Public and Police Kenneth H. Ross Coventry Cathedral R. B.
Suit, John Redfern St. Robert Bellarmine A. S. B. Glover Sharp-Shooters Stuart Hall Hymns as Poetry Miss N. M. Nicholson Common Market Peter Baker Kids in Cars C. P. Turner Canadian Elections Barry R. Morgan Holy Xenophobes James C. Menhinick Sitting Down in Moscow Desmond Donnelly, MP
SIR.—The Report of the Committee which has con- sidered relations between public and police has been castigated, and properly so. as being too knock-kneed to be of use for anything but the simplest domestic purposes, but there is one question which has not been taken in its logical place, that is, at the very start. (I had the feeling that even Colin Maclnnes, in the article you published recently, missed it himself. If memory is at fault, I apologise to him.) It is this :What degree of conflict of interest be- tween public and police will justify mutual sus- picion and even non-cooperation?
Clearly, when we are faced with theft, assault, hit-and-run driving and so on we ought to aid the police to the hilt. Our interest and every moral argument will urge us to side with law and order. Equally where there is a bad law which is remedi- able by legislation (Wolfenden, and so on) there is a duty of sorts to afford the police as little aid as we can get away with. There may be those of us who will feel a duty to undermine, at least for limited purposes, the enforcement of law, the sooner to see it changed.
But far more critical cases exist where there is, for economic reasons, a continuing conflict between State and individual which cannot be ended by a statute. In the normal way of business, motorists are the largest group who have regular dealings with the police, seeing them at every turn in towns and cities and suffering the majority of all criminal prosecu- tions and convictions. The interest of the police with regard to the motorist is clear—nothing would ease their lives like the abolition of private motoring. If motorist and policeman are at loggerheads it is only the natural result of circumstances.
The police affect to regard this ill-feeling as, un- natural, but if it did not exist it would be a clear sign that someone was being deceived, or was deceiv- ing himself, as, to his own true interests. It is not the fault of the policeman that he has to regulate a chaotic road system, but he has, in joining the Force, undertaken to be an executive officer of government, however unpopular it may make him.
Surely relations between government and indi- vidual should be characterised by cautious, even cynical, reserve? I ask this with diffidence, for if the answer is what I think it is, the police-public discussion has started at the wrong, end. It is also the end at which any Royal Commission would have to start.
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