The Outsider: The Autobiography of One of Britain's Most Controversial Policemen

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Sports Direct's founder and Executive Deputy chairman – Mike Ashley – was criticised by the tribunal for 'disgraceful and unlawful employment practices'.

He went to school at Kirkburton Secondary Modern School until the age of 15, when he left without a single exam pass, then went to Dewsbury Technical College and Barnsley College of Mining. View image in fullscreen Keith Hellawell held his role as advisor to Labour on drugs policy, or the nation’s ‘drug tsar’ from 1998 to 2003. However, since then, new rules mean that non-executive directors in companies with a single dominant investor must be put to a vote of minority shareholders first. These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the changing nature of policing since the 1960s, when crime was far lower and villains were regularly given a good hiding.He was appointed chairman of Goldshield in 2006, a pharmaceuticals business that was facing a criminal prosecution for colluding to overcharge the NHS for generic drugs. Two former detectives, Roy Smith and Laurence Andrews, took objection to the book which claimed they had conspired to pervert the course of justice when investigating a murder in 1968 in Aspley. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance. He was jeered and booed at a Police Federation meeting in response to changes he introduced to the West Yorkshire CID. He started work as a coal miner in 1958 but left to pursue a career in the Huddersfield Borough Police in 1962, gaining entry at the second attempt.

So Wednesday’s annual shareholder meeting at embattled retailer Sports Direct – where Hellawell will be bracing himself for investors to vote on his future as the company’s chairman – merely appears like the continuation of a trend.Thereafter he as successively Deputy Chief Constable, Humberside Police, Chief Constable, Cleveland Police, and Chief Constable, West Yorkshire Police.

He was required to give evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Scottish Affairs on 25 March 2015 in relation to alleged poor employment practices at the company – particularly around its widespread use of 'zero-hours contracts' and the dismissal by its wholly owned subsidiary, USC, of 200 warehouse staff in Scotland with only 15 minutes' notice. He also completed an MSc in Social Policy from Cranfield University and an external degree in Law from the University of London. Here is a man of intellect, probity, progressive ideas and the energy to carry them through, who spent his working life in the two most rigid, conservative and autocratic organisations in the country-the police force and the civil service. He endured it as a controversial chief constable of West Yorkshire police – and then memorably again during his quarrelsome stint as an adviser on drugs policy to the last Labour government.In the 1980s he was seconded to interrogate Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and reportedly succeeded in establishing that the serial killer had attempted two further murders. When quizzed about then home secretary David Blunkett’s plan to downgrade the classification of cannabis from a Class B drug to Class C, Hellawell said on air that he opposed the policy.

As a teenager he went to work in the coal mines, before joining the police force at 20, where he was promoted to the rank of sergeant in 1965 and inspector in 1966. It was just part of the rapport thing [to get Sutcliffe to open up], that was all,” he told the Sunday Times in 2000, but a disgusted Broadmoor staffer informed the Daily Mail and Hellawell was lambasted in the press. tv View image in fullscreen Keith Hellawell appearing before the Scottish Affairs Committee 2015 Photograph: parliamentlive. His mother, a club dancer, was always bringing home different men, and would tie him to the table-leg to keep him quiet. Claimed to be Britain's then youngest police sergeant at age 23, after passing a fast track examination he was appointed Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police in 1983.It was a hard-bitten, inauspicious start for a man who was eventually to become Chief Constable of Cleveland, and then West Yorkshire, and later, controversially, New Labour’s much-feted and summarily dismissed ‘Drugs Tsar’. In September 2015, Hellawell faced pressure to remove him as chairman of the company by minority shareholders. Hellawell resigned from his position as Sports Direct chairman in September 2018, on the day of the company's AGM.