Excellent post. The politicisation of the police and the rise of corporate-political policing (see the role of the unaccountable, but hugely powerful ACPO in this too…) is hugely worrying, and a tremendous threat to liberty in the UK. The police should uphold the law (and I’m not knocking the regular crime-fighting types, who served me very well when I got jumped a few weeks back, ear bitten, ribs cracked etc), and the rule of law (including impartiality), perhaps the rule of law as laid out by Raz:
# That laws should be prospective rather than retroactive.
# Laws should be stable and not changed too frequently, as lack of awareness of the law prevents one from being guided by it.
# There should be clear rules and procedures for making laws.
# The independence of the judiciary has to be guaranteed.
# The principles of natural justice should be observed, particularly those concerning the right to a fair hearing.
# The courts should have the power to judicial review the way in which the other principles are implemented.
# The courts should be accessible; no man may be denied justice.
# The discretion of law enforcement and crime prevention agencies should not be allowed to pervert the law.

Oh, and what now of the 9 Peel principles of policing, or indeed of Sir richard mayne’s version of 9 principles when the Met was established:

# To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

# To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

# To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

# To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

# To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

# To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

# To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
# To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

# To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

In the minds of those who set police policy, the Force are no longer officers of the law: they are officers of order

I think there can be no doubt of this. I also think that a case can be made for saying that this is the historical norm – the period from (roughly) 1920 to 1970 was anomalous in that order largely took care of itself, due to the social solidarity (and slaughter of young males) engendered by two World Wars.

No doubt politicians, senior civil servants and senior police officers practise a little futurology now and then. And if they do, it is perfectly possible to imagine them identifying threats to public order qualitatively different from anything they have had to enforce, or we to endure, in the last sixty years. Scenarios include:

- civil disorder arising from mass unemployment (say five million), particularly if the welfare safety net is withdrawn altogether from (say) younger single people;

- consequences of environmental catastrophe. Don’t forget that in 2007 Gloucestershire endured the worst flooding ever. Had the water level risen only a few inches more a key electrical substation would have gone down and it would have been necessary to evacuate the entire county – half a million people (about five times the number who fled from the hurricane which destoryed New Orleans). In such a case the breakdown of civil authority (and quite possibly, civil society itself) is a given;

- ethnic tensions. The nightmare scenario is probably a fundamentalist takeover of Pakistan in the next few years (probability, what – 20%?) leading to a war between Pakistan and India (with or without nuclear strikes). In that case, the West would undoubtedly provide moral if not logistical support to India, fuelling both Islamophobia and a sense of grievance amongst British Moslems and acting as a recruiting sergeant for terrorists.

Emergency planning is, by definition, about nightmares. Recent police assaults on peaceful protesters may be seen as training exercises for dealing with nightmare situations. Yes, innocent people have been killed and wounded by the police in the course of their training – it’s not that police commanders think that hippies sitting down in the road represent a threat, more that after the Hillsborough disaster they daren’t practice on football supporters (although from a purely training viewpoint the latter offer a far better simulation of what they can expect in the “nightmare” scenarios outlined above) .

We make a great fuss about the late Ian Tomlinson, but none about Sandy Simpson or <a href=”http:”Hayley Adamson who were also killed by police reckless in the discharge of their duty.

Good post . As a country we need to discuss what we expect from the Police . At present there range of tasks is very wide- from the kind local bobby to armed police dealing with armed criminals and terrorists to tracking fraudsters through international financial systems. Do we need to increase the academic entry level and the duration of training of the Police ; say to a minmum of 2 A levels and one year.

We need to be honest with ourselves and ask whether public conduct has made the Police’s various tasks very difficult. In the 1950s if Police Officer confronted an armed criminal they would receive a George Medal. The level of violence and abuse the Police reive over the last 50 years has steadily increased. The CND demonstrations of the 50s and 60s were very peaceful. We now have a minority of people who deliberately want to turn peaceful demonstrations into violent ones. In particular we need an honest debate about what sort of protest is suitable . Is damage to property , interrupting peoples work, blocking the roads acceptable ; if so for how long? How much interruption to other peoples lives by protestors is acceptable? If during a protest a small number of people cause criminal damage what are the legal duties of the peaceful protestors who do not cause damage, should they move away and allow a path for the Police to make arrests? What if non violent protestors deliberately block the path of the Police to violent protestors ?

Perhaps we ought to have some non Policed demonstrations to see what happens. Perhaps those organising the demonstrations could take out insurance and if there is any damage, victims could claim. Make the organisers of demonstrations legally responsible for the demonstration and any damage or disruption caused.

And it is clearly apparent now that in the minds of those who set police policy, the Force are no longer officers of the law: they are officers of order.

Surely it is not just dawning on you as a result of the minor skirmishes at Climate Camp that the police are an instrument of the state? That has always been their purpose and always will be.

Sometimes they act on direct instruction from the Government. Remember Orgreave?

Sometimes they take it upon themselves to have some fun. Remember what a mess they made of the the hippy convoys in the 80′s?

The real and present danger is that, with the development of a national force through ACPO, the police will start to dictate the political and security agenda rather than following the steer of the Government. The only way to arrest this development (sic) is by insisting that police remain accountable to their local communities and not to ACPO.

This is best achieved by having elected Chief Constables.

“Much has been made out of the early reactions from the right-wing press and blogosphere, and how egregiously wrong they were. I can’t really blame them for that: ”

I can. They should’ve learned after Menezes to stamp ‘handle with care’ on police briefings, particularly those relating to deaths possibly caused by police actions. The same, sadly, goes for the IPCC.

Good stuff from Nick Davies on this issue today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/27/ipcc-police-g20-death-media

Re the tendency of the press to assume that the official line is the correct one. Surely the press should have noticed by now that this is often not the case.

“I do not and will not blame coppers for how they’re trained, briefed or ordered.”

Fair enough but what about hundreds of them failing to hold fellow officers to account for their disproportionate and indiscriminate use of violent force against peaceful protestors?

If they’re not willing to shop the ‘bad apples’ then they should be reprimanded and (at least) issued with written disciplinary warnings.

“Police officers [will] report, challenge or take action against the conduct of colleagues which has fallen below the Standards of Professional Behaviour.” – http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/uksi_20082864_en_8

Mike @2:

I also think that a case can be made for saying that this is the historical norm – the period from (roughly) 1920 to 1970 was anomalous in that order largely took care of itself, due to the social solidarity (and slaughter of young males) engendered by two World Wars.

I absolutely agree that the advent of professional policing saw them formulated as officers of the order rather than of the law, but I believe that (while entirely true) this analysis also misses the effect of Victorian liberal propaganda on both the public psyche and the self-perception of the police. We did start seeing our coppers as officers of the law foremost and of order second; and yes, that’s in part because of the successful militarisation of the whole of British industrial society, partly done through the Scouts movement.

Regarding Hillsborough: actually, they were practicing enforcement techniques on football fans and football thugs alike throughout the mid-90s. They were just frequently doing it by advising the Belgian or Italian police.

Charlie @3:

You ask some good questions but most of the answers are contained in the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights’ report which came out on the 23rd of March. Go have a read of the Climate Camp legal report and you will get a good overview of the existing official line on the answers to your questions. One of the reasons we’re shouting at the Met over G20 policing is that they explicitly and specifically broke most of that report’s requirements.

I also raised the issue of self-policing, right from my initial response to the events. There’ve been some comment debates I was involved in here, as well.

Pagar @4:

Surely it is not just dawning on you as a result of the minor skirmishes at Climate Camp that the police are an instrument of the state? That has always been their purpose and always will be.

Of course not, and it also isn’t what I said. First point: you’ll want to read the sequentially linked articles from the first paragraph, as the argument I’m putting forward is evidentiary and complex; and much too long to get syndicated in full here.

Second, what I’m saying is that British policing is now explicitly and as a matter of policy outside the law. They are a force for order, in the sense of top-down control, and they are no longer (as they have been for most of the 20th century) required by Westminster to obey the law while enforcing order: unless they get filmed. That’s why this link in my chain of reasoning is so significant. The balance has been canted towards the law for some time; I’m pointing to evidence that this has been steadily reversed since 1983. I used the NightJack quote because that article suggested that he agreed: though he has since disclaimed the article in a comment on my blog.

Sometimes they take it upon themselves to have some fun. Remember what a mess they made of the the hippy convoys in the 80’s?

Well, yes, given that the closure of Stonehenge to celebrants of my religion is one of my major beefs with Thatcher. Assuming you’re talking mostly about the Battle of the Beanfield, it wasn’t the police having some fun, by the way. It was a systemic experiment in violent public policing and specifically in media control, following on from the previous year’s actions against Scargill and co. Reporters were being illegally detained and cameras smashed (sound familiar?): the only reason that one got out is that there was a peer of the realm among the hoi-polloi.

The real and present danger is that, with the development of a national force through ACPO, the police will start to dictate the political and security agenda rather than following the steer of the Government.

While I understand your point of view, as I say above my analysis differs. To me, the real and present danger is that the ACPO, the senior Met officers who survived Condon’s mid-90s cull and both parties that have any chance of getting into government already agree. They all think that the purpose of the police force is paramilitary dominance of and intrusion into all aspects of “private” life.

The place your analysis intersects with mine is that under Thatcher, there does not seem to have been any unity of political agenda among senior officers resulting in the abuse of their powers to execute said agenda. It mostly came from Westminster; but Thatcher proved they could get away with it, and the men who were sergeants and inspectors in the 80s grew up into Commissioners and Chief Constables who believed that attitude was appropriate.

Sy @5:

I can. They should’ve learned after Menezes to stamp ‘handle with care’ on police briefings, particularly those relating to deaths possibly caused by police actions. The same, sadly, goes for the IPCC.

The de Menezes information took far too long to come out for that to be a realistic assessment; also, there’s a pragmatic angle here. 40 years of day-in-day-out political and social conditioning towards the attitude that Authority Is Right, By Definition will not be effectively eroded by one, complex and easily misunderstood shooting of a man who, fundamentally, was foreign. [1] I don’t believe it’s realistic to expect such flexibility of people that hidebound; we’re talking about Conservatives here. Resisting attitude change is intrinsic to their political philosophy.

Guano @6:

The professional press is under no such illusion. They printed what they did because it’s what they wanted people to think, not because they thought it was what happened. The amateur press are amateurs.

[1] I’d like to point out that it’s not me who sees his foreign-ness as relevant.

Ceedee @7: point, indeed, and one that I made here. The main significance of all the officers standing around watching is that it is illustrative of a top-down policy; this was punishment, not policing.

One small bone of contention here in agreement with ceedee:

“I do not and will not blame coppers for how they’re trained, briefed or ordered.”

On this specific matter this misses the point, which is how they interpret and carry out those orders.

When I served in the army over thirty five tears ago in a specialist trade function our training hammered into us the fact that even though our basic soldering training was half that of the specialist infantryman we were a soldier first and a tradesman second. That held ture even for cooks and medics.

And the same prinicple applies when it comes to the difference between being a human being (in terms of being humane) and whatever job it is you do. You are a human being first and should act as a humane human being, and a tinker/tailor/soldier/policeman second. If your orders are to carry out illegal acts or act outside of actions that are humane you have a choice to either act like a human being or not. Passing the whole responsibility up the chain – and this is not to let those who set the agenda and policies etc. off the hook – is a easy cop out to hide behind the herd.

In that respect, those who take that easy option ,or protect with their silence those who take that option, are no better then those who are out to cause as much damage & mayhem as possible.

Dave Hansell @11:

“I do not and will not blame coppers for how they’re trained, briefed or ordered.”

On this specific matter this misses the point, which is how they interpret and carry out those orders.

I concur, but I don’t believe I missed the point because I believe (if you follow the links to the full argument) that I have thoroughly supported (from the evidence) the contention that they were carrying out their orders, exactly as intended by their superiors. No interpretations necessary. My argument across six posts is that the evidence suggests the behaviour of the police at Climate Camp was officially ordered and sanctioned. That makes it legal in the eyes of the police and parliament. My argument is precisely that the police and parliament are wrong. I believe I have substantiated the claim that the assaulting officers were not ‘out of control’ but instead doing precisely what they were told. Far from missing the point, that’s the main point of my argument; we are now being asked to choose between law and order.

If your orders are to carry out illegal acts or act outside of actions that are humane you have a choice to either act like a human being or not.

But we still have a presumption of innocence, and I’ll be damned if I let my side of this debate sink as low as the reactionaries do. Any specific officer we can get cast-iron evidence on should be tried, and jailed. I will not generalise my anger towards constables as a class; most of them do not deserve it. The worst thing that could come out of this would be the reputation of the police as a whole being eroded by the actions of a few political senior officers, Whitehall, and a small number of paramilitary units selected, trained and ordered to punish political dissent as violently as possible. The distinction must be drawn.

Anyone read Anthony Burgess’ novel The Wanting Seed, about an overpopulated globe where homosexuality is privileged in an attempt to reduce the birthrate ?

In this dystopia Governments only fall into two categories, Pelagian and Augustinian, and swing between the two forms.

Augustinian governments believe in Original Sin, that man is naturally given to vices which need to be checked. Tend to be hierarchical and militaristic. Rely on internalised controls to keep order, inculcated by authoritarian child-rearing and absolute notions of right and wrong. What Thomas Sowell in his ‘A Conflict of Visions’ calls the Constrained Vision. Most British governments of whatever complexion fell into this category up to the late 50s – as did British society.

Pelagian governments believe in Man’s perfectibility and innate goodness. What Sowell called the Unconstrained Vision and Steven Pinker called the Utopian Vision. Rely on natural feelings of justice and man’s basically co-operative nature – not to keep order, but because free men will naturally choose order and justice.

As this fails to produce the perfect society, so do initially liberal Pelagians tend to turn towards external controls – coercion, more laws and greater police powers. Remind you of anything ?

As Burgess would put it, we’re well into the Pelphase.

‘’Pelagius is fond of police,
Augustine loves an army’’

Laban Tall @12: …And the internet makes it possible to redefine the political map, because for the first time in our species history, we have a society which is sufficiently rich in bandwidth for genuine decentralisation to even be technological possible, let alone educationally plausible. Next!

Er, @13, there; sorry, apparently I’m getting a little tired now.

Well said JQP. Very well said.

There’s lots of interesting stuff here, but can I just pull rank as a historian and say, please stop referring to ‘Peel’s Principles’. The various versions of them have nothing to do with Peel – most appear to have been made up in the mid twentieth century. [Ref: Lentz and Chaires 'The invention of Peel's principles: A study of policing ‘textbook’ history' Journal of Criminal Justice 35 (2007) 69–79]

Over the last 200 years, British police have been responsible for a number of public order cock-ups. Every so often they’d get a bit violent (Hyde Park in the 1930s, St Pancras in the 1960s, etc) but the public order tactic they arrived at by the 1920s was generally the one called ‘winning by appearing to lose’. Large numbers of bobbies in silly hats would form deep cordons and push (and shove, I admit) crowds around. Trucheons stayed in pockets. Sometimes elements within the crowd would get violent, but because the cops hadn’t turned up tooled up and aggressive, the crowd tended to police itself: the violent minority never became a majority. And if a copper got hit on the head, his picture would be on the front of the papers the next day, and public sympathy for the police would rocket.

Nowadays the police win on the day, but at a significant long-term cost to their legitimacy. One little-remarked factor in all this is the impact of the extension of responsibilty under health and safety law to police chiefs and authorities. This, which arrived in the late 1990s, has led to a culture of excessive caution, in which the police, when threatened, are _trained_ to do two things: first, whip out their baton, wave it about, and scream. Second, run off and call for back-up. This is really good, in the short term, for lowering the injuries to police officers. In the long term, not so much. Luckily, repealing it is one of the two or three good police-related things that the Tories have promised to do when they get in.

17 Chris Williams . We need a far more profound debate on the nature of policing . The excessive H and S legislation combined with a lack of police fitness and self defence training is causing all sorts of problems . If someone is confident they can handle a situation they can respond in the appropriate manner. What we seem to see is massive under and over reaction. A few teenagers on the street can result in the response of two squad cars and vans with up to 10-12 police officers . Surely a suitable police officer on their own should be capable of dealing with a few teenagers causing a nuisance .

I think it is time we looked at the organisers of demonstrations taking responsibility , including for any damage done .

Charlie, I agree that there’s lots more to say. I can give you up to about a hundred thousand words of it, had I world enough and time.

The problem with laying it on the organisers, is that is what already happened. Organising a demo legally is almost impossible to do at short notice. Even given notice there are now lots of restrictions on it. I should know, I’ve organised a few (2,000 people on the biggest, though in a bizarre departure from normal service, the cops said 2,500). Nobody will sell you liability insurance for it (or at least, this was impossible even for CND in the period 2001-2004 when I last checked. You need to agree a route with the cops (‘an industrial estate! cool!’) and they can impose restrictions on you, under s.60 of the CJA, or s.whatever of this month’s Trrism Act. These get served on named organisers (whether they are present, or even in the country) and if there’s trouble, you’re it.

Councils generally control any assembly points, and they tend to want the kind of risk assessment and professional crowd control that they’ve got used to for music festivals, before they give permission to use them. Form up on a public road and you need to give 10 weeks’ notice to get a closure order. If the council doesn’t like it, the police probably won’t either, and they can decide to ban it.

It’s under these circumstances that ‘just turn up and be peaceful – it worked for Ghandhi’ looks like a more and more attractive policy for many potential demostrators.

Ghandi (and I’m not altogether being flippant here) had the great advantage of looking and behaving like a boiled egg.

I wonder if there are too many worryingly immediate class and social prejudices in play for peaceful demonstration to fully work in modern Britain. Look at the way some of the authoritarians latched onto the “trustafarian” profile of some of the protestors at G20, presumably because they’d ironed their Che t-shirts or something. We’re obsessed with this sort of informal classification-with-sneers. India had its own highly formal caste system and extra layers of equally formal imperial rule, so someone acting outside their slot was genuinely weird and thought-provoking, rather than (as here) a cause for everyday chippiness.

Just a thought. There’s a PhD in there somewhere.

Chris Williams @17: re. Peel’s Principles

Yes! Thank you, that way I don’t have to. The reason I hadn’t answered the post was that I couldn’t think of a way to point out that quoting a list doesn’t equal understanding a subject.

if a copper got hit on the head, his picture would be on the front of the papers the next day, and public sympathy for the police would rocket.

Neat point, well made.

Charlie @18:

A few teenagers on the street can result in the response of two squad cars and vans with up to 10-12 police officers . Surely a suitable police officer on their own should be capable of dealing with a few teenagers causing a nuisance .

In my view this is a point about why national, centralised systems are too inflexible. In (say) Shoreditch, that’s not necessarily an over-reaction, because the 14-year-old is quite possibly carrying a gun, and so is his mate. You can’t tell ’til you get there. When, on the other hand, TVU show up with two vans and three squad cars because three black kids were larking about in a public park (personal observation, this one) it’s massive over-kill. Also, racism.

Alix @20:

You’re probably right to some extent, but I think you’re missing an aspect of contrivance here. The last 20 years of British and American politics, since the right-wing victories of the 80s, have all been about creating lateral divisions between people so that they only see themselves in relation to those above and below them. Populist movements happen because people band together laterally, not vertically. Since politicians see themselves as at the top, no politician likes a populist movement. Both sides of the aisle have been specialising in divisive identity politics for a generation now, and given that they control the national curriculum and have a hugely unhealthy relationship with professional news media, is it any surprise that it’s working?

Er, TVP: Thames Valley University relatively rarely move around in squad vans. Sorry… clearly decaffeinated today.

Damn these higher education funding cuts.

*giggle* Aye. They do have some of the most delightfully ugly buildings in the whole of Slough, though. Which is saying something.

Nobody has picked up on JQP’s point that: “police forces were systematically hiding their identities to avoid accountability”.

My understanding is that covering up the ID badge is a disciplinary offence. So where were the senior officers stripping off the duct tape on shoulders? Is it possible that senior officers are so incompetent that they failed to observe that police officers were concealing ID? Will the police be identifying all who covered their ID badges, whether or not the individuals are accused of violence?

I do not and will not blame coppers for how they’re trained, briefed or ordered.

I do and I will.

You’re right that the greater responsibility lies with those who devise and order political policing. But the police’s code of conduct requires them not to attack with unreasonable force, and to report themselves or any colleagues who do. I blame all officers on the day who saw such attacks for not turning their colleagues in.

I do blame someone who batons people over the head for the batoning.

When it comes to the acceptability of ‘I was only following orders’ , count me in with the judges at Nuremberg.

Charlieman @25:

Indeed. My argument is that the distinction was between the Met, who seem to on average have been quite good about it and were the main presence up to 19.17, versus the TSG units (who are explicitly paramilitaries shipped in only when the policy-makers believe they need overwhelming force) who were dreadful.

Merrick @26:

But the police’s code of conduct requires them not to attack with unreasonable force, and to report themselves or any colleagues who do. I blame all officers on the day who saw such attacks for not turning their colleagues in.

Emotionally, I agree with you. Intellectually I can’t because it is clearly unreasonable, and very much not something I want to encourage, to have the choice of what is ‘reasonable’ entirely in the hands of street cops. There’s a diagram of the 2004 use of force model which indicates clearly that there’s a big, long gap between what the police did at G20 and what they should have done; but G20 wasn’t what this model was designed for. It was designed to instruct officers acting in immediate situations typical to daily policing on how to respond to a member of the public. G20 was a paramilitary operation organised and propagandised in advance; it was a situation in which the definition of ‘reasonable’ was modified with a political agenda. Basically, the coppers on the ground were first briefed that their opponents would be swinging bats and throwing molotovs; they were then told to stand around all day without any food or drink being provided. They were instructed to treat the situation as one in which violent actions were justified because ‘violent elements’ in the crowd were there to start a riot.

They were not instructed to differentiate between violent and non-violent protesters. They should have been but they weren’t.

Regarding the Neuremberg reference: I’m sorry, but GODWIN! Bad as the policing of dissent in this country has come, it’s still risible to compare them to Nazism.