Centrepiece
Making trouble
Colin Welch
Before trying further to help the Met- ropolitan Police with their inquiry, may I make it clear that I am not against any and every sort of inquiry into the police? I do not think it above criticism or beyond im- provement; nor, I am sure, would any sen- sible policeman, What he and I might think desirable, however, is that any such inquiry should contain, say, at least one policeman serving or retired, some elderly people and normal women, and, if any academics, then those inclined philosophically to regard the police force not as a necessary evil but rather as a positive good, albeit with in- evitable flaws and defects. I do not mean by all this stupid, prejudiced and ignorant peo- ple: honi soil qui mal y pense. Schopenhauer, after all, not exactly a philistine, left his money to the widows of Berlin policemen killed in the 1848 distur- bances. 1 mean rather quite ordinary peo- ple, the sort who might at once see something rum about the Times headline on the Policy Studies Institute report: 'Lon- doners fear for their safety at night but back police, poll shows', It is the word 'but' which jars. Surely 'and' would have been more appropriate? 'But' inescapably and modishly suggests that it is the police who threaten our safety at night, though we sur- prisingly back them all the same. When trouble breaks out at night most of us, black or white and law abiding, are jolly glad when the police turn up. As the report to its credit concedes, 'West Indians°, as it loosely calls them, are not slow to call the police and 'make use of its services' and normally get a fair deal.
Now, we ordinary people (1 am sorry to use this irritating expression, I really mean only people other than social researchers) are told by the report that 'it is not uncom- mon for officers to use bullying tactics in interrogation and to use threats, especially that of being kept in custody'. Yes, but we are also well aware, from experience or from the papers, that it is not only the police these days who use bullying tactics and threats, these last often of something worse than custody. We may not therefore be quite as shocked by the facts as ordinary researchers are. We do not expect a police interrogation to be conducted like a Socratic dialogue or learned seminar. We might wonder if anything short of bullying or threats would get the truth out of some of those disinclined to tell it. How would you, it might be retorted, being innocent, like to be bullied and threatened yourself? Well, I think I would rather run that risk than see a horde of criminals get away scot
free. Goethe, normally a very ordinary genius, thought disorder worse than in- justice. And so it is, being in fact general in- justice.
We ordinary people are further told that `drink is a hazard for detectives'. We can believe that: to whom is it not? We may know others in like peril — ourselves, for instance, journalists, criminals, perhaps even social researchers, of whom I have known at least one not averse to the odd aperitif. And some very ordinary folk might find something in a way comforting in the thought of drink being used by detectives as a test 'of loyalty, trustworthiness and masculinity and reinforce links within the group'. They might prefer to be policed by chaps with such venial and companionable failings rather than by austere puritans or fanatics, whose vices might be less con- genial, more cruel and ruthless. Did ]avert drink? If Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria drank, if Himmler enjoyed an oc- casional tincture, it was not this which rendered them infamous.
An 'older' policeman is quoted in the report as declaring that 'a young girl will be no good in restraining a violent man as long as she has a hole in her arse'. Women must have found this a disgustingly coarse remark, which it is. But is not its true mean- ing very much more neutral and less offen- sive to women than it at first appears? Men have such holes too. The qualifying clause could perhaps be rephrased thus 'as long as water runs downhill,' expressing nothing worse than unalterable perpetuity.
Ordinary people may note in the report that "stops" undoubtedly result in the detection of a very substantial amount of crime'. Bully for 'stop', we may think: nothing else seems much good. The report by contrast calls in this field for 'a sharp change of policy', with less detection of crime than ever as a predictable result.
Many of the 'stops' are nowadays, it seems, not within the law, which stipulates that the officer must have 'reasonable suspicions', whatever they may be. This has led, we are told, to a 'lack of confidence' in the police, 'dangerous' among young whites and disastrous . . among young people of West Indian origin'. This is described by the Observer as a 'devastating conclusion'. A sharp retort is that it is the duty of the police to win and retain the 'confidence' not of any particular section of society, be it young blacks or whites or criminals or whatever, but of society as a whole. And if the latter confidence could only be won at the expense of the former, that would be very regrettable, but hardly an argument for 'devastating' the police.
The sad facts could of course be equally well expressed the other way round: that the police have lost confidence in young peo- ple, and especially in young black people. If so, who is to blame? The report I think assumes that the police are, and of course they must be guilty, like the rest of us, of generalisation, which is unavoidable but can be terribly unfair. If the police did not recognise exceptions and act accordingly, they would be very culpable indeed. Yet or- dinary people may think that some young people are themselves to blame or, if not them, then the parents and teachers who have encouraged or failed to check their in- discipline, lawlessness and anti-social at- titudes.
The report tells us about a young Rastafarian called Clifton. He .was stopped while carrying £5 worth of 'gangs' (mari- juana). To distract the officer? attention, he dropped his trousers to the ground and invited them to search him properly. They abandoned the search, and the drug was not found. If stopped again, Clifton has engag- ed, in language obscure but menacing, to `do a serious injury' to the policeman: `me would poke me finger ina him eye and screw out his eyeball self', or push him under a tube train. What moral if any the report intends us to derive from these unedifying facts is beyond my comprehen- sion. Yet if I were a respectable and cons- cientious 'West Indian' parent (there are many many such), I would point out to my children that it is risky to carry marijuana about, risky to drop your trousers at the police, not all of whom are as forebearing as Clifton's, risky to utter appalling threats before strangers, risky even, if you want to avoid trouble, to go about looking like a Rastafarian which, public prejudice being as it is, is not much more sensible than mar- ching about Tel Aviv in SS uniform. If on the other hand you do want trouble, I might add, don't whine when it comes.
If I were that conscientious black parent, of course, I might already be near despair. I try to keep my children on the straight and narrow. I am not helped by the fact that, the moment they get into trouble, some mischevious 'community spokesman' or `leader', not elected by or answerable to me, regarded by me perhaps as quite bar- my, jumps up and roars that it is not their fault but the police's. I try to inculcate in my children some respect for or tolerance of the police. Not easy, with researchers im- plying, apparently with official backing, that many or most policemen are bullies, brutes and liars, violent, dishonest and drunk, horribly prejudiced against black people. The temptation just to give up must be great.
On account of all that is unfairly said' against them, such conscientious black parents deserve great sympathy; and still more on account of what is said for them, by enemies posing as friends.
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