Political commentary

Laura's party

Ferdinand Mount

For many viewers, the highlight of Mr Roger Graef's series Police was the stake-out at Laura Duchess of Marlborough's Buckinghamshire home. And the star was unmistakably Adrian Daintrey, the elderly artist and wit. Mr Daintrey was first glimpsed at his easel on a velvet lawn, while two officers of the Thames Valley CID were reviewing their dispositions for the anticipated burglary. I shall long treasure the exquisite timing of his explanation of his fellow houseguest: 'You must have heard of Sir Arthur Bryant, he is a well-known historian. He writes every week, for the Illustrated London News.' 'And who are you, sir?' I'm a semi- well-known artist.'

It seemed a little unfair that when the burglars failed to show up, or at any rate to burgle, the senior officers should blame one or other of the elderly guests either for snoring or for showing a light. The presence of 18 police officers, not to speak of Mr Graef, his assistants and his apparatus, might, one feels, also have had something to do with the debacle. I remain unconvinc- ed that this is a typical night's work for the Thames Valley fuzz.

Indeed, my own projected series, Dain- trey, in which the artist pursues Mr Graef round his home all day long, making small watercolour sketches the while, might, I fancy, approximate more closely to reality.

But what remains of enduring interest is the huge number of policemen available to lie in wait for a couple of country-house burglars. This may have been due to the healthy desire of every British policeman to appear on television, but my own recent ex- perience suggests the contrary. When I saw suspicious lights flash on and off in my ab- sent neighbour's house, a 999 call brought three police cars, half-a-dozen policemen and one handsome policewoman within three minutes. All in vain, for a telephone call to my neighbour on holiday revealed that he had rigged up this ingenious system of lights to deter burglars.

Politicians have still not come to grips with the huge increase in the strength of the police force, the consequences of this in- crease, and the trap thereby set for politi- cians trying to squeeze a few votes out of the law and order issue. The effective strength of the Metropolitan Police has, I repeat, doubled over the past 20 years, if you include (as you must) the new army of civilian staff. The recruitment of secretaries and traffic wardens leaves the police free to chase more criminals and, if not always to catch them, at least to record more crimes. No police officer likes to report that he has been wasting his time.

Last autumn, the Home Office compared their own criminal statistics with the results of the General Household Survey. When a sample of 10,000 householders were asked `Were you burgled last year?' the answers added up to a total which has varied very little over the years. Yet the police's statistics of burglary have shot up through the 1970s, from 190,597 in 1970 to a 'record total' of 294,375 in 1980. But according to the Household Survey, the police figures are still only a fraction of the half-million estimated burglaries actually committed.

The most frequent discrepancy between the number of burglaries remembered by the victim and the number recorded by the police was in cases where nothing was stolen; according to the Household Survey, there are about 120,000 of these a year, but the police record only about 50,000.

Let us turn to last week's frightening figures issued by Scotland Yard which created such a furore. Sir Kenneth Newman, the new Commissioner just ap- pointed to succeed Sir David McNee, is reported to be highly suspicious of melodramatic statistics. And he might well be suspicious of these. In fact, they amount to little more than a skimpy, and somewhat dishonest, press hand-out. The Yard skates lightly over the fact that the figures for homicide, rape, fraud, forgery, shoplifting and receiving stolen goods are all clown. In- deed, so were most categories of theft, ex- cept that of 'mugging'. More remarkable still, apart from the assaults, mostly on police officers, during the brief and terrible time of the riots, the number of assaults was also unchanged. If urban stress and deprivation were the leading cause of society sliding into anarchy, then one would expect some of these to be the categories most likely to increase, particularly shop- lifting and violence within the family.

The categories which have unmistakably increased in London — and other great cities — are street robberies and 'auto- crime' (three-quarters of which is theft from parked vehicles — radios, cassettes and the like — which may be largely ac- counted for by there being more hardware to steal). No sane person would dream of denying that a disproportionate number of these crimes are committed by young blacks in the parts of inner London which have gone downhill. The evidence of our own eyes demonstrates that vandalism has in- creased vastly too.

But suppose that I'm wrong to be scep- tical and that there really is a crime wave of unprecedented viciousness raging. Whatever cause or causes you like to give for this crime wave — unemployment, in- flation, lack of discipline in schools, lack of facilities outside schools — the first thing

the politicians must understand is that ex' cessive use of statistics is likely to rebound on the user. Any truncheon you choose to wave is likely to come back and bop You smack between the eyes. For the other Laura — Laura Norder — is a fickle mistress.

A Prime Minister in mid-term usually dominates question time. Mrs Thatcher is no exception. Yet she came a cropper last Thursday when Mr Callaghan rose with seraphic mien to point out that serious crime 'declined each year during the time that I was Prime Minister and has gone uP each year since,' and, adding condescension to injury, that 'despite what the Rt Hon Lady said in her election speeches, neither she nor I has any influence at all on those statistics.'

The Prime Minister havered and stumbl- ed, groped for the number of murders, couldn't find it, and anyway it was the number of police deaths while on duty (which would in any case scarcely have pro- ved her point, the numbers involved being much too small, one or two a year, for a trend to be drawn from them), and finally grasped gratefully at the lifebelt, to wit, that it had nothing to do with the govern- ment. Why quote it then, Mr Dennis Skin- ner rudely but aptly inquired?

With hindsight, I suppose, Mrs Thatcher could have argued that, if the crime statistics went down under Labour while unemployment doubled, then unemploY- ment could not be the cause of crime. In fact, Mr Callaghan's confession of im- potence strikes equally at all explanations and accusations based on crime statistics. But it is at least arguable that it was the IMF which cut the crime rate by forcing Mr Healey to cut the number of policemen.

None of this is any reason not to try to improve matters in the streets, the courts and the prisons. But there is a limit to the net progress that can be hoped for. In par- ticular, the Conservative Party can make good its claim to be the 'party of law and order' only by behaving in a calm and sensi- ble fashion. Hysterical attacks on Mr Whitelaw — whatever his failings — are clearly counter-productive to the point of lunacy. For insofar as the Conservatives will have achieved anything in the field of law and order, it will be Mr Whitelaw who has achieved it. And his rapturous recep- tion at Monday night's meeting of TorY backbenchers shows that the approach of the election has begun to knock some sense into their heads.

What more, after all, can any Horne Secretary be expected to offer than bulging prisons and a police force far larger, far better paid, trained and equipped than at any time in British history (all of which has put a considerable strain on the Exchequer)? No longer could a Duchess hope to express her gratitude to the'Law by instructing the prettiest kitchenmaid to offer the constablv a cup of tea at the back door. Now it would be a question of stan- ding 'C' Division a scampi and steak dinner for eighteen.