By contrast, there was considerable detail of the meeting with Mr Shersby, on 3 October 1989. Minutes show it was organised by the Police Federation and that, along with Federation representatives including PC Middup, several senior officers were there, including DCC Hayes.
From the start, it was made clear to attendees that the purpose of the meeting was “to draw out information that would be helpful to Michael Shersby when Parliament came to debate the Hillsborough disaster.”
Two months earlier, the Taylor Interim Report had been published. The report clearly rejected the views of police witnesses to the Taylor Inquiry that the behaviour of supporters—particularly in relation to allegations of large-scale drunkenness—was a contributory factor. Lord Justice Taylor wrote: “I am satisfied on the evidence, however, that the great majority were not drunk nor even the worse for drink.”
In early September 1989, Mr Shersby met Mr Hurd to discuss various policing matters. Notes of that meeting recorded that Mr Shersby “had heard that morale in South Yorkshire had taken a great knock as a result of Lord Justice Taylor's interim report”, and that he had been invited to visit SYP.
On 3 October, the Police Federation meeting began with a video presentation to Mr Shersby, led by Ch Insp Bettison. This was intended to provide some context about the disaster. According to meeting notes, the video lasted 29 minutes and included, among other things, a history of football disasters, the layout of the stadium and a comparison of the crowd in 1988 and 1989.
While it was being played, DCC Hayes and Ch Insp Bettison, among others, added further comments relating to previous games and pinpointed specific points in the footage. There were also discussions about the impact the disaster had had on officers and an acknowledgement that supporters had helped in the rescue effort.
However, the notes show that about halfway through the morning session, the tone of the discussions changed from concerns for officers to condemnation of supporters. For example, Ch Supt Mole said the behaviour of supporters in 1989 “was the worst seen”. As Ch Supt Mole had only arrived at the ground once the rescue effort was almost complete, this comment could not have been based on his own experience. Other officers strongly stated that the Taylor Interim Report had overlooked key aspects of police evidence about supporters’ behaviour.
Tony Judge was Publicity Director of the Police Federation nationally and Editor of Police, the Federation journal. He was also present at the meeting. At the end of the morning session, he was recorded as saying “evidence that was not given in the Taylor Report should come out”, and then that “we should plan with Michael Shersby the counter attack.”
In the afternoon, individual officers were invited to give their account of the disaster. These officers were, for the most part, not named in the meeting notes; instead, they were referred to as “Officer A”, etc. The majority of their accounts included references to supporters being drunk and aggressive or abusive. Officers identified in the notes as A and B reported extreme drunkenness; Officers C and E differentiated between what they called genuine supporters and “yobbos”. Officer G suggested that when supporters arrived at Sheffield train stations “at 10 or 11 am all you could smell was beer.”
Officers repeatedly stated that they could not understand why the Taylor Inquiry had rejected evidence about alcohol when they themselves had seen so much being consumed. Several officers specifically mentioned that they hoped Mr Shersby would use their account in parliamentary debates around the disaster.
This discussion was facilitated by Ch Insp Bettison, who began by drawing officers’ attention to some positive comments from the Taylor Report: “If you thought Lord Justice Taylor's Report was unfair – paragraph 253 of the Report: ‘Most Officers did all they could. Many supporters paid tribute’, paragraph 278 ‘Over many years the South Yorkshire Police have given excellent service to the public’, paragraph 279 ‘Aggravated by hostility to rescue victims’.”
He then added: “you have the opportunity to present more balance to the Report: fit those paragraphs much more in context.”
Through close comparison of what was said at the meeting with officers’ written accounts and transcripts of evidence, the IOPC was able to identify six of the officers who spoke at the meeting and asked them what they recalled of it. One was medically unfit to be interviewed, and two told the IOPC they had no recollection of the meeting. Two did recall it and said that they were invited to speak openly, so they did.
At the meeting, one of these officers said: “Before the crush I took a wheelchair through because there was no other way in. As we turned round to get out, the crush was so bad we could not move. We asked for horses to come across to stop them pushing. The horses were kicking people back to stop them pushing. Liverpool have been exonerated from this Inquiry because it would be the death of Liverpool Football Club.”
The IOPC has not found evidence of witnesses referring to being kicked by police horses, though one supporter complained to Operation Resolve that a particular police horse was not being adequately controlled. No mounted officer has stated that their horse kicked fans.
In his comments to the meeting, the other officer identified by the IOPC contrasted the behaviour of the supporters who had travelled to Sheffield by special train—who he described as “decent – no yobbos”—with the scene he saw at “the coach park where Liverpool supporters were being disgorged.” He said: “It was crowded outside supermarkets, urinating in streets. There were so many of them, it was ridiculous. The amount that came in the last 15 minutes was like a human tide. The camera was situated looking down Leppings Lane. But they came over the bridge too – no shots of them over bridge but there were just as many people coming over the bridge. They were carrying 4 packs, 6 packs, anything they could get hold of. There was a genuine reluctance to go into the ground.”
The IOPC compared the comments this officer made in the meeting with his initial written account made after the disaster and with his initial statement to the IOPC, where he described his experiences on the day. In neither of these did he refer to supporters urinating in the streets or carrying “4 packs, 6 packs, anything they could get hold of.” While he did say, in both his written account and his first statement to the IOPC, that supporters were drinking before the game and that some seemed reluctant to head into the ground, on both occasions he described the supporters he met as “good-humoured” and, in his written account, he said they were “well-behaved”.
The tone of his comments in the meeting with Mr Shersby—with terms like “a human tide”—therefore appears quite different to his initial account and to the statement he gave to the IOPC.
Three significant actions followed this meeting. The first was that, when Mr Shersby spoke during a debate in Parliament on the Football Supporters Bill on 30 October 1989, he said that “at the match at which the disaster occurred 3,500 individuals were determined to get into the ground at short notice. Unfortunately some of them had been drinking too much.”
The second was that on 8 November 1989, Ch Insp Bettison visited Parliament at the invitation of Mr Shersby, where he showed a group of MPs a video.
The third, also in November 1989, was the publication of an article in the Police Federation magazine that reported on the meeting. The article included several quotes from the meeting about drunken behaviour, though it did not include the names of the officers. It ended with the lines: “if the police version is indeed the unpalatable truth, the Hillsborough Inquiry's interim report has ignored a major cause for concern. If mass drunkenness is to be dismissed as a potential creator of future disaster, how can Taylor be said to have done his job?”
By the end of November 1989, the Sheffield Star and at least five national newspapers had published versions of the story.
Overall, the evidence examined does suggest that the meeting was set up to encourage Mr Shersby to speak up for the view of the police officers and particularly the Federation members, and that the prevailing view of the officers present was that the consumption of alcohol by supporters, and supporter behaviour, had contributed to the disaster. This view was not supported by other evidence.
Officers were entitled to share their views, and the Police Federation was entitled to arrange such a meeting. Nonetheless, the evidence indicates that some officers at the meeting exaggerated aspects of their accounts, in a bid to redress what they perceived as an imbalance in the Taylor Interim Report.
