Category Archives: police
The future of law enforcement?
As I wrote recently, there are many things happening on many fronts at this time. And considering that most people are in a continual gripe about the Coalition Government, believing that it is next to impossible to get anything done for fear of offending the other partner, it is surprising how many serious issues are being tackled.
The clear-up rate in the last 50 years has fallen from 47 per cent to 28 per cent. Why did we waste all that money on gadgetry?
In no particular order there is social security, education, immigration, the NHS and, above all, the state of the nation’s finances. We cannot know at this point if all, or indeed any, of these will come good by the time of the next election in a little under two years from now, but early indications are that we may be in for some pleasant surprises.
But one great agency of the state has largely escaped scrutiny: the police. It was hoped by the Government that here, too, serious change could be effected by the election of the new police commissioners who would oversee police budgets and other matters. The commissioners, it was believed, would look to the public for guidance as to what it wanted rather than the hierarchy of the police and its 43 chief constables. If they failed to fulfill these hopes then they would be thrown out at the next election for their post. That, at least, was the thinking behind it all and it seemed not unreasonable.
The voters, however, were totally hacked off by this time with the whole political establishment. Memories were still fresh in their minds over the expenses scandal and the thought of another tier of bureaucracy did not much appeal. The result was that only 15 per cent bothered to vote the new commissioners in. That, I believe, was a great pity. While some good people made it through, so did a lot of tired old retreads and chancers. Fortunately, the greatest of these, that discredited old buffoon, John Prescott, who thought it would be a shoe-in, was not one of these. But overall the commissioners have proved a disappointment. These are, however, early days and at some point the hope remains the new system will prove its worth.
For good and fearless policing that does not kow-tow to political or any other power, we have always judged it essential to grant the various chief constables full operational independence. Only in extremis can the Home Secretary dictate to them or sack them. The independence of police constables appears to have gone to the various chiefs’ heads.
‘Plod’ has got too big for the boots Joe public issued him with. For instance, he knows that the public highly values its almost unique unarmed method of policing and yet, more and more, chiefs ignore this fact and go on spending vast sums on gadgetry – much of it of a lethal nature – and are close to looking plain silly. ‘Plod’ seeks no approval for any of this and there has been no discussion in Parliament about it. Chiefs now dress their officers in intimidating Robocop fashion so that the gap between him and the public he is meant to serve grows daily wider. It has reached the point whereby they are almost unapproachable. You certainly wouldn’t think to ask such a weirdly dressed creature into your house for a cuppa so that you can give him an update on what is going on in your neighbourhood and where all the baddies are.
Instead of listening to the public’s concerns – like boots on the ground – he prefers to listen to what his own officers want and pander to their convenience. When things go wrong, ‘Plod’ springs to their defence like a she-wolf protecting its cubs.
In the last ten years, 74 people have died in police custody but not a single officer has been found culpable. Time and again ‘Plod’ was told about children being abused – including Savile’s hundreds – but he did nothing. ‘Plod’ cocked up at Hillsborough football stadium where nearly 100 died and tried for 25 years to put the blame on the public. That responsible chief constable was allowed to retire, keep his handsome pension as well as his knighthood: scandalous is not the word for it!
Faced with multiple unsolved crimes, England’s worst performing force, Nottinghamshire, adopted a policy of wholesale roundups and arrests of ‘the usual suspects’ with not a scintilla of evidence to justify bringing them in. They spent time under arrest and had unlawful conditions of bail imposed on them before they were released without charge.
Now it transpires that Cleveland police have spent ten years – yes, ten years – and millions of pounds trying to fit-up a distinguished solicitor who was rather better than they would have wished at getting people off. They were ordered by the High Court to pay £550,000 compensation. But should we be surprised that if they would go for a solicitor – distinguished or otherwise – they also tried to fit-up a cabinet minister? I could go on. There is so much.
In 100 years crime has grown 30-fold, even allowing for population growth.
The clear-up rate in the last 50 years has fallen from 47 per cent to 28 per cent.
Why did we waste all that money on gadgetry?
But, listen, you’ll enjoy this: Plod’s latest wheeze is to fit himself out with CCTV somewhere among all that paraphernalia, if he can find the space, so that every minute of every day he can photograph and record people he comes into contact with. Now, that definitely does it!
Mrs. Ramsbottom, who’d gone off him anyway, will never, ever, now ask him in for that cuppa. He might, after all, be photographing her bloomers on the clothes horse so that he and his mates can have a good laugh later, down at the station.
But, joking apart, there is, as we can see, much to be done where the police are concerned. They are in serious danger of becoming a law unto themselves and they must be reined in. Since it is still important that they remain free of political and other interference, we must hope that the new commissioners rapidly get their act together and do the job we have called them in existence to do. Only they can offer hope of a solution.
Is it time for real change in the police force?
Last week’s police commissioners’ election was the biggest non-event in a very long time. In terms of voter turnout it was truly abysmal. Were it not for the court jester’s candidacy – John Prescott – it would have been even worse.
Two Jags’ supporters couldn’t be bothered to stir themselves from the warmth of their slumbers on that cold November day
This lack of interest is a pity because crime in a recent poll was right up there almost on a par with benefits and pensions as an issue of great concern to the public. Why then this lack of voter turnout when it has been given a chance to do something about it?
First, unlike general elections and referendums, there was a marked lack of information and hype. It all seemed like one big yawn; we didn’t even know who was standing nor where we were expected to vote and what’s more, no one bothered to tell us. In my own case, on the day itself, I had to ring up the town hall to find out where to vote and ask for a list of candidates. It took them ages to find out. Then I had to Google each one to find out what he or she stood for and what their track record was. Who, apart from a few nerds like me, was going to go to all that trouble? I tell you, I was on the line all of ten minutes waiting for an answer – and then they gave me the wrong place to go and vote.
What then was so important about this particular election? First, law and order is something that impinges on the life of every one of us. We have more contact with plod, by far, than we do with our local MPs. And the person who heads up our constabulary is responsible for an area and population hugely greater than our MP – in my case the whole of Devon and Cornwall, where there are many MPs.
We have all for many years been feeling that our friendly neighbourhood policeman has been slipping away from us: his presence on our streets declines daily, his appearance grows more intimidating, and his friendly nick closed – except by appointment in increasing numbers. He cannot, as a matter of course, have guns because on this one we dig in our heels, but he says ‘in that case then let us have tasers’. He seems unwilling to listen to our pleadings and determined to go his own way.
We have always judged it important that, operationally, the police should be free from political interference. And while this has to be right, it is equally right that ultimate control of policy should rest with civilians. In theory this is the case, but every Home Secretary has found it next to impossible either to impose their will on a Chief Constable or sack him when it becomes necessary. The reality is that the police have many of the characteristics of an army: they learn to march in formation and salute; they are trained to obey orders; and they can hold you against your will; they have armouries; are licensed to kill; and they wear uniforms, even body armour. But we do not allow an army commander – even the chief of staff – to decide policy, much less to determine the magnitude of the lethal force to be used. If we did, then General MacArthur – admittedly an American but bound by the same military ethos – would have atom-bombed the Chinese in Korea. His insistence caused him to be sacked by the president.
Because the new police commissioners have hire-and-fire powers over chief constables, as well as budgetary control, we can now reasonably expect police priorities to move in the direction we would all like. What was important in this recent election was that we didn’t get a load of puffed up, power-hungry chancers make it through to these crucial positions. Nor did we want them to be over politicised. In the event, the public (at least that small part of it that voted) thought this too and the Independents, as a result, made a very good showing.
In a perverse sort of way the pathetically low voter turnout may have aided (this first time round) a good outcome. Elections are normally held during the better weather of the summer, and what with the lack of information and hype, Two Jags’ supporters couldn’t be bothered to stir themselves from the warmth of their slumbers on that cold November day. Yet the Polly Peck, compromised Michael Mates for the Tories couldn’t get his loyal followers out either so the field was left clear for that little band of determined, civic-minded individuals who saw the potential and understood what was at stake to make the effort. So, for the second time, Two Jags had egg on his face, but on this occasion managed to restrain himself from throwing a punch at his adversary.
May these elected police chiefs not be seen as part of the much touted ‘Big Society’ so beloved of the PM? David Cameron may not have planned it this way – that would have been too Machiavellian; too clever for him – but the fates conspired to keep the famous ‘plebs’ at home and leave it to the more dedicated. He may, as a result, have got himself some very good police commissioners. If the commissioners they do a good job, they can reasonably expect a new term with re-election.
For all the present government’s shortcomings, there is at last the prospect that many areas of public life will be the better for police commissioners having been brought into existence, albeit again – like the recent election – in an unplanned for way.
The coalition is hellbent on making us solvent again, although weaker on promoting growth; it is tackling welfare abuse and shrinking the bloated state; it promises a revolution in raising educational standards and it is not giving up on immigration. Only the police stand unreformed – a law virtually unto themselves with some horrendous practises coming to light. Now, at last, we may see some real changes there too.
If the economy starts to recover it would be a mean person who would not give the government on whose watch it all happened some credit.
Get down to the gym boys, and don’t bother bringing your body armour
Very soon now we are going to be asked to vote for civilian police commissioners – a controversial proposal not much liked by plod.
SOURCE: Rex Features
It has got off to a bad start because of the calibre of some of the applicants, many of whom one suspects view it as an excellent chance to climb aboard the gravy train as well as throw their weight around. One of these applicants, the clownish buffoon and former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has indeed a lot of that to throw around. Nonetheless, I believe that the concept is sound and as the years pass we will get genuine public-spirited men and women of stature and proven track record to oversee their force.
The reason I feel that the concept is good is that I believe that certain elements of the police are close to being out of control and act as though they are a law unto themselves: look at the incredible Hillsborough cover-up; the striking down of that poor man Ian Tomlinson who died in London and was going about his business with no thought of joining a demonstration. Then there was the shooting dead of a young, deeply disturbed barrister Mark Saunders, also in London, and the seven-bullets-to-the-head execution of the hapless Brazilian young man, Charles de Menezes on the underground – as well as many, many other incidents which have caused deep disquiet among the public. Accusations of thuggish behaviour on an increasing scale are levelled at the police.
The advent of jihadist terrorism appears to have provided an unarguable cover for the issue of more and more firearms and a tipping point seems not far off where every Bobby will have a pistol at his hip. More guns will, inevitably, lead to a greater use of them. Terrorism seems to have provided a ‘catch all’ excuse to usher in a whole range of repressive measures. Tony Blair, as with so many things which came back to bite him – such as devolution – embraced the whole scaremongering agenda. And yet, more than anyone, we were familiar with terrorism – a very competent form. We had thirty years of it with the IRA but yet, despite all the carnage such as the Brighton bombing which almost killed Margaret Thatcher and much more, we kept our nerve. We did not move towards arming our police.
Since Robert Peel set up the police, one of the glories of our country – one that has amazed the rest of the world – is that we have been able to maintain law and order without recourse to firearms. So the police know there is deep disquiet at the way things are developing.
‘If we cannot have guns’, seems to be their new mantra, ‘then let us have tasers’. And what do we see? A 43 per cent rise in their use in one year. We see a blind 61-year-old architect, who has already had a stroke, felled with 50,000 volts of excruciating pain.
In all the many instances of police malpractice there are precious few instances of officers going to gaol. They investigate themselves and produce what – predictably and in too many cases – the public perceive as a less than fair outcome. One of the useful actions that the new commissioners could address themselves to is to civilianise these investigations. That is a much needed measure and one that should be applied to each and every professional body. By all means let them have representation on that body, but not enough to determine an investigation’s outcome.
Once upon a time the police would go about their business – as the military is wont to say – in shirt sleeve order during the summer. Today they parade like Robocop, festooned with all manner of silly gadgets. Every new device that comes on the market they are fair game for; it rapidly becomes must-have. Soon they will be weighted down to such an extent that it becomes impossible for them to give chase. In any case, too many of them are out of condition and overweight that it would be impossible anyway. That too is a subject that the new commissioners could address: annual fitness checkups.(By the way, I don’t recall seeing many overweight soldiers locking horns with the Taliban. As an ex-health club owner I would be happy to advise on what needs to be done. Get down to the gym boys! I’ll meet you there, but don’t bother bringing your body armour.)
N.B. I was stopped by the police the other day after collecting my son from the railway station as I forgot to put my lights on. My car was given the once over; I was breathalysed; the works. They were a couple of fine young men – polite, fit and a credit to the force. All is not lost.
A heavy price for insurrection
Everyone will have heaved a sigh of relief that the preacher of death, Abu Hamza, and four of his associates have failed in their bid to avoid extradition to the US.
Of course, the European Court of Human Rights would have caused outrage had they failed to bring in any other verdict. It would have been saying our closest ally was no different than the likes of Jordan, Morocco or Pakistan and that it could not be trusted not to torture or apply inhumane conditions – when in fact the conditions are likely to be even more over the top than our own 3.5-star gaols.
So the result, in truth, was a foregone conclusion and would, had it been otherwise, have represented a gross insult to the world’s greatest democracy.
Interestingly, the extradition is of exactly the kind that the controversial UK-US Extradition Treaty was designed to cover (i.e. terrorism). Had we reminded the US of this in many of the disputed cases where a clear terrorism link could not be established, we could have avoided much of the acrimony that has been thrown up.
But the fact remains that the treaty is flawed: the legal requirements in each case are not the same, making it easier for Uncle Sam to get his hands on our people than for us to get our hands on his. What incompetent treaty drafter thought it was in order to produce a document of this kind? He should be kicked sideways into oblivion as should the several other jobsworths who must have perused it before it was enacted into law.
This refusal to punish people who make monumental cock ups in the public sector is an affront to all of us; I believe it is at the root of so many of the outrages about which we throw up our arms and say ‘never again’ or ‘lessons will be learned’, but where they never seem to be.
In industry or commerce, it is clearly understood that either you do the job for which you are being paid or you will go. Only an equal sanction for those paid from the public purse is likely to do the trick.
Nothing, as they say, concentrates the mind like a good hanging.
What enrages the public so much is that salt is so often rubbed into the wound by either rewarding the miscreant with a promotion or allowing early retirement with the most mouth-watering of financial packages.
Police, for instance, can often avoid investigation into alleged irregularities by the simple expedient of taking early retirement. And that brings me to the ex-policeman, Brian Paddick, the no-hoper would-be mayor of London.
What a lovely set-up – naturally facilitated by money-bags Joe Public – that allows a perfectly fit and able copper to retire at the age of 49 on a pension of £65,000 a year!
This nice little nugget of information was thrown up as a result of the recent live BBC Newsnight debate between the mayoral contestants when, unwittingly, they stumbled into a pledge of total transparency in financial matters.
The issue has snowballed to the point where every senior holder of public office can now expect to be required to come clean. Get ready for more revelations about where all our money is going and how much.
But I started this article on prisons, and it seems right to finish on the same note.
The eleven and a half year sentence meted out to the London riot arsonist may have struck some as a bit over the top. But remember this: it was so very nearly murder and the offender gave not a thought to the fact that there could well have been many people trapped on an upstairs level.
As it was, a woman had to leap for her life to avoid being incinerated.
The law has always taken a very hard line where arson is concerned, and not just because it concerns property. Whole cities have been destroyed by conflagrations, including our own capital and large numbers of lives are lost to this day in fires. It is, perhaps, the most terrible way for a life to end.
Remember also that the authorities felt, rightly or wrongly – and, in this case, I think rightly – that they had to dish our exemplary sentences where the authority of the state was under threat.
For a moment during those terrible scenes of last August there was a widespread feeling that Armageddon had arrived: that if it escalates, the next thing we’ll see is the Prime Minister’s head being paraded down Whitehall on a pike, and that the dark underbelly of the disaffected underclass was taking over and was about to take revenge on the ‘haves’.
A message had to go out that if you indulge in acts of what amounted to insurrection, you can expect to pay a heavy price.
In those particular circumstances it would have seemed nonsensical to apply the normal slap-on-the-wrist for a bit of shoplifting.
And as for the recipient of the eleven and a half year sentence, also remember this: he turned out to be a career criminal with violence a part of his repertoire; and that the eleven and a half years is something of a joke anyway since he will be back on the streets in 2016 having served only half of his sentence.
The weighty matter of elected police chiefs
Nothing has filled me with despair recently so much as the news that that tired old retread John Prescott is to throw his hat into the ring to become the new Sheriff of Uddersfield. You come up with a good idea, and who leaps in to ruin the whole concept but the man we all thought had been finally put out to pasture: the former prize fighter/deputy prime minister.
The idea of elected police chiefs is for us to get a form of payment by results. That is to say, the chief increases the clear up rate of crime, brings order to our streets and thus enables us to sleep easier in our beds. And in return for performing this valuable service, he or she is awarded (and paid) with a fresh mandate and a continuance of his (or her) £70,000 stipend. It does sound like a good arrangement to me to me! So let’s look at this particular applicant’s CV.
He’s certainly been a busy boy during his long career – although, at 72, I worry a bit that that it’s just too long. His cheeky-chappie approach would undoubtedly go down well with the binge drinkers of a Friday night (the same people he’s promised to sort out). And his beer belly should also appeal to many, allowing him to empathise – always a most important consideration in this touchy-feelie age. But against this there’s the risk that if he’s provoked he might strike out. After all, he has got form in this department and a GBH charge is not something that would sit well on a police commissioner’s record.
But let’s get serious for a moment and look at Two Jags’ actual record. It is acknowledged that he was appointed deputy prime minister not just as a sop to the unions, but in order to keep peace between the warring prime minister and his chancellor… a sort of honest broker. Ten years of backstabbing and plotting between the two made a mockery of that and proved even beyond Prezza’s giant abilities.
Ever resourceful, and looking for something meaningful to do, he came up with the idea of regional authorities. What an ineffectual and horrendously expensive exercise in futility that turned out to be. But not to be deterred, he pressed on.
His next idea was to knock down street upon street of houses right across the land which his office deemed not fit for human habitation. It later emerged that they could have been renovated for a fraction of the cost of replacements and kept vibrant communities from disintegrating. But Two Jags, as he will freely acknowledge himself, was never very good at sums in school.
He wanted more development, so his next ‘Big Idea’ was to allow rejected planning applications (often sent back for good reasons) to be sent to his office where his expert eye could peruse them and tell whether the planners had got it wrong. As a result, large numbers of outrageous appeals were sent back to the planners with instructions to allow the development. Prescott could never leave it – nor for that matter some of his office staff – alone. He could never accept that he was, in fact, a man of limited talents.
It adds to the gaiety of nations for every administration to have its own court jester, and ‘Prezza’ was happy to fulfil that role for New Labour – although he never fully understood how much they were all taking the you-know-what.his own side included.
His opposite number in the Tory Party is Boris Johnson. But there is one very big difference between the two of them: Boris is superbly educated. Plus he comes up with ideas like getting rid of London’s hated bendy buses and returning to the much-loved jump on/jump off version. Then there’s freezing of congestion charges and, best of all, the world-beating, environmentally friendly replacement for Heathrow: the Estuary Airport. Most of his ideas make a lot of sense and are in accord with the public opinion. I’m personally looking forward to Boris stepping forward as Master of Ceremony for the London Olympics. Quite what Johnny Foreigner will make of him I wouldn’t like to guess, but I think there’s a good chance that, like so many of us, they’ll love him. At the very least we can be sure that he’ll create a sensation of some sort.
But returning to the hoped-for revolution in policing: this is a once in a lifetime chance to get the system sorted. The last thing we need is for a plethora of failed has-beens to prove all over again how useless they are; it is desperately important that we have people of proven track record and of the highest calibre if we are to have any chance of success.
We have strayed so far from policing as we would like it to be, and in many respects the Force no longer commands the respect which should be its due. We spent well over a million pounds on a state of the art police station in my suburb of Plymouth just a few years ago and it’s not any longer open to the public. You can only visit by appointment. Many officers, sad to say, couldn’t even give chase to a baddie. With all their Inspector Gadget accessories and body-armour weighing them down – not to mention their Prescott-style waists which so many seem to be developing – it’s small wonder police chiefs recently dismissed a move to introduce compulsory annual fitness tests for serving officers.
Plod under caution
A searching spotlight has been directed on to police in recent weeks as a result of the recent riots. It is true to say they are all that stands between us and anarchy, since we are not a militarised state with a large standing army. (We have always found work for the latter to do far from our shores.) But anarchy did, indeed, descend on us 4 weeks ago and for a while the nation trembled at the thought that it was running out of control. What disturbed it most was not the perception, funnily enough, that rioters were on the rampage, but that the police were powerless to stop them. Let us be clear about one thing: it was not lack of numbers which created the difficulty; at 143,000 officers the police are 50,000 greater in numbers than when they faced down the miners. What it all comes down to is how those numbers were deployed. I was shocked to learn the other day that the time of greatest police deployment was on a Monday morning and the time of least was on a Friday or Saturday night. What is going on? It seems to me that the police are working themselves into an office mindset whereby they see themselves as a basically 9am to 5pm operation with overtime paid for unsocial hours. I was even more shocked to learn that in one constabulary almost half of all officers make no arrests in a whole year. And other constabularies perform in similarly dismal fashion.
What the public craves above everything is a visible presence on the streets and it has begged for this for years. But Plod wishes not to plod any more. It’s highly unglamorous and a little demeaning. Much better a high speed chase, lights a flashing and siren screaming. Now that’s glamour! In between times there’s cruising the streets in their costly, often alloy-wheeled cars (preferably with a pretty young thing for company) and seeing not a lot as they pass. The public wishes to see the money which is extracted from it under duress spent responsibly. It does not regard two officers ‘patrolling’ safe areas while they chat away to each other not noticing much as money well spent.
We know that gang culture blights our larger cities, but what do the police do when the Prime Minister wants to engage the services of a proven gang buster from the States and put him in charge of the rudderless Met? They throw up their arms and say ‘we’re not having a foreigner coming over and telling us what to do’. They know a game changer when they see it; he would be jumping on their Spanish Practices and spoiling everything. Indeed, a few years ago a South African policeman came to work at one of the constabularies. He took his job seriously and his arrest rate was light years ahead of his colleagues. What happened? He was sidelined and virtually sent to Coventry. He left in disgust. We have 43 Constabularies in Britain and the crime clear up rate in some are, again, light years better than others. Were this to be the case in a company, the CEO would descend like the Furies on the laggards: heads would roll and things would change. Nothing less than a rout-and-branch shake-up of the police is required.
But it is certainly not all their own fault. They have been blown this way and that way by the armies of bleeding hearts, health & safety directives, race & equality demands, box-ticking requirements, political correctness and courts who make their bringing to trial efforts a joke by handing down laughably lenient sentences. Even their dropping of the term Force in favour of Police Service tells you how confused they are. They cannot any longer be seen to project an image of firmness. They are ‘At Your Service’, if you please! But there is one area of law enforcement in which the police do show genuine zeal. That is their pursuit of the motorist. A hugely disproportionate level of resources are devoted to motoring offenses. Is it, I wonder, because they are easy pickings? Like shooting pop-up ducks at a fairground. The British motorist is the perfect customer: he goes quietly, is not abusive, and best of all never violent. What is never recognised is that he is the most considerate driver in the entire world with a death rate which reflects this. My Baltic wife, when we married ten years ago and she came to live here, remarked how willingly people gave way on our roads and even gave a little return wave when they were thanked for their kindness. She said such gentlemanly behaviour would be unthinkable in her country. An elected head of each constabulary – answerable for his or her own performance, with real powers of hire and fire in the top echelons – would be a good start and could work wonders. And a Home Secretary who would stand up to the vested interests within the Force and say to them that the vacant post of head of the Met was open to all, foreigners included, would also help. What does it say of David Cameron that he meekly acquiesced in his Home Secretary’s refusal to look for the best wherever it could be found? I doubt that Mrs. Thatcher would have tolerated that sort of cheek from her Home Secretary, or even Gordon Brown for that matter.
Police must lose Robocop image
How humiliating that perhaps the greatest city in the world, known to everyone since the very first Caesar, has fallen to the latest incarnation of the Vandals. What happened last week has been headline news all around the world to what should be the huge embarrassment of every person living in these islands.
How did it happen? It happened because a group of amoral young people saw an opportunity to unleash their feral instincts and have what was to them some real fun. Underpinning this was a unique chance to help themselves to items that their state handouts would not allow them to buy. They did not set out to harm anybody, but that was the inevitable consequence. They just wanted everyone to get out of their way so they could do as they pleased. Where did the forces of law and order feature in all this? First they were caught asleep on their watch with the only two senior officers who might have made a difference pushed out of their job because of pettifogging nonsense over phone hacking. So the ‘Great Met’ was rudderless. They should have been monitoring the Twitters and realised that in today’s joined-up world they can get advanced warning of what is likely to happen. Wake up Met, the Internet is here! Then when they did spring into action they stood back, looking like RoboCops, and stared out from behind their shields. Were they afraid?
There is a terrible disconnect between the police and the lawless underclass, who view them as the despised enemy; someone, who in their take on the world, can be to blame for the boring pointlessness of their lives. But who, we have to ask ourselves, is truly to blame? Back we have to come as I said in my last spiel to the lack of values inculcated at family level. And who encouraged that? Why, the ‘bleeding hearts’ who said that discipline at all levels – be it at home, school, the policeman on the beat – should be eased. Reasons must be sought for bad behaviour. We must try not to be so judgemental. And as if we were not storing up enough trouble for the future with such policies, we failed to give these luckless kids a decent education.
A few decades ago there was one arm of the state which might still have saved these sad cases of hopelessness: the military. Two years before the mast (National Service) would have knocked some real sense into them and taught them many real and valuable skills. They might even have come to take some pride in their country’s military prowess down the centuries and come to love her. But, alas, we must deal with the situation as we find it now. First of all we must get behind the Education Secretary’s revolution in the classroom. Then we must support the policies which encourage people into work and penalise the workshy and the malingerers. But most all we must do everything we can to reinforce the family and ditch the silly notion that a father isn’t altogether necessary.
I am pleased that we did not rush into using water cannon, rubber bullets and tear gas. The foreigner may be shocked at the images coming out of London and elsewhere, but he should not get supercilious and start tittering. Germany, France, Greece and others have all resorted to these but, except for Northern Ireland, we never have. And our policemen are virtually alone in the world in not being seen to strut the streets with a pistol at their hip. Such is the British way and the foreigner stands in awe at such law enforcement. We have ethnic groups who do not yet understand these things, but in time they will.
Meantime, it would help if our police stopped dressing up like Robocops. If they are to connect with these feral young people they should look as casual as possible, not like someone who has leaped straight out of ‘Grand Theft Auto’ or some computer game they have been playing… someone they have just zapped into oblivion. Even our ‘Bobbies’ on the beat are padded out to an absurd degree and no longer look normal. Mrs. Thatcher’s police faced worse violence during the miners’ strike without these scary looking outfits, but yet they managed to contain the situation. But the difference is that they got stuck in; they didn’t cower behind their shields and allow the collieries to be torched. It was just the same when the print unions took on Rupert Murdoch at Wapping. All done without a lot of show-off, expensive paraphernalia, but with a determination to oppose lawlessness at any cost, even to themselves. I bet the boys presently in Helmand Province would laugh their socks off (or perhaps weep) at such pusillanimous as we have seen on the streets of London recently.
Ian Blair, the former head of the Metropolitan Police, has so much to answer for with his politicising of the police and his insistence on political correctness. What a disgrace that we must now refer to him as Lord Blair! But in all this sad litany of woe there is a very great silver lining: we can now be sure that the police will not allow themselves to be caught again with their pants down at the London Olympics next year.
The Last Foundling 