.50 p.m. on Thursday 27 September 2012. It was precipitated by my message to him, following up on the resolution that he had sent to me two days previously. I told him that I was not prepared to respond until a) I had seen the grounds that would support a vote of no confidence and, then b) I had an opportunity to consult a lawyer. We were sparring, nothing more.

  He rang, unexpectedly, to acknowledge receipt. I was on leave at home that day and he rang me to say that he had just called at my office and wanted me to know that it had been an intended welfare visit. A unique event in my fourteen years’ experience as Chief Constable. He told me that the grounds ‘weren’t quite finished yet’ but that he would discuss service of them with Craig Mackey. As I say, the grounds never arrived. Mr Sampson and I would never have need to speak to each other again.

  The following day I saw Cllr Burns-Williamson at a neutral venue: the Cedar Court Hotel at Wakefield. In spite of the Chairman having the bullets to fire, I realised that it would be others who were providing them and loading for him. Mark Burns-Williamson would be uncomfortable; we had been friends. He would, by now though, be reconciled to the fact that my dispatch was necessary on the grounds of political expediency. As a politician, he would have seen the guillotine in operation many times. Although we were, to all intents, locked in a fight to the finish, I knew I could discuss alternative options to Section 11 dismissal which might better achieve his politically expedient ambition.

  I told him that I saw the Section 11 procedure as a device and it wouldn’t achieve its intended purpose. We might all get damaged in the process. I did understand, however, that as a candidate in the forthcoming PCC election, he might well need a political resolution to what had become the ‘Bettison problem’.

  I offered to announce, forthwith, my retirement in May. Firstly, it would give the incoming PCC, on the first day after the election in November, an opportunity to advertise for a Chief Constable. It generally takes six months from advert to appointment. Secondly, it would give the IPCC a fighting chance to fulfil their investigation into my conduct. I remained anxious to end a forty-year police career with my integrity intact.

  The alternative, I warned him, was a dirty fight over Section 11. I left him to think about that whilst I went off to pay for the coffee and biscuits.

  He warmed to the idea of an early announcement of retirement pre-dating the PCC elections and promised to work on Authority members with a view to agreeing on my suggested way forward. He was to be at the Labour Party conference at Manchester throughout the following week, which was vital to his political future as West Yorkshire’s elected PCC, but he would sound out his fellow members from there. As we parted he assured me, in the detached way that politicians do, that this situation wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t personal, it was just politics.

  Craig Mackey served on Fraser Sampson a formal notice setting out my offer and on Thursday 4 October 2012 it was put before the Authority. At 2.40 p.m. that day, the Chairman rang to say that, with one abstention, the Authority had accepted the compromise but they wished the retirement date to be 31 March 2013. I asked for time to consider that and made a call to Craig Mackey as my ACPO ‘friend’ and confidante. Whilst connected to Craig, my Deputy, John Parkinson, informed me that the press office had received word from the Yorkshire Post that a councillor on the Police Authority had briefed them that the Authority had met and were unanimous that I should resign following a vote of no confidence. That was the story they intended to run the following day. I therefore decided to announce my retirement that evening, to take effect from 31 March 2013. I knew that would be a bigger story than the leak.

  I spoke with the Chairman before issuing my public statement. I told him that I was appalled by the leak, knowing that he would be too. I undertook to send him a copy of my retirement announcement and he undertook to speak to the local media about his reluctant acceptance of it. I saw him on TV that night and heard him the next morning on BBC Radio Leeds. I hope he was being sincere when he expressed his disappointment that it had come to this and praised my record whilst Chief. The same Chief that was threatened a few days previously with Section 11 requirement to resign on the grounds of being ineffective. Still, it wasn’t personal.

  The news of my retirement was welcomed in many quarters. Trevor Hicks, on behalf of the Hil
lsborough families, told the press that ‘this is the first of the new scalps, his will be the first of many’.

  On 5 October 2012, I wrote to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to confirm that it was my intention to retire on 31 March 2013 and asked that they now expedite any investigation so that it could be completed before that date. If an investigation is completed to the point of finding prima facie evidence of gross misconduct, then a stop can be put on retirement until the officer has faced disciplinary proceedings. I was always confident that it would never come to that and so I gave the regulatory body the earliest notice of my intentions and copied that letter widely, including to the Home Office and the HMIC. I still, at this time, believed that there might be a swift and fair process undertaken by an independent regulator. I had never been down this road before and, now that I have, I realise that my expectations of the IPCC, on both fronts, were set too high.

  Taking stock on the evening of 5 October 2012, I reflected on three frenetic weeks since the Hillsborough Panel had published their report. Three weeks since Trevor Hicks had implied that I was at the heart of a criminal conspiracy. Three weeks in which my professional career had come to be hanging by a thread. I seriously entertained the thought, on 5 October, that I might still retire, honourably, in six months’ time. I was foolish to think that.

  By late October, the IPCC had made clear their intentions and had reinforced the view that there was some merit in the swirling allegations of a criminal conspiracy to cover up the truth about Hillsborough. Given that mine was the only name in the public domain, it bolstered the prejudgement about my alleged involvement. Notwithstanding this development, I was still working my lengthy notice period and genuinely hoped that the IPCC might, during that time, get to the bottom of these historic and unspecific accusations. The Yorkshire Post had published an excoriating editorial about me following the IPCC announcement, but I had survived it. The media attacks were becoming fewer and further between. In the absence of new facts there was only so much vitriol that could be expended on one person. The media can always find fresh targets. It was, though, only the lull before the next storm.