Valley Parade disaster: Survivor of Bradford City fire Martin Fletcher casts suspicion on chairman in new book

Businessman Stafford Heginbotham was facing financial difficulties – and had received payouts for previous blazes

Crowds on the pitch at Valley Parade stadium after the stand caught fire on 11 May 1985. The disaster killed 56 supporters (Rex Features)

The Bradford City fire, which claimed the lives of 56 football fans in 1985, was the ninth blaze at businesses owned by or associated with the club’s then chairman, Stafford Heginbotham, according to extraordinary revelations made in a new book written by a survivor of the tragedy.

Martin Fletcher, who as a 12-year-old-boy escaped the fire that killed his brother, father, uncle and grandfather, has spent years going through archives, assembling evidence that was not heard at the inquiry held at the time, and has now published a book which hints the fire may have been started deliberately.

Stafford Heginbotham, who died in 1991, was a prominent businessman, and had seen fires destroy properties associated with other businesses.

Mr Fletcher stops short of directly suggesting the fire was begun on purpose, but asks whether “any man could really be as unlucky as Heginbotham”.

The book also highlights financial difficulties faced by Mr Heginbotham, which were not raised at the inquiry, chaired by High Court Judge Oliver Popplewell, which concluded just a few weeks after the fire occurred.

Stafford Heginbotham was never prosecuted over the fire at Valley Parade (Rex) (Rex Features)

According to Fletcher, who sifted through almost two decades’ worth of local newspaper cuttings, the Valley Parade fire occurred when Mr Heginbotham was close to being unable to pay his workforce, and two days after he had been told it would cost £2m in renovations for Bradford City’s ground to meet the safety standards required by the team’s promotion from English football’s third tier.

Bradford City received insurance payouts and grants totalling £988,000 as a result of the fire, around £7m in today’s terms. The fire at Valley Parade in May 1985 broke out during a match against Lincoln City, which had begun with celebrations as the home team received the Football League Third Division trophy.

The Valley Parade fire - football's forgotten tragedy
Bradford City to commemorate Valley Parade disaster

At around 3.40pm, the match commentator noticed a small fire near the corner of the main stand, which had already been condemned and was due to be demolished. Within four minutes, wind had spread the flames throughout the entire length of the stand.

Fifty-six people died, almost all of whom had run back to the turnstiles rather than on to the pitch, only to find them locked.

At least 256 were injured. It remains the worst stadium fire in British football history. The eight fires highlighted by Mr Fletcher, which took place between 1967 and 1981, had led to other insurance payouts of close to £1m. Bradford City would later receive an additional £1.46m from the local authority.

Mr Heginbotham was never prosecuted over the fire, and Justice Popplewell’s inquiry concluded it had probably been started by a lighted match or pipe tobacco falling through the floor of the stand on to litter accumulated over 20 years.

The coroner would later say he had considered a manslaughter charge, over evidence the club had failed to act on three warnings of fire risk.

Sir Oliver Popplewell told Sky News it was a “striking coincidence” that eight fires should be linked to the Bradford chairman, and that he would have investigated had he known. But he stood by his verdict, which concluded there was no evidence of arson and the fire was “an accident exacerbated by negligence”.

“Could any man really be as unlucky as Heginbotham had been?” Fletcher wrote. “From standing around with a bunch of kids and onlookers on a Sunday afternoon in May 1967, as his former foam-cushion business went up in flames, to standing on the pitch at Valley Parade 18 years later, making noises about smoke bombs while 56 people perished behind him?”

The first of the eight fires had occurred in May 1967 at Mr Heginbotham’s factory at three-storey Cutler Heights Lane, Bradford. The most serious, in November 1977 at Douglas Mills factory, took “50 soldiers and a dozen army appliances” to bring under control, local news reports stated.

This, and another fire four weeks earlier, generated insurance payouts of £174,663 (£3.165m in today’s terms). At the time, the fire service were on strike, meaning the fractured gas pipe alleged to be the cause was not properly investigated.

It would be up to the Home Secretary Theresa May to order a new inquiry – but it would be unlikely before the election on 7 May.