SPECTATOR
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SWORDS INTO TRUNCHEONS
We were once taught that the best thing to do if we lost our way was to 'ask a policeman'. This lesson of the past is as valid today as it was in the far-off indeed, largely mythological — days of Dixon of Dock Green. Ask any constable in the street for directions and you can still expect to receive a polite and helpful response. In contrast, how many would feel so happy to ask directions of a gun- toting cop in New York, or Paris? We still need to count our blessings whenever we think about the British police.
But that does not mean that we should be uncritical of them, or be too shy to ask the question: which way forward for the police themselves? Members of the force will answer with the same catchphrase: 'ask a policeman'. Should we continue to accept such an exclusive answer as satisfactory? At a time when many of the police forces in the country are being investigated for alleged irregularities -- by other forces; when the verdicts of highly important criminal trials are being overturned be- cause of previously undetected police errors or deception; and when opinion polls consistently show that public confi- dence in the police is slipping, we have reached the time when outside opinions should be brought to bear more sharply on the police.
In particular, we have arrived at the moment when the central question of leadership in the police service should be tackled. We are frequently told that we need not worry ourselves because 'things are changing' and all will soon be well. This approach will not do any longer. There simply is no need to debate the self-evident desirability of creating a properly trained and qualified 'officer class'; any attempt to foment such a debate is a delaying tactic on the part of those policemen who have opposed the idea from the start. All senior policemen with a good sense of direction, most notably the former West Midlands Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear, have been trying to bring the officer class into exist- ence, chiefly by attempting to develop the Police Staff College at Bramshill into a centre of professional excellence where officer-class material can be trained. Evi- dence suggests, however, that they have been fighting an uphill battle and that far too little use has been made of the courses available there. Moreover, university graduates in general (who make up around 5 per cent of the police) often have a difficult time with their colleagues, espe- cially in their early years; many of them leave before they reach positions of re- sponsibility which they could have long before expected if they had gone into industry or the Civil Service.
This sorry lack of progress in the de- velopment of proper training, and better opportunities, for officer-class police re- cruits is usually attributed to the strength and resilience of the so-called police 'can- een culture'. Ordinary constables like to think that their education at the University of Life places them above the BAs. But while it is not a bad thing that future senior officers should, like managers in industry, have had some experience of conditions at the 'sharp end', the police service is not and has never been — a career open to all talents at all levels. The idea that every constable is carrying in his backpack the baton of a future chief constable is way off the mark. For above the enforced egalitar- ianism at the bottom of the police structure there is a much stricter hierarchy of disci- pline, based on bureaucratic distinctions, than one finds even in the modern armed services. And far too many of the senior officers who do make it to the top carry with them the attitude that if they were made to suffer on the long haul up from the street to the seminar room, then so should the 'young chaps' of today.
This unvirtuous circle will have to be broken. Fresh blood is urgently needed at senior levels in police forces and right now there may be a golden opportunity to get it — ironically, from the army itself. Many youngish military men, facing uncertainties too great for themselves and their families, are handing in their commissions. If lead- ership is what the police is crying out for they will never find it in greater supply than now and in these men. At the moment any ambitious man or woman with all the right potential for the police officer class would have to be very hard pressed to thinking of joining up. The trade union mentality of the British bobby is still far too much in evidence for that. (This was seen most vividly at the recent Police Federation Conference, which applauded Mr Hattersley and gave the sulkiest recep- tion to the Home Secretary, while accusing the present Government — than which none has ever been more supportive of the police — of 'betraying' them.) We have discovered in other unionised industries that it is only by fundamental reconstruction that entrenched attitudes can be changed and it is high time that such a change was brought to the police. We must insist on new, well trained, leadership potential being added to the service. And, after years of delays and prevarication, we should no longer be prepared to 'ask a policeman' how best to do it.
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