As charges against Sir Norman Bettison are dropped, Hillsborough victims are still fighting a toxic narrative about that terrible day

Why have these families been let down once again by an officialdom that seems chronically insensitive to their pain?

Twenty years ago, I interviewed Sir Norman Bettison shortly after he had been appointed chief constable of Merseyside Police. Some days earlier, I spoke to families of Hillsborough victims as they staged a sit-in of the police authority’s offices, trying to block the appointment of this man in charge of the city’s law and order. Their pleas were ignored.

In his interview, Sir Norman was polished, unflappable and reassuring. Although I do not have a transcript of what he said to me, an interview with local TV news from the same time shows him appealing directly to the people of Liverpool to give him a chance, arguing they were “fair-minded people”.

This cordial demeanour is at odds with how Sir Norman has been viewed by the families of the 96 fans who died. And so it is unsurprising that they have reacted with dismay that criminal charges against him relating to Hillsborough and its aftermath have been dropped.

Sir Norman was accused of lying about his role in the police response to the disaster as “peripheral” when applying to be chief constable in Merseyside in 1998, and of allegedly lying to the Merseyside police authority when he said he had never attempted to blame the fans. He was also accused of misconduct in public office over a statement he made in 2012, following the publication of the damning independent panel report into Hillsborough, when he insisted his role was never to “besmirch” the fans.

All four charges – which were always denied by the former police officer – have been dropped after the Crown Prosecution Service said there was no realistic prospect of conviction. Two prosecution witnesses were becoming increasingly unreliable, while a third has died. Sir Norman says he has been “vindicated” by the outcome and that the Hillsborough families have always had his sympathies.

But what about the feelings of the families themselves? Nearly 30 years have passed since Hillsborough, and all along their unimaginable grief and pain has been compounded by a lack of resolution over the response by authorities to the unfolding tragedy.

It is a matter of public record that, in the aftermath of the disaster, Sir Norman was assigned to a team which helped gather evidence for police lawyers to present to the Lord Justice Taylor inquiry into Hillsborough, although criminal charges in relation to this have been dropped and he has denied any wrongdoing. Sensitivities among survivors and victims’ families, when his appointment at the Merseyside force was being considered, should have been taken into account.

It is also a matter of public record that, in 2012, Sir Norman said Liverpool fans had made policing the 1989 tragedy “harder than it needed to be”. (He later apologised for his remarks, saying in a further statement that “the fans of Liverpool Football Club were in no way to blame for the disaster”.)

While criminal charges in relation to his 2012 comments have been dropped, the narrative that fans were in some part to blame for what happened on that day has hampered their fight for justice for nearly three decades.

For its part, the CPS has some serious questions to answer over its handling of the case, and the families have demanded an independent review. Were the correct charges brought? Why did the case rely on witness evidence that was unsubstantiated by others?

And, most importantly, why have Hillsborough’s victims been let down once again by authority and officialdom that seems consistently and chronically insensitive to their pain?