Gawain Towler on the sudden, unexpected — and undoubtedly unwelcome to self-appointed guardians of the official narrative — appearance of what sounds surprisingly like common sense from a top police officer in Britain:
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“A Safe Escort” by Harry Payne (1858-1927), first published in August 1911 but possibly painted a few years earlier. From the back of the card: “Among the hundred and one duties of the London Policeman he is here depicted as a kindly protector, halting the traffic as he escorts a Lady across the congested streets. This is essentially a London incident, and has no parallel in any other Police Force in the world.”
Photo of the Tuck’s Oilette by Leonard Bentley via Wikimedia Commons.
Has Robert Peel been reincarnated as the Chief Constable for Manchester?
“But officer, if you are not on your knee, and wearing a rainbow lanyard, how do we know that you are on the side of the oppressed, the intersectional, the poor, downtrodden graduates of minor universities?”
“I’m sorry madam, may I call you madam? I am on the side of the law.”
The promotion of Stephen Watson as the new Chief Constable for Manchester comes as a shaft of light cutting through the murk of muddled thinking. He has said two things that will resonate with millions and will cause consternation amongst thousands:
I would probably kneel before the Queen, God and Mrs Watson, that’s it … The public are getting a little bit fed up of virtue-signalling police officers when they’d really rather we just locked up burglars.
It sounds like the first blast of the trumpet, but not only does it strike an astonishingly different note than the honky tonk tunes played by other constabularies. Stentorian and self confident it also marks a huge departure in that he makes a very public statement that he would kneel before God. A very courageous statement in the current climate in itself. But it is his approach to policing that strikes the eye.
One almost feels that as was once the case, each new officer in the Manchester Metropolitan Area will be issued with Sir Robert Peel’s 1829 Nine Principles of Policing. It is worth our while looking at those principles and deciding whether or not to accept that they should remain at the core of policing, or be junked as impossibly dated.
What is clearly apparent is that Peel’s principles are at heart about consent. Famously it described the police as merely the citizens in uniform, or 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”.
Underlying this basic thought is an understanding that the police rely, entirely on the goodwill of the populace, if they wish to carry out their basic duties. In order to fulfil their functions and duties they are “dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect”.
