Film of a 47-year-old father of three, who was one of the 96 people to die at Hillsborough, was included in a South Yorkshire police compilation video that Sir Norman Bettison, then a chief inspector, took to show MPs in the House of Commons in November 1989.
Bettison has denied that the video’s intention was for the force to provide “ammunition” to Conservative MPs to “attack” the report into the disaster by Lord Justice Taylor, which criticised the police.
The video Bettison showed the MPs, the inquests heard, included colour footage of Henry Burke’s last moments, when he was being carried across the Hillsborough pitch by police officers and Liverpool supporters, on an advertising hoarding being used as a makeshift stretcher.
Burke, a builder, died after being trapped in the lethal crush in Hillsborough’s Leppings Lane terrace at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
Michael Mansfield QC, representing Burke’s widow, Christine, daughter Christine Jr and sons Ian and Steven, all of whom were sitting in the front row of public seats in the Warrington courtroom, asked a former police constable, James Grant, one of the officers who helped to carry the hoarding: “The section [of footage] was incorporated into a compilation video shown in the House of Commons by Mr Bettison – did you know that?”
“I didn’t know that, no sir,” replied Grant.
Bettison, giving evidence in May, said he went to parliament after Taylor’s report into the disaster, to show MPs the compilation, at the invitation of Michael Shersby, a Conservative MP who represented the Police Federation. After that meeting, Bettison reported to the chief constable, Peter Wright, that two Conservative MPs had promised to attack Taylor’s report.
Bettison, however, denied that the video had been compiled to provide ammunition for that attack. He said he thought the video was useful, and explained of the context that within South Yorkshire police HQ, there was a “debate” about the fact that Taylor had criticised other organisations for the disaster, but “the single cause narrative that was running at the time was South Yorkshire police”.
Giving evidence by videolink, former South Yorkshire police officer James Grant, a constable at the time, apologised for errors in his signed 1989 statement about the disaster. Grant said he did not write the statement himself; it was “presented” to him and he did not read it carefully before signing it.
In the statement, Grant had said that he had stayed with Burke “from the point of removing him from the terrace, to handing him over to CID officers” in the gymnasium at Hillsborough, where Burke was taken on the hoarding.
In fact, Grant said he could not recall removing Burke from the terrace, and had not stayed with him throughout; he had left the gymnasium, went onto the pitch and helped to carry a young boy, before returning to the gymnasium.
Grant told the inquests: “I haven’t prepared this statement, but it’s been presented to me, and I’ve signed it and I haven’t read it properly, or not realised the significance of the error within the statement when I signed it, and I apologise for the confusion that’s caused.”
Grant later said it was “a mistake of mine” that he did not read the statement properly before he signed it. Asked if he was “allocated the job” of staying with Burke, having written his police number on Burke’s left arm, Grant said: “It was nothing as specific as that,” but that he did stay in the gymnasium and kept Burke’s body in his sight.
Another officer, Sgt Peter Chapman, was identified in a photograph standing next to the prone body of Burke behind the goal at the Leppings Lane end, despite having never said in any previous evidence that he was in that area.
Christina Lambert QC, representing the coroner, Sir John Goldring, said Chapman did not mention being behind the goal in his May 1989 statement, evidence to the Taylor inquiry, or a more recent 2013 statement to Operation Resolve, the new police investigation into the disaster.
Earlier this year, Chapman told Operation Resolve he was “stunned and staggered” to see himself in that picture, saying he could be only 70% certain it was him because his instructions had been to remain by the players’ tunnel. Chapman said he could make no observations about what was depicted in the photograph, nor did he have “any physical contact with any casualties or those who died on the day”.
The jury of three men and seven women heard that Burke went to the semi-final with his brother-in-law James Murphy and three friends, and bought a ticket there to stand on the Leppings Lane terrace. The group became separated, but Burke was seen struggling for breath in “a pile of bodies” at the front of pen 3 by another Liverpool fan there, Ian Johnson.
Giving evidence in a quiet voice, Johnson gave a graphic account of the crush, saying he was “100% confident” he saw Burke, who seemed to be “staring” at him. Johnson said he saw Burke move his head forward to try to breathe, then his face changed colour, from white, to red, pink, Burke was sick, and eventually turned a “bluish, purple” colour.
Murphy and friends spent hours looking for him after the crush, the court was told, eventually being directed back to the gymnasium, where his friend James Swain identified his dead body to police officers.
Judith Black, a registered nurse who was at the semi-final supporting Nottingham Forest, briefly broke down with emotion when describing her efforts to revive Stephen O’Neill, then 17, another of the 96 people who died.
O’Neill was put into a “very crowded” ambulance, she said, with another of those who died, Victoria Hicks, on the other side, and a third, Gary Jones, on the floor. Each had two people trying to revive them. Black said she was being assisted by another Forest supporter, who had no medical training, and while she gave O’Neill mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, she had to show the supporter in the ambulance how to do chest compressions.
Another nurse who attended to O’Neill at Sheffield’s Northern General hospital, Lynne Ali, said in a statement earlier this year that she could not recall him individually. “When I look back, I see all the casualties as being young men in jeans and T-shirts, lying on trolleys, in need of resuscitation, and can’t distinguish between them, as they have all blended into one,” said Ali.
The inquests continue.
