ANOTHER VOICE
'It appears to have been a mugging which went tragically wrong'
AUBERON WAUGH
Ihave been haunted by a sentence which I read in the Sun on Saturday. My country edition led with an account of a stabbing on the tube at Holborn station. Holborn, it explained, was a regular hunting ground for muggers, who now commit a thousand thefts a month on the London Under- ground. Earlier in the day, the same three muggers had been reported demanding money from Christmas shoppers who thronged the station. The young man who was murdered had put up some sort of resistance. Horrified Christmas shoppers screamed as he was stabbed to death.
Nothing very remarkable about that. A fairly ordinary event in the throbbing heart of our vibrant capital. A policeman ven- tured the information that at least two of the killers were believed to be black. Nothing very remarkable about that, although there was a time when the National Union of Journalists forbade its members to reveal the ethnic origins of people in the news. What caught my eye and has remained with me ever since was the second sentence in the report by George Hollingberry: 'A detective said last night: "It appears to have been a mugging which went tragically wrong." ' Perhaps it will be judged pedantic to build too much on a careless remark by an unnamed detective. Mr Hollingberry may even have misheard it. The best and most experienced reporters sometimes make mistakes. But the Sun was not reporting it as anything very odd for the detective to have said.
It appears to have been a mugging which went tragically wrong. Like some practical joke at a stag party. The implication is that other muggings go off perfectly all right. The chap hands over his wallet to the assailant, possibly believed to be a black man, and the mugger moves on down the train to mug someone else. God's in his heaven and all is right with the world. The incredibly over-worked policeman at the local station takes down the details and apologises for the fact that there is no chance of catching the assailant after deli- cate enquiries about his skin shade, just for the computer. The Force is incredibly undermanned, as you know, Sir, what with Maggie's cuts, and many of us have to spend most of our time doing desk work when what we'd really like is to be out on the beat, and then these judges are so lenient. . . .' After wasting half an hour at the station, the victim comes away confirmed in his belief that the British police are the best in the world. That is the sort of mugging we all like and expect, the sort that does not go tragically wrong. The police role, on such occasions, is one of comfort and reassurance. Nobody can seriously expect them to put in an appearance at such a sordid place as a tube station, when there are only 27,500 of them in London, and they cost over £20,000 a year each — even when, earlier in the day, the same' muggers were reported in action. In fact the Met leave it to the Transport Police — reckon- ing, perhaps, it would be too hard to get their patrol cars or helicopters into the Underground.
A widely circulated Metropolitan Police recruitment advertisement sketches the sort of man they are looking for: 'You're off-duty at a great party. A few people start smoking marijuana. Worse still, one's a mate of yours.' What do you do? It is significant, perhaps, that the puzzle is set in off-duty hours. On-duty, time is spent safely behind a desk reassuring those who have been burgled, robbed, raped, or, in cases which have gone tragically wrong, murdered, that there is nothing much you can do about it, what with Maggie's cuts, the shortage of helicopters, etc. This is what the policeman should do who encoun- ters illegal activity when off-duty: Take a deep breath (and not too near the offending substance, you'll need your wits about you). Ask yourself: is it definitely cannabis? Are you absolutely sure?. . Now observe the first law of diplomacy, 'engage brain before opening mouth.' In other words, consider the options. . . . if you simply walk out, as you might well be tempted to, you are evading the issue. If you rush over and try to arrest them all, there's very little chance you will succeed and, even if you do, that you'll make the charges stick in court. . .
It would be unfair and cheap, of course, to transpose this predicament on the case of an off-duty policeman who happens to be present when three muggers (two be- lieved to be black) are stabbing a Turkish tourist to death on the tube. I do not suppose off-duty policemen often travel on the tube, anyway. It must save them embarrassment if they don't. But what really stuck in the mind from this recruit- ment advertisement — carried, ironically enough, in the Mail on Sunday's magazine YOU, came later: To balance up this rather sombre side of the job, remember you never walk alone. A call on your personal radio and you have all the resources of the Met at your side: colleagues, cars, helicopters, dog handlers.
In the next few months, the advertise- ment reveals, they hope to build up their establishment figure of 27,500 'substantial- ly'. It would be easy to receive the inipress- ion that apart from its time spent behind a desk soothing members of the public who have been burgled, mugged, raped or murdered, the Met is concerned with very little but looking after its own members. Nearly all the cars one sees tearing through the streets of London with lights flashing and sirens 'screaming are, I suspect, run- ning to the aid of a 'community' policeman on the beat who finds himself confronted by one or another aspect of the Londoner's resentment of the police. Very few indeed, I fear, are going to the aid of private citizens who have been burgled, mugged or sexually assaulted. They are expected to go round to the police station and fill in their forms, like everyone else.
None of which would matter very much if the police had not taken on the addition- al responsibility of harassing and terroris- ing private citizens. The response to Ste- wart Steven's account of being dragged from his car, held in a half-Nelson and frogmarched to the police-station for the alleged crime of sounding his horn when stationary, makes me almost hope that other editors of national newspapers might get around a bit more. One certainly hopes that something or other will happen to the editress of that stinking rag News of the World, which seems to be urging its read- ers to inform the police if any of their friends proposes to drive after drinking ('SHOP YOUR BOOZED UP PALS TO COPS!): 'Government minister Peter Bottomley said: "It's because of campaigning news- papers like the News of the World that we have the lowest level of drink driving in the world."
I do not think it is because of the News of the World but because, taken by and large, we are a naturally sober, law-abiding race. But perhaps Mr Andrew Neil will find himself dropping a sweet paper. . . . And then, reflect, Oh my God, something terrible might happen to Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, saintly editor of the Sunday Telegraph, who was 65 this Thursday.
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