Revealed: former Bradford chairman linked to at least eight fires...

[ian1964 10,448]

...before Valley Parade disaster.

 

Book reveals extraordinary history of Stafford Heginbotham’s businesses

• New evidence emerges 30 years after blaze that killed 56 football fans

• Martin Fletcher: ‘Maybe the reason I am here is to – finally – reveal the truth’

• Extract: ‘Could any man really be as unlucky as Stafford Heginbotham?’

 

 

The blaze that killed 56 football fans at Bradford City’s Valley Parade ground in 1985 was just one of at least nine fires at businesses owned by or associated with the club’s then chairman, according to extraordinary evidence published for the first time.

The Story of the Bradford Fire: ‘could any man really be as unlucky as Stafford Heginbotham?’

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The revelations are contained in a book written by Martin Fletcher, a Bradford fan who lost three generations of his family in the stadium fire. Fletcher believes the fire was not an accident and says he and his family are no longer willing to “live the myth”.

 

Fletcher managed to escape after the timber main stand at Valley Parade turned into a death trap during Bradford’s game against Lincoln City on 11 May 1985. His brother, Andrew, 11, was the youngest victim and his father John, 34, uncle Peter, 32, and grandfather Eddie, 63, all perished. Martin Fletcher, who was 12 at the time, has spent the past 15 years investigating what happened and his book, Fifty-Six – The Story of the Bradford Fire, is published on Thursday 16 April.

 

The book, serialised by the Guardian today and tomorrow, reveals there had been at least eight other fires at business premises either owned by, or connected to, Stafford Heginbotham, Bradford’s then-chairman, in the previous 18 years, resulting in huge insurance claims. Fletcher does not make any direct allegations but he does believe Heginbotham’s history with fires, resulting in payouts of around £27m in today’s terms, warranted further investigation. “Could any man really be as unlucky as Heginbotham had been?” he asks.

 

The disaster at Valley Parade came at a time, according to Fletcher’s evidence, when the businessman was in desperate financial trouble, unable to pay his workforce beyond that month. Heginbotham had learned two days before the fire it would cost £2m to bring the ground up to safety standards required by Bradford’s promotion from the old Third Division that season. Yet this has never been reported and did not feature in the Popplewell Inquiry, chaired by the then high court judge Oliver Popplewell, which held its investigation only three weeks after the fire.

 

The inquiry heard only five days of testimony and concluded the fire was probably started by a match, a cigarette or pipe tobacco slipping through gaps in the floorboards on to litter that had built up over the previous 20 years. Fletcher does not accept that version and quotes a report by the Fire Research Station, a government-funded body, that “features of the Bradford fire required a detail of understanding greater than that presented to the formal inquiry”.

 

Fletcher’s evidence was collected through months of painstaking research into Heginbotham’s business history and by trawling 20 years of local newspaper reports into fires in the Bradford area.

 

The pattern began with a fire at a three-storey Bradford factory in May 1967 and continued on Good Friday 1968 with another fire at the premises of Genefoam, of which Heginbotham was the managing director. A firm Heginbotham had founded suffered a serious fire in 1970 before the Castle Mills building, owned by Heginbotham, had a fire in 1971. Further blazes followed at the Douglas Mills building, also owned by Heginbotham, in August and November 1977. In December that year there was a fire at the premises of Coronet Marketing, a subsidiary of Heginbotham’s Tebro Toys. A further fire at the Douglas Mills building occurred in June 1981.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/15/bradford-fire-stafford-heginbotham-martin-fletcher

[compo 6,220]

strong insinuations

[Bearman 9]

If he wanted to burn down his ground for insurance, why wait until it's packed with people?

 

I never believed the "cigarette or pipe tobacco slipping through gaps in the floorboards on to litter that had built up over the previous 20 years" story...but it certainly gave excuse for the fire and an escape from justice for the arsonist.

[The Real PapaBear 0]

If he wanted to burn down his ground for insurance, why wait until it's packed with people?

 

I never believed the "cigarette or pipe tobacco slipping through gaps in the floorboards on to litter that had built up over the previous 20 years" story...but it certainly gave excuse for the fire and an escape from justice for the arsonist.

 

because a fire is easier to explain if there are 5,000 possible starters than if it breaks out in the middle of the night in an empty stadium - particularly if there have been other instances to which one may have been connected?

[pete 2,499]

I am surprised Gribz hasn't been on this one it is just down his street.

[Yorkshire Bear 0]

It used to be nearly down my street Pete.

Half an hour bus ride.

[Gribz 743]

I am surprised Gribz hasn't been on this one it is just down his street.

 

Bradford is a bit further than down the street to where I live mate

Edited April 17, 2015 by Gribz

[craig 5,199]

Bradford is a bit further than down the street to where I live mate

 

I think pete means conspiracies

[Gribz 743]

I think pete means conspiracies

 

I did gather that one