The angry police
Eldon Griffiths
There is no longer any excuse for the Government to go on denying the police a fair pay settlement. The police need it, they have earned it and if it continues to be denied, their ability to hold the line against rising crime and disorder will be severely, perhaps fatally compromised. The Conservatives at their conference unanimously agreed that the police are a 'special case'. Ministers can therefore count on a clear majority in Parliament and, I believe, in the country, to settle the Police Federation's two-year-old pay grievances on terms that will have to be far more generous than the Chancellor's 10 per cent but which need not create a precedent for other groups to follow, What is the Home Secretary for?
The reasons why such a speedy police settlement is in the national interest can be stated simply. Crime is rising to a level where it threatens and frightens millions. Police numbers are falling to a point where public order is at risk. The continual struggle to protect life and property, to keep Peace in the streets, to stave off terrorism, is no longer being won; and in many cities it is actually being lost for lack of police to handle the situation.
Crime has now become our fastest growing and most profitable big industry. In 1950, just over 1 million indictable offences were reported to the police; this year, there Will be close to three millions. To deal with this staggering increase, police numbers have been raised from 105,000 to 120,000 and police equipment has been greatly unproved, chiefly by the introduction of more cars, more civilian aides and better Personal radios. But the proportion of crimes cleared up is steeply falling. In most big cities, the mugger has a chance of evading arrest and punishment. Four out of five robberies and five out of seven burglaries in Greater London are never solved.
The reason is not police inefficiency. It is the sheer lack of police resources. Demonstrations, marches and pickets now occupy more and more of the time and manpower of the police. The householder, the solitary pedestrian, the old person living alone pays the price in the drastic reduction in neighbourhood policing. In many large towns, the number of footpatrol police out ?n duty during the small hours is very small tndeed. And where, as often is the case, some of these officers are women, those Patrols may not be able to handle drunken brawls and street fights. Many CID men have an average case book of two or three serious crimes per day — yet the successful investigation of even one complex fraud or break-in can take hundreds of man-hours. Public disorder, too, is becoming corn monplace. The Metropolitan's Special Patrol Group is almost permanently occupied with terrorist threats or political-industrial confrontations. All the ingredients are to hand for more, not less, violence in Britain: widespread unemployment, especially among school-leavers, the emergence of neo-Nazis and revolutionary Socialists, spoiling to get at one another, and industrial unrest as militant shop stewards jockey for position in the wage queue. There are also severe racial tensions which, in many big cities, could be sparked into violence by a single incident.
In this period we ought to have a strong and confident police-force. Yet police morale has never been lower. Thousands of the best men are leaving in search of better-paid jobs. The police cadet force is being decimated and, for the first time since the 'twenties, the world's most dedicated police force is talking seriously about a police strike.
The police have been driven to this by the appalling insensitivity of Ministers to the Police Federation's reasoned case for a better deal and by the evidence that other groups, prepared to take strong-arm action, can count on more generous treatment. Inevitably, the main issue is pay. Large numbers of police constables are no longer able to survive on their salaries. True, they get free uniforms and a rent allowance: but the majority of younger constables outside London now take home less than £50 a week. Many would qualify for supplementary benefit if they were not too proud to apply; and some might be better off if they were on the dole! This disparity between what the police are paid and the responsibilities and dangers they must bear is something no other group of organised British workers would accept.
Above all, the policeman's job has recently become much more hazardous. Assaults on the police are now a routine feature of most big city crime reports. Every month an average of 1,000 policemen are injured on duty, a third of them so seriously as to qualify for awards from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. Policemen's wives must accept that during an average service lifetime,their husbands face a better than even chance of being permanently scarred. Hence the growing desperation of the Police Federation's demand for a substantial rise.
The police had a sizeable increase in 1974. Since then they have been refused the £6 paid to virtually all other public servants under Phase I and turned down when they asked for their Phase II award to be topped up by fringe benefits of the kind won by the seamen when the Seamen's Union went on strike. It was a major error by the Home Secretary to stuff this Phase II settlement down the Federation's throat, against the unanimous wishes of its elected representatives. Nothing could have more vividly illustrated the Federation's powerlessness, unless it can acquire union muscle and the right to strike.
To take account of the special nature of police duties, a Royal Commission in 1960 set police pay at 104 per cent of the average of industrial workers. Because of the Government's neglect, their actual pay has now fallen to barely 80 per cent of this average. To catch up, the Federation wants increases of well over £20 a week. It remains to be seen how far its claim may be negotiable.
It is illegal for the police to withhold their labour. No policeman I know wants to do it. But moderation has so far achieved nothing, and the patience of the police is now running out. Unless the Government finds a way to make a fair offer, so that negotiations can begin and a settlement can be reached that will put extra money in the policeman's pay packet before this year is out, 1978 will see thousands more policemen resigning and significant numbers of younger constables in the more militant forces being driven into taking various types of industrial action.
It is incredible that any British government, even one that is dominated by the TUC and the left wing of the Labour Party, should have allowed unrest in the police force to increase in this way. Any kind of police strike would be a catastrophe; only the criminal and agitator would have anything to gain.
A police strike would also do enormous damage to the police themselves. I doubt if it would be unanimous or wholehearted. The service could be split from top to bottom, policeman set against policeman, rank against rank. In the process, that link of confidence between the police and the public which is the British bobby's greatest asset could be destroyed.
It is the clear duty of Government and Parliament to protect the public and the police from such a tragedy. All that is required is a sense of urgency on the part of the Home Secretary and an act of political will. The police are unique. Settling their claim at a figure substantially higher than 10 per cent need not be a precedent for other groups, provided that Government and Opposition both make it plain that it is the threat to law and order, to the democratic fabric of our society, that justifies treating the police as an exception.
The Prime Minister has told the Federation that he wants to see their pay restored to the Royal Commission's standards. Merlyn Rees said at their conference, 'Yes —, the police are a special case'. Given the powerful backing of the official Opposition, there is nothing to prevent — and everything to commend — an offer being made and a settlement being reached before November is out.
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