Sir Oliver Bury Popplewell (15 August 1927 – 6 June 2024) was a British judge and cricketer. Hechaired the inquiry into theBradford City stadium fire, presided over thelibel case brought byJonathan AitkenMP againstThe Guardian newspaper which eventually led to Aitken'simprisonment forperjury, and was widely reported for asking "What isLinford's lunchbox?" during a case over which he was presiding, brought byLinford Christie. He playedfirst-class cricket forCambridge University and was president of theMarylebone Cricket Club (MCC) from 1994 to 1996. He wrote a memoir of his legal career, published in 2003.[1]
Popplewell's father was a civil servant.[2] He was the father of four sons,[2] the eldest of whom is the former Cambridge University andSomerset cricketer and now solicitor,Nigel Popplewell,[3] and another of whom, SirAndrew Popplewell, is now a Lord Justice of Appeal.
Awidower, Sir Oliver marriedDameElizabeth Gloster in March 2008.[4] He was thegodfather ofStephen Fry,[5] and the grandfather ofAnna Popplewell andLulu Popplewell.
Popplewell died on 6 June 2024, at the age of 96.[6]
Popplewell went toCharterhouse School as a scholar, where he played cricket withPeter May and future politicianJim Prior,[7] and after spending two years ofNational Service in theRoyal Navy,[2] he went toQueens' College, Cambridge as anexhibitioner. He was awarded a BA degree in 1950 and anLL.B. in 1951.[8]
In 2003, Popplewell became one of the oldest mature students at theUniversity of Oxford when he started readingPhilosophy, Politics and Economics atHarris Manchester College.[9][10][11]
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Popplewell was a right-handedwicket-keeper-batsman, playing 56innings in 41 matches, scoring 881runs for anaverage of 20.46 including two half-centuries.[12]
He played forCambridge University from 1949 to 1951 at the time when the RevDavid Sheppard was playing for the university, for the MCC in 1953 and for theFree Foresters from 1952 to 1960.[3]
His solebowling stint was three balls[12] for the MCC against Cambridge University in 1953.[13] He was president of the MCC from 1994 to 1996.[2]
Popplewell wascalled to the bar in 1951. He was appointedQueen's Counsel in 1969.[14][15] After serving asRecorder ofBurton upon Trent and Deputy Chairman ofOxfordshireQuarter Sessions, he was appointed as Recorder of theCrown Court in 1971.[14] He was aHigh Court judge from 1983 until 2003.[16] During this time, he chaired the Bradford Inquiry into Crowd Control and Safety at Sports Grounds in 1985. He was a judge of theEmployment Appeal Tribunal, vice-chairman of theParole Board, and a fellow of theChartered Institute of Arbitrators.[8]
In 1975 Popplewell defended his godsonStephen Fry, who was 18 at the time, at his trial for credit card fraud. Popplewell and his wife had long been friends of Fry's parents.[2][5] Stephen Fry writes about the event in his autobiographyMoab Is My Washpot (1997).
Following the fire atValley Parade, theBradford City stadium, on 11 May 1985, Popplewell was chosen to chair an inquiry held under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975. Following this inquiry, he was chosen to chair a Committee of Inquiry into Crowd Safety at Sports Grounds. In 1999, he donated the papers of the inquiry to theUniversity of Bradford.[17] A copy of theCommittee of Inquiry into Crowd Safety and Control at Sports Grounds' Interim Report is published online in PDF format by the Bradford City Fire website.[18]
He presided over the libel case brought byJonathan Aitken againstThe Guardian andGranada Television,[2] and upheld the defence ofReynolds privilege, established in theHouse of Lords inReynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd in 1999, in an action against theYorkshire Post for reporting that a localkarate company was selling "rip-off" lessons.[19] He ruled in 2018 that the foreignact of state doctrine (a rule concerned with the courts' approach to another state's legislative and executive actions) applies not just in litigation in the English courts, but also duringarbitration.
While presiding over the High Court case brought by the athleteLinford Christie against former criminalJohn McVicar, the editor ofSpike Magazine, he was widely reported as asking, "What is Linford's lunchbox?". He later claimed that this was intended as a joke.[11] The question was in the tradition of British jurisprudence, in which the judge asks seemingly inane questions relevant to the facts of the case on the assumption that the jury, which cannot ask questions, is ignorant of them. Following this case, the name "Mr Justice Cocklecarrot" was revived byPrivate Eye magazine (it was originally the name of a character in theBeachcomber column in theDaily Express) which became the magazine's generic name for unworldly and out-of-touch judges,[9] though Popplewell asserts that this description did not apply to him.[2]
After his retirement, Popplewell spoke up for the right of judges to impose thesentences they see fit. He had an argument withHome SecretaryDavid Blunkett who was seeking to introduce mandatory minimum sentences for some serious crimes.[2][20]
On 19 October 2011, Popplewell sparked fury by calling on the Liverpool families involved in theHillsborough disaster to behave more like the relatives of victims of theBradford City stadium disaster. He made the comments in a letter toThe Times following the Commons debate[21] on 17 October 2011 calling for all Cabinet papers on Hillsborough to be released. He said: "The citizens ofBradford behaved with quiet dignity and great courage. They did not harbour conspiracy theories. They did not seek endless further inquiries".[22]
His letter was published by theTimes sister paper,The Sun, which is boycotted onMerseyside, the day after it was revealed to Parliament that senior policemen had changed the evidence of junior policemen whose evidence contradicted the official version given to the press by police spokesmen. Popplewell was widely criticised for his comments,[23] including a rebuke from a survivor of the Bradford stadium disaster.[24]
In April 2015, Popplewell expressed the view that it was "bizarre" to suggest that theBradford City stadium fire was anything other than accidental. This was in response to the publication of an article inThe Guardian newspaper of an extract from a newly published bookFifty-Six: The Story of the Bradford Fire by Martin Fletcher. The extract of the Fletcher book contained previously unpublicised information about eight earlier fires allegedly connected to the Bradford City owner and chairman,Stafford Heginbotham (who died in 1995).[25][26][27]
Popplewell later qualified his remark and suggested that the police should look into the "remarkable number" of fires allegedly connected to Bradford City's then chairman "to see if there was anything sinister". He had earlier said that he remained convinced that the fire was "undoubtedly" started by accident by a discarded match or cigarette, despite the new evidence.[26][28]
With reference to your recent coverage of the Bradford City fire and Martin Fletcher's book about it ('No accident': stadium fire that killed 56, 16 April, and several subsequent reports) [...] while Mr Fletcher's book is rightly a tribute to his industry and is an emotional record of the terrible tragedy suffered by his family, I have to say that his conclusion that the fire was caused by arson is, in my view, nonsense.
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