..we need to re-establish operational policing independence from political control, starting with the abolition of Police and Crime Commissioners.I'd guess John was off sick the day they did 'The history of the police force' at copper school. Policing has never, ever, in any remote way been free from democratic control - and rightly so. Before the 1964 Police Act local forces were governed by Watch Committees, made up of both local elected burgesses and local magistrates. The fight between SW1 and local communities for control of the police has been a long one; the 1964 Act was a victory for the Home Office, and centralised control of much of the authority previously exercised by the Watch Committees. The Watch Committees were abolished. Crime Commissioners are nothing but an ineffective sop to Localism by a Home Office under pressure for their power-hoarding.
John of course is not alone in his anti-democratic and extremist opinions. They are held by most senior police officers, who want nothing more than a national police force controlled by no-one but themselves. To this end they have created numerous bodies - funded by our own taxes - to promote this outcome, and lobby for anti-democratic powers at every opportunity. They are part of the anti-democratic nexus that in the words of Betz and Smith has captured the democratic State -
What we appear to be witnessing is the corrupt mutation of the notion of the representation of the people in parliament, into the substitution of the will of the people by the interests of the political class. We are entering the realms, no less, of state capture. What happens when sectional interests capture the political institutions of the state? This is a question we will get to, but first it is worth reiterating that in many senses this has been a long time coming, and to emphasise, in the British case has little or nothing intrinsically to do with Brexit.In our fight against extremism - of the Left, Right and Islamist - we must never forget that those who seek to destroy democratic control over the institutions of the State are also extremists. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Someone also needs to tell John that it's not the job of the police to dispense justice - we have courts for that. I can't help feeling that we've been recruiting the wrong sort of people to the police.
It's time we had a fundamental review of the role and structure of the police, similar to the Royal Commission that reported in 1962, but this time not rigged by the Home Office. Remember - 98% of police work is call-outs to disturbances and policing non-indictable offences. I can see no reason why such work cannot be undertaken by local, accountable forces of coppers skilled in the basics. Organised crime, terrorism, specialist investigations and serious indictable offences can be undertaken by regional or national squads or bodies under democratic oversight. Why not?
40 comments:
Yes the maintenance of a local force used in the role of "bobby on the beat", and a regional/national one for crimes against the state does make some sense, by splitting the money, one splits the power and directs it more effectively, perhaps.
However, my feeling is that as a state, we are losing touch with the point of our constitution, which is that the state has a very limited role. Unfortunately the state has insinuated itself on the poor benighted folk of these islands, particularly since the end of WW2 with the imposition of strict puritanical socialism, which is not becoming any less so.
The thing is that people have been arguing with each other about something or other since the beginning of time, why on earth should every single dispute be deliberated on by the state? What happened to two people solving their problems by meeting under a tree and submitting to the wisdom of the local head-wo/man?
R_writes Esq - +1
Italy has, at my last count, five police forces. France has a number, and so does the US.
You make some striking points in a generally good read, Raedwald, but let yourself down with the sloppy device of "the will of the people" yet again.
There is no such thing. There are many divisions, and little consensus over many things. Yes, it is fairly settled in some areas, such as in opposition to privatisation of utilities, where consistently four-out-of-five people want a single, democratically-accountable, not-for-profit supplier, for instance.
R-w, the judiciary are charged with administering the law, not with furthering the interests of the State. The relationship between the three is a complex juristic matter, and probably beyond the scope of this site.
Peter Hitchens has a good take on this in his most recent Sunday column.
He has commented on the police quite a few times and one of his most telling observations is when police authorities and others refer to the public as "civilians".
Whilst the judiciary might be charged with administering the law, the state seems to think that it is its responsibility to nationalise everything, including the law.
By removing any ability for a judge to assess a claim or dispute on its particular merits, rather than some arbitrary edict that is more and more frequently rooted in the deliberations of a foreign entity, you traduce the meaning of democracy.
What I am suggesting is that your triumvirate of political control, which is used by democracies to balance the intrinsic powers that are implicit in tribal constructs, is subject to being undermined by unscrupulous folk that have a different agenda to ordinary folk, who on the whole are not agitating for a communist/fascist revolution.
They just want to feed their families and have some peace.
@JPM: bit of a lofty tone there. (You're not a lawyer by any chance? They do have a tendency to put on side.) I am sure Raedwald is perfectly capable of debating any matter here, and with yourself.
Brexit is merely the lid on a box of unresolved and festering problems to do with power. One theme I should like to see developed here is the fact that we are now governed not so much by law as by secondary legislation, of which ECA1972 is (we haven't left yet) merely one particularly large and troublesome example.
Another one is the encroachment of the judiciary on the legislature and executive, so that the first line of attack when some know-better wants to overturn one of our few opportunities to exercise democratic power, is for a judicial review; the equivalent of running to Teacher with a finger in your eye to complain of others.
Even now, listen out for comments by TV people and celebs denigrating democracy and saying the (poor, ignorant) people often "get things wrong," e.g. https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/study-this-boris-the-bbcs-brexit-bias-laid-bare/
Antidemocracy is on the rise.
@Sackerson...
Love that video:
Democracy only works when the demos make the "right decisions".
With material like that, he could be on the stage!
Point taken, Sackerson. By scope I wasn't referring to people's capabilities, but to their intentions.
R-w, you're in danger of getting bogged down, I think. Raedwald correctly pointed out that the police are not responsible for administering justice - that is for the judiciary, and we have - nominally at least - Separation Of Powers here, as in all free societies. That enabled the Supreme Court to find contrary to the wishes of government in the Gina Miller case, for instance. It might not always go your way, then, but that's how it should be. However, the state is not a single persona, of one mind and one intent. It is an abstract authority, which it confers on its many agencies, to give weight and standing to their diverse agendas.
Mark, yes, Peter Hitchens has expressed good sense over policing, and on much besides.
@Cheerful:
My mistake, thanks for putting me straight, but I think I would rather these separate powers actually worked separately. My whole point was that contrary to theory, it doesn't. Instead it is currently configured in such a manner that ordinary folk are intentionally being denied a voice. Since the EU became a fact for us, we have had essentially the same puritanical Westminster government.
The state nationalises, or more frequently the supra-state federalises, what it sees as a crime, and the judiciary and the police unquestioningly follow the money, rather than the argument.
The judge who deliberated on the Gina Miller case acted outside of its remit, thankfully, since the executive was doing the same and ironically Ms. Miller's act protected us from the MayBot treachery. The commons are expressly proscribed from taking part in referendums, which are defined by their nature, of a direct discussion between the executive and the people.
However, this was not some radical act, the actors were all of the same mind, they wanted to stop Brexit. They just messed up, we would be stitched up like the veritable kipper by now if it hadn't been for Gina Miller, I bet she is really pleased to be so instrumental in testing the protections of our constitution.
It was a panel of judges in the constitutional case brought by Gina Miller. By a majority they found in her favour.
If no one, or no entity, can be above the law, then the Supreme Court was not acting beyond its remit. Government and the Claimant disagreed as to what the law was, and the Court merely clarified that.
Those who called the judges enemies of the people are implicitly demanding that some persons or personae be above the law.
Let us hope that they always fail, because if that status were to be conferred upon the police - as would instantly happen if the State were to be above it - then heaven help us all.
JPM - I referenced this all comprehensively during Ld Sumption's outstanding Reith Lectures on these very subjects earlier ths year - did none of it sink in? Did you even bother listening to the broadcasts? Or do you imagine you know better about these things than Sumption?
Raedwald, Reading your articles week by week, I am coming to the conclusion that you are just too informed and, well, too sensible for this now radically transformed and disfunctionally-governed country.
As I said, they found in Miller's favour because they thought that like her, that the best way to stop Brexit was to insist that the Commons make the final decision. In this they tried to gainsay the fact that WE were told by the government, that it was OUR DECISION and that we should be very careful what we decide.
They were wrong, because the referendum is an exceptional interjection, we have only had three at national level. It is not correct to rejig the system to undermine this exceptional tool. Government has been running fast and loose with our constitution since the day that it changed us from an independent nation into a satellite of a foreign federation without referring to us.
The Judges always back the State, when the chips are down. They know who butters their bread, and protects their houses. If a case come before the courts that requires them to make a decision between the rights of the individual vs the power of the State, and to grant the individual the rights they are seeking would fundamentally weaken the power of the State, then the courts will ALWAYS find for the State. The courts don't mind telling the State to spend more money on people or special causes, and the State doesn't really mind that, because it just hands them even more power over the public, via taxes and spending. But any decision that would reduce that State power is always thrown out, regardless of the legal argument.
Take the Tilbrook case - regardless of whether his argument is correct or not, he at least has a decent case to make. Yet his case has been thrown out at the first hurdle, as 'totally without merit'. Thats not a decision based on legal argument, its one based on the courts not agreeing with his case, and wanting it swept under the carpet.
Lawyers like to pretend that 'The Law' is independent of the State, and noble and pure. It isn't, its just another weapon the State uses against the People.
I'm sorry, Sobers, but, as an example, every single provision of the Human Rights Act, which imports ECHR, weakens the State's power over the individual, and every time that a judge implements one he does the very reverse of what you claim.
That said, the judiciary are a key part of the Establishment, and Lord Sumption is an absolute prime example.
"With material like that, he could be on the stage!"
With material like that, he should be in a cage!
Re Lord Sumption, it is interesting, that he was lifted straight from the Bar to the highest court, instead of being a time-served judge at the different levels on the way up. He is the only such appointee to the Supreme Court, in what seems to me to be a highly political promotion.
The BBC naturally used it as authority leverage on his Reith lectures, but reading the transcripts, they seem to lack the intellectual rigour of, say Lord Neuberger, and he wanders off into areas which are not law or juristics anyway. Jordan Peterson, a pretty respectable psychologist, often does much the same thing, and drifts seamlessly into matters where he evidently hasn't much idea.
Sumption used to work for Keith Joseph, and wrote this helpfully informative speech for him:
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/101830
Radders, I'm surprised you didnt mention the latest manifestation of police management straying disastrously into politics.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/06/british-muslims-should-not-forced-assimilate-says-senior-counter/
@JPM: Thanks for the link to Sir Keith Joseph's speech - most interesting (how did you know Sumption wrote it?) The "human stock" phrase goes back, I think, much earlier - maybe to the Fabians?
William Beveridge argued in 1909 that in return for State dependence the weaker men should be forced to accept "complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights — including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood" (N.B. the last bit - especially that it should be "permanent".) https://www.spectator.co.uk/2009/11/how-eugenics-poisoned-the-welfare-state/
In c. 1934 GB Shaw proposed regular tribunals to decide whether individuals should be permitted to continue living, and if not: ""I appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly. Deadly by all means, but humane, not cruel."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgpaKkrZex4
Thus spake a Liberal, and a Socialist. What remains for the "far right" to do?
To be fair, Sackerson, the speech was co-written by Alfred Sherman - a very interesting character - and Sumption, and the so-called controversial sentence was added by Keith Joseph himself, but it's still enlightening.
Yes, re GBS et al, it just shows what being brought up in a brutally militaristic, imperial, utilitarian country can do to the mind, doesn't it? Not only that, but unless you came from a certain background, it's very unlikely that anyone would ever have heard of you. People's self-styled political labels have generally, often comically, been absurd.
Dominic Cummings - who elected him? - is "interested in" eugenics too, we read.
"Brutally militaristic"
Compared to where?
Different times, not so much places, maybe, Mark?
@Cheerful
George Bernard Shaw: 1856 - 1950.
Your implication is that Britain he spent much of his life in was "brutally militaristic". Militaristc, jingoistic or whatever, perhaps. But brutally?
Compared to whom. Hardly Europe over that time period, so where?
The truth is that GBS was a Socialist - and like all Socialists, held individual human like to be of little worth. Yes, he wanted to exterminate the poor with a humane gas such as Zyklon B no doubt, just as Virginia Wolff, on seeing a group of severely mentally subnormal people exclaimed "they should certainly be killed - they should all be killed"
In the years before WWII British socialists were as much taken with ideas of racial purity, eugenics, planned breeding as were their national socialist cousins in Germany. Who knows, given time they may even have created an English T4 euthanasia programme, killing subnormal and crippled children, helpless basket-case veterans from the great war and so on whose presence fouled the insane socialist paradise in their minds.
The films of the Nazi extermination camps caused a volte-face amongst UK socialists, who rapidly pretended they had never promoted such barbarism themselves and worked to erase as much evidence as they could of their cruelties.
The only socialists who continued to practice Nazi eugenics were the Swedes - who compulsorily ripped out the ovaries and tore off the testicles of 'social undesirables' right up until the 1970s. Yes, when I was sitting my 'O' levels, in Sweden the State was still sterilising the impure pollutants of their Socialist paradise.
Raedwald,
When I saw your headline this morning I thought you were referring to the item in the Daily Telegraph today where “the country’s most senior counter terrorism officer” says that British Muslims should not be forced to “assimilate”.
The police officer says that in a successful integrated society people should be free to practise their religion and culture openly rather than having to hide away.
There are of course degrees of multiculturalism, starting with the late Robin Cook’s definition of it only being a difference in eating habits, but if this policeman intends “free to practise their religion” is to include major differences in laws such as FGM, forced marriage, slavery, polygamy, limb amputation, stoning to death and throwing homosexuals from rooftops, then I completely disagree.
You seem to understand the complete opposite of what short, simple, unambiguous phrases mean, Mark.
The imperial powers of Europe, that is, France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and the UK, not to mention the nationalistic countries such as Prussia, were all militaristic and brutal by present-day standards, and crude pseudo-Darwinist social policies were popular across the Continent, and across the political spectrum.
"Socialist" was a fashionable word, and many political movements called themselves that, just as today those in places like North Korea call themselves "democratic".
Getting back to the POlice, I think you are being hard on Sutherland "Underpaid, overworked and under constant attack – small wonder the police can't recruit"...
This has been true for a while. I am adding 'destruction of the UK Police Force' firmly and squarely as New Labour's fault (and Coalition and Consrvatives have only added rather than helped the decay). Admittedly things were slowly changing before, what with fast-track graduate promotion etc. the Police now are almost not fit for purpose (and am generalising because we all know there are thousands of excellent coppers).
I think Sunderland just wants rid of the PC/CP PCs and political interference and I agree the Police and Crime Commissioners should go.
John Brown 16:39, agree 100%. That officer is clearly not very smart... and look at his position! Ludicrous.
Raedwald, and here in the UK the authorities compulsorily severed the frontal lobes of troublesome young people's brains. In the US they covertly injected pregnant women with radioactive iron, to see how many of them or of their offspring died of radiation-induced disease.
Let us hope that people generally across the world have gained at least some permanent protections since those terrible times.
@Cheerful
Come on, you were just making one of your snide digs at this grubby little island and the troglodytes that inhabit it.
By our exalted standards, the world of a hundred years ago can be seen of as brutal and militaristic but what would those people make of the "enlightened" world of leftist "social justice" that is the zeitgeist today?
I suspect they simply wouldn't believe the sort of degeneracy we see all around could be conceived by, let alone actively promoted by anything they would acknowledge as a government.
I posit they would see more brutality in our world than we could see in theirs.
JPM - utterly false equivalence. Doctors performed lobotomies because they sincerely believed it was a cure for severe schizophrenia - their motivation was wholly for the patient's health and well-being, though mistaken.
Socialist love of eugenics, murder and compulsory sterilisation was for the abstract good of a racially pure, superior breed of citizen for a socialist paradise - the welfare of the individual was nowhere a consideration.
There is simply no comparison. The lesson is never to let zealots near power.
Zealots? So what is the unelected Dominic Cummings doing as policy director at No.10?
And how can you blame what you call socialism for the ghastly, fatal experiments, secretly carried out by the US on its own people?
My point is that EVERYONE must be bound by the rule of law, especially the police, and it is every voter's duty to elect decent people to pass civilised laws.
Sadly, all too many apparently couldn't care less about these things, and it is why we are now an object of international contempt and ridicule in equal measure.
JPM, in the rest of the world England is not an object of international contempt and ridicule. Only in your mind. Fool.
JPM @ 1807 7/8/19
“So what is the unelected Dominic Cummings doing as policy director at No.10?”
Yet you seem comfortable with the unelected Panjandra of the EU.
The supreme power of the EU are the twenty-eight national leaders in the European Council. Everything that is proposed is put before its elected Parliament too. The UK also has an unelected Law Commission, don't you know?
It's true, that Alexander Johnson was not elected by the people to his position either, no.
Bloke, you should read what the Mainland's press is saying, and what its ordinary citizens are posting on blogs, Twitter, etc.
Incidentally i read that Cummings' extended family includes a generous scattering of earls, viscounts and baronets. That is, those few hundred, perhaps a couple of thousand, who still own half of England.
It's something finally, to be able to put at least one face to the State-within the State, perhaps.
@JPM: have read the Wiki entry on Alfred Sherman. While some of his attitudes and language are a bit breath-taking, he seems on the button about US foreign policy!
With Shaw as with Sherman, one should not look for simple touchstones to judge a man. If you're familiar with his play Arms And The Man, you'll have a clue about what he thought of war, and, says Wiki (please don't mock, time is scarce) "courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable" - yet there he is in 1934 advocating euthanasia for, hem-hem, unfit humans.
Brutal militarism: the two are not synonymous. My father was a long-serving soldier who served in the Desert Army, in Cyprus during the EOKA unrest, Aden, and NI - and a gentler, fairer-minded man you will never have met. The heart sinks when I see films, TV and actors who portray the military as bawling numpties - the sort that would get shot in the back during an engagement with the enemy, as might have happened to Evelyn Waugh if Lord Lovat hadn't moved him after shouting at the sergeant major in front of the men for failing to ensure drinking water was put onto a troop train.
On the other hand there are or were generals like Sir Oliver Nugent in WWI: "The man who commanded [Dennis] Wheatley's division, General Sir Oliver Nugent, had boasted that a double decker London omnibus would hold all the men he intended to bring home alive." (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/1903517753/ p.139)
I think the common factors among "brutal militarists" and Fascist/Socialist slaughterers are power and remoteness. Lord Acton was right, but not just about the King. This is an element of concern re the EU, which is clearly determined to minimise the ability of the hoi polloi to influence things, and which is also clearly set on Empire and the construction of a fully-articulated "defence" force - including an aircraft carrier for their landlocked super-country (Rhine cruises with attitude?)
Personally I'm a Little Englander - i.e. an anti-imperialist who thinks we should MYOB.
Perhaps when I next come to London we should share a glass of Pommeroy's?
@JPM - P.S. Another gem from the old officer class (Wheatley biography p. 100):
"The RFC [Royal Flying Corps] was still in its infancy, having only just got past the stage of using hand-held revolvers in aeroplanes, but it was now rapidly expanding. In May 1915 it comprised only 166 planes in total, but within eighteen months it was losing fifty planes a week. Parachutes were not issued; senior Army staff believed pilots would try harder without them."
I think Mao, Stalin and Tojo would have approved.
I'll raise a glass to your proposal, Sackerson, but I'm not in London often these days, unfortunately. I have a soft spot for the place, mainly for its pubs.
The wiki page says little about Sherman's reason for his abrupt, radical shift in politics, disappointingly. I did wonder whether, post WWII, it was something to do with the Left's espousal of the Palestinians' cause, as well as his expulsion from the Party over what can only be described as courageous, noble, and principled conduct along the grain of the claimed ideals of that party.
There are plausible theories, that one of the incidental aims in WWI was to squander as many young lives as possible, so that there would be no one left to fight any kind of revolution at home, as was going on in Russia, and had happened in France.
@JPM: John Donne noted that converts tended to show the same behaviour afterwards as before - lukewarm anti became lukewarm pro, the zealous opponent became a zealous adherent. So perhaps it's not surprising that Sherman went from Communist to right-winger.
Or maybe once he'd seen Communism close up the scales fell from his eyes?
The Russian Revolution is interesting, I watched a French documentary recently that showed how improbably Lenin got to lead it - his wasn't even the major one of the revolutionary groups. There was a point where Russia could have become a social democracy. And Germany secretly gave the Bolsheviks 50 million goldmarks to foment revolution by underground propaganda publications for factory workers, soldiers and sailors, to take the pressure off German forces on the Eastern Front.
I don' accept that conspiracy theory about WWI; that would be completely monstrous.
Yes, Sackerson, Donne's observations have been corroborated many times.
I myself am a social democrat along the lines that Peter Hitchins claims to be, maybe. I've moved leftwards over the years, but not very far, probably.
I think that we have to grasp the nettle however, that monstrous though some explanations might be, given human history, that does not necessarily prevent their being true.
I personally doubt that there would have been a systematic intent to squander life in that way, but it might well have been on the minds of certain commanders. We will never know.
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