ANOTHER VOICE
Should the police terror campaign be seen as a new anti-Popish plot?
AUBERON WAUGH
The thought occurred to me this Christ- mas that perhaps the seemingly pointless and oppressive police terror campaign against motorists has, in fact, a sinister purpose. Why do they reserve their greatest ferocity for the season of what has undoubtedly become the Christian reli- gion's greatest festival of the year — for many people, perhaps, its only festival? The first, and least sinister, answer is that they wish to crack down on any spirit of joy or festivity, which is intolerable to the authoritarian, Protestant mentality. Catho- lic dictatorships, nurtured in the Roman tradition, know the value of circuses, or more particularly, the fiesta, a time when normal social constraints no longer apply, as a means of cementing a society built on more austere standards at other times of the year. In fact the idea of a festival of Unreason, fete des foul, or Saturnalia, long precedes Christianity. But it is unaccept- able to the puritan, Protestant ethos, based on self-righteousness and asceticism, which must seek to impose its own standards as a justification for the elitist philosophy which replaces the alternative system of hapha- zard or fortuitous privilege. One of these can afford to be mocked in drunken masques, where simpletons are traditional- ly invited to burlesque the roles of bishop, squire and policeman. The other, because it is based on a supposition of virtue, cannot afford to be mocked in this way.
But as our society evolves, it becomes harder and harder to see encroaching police activism in terms of the ancient struggle between the Stoic and Epicurean traditions: between Low Church and High Church, Roundhead and Cavalier. The police are themselves grotesquely over- paid, idle and self-indulgent, not to say corruptible or plain crooked in many dis- tricts, even if my own Somerset and Avon Constabulary is generally recognised as the shining exception. They are not, by and large, these New Brit policemen, con- cerned to fight the good fight against muggers, burglars, car thieves and similar villains, so much as to increase police powers and give themselves quasi- prefectorial authority over the civilian population of private citizens.
In this struggle they are not, of course, alone. Social workers, health visitors, local planning authorities, housing authorities, health authorities and the seemingly myriad committees which sit in judgment on any mother struggling to raise her own children — even family doctors — are all playing the same game. There seems to have been a general explosion of the symptom identified as mini-napoleonism, previously catered for in the House of Commons, the trade unions, the mental hospitals and the teaching profession. The police sickness is more worrying only because of its greater application.
The emergence of a few exhibitionist and garrulous chief constables as would-be local gauleiters is made all the more alarming by the speed with which their posture travels down to the humblest police constable in their areas. An instance of this is provided by police initiative under Douglas Hurd's Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, pusillanimously introduced by a weak Home Secretary in response to police pressure after the Hungerford massacre. Penalties under the Act — for possession of a shot gun when your licence has expired, for instance — are already so high that police have all the leverage they require to terrorise and bully their unfor- tunate victims into surrendering their guns without payment.
The normal practice now is to neglect to send a reminder when the shotgun certifi- cate is due to run out, then call three months after it has run out and confiscate the guns under threat of prosecution for illegal possession. Those who are suffi- ciently well organised to be aware that their three-year certificate is about to run out find they receive no acknowledgment of their application for renewal (it is essential, for this reason, to send it by registered post or recorded delivery), and will receive no shotgun certificate at all unless they badger their chief constable's office with telephone calls. Then, if they are lucky, they will receive, two months late, the ludicrous new certificate, with space for recording 61 shotguns already possessed, and further space for acquiring another 12, decorated with a laminated photograph of which copies are retained by the police authority.
There are refinements of this treatment. A barrister friend who gave up shooting for three years and kept his guns in North Wales, where they were covered by his father's certificate, decided to resume shooting and sent his wife round to the local police station in Richmond to renew his certificate. On discovering that the guns were already in Richmond, the police sergeant went through the usual rigmarole of threatening to prosecute, reducing the wife to tears, and took possession of the guns. When the barrister went round to the police station afterwards to demand a receipt for his exceptionally valuable pair of Purdeys, he was told it was not Metro- politan Police policy to give receipts.
Innumerable similar stories add weight to the belief that it is unofficial police policy to bring to an end the private citizen's right to own sporting shotguns. One may doubt the extent to which the policy is even unofficial when one reads, for instance, in the Annual Report of Cheshire County Council, such paragraphs as this:
However, new firearms legislation has met with a heartening response from Cheshire owners, with almost 800 shotgun certificates being cancelled in the six months after the change in regulations.
Local government and police alike can- not abide the thought of private citizens possessing weapons which might, in some unthinkable future eventuality, be turned against them.
There need be nothing sinister in this nervousness, however contemptible we may find it. The way to resist it is to frighten them in other ways. But it does strike me as possibly sinister that the police should reserve their greatest ferocity in the campaign to terrorise and oppress private citizens for the Christmas season. Many Catholics — or people who think of them- selves as Catholics, despite official dis- couragement — go to church only once a year, at the Christmas midnight Mass. Only a few religious fanatics will have failed to dine before midnight, even if they did not need a drink or two to stiffen them for the horrors of the new kiddies' liturgy.
A major effect of the annual Christmas crackdown by police is to deter these people from their one religious observance of the year. After a few years, they will necessarily lose all Catholic identity. I do now know what proportion of senior offic- ers are still Freemasons, but there are plenty of other reasons for wishing to see the Catholic church reduced to a tiny rump of damp-eyed fanatics, kindergarten dance-leaders and teetotallers. The threat of Sunday morning breath-tests supports the theory that something very sinister indeed is afoot.
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