A bit of positive policing......

You heard it here first; Kittenheels May aka Laura Norder is due for an early bath.

What makes me believe this? Because the Daily Telegraph, now house journal of the Tory Party since the departure of Heffer, carried a vitriolic attack on her, virtually accusing her of being the heir to Harman and a closet socialist. This could only have been the result of some pretty vicious briefing  from on high, probably at Cabinet level.

Dave wanted Bill Bratton to take over the Met. She said ‘no’ – Brits only. So who’s minding the shop? The Old Bill will get Old Bill one way or the other. And I suspect that she is out of order anyway, because public appointments in the UK are open to citizens of the EU, Switzerland and Turkey, probably by some EU fiat, so Brits only is out, surely.

So what’s Bill’s philosophy of effective policing? He says, basically, that the police should be respected by the public and feared by villains.

We have been here before; step forward, Sir Percy Sillitoe (only he can’t because he is long dead).

Sir P was the famous head of MI5 in the years after WW2, but he previously been a top cop.

Born in 1888, he joined the British South Africa Police (the Rhodesian police force – nothing to do with South Africa). He served in the South West Africa campaign (in which another BSAP contemporary was Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris who got fed up with marching all over the Great Namib Desert and became a pilot so that at least he could fight in the  sitting-down  position).

After another spell post-war in colonial police he returned to England and eventually became Chief Constable of Glasgow.

At the time Glasgow was Dodge City with knobs on; it was run by the razor gangs, such as the Billy Boys and the Norman  Conks. The City Council was irredeemably corrupt.

Sir P’s philosophy was that the gangs had to be made to fear the police, not the other way round. He recruited the hardest men he could find, mostly ex-service Highlanders. They met violence with violence. Prominent amongst them was Sergeant Morrison – Big Tam.

One of the gangsters thought he would make a name for himself and attacked Big Tam. When he appeared in court thre morning after his arrest, he had a broken jaw, black eyes and some difficulty in standing upright.

When the charge of assaulting Big Tam was read out, his defence lawyer suggested changing the charge to ‘attempted suicide’.

Sir Percy contacted the gang leaders and suggested it might be healthier if they practised their trade elsewhere. After some were hanged, others sent to the Barlinnie for long spells and so many of the City Council banged-up that it almost ceased to function, this advice was taken.