A Response to Assistant Chief Constable Morgan

I think this had better be my last full posting on the police matter, though Mr Morgan, as the subject of this posting, is of course free to respond here at length should he so choose. The problem is that this is a very important subject, and it would be a pity to miss any opportunity of discussing it properly (even if I would rather discuss my pleasant and rewarding visit yesterday to a girls' secondary school in St Alban's - thanks to all involved)

 

Gareth Morgan, an Assistant Chief Constable, suggests that my article was *intended* to ‘provoke a furore’. How wrong he is. I have had to set aside much time that I would rather have spent on other issues, just fending off spiteful and ill-informed personal attacks on me from people claiming  to be police officers ( and in many case people who actually are police officers, the quality of their attacks – alas - not giving a good impression).

 

I was actually surprised that this particular (rather mild) attack on one of Britain’s last great unreformed nationalised industries (alongside the political parties and the BBC) led to such an extraordinary response. I have been persistently and consistently criticising this particular institution for more than a decade. Personally, I think that a) failing to prevent an intruder gaining access to Buckingham Palace and b) soon afterwards failing to recognise one of the Queen’s own sons in the garden of that palace are very serious and indicative failings, quite deserving of very vigorous criticism indeed, and drawing attention to a deeper and wider problem.

I only brought up the subject -yet again – because of the astonishing behaviour of police officers in Buckingham Palace, and the lingering effect of the Mitchell GateGate incicent.. I am surprised tht this needs explaining, but newspaper columnists generally use specific and telling incidents, which are currently in the news columns, as a starting point for articles in which they make wider points. I do this all the time, and it seems obvious to me. But I have many, many times written articles critical of the police (some years ago I wrote one which began ‘If all the police in this country were abducted by aliens, who would notice?)

 

 

Yet the response of the police, for many years, has been to damn all critics as enemies, and to circle the wagons rather than listen, let alone change. As we know, and  as Arthur Scargill proved beyond all doubt by ‘defending’ the coal industry to death, this sort of thing can be kept up for years and years, and will scare away reformers for a long time - but in the end it will fail. And when it fails, because there is so much pent-up desire for change, the changes that come may well not be the right ones.

 

I remember many years ago, on a late night Radio Five Live phone-in, pointing out that the standard excuse for the absence of the police from the streets – manpower shortage – was simply untrue. (the table of page 47 of ‘A Brief History of Crime shows that the numbers of police officers, as an absolute total and per head of the population, rose sharply during the period in which they were withdrawn from the streets). Within a couple of minutes, two men saying they were serving constables were on the line, furiously denouncing me as ‘anti-police’, although my facts are unchallengeable. And ever since then, I have endured this unresponsive special interest pleading as the price of raising this very important issue. I am not anti-police because I criticise modern police methods, any more than I am anti-American because I opposed the recent planned attack on Syria.

 

And I will make once more these simple points. The police are often on display, at Federation conferences and on mass demonstrations, protesting about their pay, pensions and other material matters. If they are ( as many say they are) as appalled as I am by  the changes in the police , wrought by PACE , the CPS, force mergers, the influence of Bramshill,  and Macpherson, etc, why do we never hear them protest about *them*?

 

If these are their views, and they are genuinely afraid to express them, then surely they should be glad of an independent outside voice who expresses them for them? I am sure that many in the BBC, for instance, were very glad when Margaret Hodge had a public go at the Corporation’s top echelons the other day. I doubt very much whether Mrs Hodge received any rude letters or e-mails denouncing her as anti-BBC from rank and file staff.

 

I fear that the truth is that in the police, perhaps more than in any of the other state industries,  from teaching and social services to local government and the NHS, the leadership and the rank and file are united in defending what is called ‘the producer interest’, that is, arrangements which suit management and staff very well. The ‘consumer interest’, that of the public who receive the services of the police force for which they pay very heavily in taxation, is largely excluded from the discussion.

 

I write of the police as a ‘consumer’, someone who has experienced the vanishing of the police from the streets in his lifetime, and who has ( as a pedestrian and user of public transport) also experienced the severe deterioration in order which has followed that departure. I have also experienced the transformation of the police from a generally conservative body of men into a politically correct army, one of whose main aims is to protect its own monopoly of force - in case the rest of use force force for traditional consrvative ends. All law-abiding persons now know that they are at grave risk from the police if they defend themselves or their property – they are, in fact, at graver risk from the law than are the criminals against whom they seek to defend themselves. This is because the polcie always find it eaaier to prosecute co-operative, law-abding people, who respect and fear them, than they do to prosecute criminal hard men, who do neither.

 

But I also write about the police as a privileged person – a journalist with long experience of reporting on crimes and trials, who understands the prosecution system, who has visited prisons, who has accompanied police (as I am constantly told I can’t have done, or I'd view them differently) on what they call ‘patrol’ these days. Why, I’ve even experienced these things in other countries, and so been given the special insight which comparison of different cultures provides. And finally I write as an author, someone fortunate enough to have been given the chance, by a reputable publisher, to set out between hard covers a coherent position on the issue of law, justice and policing, based upon extensive research.

 

One of the most miserable experiences I have is the one of reading people saying ‘Oh, you’re just trying to promote your book!’.  This is not because it is wounding ,but because it just so frustratingly stupid and ignorant, and yet gives the person involved an excuse (in his or her own mind) not to read the book.

 

No doubt I should be pleased to be propelled into the best-seller leagues, and become as fabulously rich as I suspect many people think I am.  But it is most unlikely.  As it happens, the only book I wrote (about religion, as it happens)  that made me any substantial sum of money did so because of a very generous advance, which I doubt it will ever earn back.  In almost all cases, in terms of money reward per hour spent, the writing of non-fiction is one of the least lucrative activities known to man. I write my books to try to influence public policy. Alas, if nobody reads them, I will fail, and many years of effort and work will be more or less wasted. Anyway, as I keep saying, my books can be obtained from libraries, for no more than a small reservation fee, which does not go to me.

 

Having dealt with that, let’s examine what Mr Morgan says next:.

 

‘I have since re-read the original piece and the subsequent commentary in Peter's blog where he develops his argument that the Police Service has essentially become remote from communities, lost sight of its founding goals and become a belligerent paramilitary force led by a liberal elite who have colluded since the mid 1960s to dismantle Peel's model of policing.

 

‘This hypothesis is supported by extensive historical research and analysis and has been outlined in a number of publications in recent years by Peter. This commentary on policing is central to a range of Peter's arguments about the 'state' of Britain and public services in particular. To argue that Peter is unfamiliar with policing and that he is presenting a case from a position of ignorance is therefore folly.

 

 

‘His personal interpretation of events and developments in policing is well articulated from a particular perspective; his ideological and philosophical stance about the role of the state vis-a-vis the citizen is equally well documented.’

 

 

I appreciate that. It demonstrates the necessary openness of mind, and basic generosity of debate without which no serious discussion can be held. I commend it to *all* the persons, here and on Twitter who have chosen instead to abuse me, and to claim (mistakenly) that I don’t know anything about the subject because I don’t share their views (One such, who rang me up at my office, called me ‘Ill-informed’ and yet had never heard of the ‘Broken Windows’ theory put forward by James Q.Wilson,  nor of Rodger Patrick’s work on crime statistics. I was also interested to note that he accused me of calling the police ‘cowardly’ which I had not done, and would not do, because I don’t think it’s the case. I found this particularly shocking in one trained in the rules of evidence. When I tried to give him the name of my book, he boorishly hung up).

 

Then Mr Morgan says : ‘His personal interpretation of events and developments in policing is well articulated from a particular perspective; his ideological and philosophical stance about the role of the state vis-a-vis the citizen is equally well documented.’

 

Thank you again. It might be helpful to mention here that this view of mine is the traditional British one, based on personal responsibility, conscience, freedom under the law, due punishment of responsible persons, and limited government. I believe that the difference between this view, and the continental one of a powerful state to which all owe direct allegiance, is probably the single most significant division in politics. When I was growing up in this country, the first view was pretty much universal in all classes, and it was a matter of national pride that our police were unarmed. Of course, the lack of weapons was a symbol of many other things about them. The almost complete disappearance of this view, and its replacement by what we have now, is one of the most extraordinary revolutions of our time. And in my view, the fact that it has happened does not mean it was a good thing.

 

Mr Morgan again : ‘I have always been and expect to remain wedded to Peel's Principles of Policing. I don't think there will ever be a better mission statement.’

 

I find ( and note in my book) that lip-service is generally paid to Peel, even while his methods are being abandoned. There is a particularly telling example of this on page 65 and 66 of ‘A Brief History of Crime’ .This passage discusses the decision of the Police Advisory Board, on 7th December 1966, to abolish traditional foot patrolling after almost 140 years of successful practice. Yet, even as they strangled Peel’s ideas, one of the working parties which reported to the PAB praised them. This is inevitable. They remain perfectly sound, and are not fundamentally affected by modern technology or any of the other glib excuses offered for abandoning them. That is because they are built upon an understanding of human nature, which changeth not.

 

Mr Morgan continues

 

‘I agree with Peter's description of policing moving away from preventative models and that linked to changes in technology policing has become more remote in the last 40 years. But we then part company. I believe that the 'rediscovery' of neighbourhood policing and the self evident truth that policing is better delivered locally, in partnership and with communities remains at the heart of British policing. It is at risk in these times of austerity but the service can and should make choices to invest in this the most visible foundation of policing by consent.’

 

Yes, but such policing is offered not as the central activity of the police, but as an occasional concession by officers taking time off from their various squads, courses and specilaisms, or from coping with the demands of PACE 1984. These  brief concessionary bursts of activity are  always vulnerable to the demands of the new purpose of the police, which is to react to crime after it has happened and provide the illusion that detection, arrest and prosecution (reinforced by massaged figures) can begin to cope with, contain or reduce the steadily rising flood of disorder and selfishness which makes the lives of so many so miserable.

 

What use is all this, as I so often ask, to the lonely pensioner on the rough estate who must endure, night and day, the whack of a football being repeatedly kicked against her walls and windows by bands of callous youths? What statistic can begin to measure this horrible thing, which to her is worse than the entire Great Train Robbery and far more present than the terrorist menace?  Petty crime, not even worth recording. Only when, as in the case of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francecca, it ends in hopeless tragedy, does anyone realise what a universe of unrestrained cruelty lurks in our streets. While those who should restrain it, regard the task of doing so as beneath them (much as many nurses, who were  also until recently above criticism, now seem to regard nursing as beneath *them*) . isn’t it funny the way that hardly anybody in Britain does what he or she used to do, and how hardly any building is now used for its original purpose.

 

Most of us have rceeived leaflets pushed through our doors telling us about the new 'community officer' who will be getting to know us and our area. Then nothing happens. And he is never heard from again, until a few years later a similar leaflet arrives, and so on. It's also quite common, after a particularly nasty incident, for polcie to flood an area on foot for a few days or weeks afterwards. Then they go away again.  Yesterday, I was in St Alban's in Hertfordshire, and walked for some miles through the city and along main roads. I saw no police officers at all. This is quite normal in English towns and cities.  

 

I never claimed that my various nights spent with police officers in London, Dallas and Johannesburg could ‘be used as the basis of a sustained critique on the complexities and challenges of policing modern Britain.’ I merely mentioned them because so many of my critics invited me to take such rides, or assumed I hadn’t done them. My ‘critique’ is also based on years of research, and on observation, as a consumer, of police effectiveness . It is also based on a ‘theory’ of law and justice which I think has been swept aside by post-Christian reformers, but not superseded. In fact, it is the blazing failure of modern criminal justice and policing, with its bursting prisons and swollen police forces and fiddled statistics, plus vast disorder and (very importantly) almost total collapse of enforcement of laws against drug possession, that  is the strongest argument for revisiting the policies which were abandoned, on spurious grounds, in 1966 and thereafter. They were not perfect, but they were fundamentally sound, and their imperfections were (in my view and that of many of my fellow inhabitants of these islands) much less important than the imperfections of what we have now.

 

 

Finally, Mr Morgan says :’ I wish that Peter Hitchens' perfectly legitimate right to promulgate opinions on policing could have been written in a way that invited discourse and discussion rather than polarising opinion. The opportunity to use evidence in support of an argument has been lost in anecdote and ideology.

 

It could have been different but as in many things it's about making the right choice and I fear there was an overwhelming desire to add to the already overburdened bandwagon.’

 

I'm glad my right is legitimate. Oh, but I have expressed these views so many times for so many years. And yet this is the first time in a decade or more that I have got Mr Morgan’s attention. The same ideas were written in my book, which I couldn’t get any police chief to read or listen to, or any politician. They were even written in my recent contribution to a booklet (‘Upholding the Queen’s Peace’) published by the Police Federation itself , who solicited my views,  knowing my long record of criticism. It can be read here

 

http://www.polfed.org/documents/Upholding_The_Queens_Peace_Essay_book.pdf

 

So, is it a criticism of *me* that nobody reacted before last Sunday’s article? Or is it a criticism of those who only reacted when they were presented with an article of this type?

I think good, robust popular journalism has an important role in society, and I also think that people have to learn to take criticism. We journalists know that nobody loves us. In most cases, we understand why that might be, and even sympathise with and share some of the criticism. Most of us have learned a lot from that criticism over the past 30 years or so, and do things better as a result. We don’t say, when attacked, that because some of our number have died bravely (as they have) or because state-registered cowards such as I am, have even so found themselves dodging bullets in war zones or nearly getting lynched in the Congo, that this excuses the failings of our trade. Nor does any serious person offer hard work or danger as an excuse for doing the wrong thing. If it’s wrong, however energetically you do it, and however brave you may be,  it will still produce the wrong result