Retirement marks end of two-year 'nightmare': Alison Halford's decision to retire ends a bitter and degrading dispute. Steve Boggan reports

LAST THURSDAY an exhausted, emotionally drained Alison Halford sent a letter to one of her solicitors reporting that she was about to settle her sexual discrimination case.

'I will be free of what has become a nightmare . . .' she wrote.

It was the culmination of two years of bitter, dirty, politicised and degrading argument surrounding two basic claims: hers, that she had been denied promotion nine times because she was a woman; that of the Merseyside police, that she had been guilty of misconduct by drinking and swimming in her underwear in a businessman's pool while acting as the force's most senior officer.

During that time, there were allegations that her phone was tapped, that she and her senior colleagues often got hopelessly drunk, that male officers conspired to smear her in a Sunday Mirror article and that George Bundred, the then chairman of the Merseyside police authority, told a fellow councillor that Miss Halford was a lesbian who should never have been given a job.

'She took more than most people could have stood, but I think she had had enough,' Rex Makin, the solicitor who received the letter, said. 'The tragedy of the matter is that there is no clear conclusion. I feel she was bullied into settling and she had little resistance left.'

Miss Halford, assistant chief constable of Merseyside since 1983, upset the macho ranks of the Merseyside force as early as 1987 when she wrote an article in the Police Review complaining that projects she started were often handed over to male colleagues to complete.

'There appears to be a strong but covert resentment of the competence of a woman who can get to the heart of a problem, shows creativity and innovation, and manages to acquire a reputation for getting things done,' she wrote.

She failed repeatedly to win promotion - nine times between 1987 and 1990 - and finally made a formal complaint to the Equal Opportunities Commission in June 1990. Six weeks later, she attended an afternoon function at the home of Peter Johnson, the chairman of Tranmere Rovers FC, where she and two other officers drank heavily and put on a 'life-saving' demonstration in the pool.

The incident was investigated internally and the officers reprimanded. Jim Sharples, the chief constable, and Mr Bundred approved the action and there it should have rested, according to a later High Court ruling.

But it did not. Details were apparently leaked to the Sunday Mirror, which ran a story headlined: 'Top cop Alison in Strip Off Storm' on 19 August 1990. The police authority reopened the disciplinary proceedings.

At the time, the Police Review described her action as 'the bravest political stand taken publicly by an individual officer since the Stalker inquiry', but that cut no ice with the police authority.

Brian Hilliard, editor of the Review, said: 'All along, George Bundred and David Henshaw, the authority's clerk, said the disciplinary action was not related to Alison Halford's decision to go to a tribunal with her sex discrimination action. They must be the only two people in the world who believe that.

'I believe the whole affair has been dirty. But the dirtiest thing the police authority did was to reopen the disciplinary case.'

Others have argued that legal tactics that appeared to be aimed at delaying the discrimination hearing were unfair and piled the pressure on Miss Halford. The authority lost an application to adjourn the hearing until after the disciplinary procedure had been completed. Subsequently, in January 1992, it was told by the High Court that it had acted ultra vires (outside its powers) in reopening the disciplinary action after approving the initial reprimand.

Undeterred, the authority suspended Miss Halford again and initiated fresh disciplinary procedures.

The announcement of a new disciplinary action resulted in Miss Halford making angry late night telephone calls to Mr Sharples Mr Bundred, Harry Rimmer, the deputy chairman; and an assistant chief constable - who invoked yet more disciplinary procedures.

Her frustration may have been fuelled because she hit the 'glass ceiling' - the promotion dead end - even though she played by the rules of a force where hard drinking and hard living appeared to be a requirement of the job.

Miss Halford is known as a drinker but, according to Mr Hilliard and Lady Simey, the authority chairman from 1981 to 1986, it did not appear to affect the performance of her duties. Lady Simey told the tribunal two weeks ago: 'My recollection is that there was gossip that one of the reasons she wasn't interviewed (for posts advertised in 1988) was that she was said to drink too heavily.' But Lady Simey, who saw Miss Halford at numerous social occasions, added: 'It never once occurred to me that she drank, let alone drank heavily.'

There does, indeed, seem to be evidence of a drinking culture within the senior ranks of the Merseyside force, and evidence that Miss Halford was a part of it. One profile of her was at pains to point out that she drank her beer in pints to make other officers feel comfortable.

At the tribunal hearing, Miss Halford recalled once having to help Sir Kenneth Oxford, former chief constable of Merseyside, back to his office at 3am after a drinking session. In her diary, which, to her despair, was used at the hearing, she recorded an 'enormous VIP booze-up' and an occasion when she gave a bottle of Campari 'a belting'.

Mr Hilliard said: 'I know of no other force where drinking among such senior ranks seems to have been so prevalent. I have spoken to many officers in Merseyside and they say Alison Halford was a heavy drinker, but that she could take it. She could drink other officers off their chairs and then walk away, unaffected, apparently sober.

'More importantly, I understand she was a damned good officer. The consensus is that she could knock the spots off the other ACCs (assistant chief constables).'

There is evidence that she was far from perfect. Besides her drinking, she may have been difficult to work with. She admitted criticising Ernest Miller, a fellow ACC, at a function and calling him 'a prat', although she denied another claim that she once got drunk at an official dinner and called Sir Kenneth 'a bastard'.

And, at the hearing, she admitted hacking into Mr Sharples's word processor to find a reference he had given when she applied for a deputy chief constable's post in the Thames Valley force in 1989.

But the disciplinary matters and the allegations of sexual discrimination must be looked at separately. If, as Brian Hilliard has learned, she was a first-class officer, the fact that she was overlooked nine times is disturbing and embarrassing to all police forces.

(Photograph omitted)