When they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, in the right place, at the right time, for the right reason, mainly making a success of it, but being properly accountable for things that go wrong, we’re great supporters of HM Constabulary. Being Liberals, ‘credit where credit’s due’ is naturally one of our mottos, and we try to apply it to HMC as often as possible, especially when they’re getting a bad press for doing good things.
But, there seem to have been rather more than a few little local difficulties of late; in fact, a pattern’s emerging of rather large systemic failings. When things go wrong with HMC, people to the right of us - Jack Straw, David Blunkett, David Davis – are terribly prone to call for a return to traditional policing, as if most of the problems haven’t arisen precisely from those very traditions that we remember with a shudder from the days of our youth, like failure of intelligence, failure of strategy, waste of resources, cover-up of inconvenient evidence, improper relations with the criminal fraternity, ’fitting up’, picking on eccentrics, kowtowing to perceived authority, failure of accountability.
We played one of our regular ginger rodent cleaning up mess others leave behind parlour games last night. Everyone had five minutes to name as many major HMC messes as possible from the last six months and to identify for each how many of the above traditions it fulfilled. Needless to say – ginger rodents being who we are – the game concluded in 3minutes 35 seconds, with everyone a winner: at least seven major HMC messes and almost every policing tradition gloriously fulfilled!
Once we’d re-gathered our collective breath, we drank a toast – claret of course - to the late Roy Jenkins, one of our distinguished founders, liberal, radical, and greatest of Home Secretaries, and we fell to wondering what he’d have made of the things his former charges at HMC had been getting up to lately. We had no doubt that Roy would have given short shrift, for a start, to all their out-of-control penetrating.
We have to admit we’ve always regarded police intelligence as a bit of an oxymoron – not the concept of intelligent policemen and women, there are plenty of those – but the very idea that HMC could sufficienty get its collective wits together to rival the work of the specialist intelligence services, and goodness knows, they’re a long way from perfect. But clearly, one or two of the top brass at the Yard reckoned they’d boned up enough through a couple of Interactive Espionage Mystery Dinner Parties to be able to dispatch a few men to do the stuff at the front line – haven’t yet heard of any specific women being involved, though today’s Observer claims there were, and very actively so, which could multiply the public’s interest, given what happened next.
These George Smileys-come-lately, though apparently come-more-frequently than the fictional hero – were ordered to penetrate a few suspect organisations and report back. Unfortunately, they apparently mistook the message – that intelligence thing again – and ended up penetrating a few members of the opposite sex and not quite reporting everything back, though today’s Observer, again, is putting out that it was central to the job spec. Be that as it may, it only started coming to light when a high profile, high cost prosecution of a nest of ’eco warriors’ collapsed because a penetrator blew his own whistle, so to speak, whereupon he was revealed to have been an agent provocateur, stirring up the passions of his ’fellow eco warriors’, both under the duvet and to extremes of miltant action. So, the Yard sent him out to screw (or not), and the Court reckoned he’d screwed up the evidence, on account of… he’d been screwing its sources!
Which whole affair provokes even more deeply disturbing thoughts and feelings: if this penetrator could do that, then, with them, then your averagely sentient, comprehensively educated ginger rodent feels obliged to wonder whether fellow members of HM Constabulary might possibly, just possibly, have been doing a fair bit of agent provocateuring in exchange for some very pleasant penetrating (‘thank you ma’am’) amongst tuition fees protesters up and down the land a few weeks ago – up on roofs, encouraging the throwing of fire extinguishers on to crowds below, that sort of thing. And what credence to place in the prosecutions of protesters that have followed?
Not too much clever intelligence gathering you’ll understand, as that would have enabled the Met to plan properly, get a grip, and enable marching and shouting to proceed without disorder, and the ‘need’ for kettling and other unpleasantness, bullying and injury to be avoided. But just enough penetration to ensure the opposite, plus or minus a barely sub-total failure to protect Mr Windsor and his Missus as they went about their legitimate business on our behalf and at our expense.
Which brings us to number two of the magnificent messes of the last six months: the lately-come-to-light matter of ‘police protection’. It seems that the intelligence failed again, to the extent that the penetrating detachment cross-bred with the Home Office former officials protection squad in some way yet to be explained by science.
Until this moment of awakening, we admit we’d forgotten just how many members of previous governments were in need of lifelong ‘police protection’. Tony Blair understandably needs 100s of protectors wherever he goes. It may partly account for why he’s now completely looped the loop. But how could we have forgotten most of the others, the Straws and the Blunketts and the Reids, and other reincarnations of Home Secretary? Until we remembered anew poor Jacqui Smith, and recalled what a politically and intellectually attractive Schools Minister she’d been in 1999, and how later her political life unravelled at the Home Office, with the disagreeable episode of her husband’s ‘adult’ DVD invoice precipitating her final fall.
Following enquiries, however, we’ve been cheered to hear how much better Jacqui now is, much like her old self it seems: svelt, alive and attractive, soft-featured and well slept. And we allow ourselves to think, with some pleasure, that maybe, sometimes, when HMC moves in a mysterious way, some good may come of it.
