Armed liberals
Rod Liddle says that there is a nasty whiff of New Labour about Sir Ian Blair and his police force Alittle earlier this week there were 21 Metropolitan Police officers hanging around the side of the road in Surrey Docks, each of them with a little clipboard and a little pencil and a little notebook, all dressed up in little yellow tunics so that they could be seen by drivers at night (it was actually lunchtime). I think they were checking car tax discs, because they stopped about one vehicle in three and asked questions of the drivers and poked around in documentation, etc. But nobody at the Met could give me a definitive answer. Maybe they were actually off duty and this was simply an example of the sort of activity they like to do in their spare time; in any case, they seemed happy enough, which is the important thing. I know there were 21 of them because I counted them.
Something has happened to the British police in the last ten or 15 years; I’m not sure quite what. The easy answer is that they have become politicised, or, to put it more kindly, made politically aware. For example, there are a whole bunch of rather Orwellian-sounding ‘hate crimes’, sometimes quite nebulous offences, which previously didn’t really exist and now eat up quite a lot of their working hours. And driving a car has almost become a hate crime; certainly, if you drive a car you are more hemmed in by restrictions and more zealously policed than would have been the case 15 years ago. My guess is that those 21 yellow-breasted coppers were helping the Met fulfil some politically imposed target aimed at nobbling car drivers, but I can’t be sure. I can’t be certain, either, that the amount of police man-hours spent investigating burglaries and muggings has proportionately reduced over the last decade or so; but I would guess that it has.
There seem to be other, more pressing, priorities these days. I suppose it is stretching it a bit to say that there are anti-leftwing crimes and anti-right-wing crimes and that the balance of police activity has swung towards the former from the latter. I suppose the most we can say is that people on the political Right would prefer the police to arrest burglars and muggers than people who drive too fast or who may have shouted some horrible racial epithet at a passing immigrant. A couple of years ago, two young white men were sentenced to 18 months in prison for having shouted ‘nigger’ at a man who happened to be an offduty police officer. Yes, that’s right both of them got 18 months, even though only one of them had sworn.
I wondered about all this when reading the newspaper coverage concerning the Metropolitan Police’s peremptory assassination of an innocent Brazilian man on a tube train at Stockwell station. Here we had an incident in which the police shot a man eight times in the head, a man singled out for execution partly because of his ethnic origin (he was darkish-skinned), and a migrant worker from a poor family to boot. And yet the newspapers which were the least condemnatory — and indeed, even supportive — of the police action were the newspapers of the Left, the Guardian and the Independent. Fifteen years ago they would surely have been howling for blood — the blood of the commissioner. But the current boss of the Met is very popular indeed with the liberal press — he is thought of as being an ‘enlightened’ copper. Nor do his previous mistakes count against him: the fact that he was accused in a tribunal of ‘hanging out to dry’ three white police officers who had allegedly made nasty comments about Islam and Muslims only enhanced his reputation, as did his subsequent refusal to apologise for his actions. There is no doubt that being boss of the Metropolitan Police demands some political skill and nous; but equally, it seems true that Sir Ian Blair is the most politically conscious top copper we have ever seen. He is rarely off our television screens, uttering pieties and blandishments in that smug and slightly patronising manner we have come to associate with New Labour cabinet ministers. I have mentioned this before but it’s worth saying again: telling us all that Islam had nothing to do with the 7/7 attacks does not make us rest easy in our beds. It makes us think you are either a fool or disseminating a politically expedient lie.
But it is Sir Ian’s other trait — also deeply familiar to all New Labour-watchers — which worries me more. And that is the haste and fervour with which he has attempted to save his own skin during what has been the most catastrophic period for the Met in 30 years. Blair has been speedy and resolute in telling us that if wrong information about the assassination had been given out by the police, he had no knowledge that it was wrong, even when it came directly from his own mouth. But you will note that the information was never initially corrected by Sir Ian — it always had to come from some other source. Secondly, a couple of days after the shooting of the innocent Brazilian man, the West Midlands police successfully apprehended a terrorist suspect using one of those exciting Taser guns, which shoot an electronically charged dart into the suspect and briefly paralyse him. Again, Sir Ian was quickly out of the blocks in condemning the use of the Taser: now, can you remember a top policeman being so critical of another force? I can’t. Sir Ian was again covering his back.
You will remember that he wrote a letter in an attempt to delay any possible investigation into the appalling mistake made by his force, a request which was rightly kicked into touch by the Home Secretary. More recently, you will have become acquainted with the name of Cressida Dick; you may even have seen her photograph staring out at you from your morning newspaper. Ms Dick, it transpired, was the police officer in direct charge of the operation which resulted in the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. It is perhaps coincidence that her name reached the press just as the newspapers were leading on the story that Sir Ian Blair might be forced to resign his post as a result of the debacle. But it is true that for a few moments the heat was taken off the Metropolitan Police commissioner. Perhaps it was merely fortuitous timing, although not very fortuitous for Ms Dick.
There is a whiff of the Stephen Byers about Sir Ian Blair, and there is a whiff of New Labour generally about his police force. It is a terrible thing for a leftie to say, but one almost wishes for the return of the likes of James Anderton. Rather God’s Copper than Blair’s Copper.
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