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

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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. Following a profit fall during 2016 of 57%, Hellawell stated that an "extreme political, union and media campaign [had been] waged against this company". 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.

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.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. 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. 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. 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. His mother, a club dancer, was always bringing home different men, and would tie him to the table-leg to keep him quiet.

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. He also completed an MSc in Social Policy from Cranfield University and an external degree in Law from the University of London. 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’. 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. He has previously talked of how he never knew his father and how as a boy he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a young man who had access to their tenement rooms.And he chronicles the often lonely challenges of dealing with the likes of Peter Sutcliffe in a police career that took him everywhere from Northern Ireland to Hollywood. The Outsider is the autobiography of a man of absolute integrity fired by the determination to better not only his own lot, but that of other humans as well, and to change things from the inside. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. 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.

Thereafter he as successively Deputy Chief Constable, Humberside Police, Chief Constable, Cleveland Police, and Chief Constable, West Yorkshire Police. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice. He deals with the issues of racism, sexism and political correctness, and provides a rare insight into the workings of the judiciary, royalty and the establishment. In September 2015, Hellawell faced pressure to remove him as chairman of the company by minority shareholders.

In the seventies he served in Northern Ireland, and h became Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police in 1983. citation needed] Rising through the ranks, including working in CID, he was appointed Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police in 1983, then Deputy Chief Constable of Humberside Police in 1985.

He was jeered and booed at a Police Federation meeting in response to changes he introduced to the West Yorkshire CID. 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. He resigned from his position in July 2002 over the government's reclassification of cannabis from a Class B to a Class C substance. He fell out with his Whitehall bosses and, while he had already resigned, publicly announced his departure in 2002 during an interview on Radio Four’s Today programme.Keith Hellawell was born and brought up in Yorkshire and, after spending some years working as a minter, has been a policeman all his life. The tough life of one of Britain’s most senior policemen, who rose through the ranks from poverty and deprivation to the highest office, and went on to become Blair’s ‘Drug Czar’. 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.