[QUOTE=âRocko, post: 1130052, member: 1â]Really good interview by Daniel Taylor with Popplewell in the Guardian today:
Martin Fletcherâs book about the Bradford City fire has created worldwide headlines because of its revelation that there had been at least eight previous fires[/URL] at business premises either owned or connected to the then chairman, Stafford Heginbotham. Fletcher, who was 12 at the time, escaped from the fire but his 11-year-old brother was the youngest victim and his father, his uncle and his grandfather were among the 56 to die at Valley Parade on 11 May 1985. The author [URL=âhttp://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/15/bradford-fire-martin-fletcher-stafford-heginbothamâ]has spent 15 years researching the fire[/URL] and is critical of[URL=âhttp://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/16/bradford-fire-andy-burnham-calls-for-fresh-investigationâ] the inquiry led by the then high court judge, Sir Oliver Popplewell, which featured only five days of testimony. Popplewell describes Heginbothamâs fire history as highly suspicious but believes another investigation will show nothing sinister. He invited Daniel Taylor to his London chambers.
Daniel Taylor The book shows this is the chairmanâs ninth or 10th fire, and I saw you quoted saying that merited an investigation.
Sir Oliver Popplewell Of course it should have been investigated, but when you analyse it if there had been anything sinister about it, eight or nine fires, the police would have investigated. Fire officers are very sceptical â Iâve been involved in a lot of fire insurance cases â if there had been anything sinister and, above all, Heginbothamâs insurers wouldnât have insured the various buildings if they werenât satisfied there was nothing in it. And there is nothing in it.
DT For it not to be part of the inquiry, strikes me as remarkable. If that evidence was withheld.
OP It wasnât âwithheldâ. No one told us about it. The police got all the evidence together. We donât have the power to go around gathering evidence. The police did. No one suggested this. Nobody wrote in, neither the police nor the fire authorities nor the insurers.
DT Itâs an incredible number.
OP I follow. It is incredible. But then you have to ask: âHow did he set fire to the club? What did he set fire to?â The place was absolutely jam-packed full. The biggest crowd theyâve had. The fire starts five minutes after half-time when the stand is full of 4,000 people. Now, if you are going to have a fire, you donât do it when the place is packed.
DT To clarify, though, the author doesnât ever point a finger directly like that.
OP No, but if you [the author] say it is not an accident âŚ
DT What he says is: can any man in the world be that unlucky?
OP I follow that. It is a perfectly proper question. But the answer is: itâs contrary to all the evidence of the time and it doesnât make any sense.
DT One of the things I heard you say ⌠it got picked up everywhere because your voice is a very powerful voice and people obviously see you as the authority on this subject ⌠you said on radio that it was a âgood storyâ but immediately falls down because the stand had no insurance value.
OP Yes.
DT Thatâs wrong though.
OP It doesnât have any insurance value.
DT It did.
OP Well, I donât know why they paid out.
DT They did though. The club received ÂŁ500,000 in insurance.
OP From insurance? Football insurance? Or his owner, stand insurance? Iâd like to know because it doesnât make any sense. It had half an hourâs life. No insurance company is going to pay out on something that was going to have only half an hourâs life. Anyway, thatâs a point. But the truth is there still wasnât a single piece of evidence that suggested this was arson.
DT Nigel Adams, one of the leading fire investigators in the country, has said that in 1985 fire forensics were pretty much non-existent and investigators were known as âdust kickersâ. He says there has to be another look at this. When someone of that authority says it âŚ
OP Well, we had fire experts at the time but there is nothing to look at now. There isnât any material now.
DT He clearly thinks there is something to look at.
OP Well, I just donât know ⌠we had fire evidence from distinguished people. I had a chief fire officer as one of my assessors. We went to the Home Office and they had fire people there. It never occurred to anybody this was arson. There was not a single sign of anything indicating arson. Basically, most arsonists leave some clue, however small. They didnât.
DT One of the authorâs complaints is that the inquiry went too quickly. The inquiry (testimony) lasted as long as the John Terry court case, for example. Five days.
P[I]opplewell is shown a police document, dated 2 May 1989[/I], after a meeting involving senior officers from the West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Humberside forces to discuss, post-Hillsborough, how the Bradford inquiry was conducted
DT Itâs a memo from Superintendent Nettleship from South Yorkshire saying [it was agreed] there was a âsevere pruningâ of [witness] evidence.
OP What part did he play in Bradford?
DT The Bradford tribunal is described as a seat of the pants affair and quite informal.
OP Was he there? It was quite informal. It was a very serious matter and we wanted to make people feel at ease. But it was conducted perfectly properly and it was tested, the work. Witnesses were cross-examined.
DT So when he says there was a severe pruning âŚ
OP Well, we cut out stuff that was irrelevant. There was a chap from some newspaper who said he had seen something thrown ⌠a bomb thrown, a smoke-bomb.
The then Bradford City chairman, Stafford Heginbotham, left, with Oliver Popplewell, at the time a high court judge, at Valley Parade in 1985. Photograph: Pa/PA Archive/Press Association Images
DT Do you know that wasnât a newspaper person who said that [first]? It was Stafford Heginbotham. He went on television while the fire was still going on in the background and it was him who sowed the seed that someone had thrown a smokebomb.
OP We had a journalist who came along.
DT Iâm sure a journalist did say it afterwards, but that was because the chairman had gone on television and said it.
OP The journalist said he saw it.
DT Actually saw it being thrown?
OP Yes, he said he saw it going through the air ⌠it was rubbish.
DT Andy Burnham [the shadow health secretary] said he thought the inquiry had been conducted with undue haste.
OP Well, what other conclusion are you asked to draw?
DT Thatâs why I would have thought you would have read the book in full. A newspaper serialisation of a 90,000-word book only gives you a certain amount âŚ
OP It gave a sufficient picture to me that he was saying Heginbotham set fire to it.
DT What he asks is this is a âmountain of coincidenceâ â do you know anyone in the world who has ever had two major fires, never mind nine?
OP I follow all that, I follow all that, but it doesnât stand up when you analyse it (pause) ⌠it sounds very suspicious.
DT It was never investigated, was it?
OP Iâve already explained. If the police at the time, and the fire authorities, and his insurers, were perfectly happy about these fires and there was nothing at the scene to indicate this was arson. Everything pointed to it happening in whatever row it was. Have you seen the video? It shows a small flame coming out through [the stand] as being the scene of the fire. Well, how did that happen? How do you put arson into that context? A bit of sense ⌠how did Mr Heginbotham organise a little fire which could have been put out if someone had been alert enough with a fire extinguisher? It makes no sense, absolutely no sense at all, thatâs why I say itâs nonsense.
DT Did you see the interview with a detective, Ray Falconer, [in the Bradford Telegraph & Argus] who said he had gone to speak personally to a man [from Australia] who said it was his cigarette that started it?
OP I saw that somewhere, but we didnât have that evidence. Iâm fairly sure we didnât. I mean, if that is right, it is even more conclusive.
DT The Bradford Telegraph and Argus described him as a âtop detectiveâ. He was actually one of the detectives involved in one of the gravest miscarriages of justices in the country, the Carol Wilkinson murder in Bradford, where someone was locked up for 20 years for a murder he didnât commit.
OP Oh, right.
DT The book says one of the key-holders was told about the fire and told to unlock the doors at 3.30pm, which is before the fire happened. That leaves the question: how was someone told before it happened and told to unlock the doors?
OP The doors were locked. Whether they were all locked we donât know, because some people undoubtedly got out. It doesnât mean anything.
DT It strikes me as incredibly strange.
(no reply)
DT No?
(no reply)
DT The book also says three of the four doors were unlocked yet the policy at Bradford at that time, in keeping with the rest of football, was that gates werenât unlocked until, say, 10 minutes before the end. There is an entire chapter about this unanswered question of why on this day, never before, were they unlocked at that time?
OP Part of the problem at Bradford was the doors went on to the roadway and people used to walk in. But what happened on previous occasions, Iâve no idea. Nobody suggested anything untoward that day. No steward came forward. No member of the public came forward. I mean, they interviewed hundreds of witnesses and nothing suspicious was thrown up.
DT Thereâs also a great focus in the book [from the inquiry] about a lot of people commenting during the first half about a very strong, acrid plastic smell. There were people on their hands and knees trying to find out what it was. Someone asked a guy who was smoking a pipe what he was smoking. The author says it was left. In his words, it was ignored.
OP None of that evidence was presented.
DT But itâs a great piece of the testimony. It forms part of the [inquiry] papers.
OP Not to my knowledge, it doesnât. I donât remember any suggestion of there being any smell. My recollection may be quite wrong because it is 30 years ago but I donât remember a suggestion of there being a smell. The first notification anybody ever had of this fire starting was a small wisp of smoke coming up, which you can see on the video.
who said Heginbothamâs nickname was âCentral Heating.â A phrase at the company where Martin Fletcherâs mother worked was if Stafford has a problem it âgets torchedâ and thereâs a fireman quoted in the book who says that when they were on fire strike they knew the first fire would be Stafford Heginbothamâs.
OP Well, itâs surprising that all these people remained totally silent for 30 years. The truth is if there had been anything sinister he would never have got any insurance.
DT What would be your advice to the author?
B[I]efore the interview, Popplewell had sent a letter to the Guardian[/I]
DT Your letter to the Guardian calls Bradfordâs ground âVilla Paradeâ
OP Valley Parade â Iâve corrected it since âŚ
DT The letter also says â and I think you said the same earlier when talking to me â that the fire started after half-time.
OP Yes.
DT But it didnât. It started at 3.40pm and took hold at 3.42pm.
OP I thought they had just got into the second half ⌠actually, at half-time.
DT I donât mean to sound impudent but it was 3.40pm. Your commenting [on Fletcherâs book] and your voice, as I said earlier, carries great power ⌠but just basic facts. Iâm not sure Mr Heginbotham ever said âthis is all my faultâ either.
OP Yes, he did. At the inquiry he put his hand up and said: âI accept responsibility.â
DT Well, on this point, it wasnât after half-time.
OP It wasnât before half-time.
DT It was.
OP Well, I am surprised, but there we are. If thatâs [correct] ⌠I will change it to âat or about half-timeâ.
DT My point was, I would have expected you to know that automatically.
OP Oh, come on.
DT Itâs a pretty major fact, surely.
OP No, why?
DT I just thought you would know the timings of when it was.
OP Well, itâs just my mistaken recollection. I thought it was just after half-time. It was always that there was only another 40 minutes to play before the thing was being pulled down.
DT The criticism, have you been stung by it?
OP I donât mind somebody saying âI donât agreeâ but to suggest we were hopeless and attack the integrity of the inquiry, I do resent. Iâm used to being criticised. There are slings and arrows, which one takes normally. But nobody has explained how Heginbotham arranged the fire at the time that he did. What is the explanation? What is the suggestion â that someone deliberately threw a match down?
DT In todayâs age would an inquiry like this last a lot longer?
OP It all depends on the evidence. You can have an inquiry like the Saville inquiry [Bloody Sunday] that goes on for five years. It all depends what you are investigating. The public evidence took a comparatively short time but we then did some more. It never occurred to us we were unduly hasty. We obviously wanted to get on with it, partly because the people of Bradford needed to be assured how this happened and secondly to try to prevent it happening again.
DT You say there should be an investigation into Heginbothamâs other fires.
OP Only because of the speculation.
DT Have you contacted anyone about this?
OP No ⌠people have been asking me: âDo you think it is sensible?â Of course it is sensible because it will put peopleâs minds at rest. Frankly, if nobody thought, during that period of eight or nine fires, that there was anything sinister I donât suppose they will find anything now. They may do. I may be proved quite wrong but I should be absolutely astonished.[/QUOTE]
Popplewell is very defensive the cunt
