The 15th
of April 1989 will be remembered for many reasons. The day that resulted in 96 people losing
their lives for attending a football match, the day when worlds were changed
forever and the day when “the biggest cover up of all time” was instigated.
Within hours
of the first deaths South Yorkshire Police set in motion a smear campaign of a magnitude
never seen before and likely will never be seen again.
At the
forefront of this campaign was the South Yorkshire Police Federation and its
Secretary at the time, Constable Paul Middup.
I contacted
the now retired Middup three times on the morning of 15 September 2012 by
telephone. Below are the transcripts
from the three conversations:
11:37am - 15 Sep 12
PM: Hello?Me: Mr Middup?PM: YesMe: Mr Middup, Good Morning, I wonder if you’d like to answer some questions regarding Hillsborough.PM: No thank you, I’m not making any comment at all, thanks very much, bye... (Hangs Up)12:20pm - 15 Sep 12
PM: Hello?Me: Mr Middup, this is your chance to put forward your side of the storyPM: No thank youMe: Mr Middup, you were happy to chat after HillsboroughPM: (Silence….. hangs up)14:43pm - 15 Sep 12
Mrs Middup: Hello?Me: Hi, can I speak to Mr Middup please?Mrs Middup: I’m sorry he’s not in can I help?Me: I was hoping to speak to him reference ‘ticketless drunk mob’ claims made 23 years ago?Mrs Middup: Is this about Hillsborough?Me: Yes it is, I was hoping he’d like to put his version of events forwardMrs Middup: I’m afraid he’s not speaking to the press; he’ll talk to you but won’t say anythingMe: It may be in his best interest to release his side of the events which took place during a meeting on 19 April 1989Mrs Middup: I’ll pass the message on but I think the answer will still be noMe: Well you have my number so please ask him to call if he’d like toMrs Middup: Thank you very much (Conversation ends.. hangs up)
I tried to contact the former
Constable Middup a further number of times during 15 September 2012 but his
telephone was either engaged or rang out without answer.
This somewhat confused me. Middup was extremely vocal in the hours and
days after the Hillsborough disaster. He
was one of the first to push the image of drunken fans urinating on Police Officers;
he was the first to push the idea of fans stealing from the dead. He later remarked in a meeting of the Joint Branch Board (19/04/89) that:
“He had initially been
interviewed on radio – Radio Sheffield, which had been successful and it had
snowballed from there”
In
the days after Hillsborough Middup met with Senior Police Officers and the MP
for Sheffield Hallam (Irvine Patnick) and conspired to write a version of
events which was released to Sheffield based, White’s News Agency. This version of events was picked up by The
Sun and directly led to the now infamous ‘The Truth’ headline and subsequent
article.
However,
prior to this Middup went on television to publicly reinforce a web of deceit
that was spun in the hours after the disaster.
Middup went on Yorkshire TV the day after Hillsborough and gave the
following interview at 6 minutes and 22 seconds:
Pay
particular attention to the phrases which began to be used at every
opportunity:
"And I’m saying to you
that if police officers had have been in there, when this mob surged through, the police officers would’ve been
trampled to death underneath it. You just can’t handle them. And the vast majority of that lot had been drinking, the ones
that were arriving late, and they will not be
told what to do, they won’t do anything you try to do, and what can you do? "
This
line of blame continued and was underlined again in the meeting of the Joint
Branch Board (19/04/89) where the then Chief Constable of South Yorkshire
Police, Peter Wright, backed Middup’s claims and insisted:
“If anybody should be
blamed it should be the drunken ticketless individuals"
Middup
claimed “the Chief Constable had said the
truth could not come from him but had given the Secretary a totally free hand
and supported him. The Secretary commented that never before have so many
senior officers sought him out and thanked him”
Middup
portrayed himself as the knight in shining armour, the one that would save face
for the South Yorkshire Police. Surely
he must have known that as a member of a uniformed service his words would be
taken on face value. He must have known
that with his direct input the blame would be automatically shifted from
incompetent policing onto a ‘drunken mob of late arriving ticketless louts’.
I
wanted to talk to Middup about where these seeds were originated and by whom. Was it all his idea? Was he coaxed into being
the face at the front?
Middup
has not broken his silence since the release of the Hillsborough Independent
Panel report.
This
leads me to my final question, and maybe the most notable:
Middup
was only a Constable; in modern military terms he would be described as a ‘Strategic
Corporal’ a soldier that possesses technical mastery in the skill of arms while
being aware that his judgment, decision-making and action can all have
strategic and political consequences.
Were
the South Yorkshire Police so bereft of leadership that they allowed a base
rank to orchestrate one of the biggest lies and cover-ups of the 20th
century?