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

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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. 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 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 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. 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.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. 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.

His mother, a club dancer, was always bringing home different men, and would tie him to the table-leg to keep him quiet. He resigned from his position in July 2002 over the government's reclassification of cannabis from a Class B to a Class C substance. 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’. Thereafter he as successively Deputy Chief Constable, Humberside Police, Chief Constable, Cleveland Police, and Chief Constable, West Yorkshire Police.These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. He later became Chief Constable of Cleveland police and in 1993 became Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police. 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.

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. 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 his expertise in narcotics that led to his appointment in 1998 as the UK’s “drug tsar”, only for that position to be downgraded in 2001 to an advisory role. 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. Hellawell resigned from his position as Sports Direct chairman in September 2018, on the day of the company's AGM. In his current guise, the former policeman has become the obvious target for disgruntled investors in the sportswear chain, which is 55% owned by the billionaire Mike Ashley and has been widely criticised over its working practices and corporate governance.

Keith Hellawell QPM (born 18 May 1942) is a British retired police officer, [1] former UK Government drugs-czar, ex-chairman of Sports Direct plc. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bradford in 1998, [19] and an honorary degree by Leeds Metropolitan University in 1997. In the seventies he served in Northern Ireland, and h became Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police in 1983.

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.