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Prison works (Rob Stothard/Getty Images)
Perhaps the most shocking thing about the killing of Thomas O’Halloran was how unsurprising it seemed. The details are awful: an 87-year-old man, known for his local fundraising, stabbed to death while sitting in his mobility scooter in a suburb of West London. It made the headlines, but there has been no great national introspection, no sense this was a true aberration. It was just a horrid but ordinary incident in a country where it increasingly feels like crime is legal.
The killing was one of half a dozen or so last week in London alone, where 67 people have been murdered since the start of the year. Beyond these shocking figures, petty crime has become almost unpoliced, while robberies and burglaries are nearly always unresolved. The city’s Metropolitan Police force remains in special measures after a failing to address, or even really acknowledge, the failings apparent in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder and other longer-standing scandals.
From the outside, the force seems entirely dysfunctional, somehow both unnecessarily authoritarian and impotent. Yet police services around the country seem little better. A further five forces are in special measures, with Greater Manchester Police failing to even record crimes, never mind solving them. Across the country there is a similar picture of forces being overzealous on trivial matters, yet repeatedly failing to deal with the most serious of crimes.
The wider criminal justice system is equally troubled. Overcrowded and crumbling courts cause unbearable delays to prosecutions, hampering attempts to bring criminals to justice. Anecdotally, lawyers tell me that trials are currently being listed for 2024, up to three years after the crime took place. This will be exacerbated by the strike action to be taken by publicly funded barristers, whose income has atrophied over recent years. Quite simply, the criminal and justice system is on the verge of seizing up entirely.
And yet, somehow, neither Liz Truss nor Rishi Sunak seem to recognise this, let alone offer any remedies to fix it. Truss’s recent major announcement on crime was not a strategy, but rather a list of things she wished were true: a promise to bring crime down without any new resources or thinking to do it, repeating a desire for targets and league tables without any sense of how those are met. Sunak, meanwhile, has promised the strengthening of sentences, but little that addresses crime prevention or detection.
For the most part, however, this lack of vision is merely a continuation of at least a decade of Tory impotence when it comes to lawlessness. The increase in police numbers under Boris Johnson’s government, for instance, was little more than a reversal of cuts and did not make up for the experience lost under the austerity-driven exodus. In particular, shortages of detectives have significantly worsened “clear-up” rates, with crimes more likely to go uncharged and un-convicted. As for those cases that pass this stage, they are still likely to linger in a court system which lacks sufficient judges, buildings, and lawyers to run effectively — all problems that could be largely solved by a commitment to spending where it counts.
Beyond that, the Conservatives are reluctant to confront systemic issues within the police. While ministers are keen to criticise the civil service that oversees it, the Tories appear reluctant to intervene in the actual organisation of police, despite the way the many forces fall short of the mark. What interventions have been launched in the last decade have often gone awry. The partial privatisation of the probation service, for example, proved muddle-headed, worsening performance and ending with an expensive bailout of providers. Similarly, the creation of Police and Crime Commissioners has offered little in the way of actual improvement; the office is poorly understood by the public and is notable largely for its scandals. Even the Johnson government’s reforms on sentencing — such as ending the automatic early release of offenders deemed to be a danger to the public — have been undermined by being pushed through in bills which also seek to reduce the right to protest.
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SubscribeIt is not the budget and it is not police numbers that create this situation. It is how our Police are deployed.
In 1961 there was 1 police officer for every 807 civilians in this country. Today, that ratio is 1 to 462.
The Guardian, Sadiq Khan and depressingly many others might bleat about budget cuts and like to pretend that releasing funds to employ a few hundred more coppers might return us to the days of Dixon of Dock Green (or PC49 for Eagle comic fans) but it is a fantasy.
As with almost every debate about the Police – the answer is relatively simple, if unpopular among senior Police officers (whilst far more popular with rank and file). Reverse the policy of reactive policing, that made Police Officers merely the mop-up crew after a crime has been committed, and return them to proactive policing with local police officers patrolling a small patch and knowing most of what is going on on their beat.
Proactive policing prevents crime, reactive policing can only record it and try and catch criminals after the fact.
Of course Crime-fighting in 2022 is a far more complex business than it was in the days before Police officers retreated from street patrols, but the issues that are at the top of the agenda – stabbings, muggings, moped gangs etc are all instances of street level crime which has been proven to be ameliorated by Police patrolling.
Cambridgeshire Police Force ran a research project with Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology. Here’s a short quote from their report:
Naysayers will point to the new, modern problems that weren’t in Dixon of Dock Green’s job description – But Police resources directed at Cyber crime will need to have a fairly sophisticated knowledge of IT and those directed at Fraud will need a specialised understanding of financial crime – well beyond the training of most police officers (or us for that matter). These should not detract from the numbers of officers available for beat duty,
Rising levels of street crime is the most worrying issue in the immediate future and that could and would be tackled by getting policemen out from behind a desk and onto the street.
Taxpayers find it hard to fathom the rationale of the current deployment of resources. Yet most senior police officers resort to the age-old excuse of under-manning and underfunding as the principal reason they are failing to fulfil their remit.
Previously the Police were responsible for parking offences – (now covered by parking & traffic wardens). They were responsible for transporting prisoners to and from courts and prison – (now covered by contracted Prisoner Escort and Custody Services). Their role in prosecutions – (now covered by the CPS). Their responsibility for checking business premises outside of working hours – (Now covered by CCTV and private security contractors).
They aren’t even having to staff the many hundreds of local stations that are now closed – or manned only sporadically.
Given all the things the police no longer have to do – and given that there are (proportionally) twice as many officers, we should have an effective force. Yet demonstrably we don’t.
But all the research and all the evidence points to the rather obvious conclusion that having a regular police presence in a neighbourhood reduces crime, reassures residents and deters criminals.
Given the numbers of Police officers, plus community support staff, there is no reason we could not achieve the sort of policing the vast majority of tax payers want. But only if they are deployed effectively and stop wasting time on spurious claims of hate crimes and twitter messages.
Very pertinent points. They are ones that Peter Hitchens not infrequently makes. It is not just a matter of money but getting the police back doing their job – not being stuck in offices and cars or dealing with the excessive paperwork that the bureaucracy of the police favours.
Chief amongst Hitchen’s cpmments was that they are a Police Force and not a Service. Paramilitary Social Workers comes to mind.
Excellent and interesting comment Paddy. Food for thought.
Test out a minimum ‘walking requirement’ where all police officers are required to spend at least one hour a day (or more), or one day a week walking on the streets – senior officers too. Need a meeting – do it while walking. Use action to shift the culture.
Would doing the Macarena count instead?
Trouble is, following the Blair-era abaondonment of the ‘racist’ 5’10” minimum height rule, 3/4 of urban police now seem to be are bullied-at-chool midgets and chubby-used wimmin who hate the public, but are physically wholly unequipped to tackle vigorous, fighting age male criminals. Hence the focus on Thoughtcrime…
Why aren’t you Home Secretary?
JR Stoker Someone as seemingly straight and lucid as Paddy is automatically disqualified from high office.
Very interesting Paddy, thanks. I would like to quote the Cambridge report to my local Neighbourhood Watch group, can you tell me what year it was carried out please?
Here you are, Colin, hope it helps.
Policing: two officers ‘on the beat’ prevent 86 assaults and save thousands in prison costs | University of Cambridge
Let me know if you have difficulty accessing the research paper
Paddy there is much in what you say. The abandonment of the beat patrol was a complete disaster – led as usual by pressure from academics and politicians as has so often been the case. The loss of non-confrontational interaction between police officers and the general public has had a profoundly detrimental effect on the standing of the police.
However it is overly simplistic to compare 1961 and 2022 on police/population numbers alone. PACE – 1984; the creation of the CPS 1985; the CPIA – 1996; RIPA 2000; the requirement for Risk Assessments for virtually every activity generated as a result of Human Rights legislation, et al, have all added tremendously to the bureaucracy facing police officers today. All of these would have seemed completely bizarre to the beat officers – and detectives too – of 1961.
On CPIA criminal disclosure alone, I know of one investigation that took a team of twelve over two years to manage the unused material responsibilities imposed by the act, to the exclusion of all else. A list of material nearly 10,000 pages in length. As you are probably aware this is material gathered during the investigation but which does not form evidence for the prosecution, however failures to process this material correctly has led to many collapsed cases.
The final nail in the coffin for me was the recruitment of direct entry senior officers and detectives. The effect of these have yet to fully manifest themselves, but in the inimitable words of Bachmann Turner Overdrive I suspect that: ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’.
Paul, I agree with most of what you say, apart from the last bit about direct-entry recruitment. I think this could actually be a good thing, if they recruited the right people. The trouble is, they’ll almost certainly select people who conform to woke orthodoxy: diversity targets, critical race nonsense and all the other guff that gets in the way of common-sense policing. Yes, I know I’m a dinosaur.
Andrew. I would be interested to hear an argument setting out the merits of direct entry to senior ranks and into the CID.
In the post-war world the British police without an ‘officer’ class developed a world wide reputation for excellence – sadly now long lost. It seems to me the logical approach would be to look back to the systems, recruitment, structures and training in place when the standing of the police within the UK and worldwide was at it’s zenith, as to some extent Paddy has done, and to see what can be recovered. I take some solace in the apparent re-discovery that smartly turned out police officers is something the public react well to.
In my experience the best senior officers and in particular the best detectives were good, keen and enthusiastic junior officers. The poorer senior officers were equally poor junior officers, focussed on their promotion profile and leaving practical policework behind at the earliest opportunity.
Insights and experience gained as a patrolling police officer are in my view invaluable for the senior officer and the detective.
I wouldn’t advocate hiring direct entry senior officers in large numbers, but there are exceptional leaders in other fields who could could bring new ideas and fresh eyes to policing. It would make the police more open to change and innovation. I believe the leadership skills of successful people in other fields are transferable and the police should be confident enough to take them in. But everything depends on selection. If senior people are selected because they’ll be compliant with Home Office directives or centrally-issued targets, all the wrong people will be hired and there would be no benefit. I’m not sure what I think about direct-entry detectives. There will be investigators in other fields who could do the job, but the ideal would be for detectives to have a grounding in patrol duties, partly because the learning curve from complete outsider to detective would be huge.
The simple solution would be to repeal all that rubbish legislation.
I take it the thugs have NO fear of being shot? I read somewhere that burglars in the UK sometimes break into people’s homes at night, when the owners are likely to be at home .. something a unthinkable here – or at least in Texas.
Johnny,
I lived in the US for a while in the early 90s and quickly realised that, for all our shared heritage and values, there were some widely held attitudes that were uniquely British and uniquely American and it was rarely worthwhile for one to try and persuade the other of the merits of their argument. There are certain topics about which we must amicably and respectfully agree to disagree.
It’s not easy to make a sound rational case for an hereditary monarchy – however the majority of Britons feel that our system has worked well for us. We see the stability of a constitutional Monarch as being better than the partisan politicking around an elected Head of State. Most Americans are baffled by our system and see it as out of date and anachronistic.
Most British people are baffled by US gun laws, and see widespread gun ownership as the root cause of all the gun violence that plagues America. But I know that trying to make that case is only likely to lead to resentment.
I guess you have to be British to “get” the idea of a monarchy, just as much as you have to be American to “get” the idea of 2nd Amendment rights.
An unarmed UK Police force probably strikes you as madness. I have to say it makes me rather proud. I would welcome tougher policing, and tougher sentencing, but still wouldn’t want the Police, the criminals or even law-abiding citizens to have unlimited access to firearms.
Well said but there are special brigades who do use weapons when needed and these are highly trained. They were used against terrorists blindly stabbing anyone they could for Jihad’s sake.
I haven’t heard of burglars breaking into people’s homes at night, even if they have no fear of being shot.It must be exceedingly rare. If many homes had a gun for fear of such a thing, my guess is that there’d then be a lot of accidental shootings.
There is of course criminal activity in my area, but few criminals are violent, and I have never seen or heard of an armed policeman in my area, although I’m aware that the county will have a certain number of armed units. Even in London, where there are more armed policeman, they are mainly guarding potential terrorist targets, which started during the IRA terrorist campaign.
It’s becoming quite common Colin but mainly to commit the crime of rape etc. for women who live alone or where there is no male.
Of course burglars break into people’s homes at night. It has happened to us. It’s what burglars do. And when I was first living in London someone was murdered outside our house. I know of a family friend whose daughter was murdered in London. Someone I used to know in another city was attacked and thrown in the docks and left for dead (thankfully survived). And following a move we used the services of someone who was charged with murder after killing someone but got off with self defence.
Sadly not. In this sick remnant of the country formerly known as Great Britain, if you shoot a burglar, YOU’RE the criminal.
Thought frankly, you’d be hard put to do so. Even if you manage to get a licence for a shotgun or a rifle – pistols have been effectively banned since about 1998, bar black powder weapons – you’re obliged by law to keep it in a secure locker, and the ammo in another, separate secure locker.
In a functional democracy, the law would encourage the shooting of burglars and pay a bounty for their scalps. You’d see a decline in crime then, by God.
Pro active policing requires officers to be based locally, and most small (one man on shift) local police stations have been closed down and sold off because local stations were expensive to maintain. I remember a Chief Constable asking me how he was supposed to meet response times in Aberdaron when the nearest police station was Pwllheli. I replied that unless he stationed an officer in Aberdaron (as had previously been) and reopened Abersoch and Nefyn stations he couldn’t. Local policing from a senior officer viewpoint is considered a waste of resources because officers would patrol but have very little real work to do. This is to miss the point entirely. Such officers were providing a service, they were interacting with the community, they were acting as a deterrent, and they were gathering intelligence about any local ne’rdowells. I was involved in an attempt at cost cutting and what was revealed was not only the profligacy of senior officers but also their reluctance to address the problems other than tinkering with the system in ways that didn’t directly affect them. This has meant cutting front line services like civilian staff while maintaining other eyewateringly expensive services that provided next to no benefit.
The Government outsourcing of resources has been an expensive failure, in fact this is not just true of the police service but anywhere the government privatises anything.
The crucial word was deterrent which seems to have been dropped from the police’s and government’s vocabulary.
Well said, Paddy Taylor!
I genuinely cannot recall ever having seen a police officer on foot in Chester for at least the past 20 years – more likely 30+ years! Even police cars have become rare sightings these days!
I was a boy in North London in 1961, the time you are comparing to now. For a few years from about the age of 13, I spent much of my time hanging around the streets or parks in small groups. Aside from some occasional minor vandalism I don’t remember any of us acting very badly or getting hurt or hurting anyone-else. There were no gangs as such. We’d hang around chip shops rather than cafe’s or pubs, so we didn’t much encounter older youths. When we did, they took no interest in us. We never encountered drugs. We tried smoking and drinking but didn’t much like either at that age. We had penknives but I never saw a knife used as a weapon. In those days, however, there wasn’t such a multiplicity of different groups seeing themselves as having little in common – so far fewer grudges to be acted on.
We would sometimes be disrespectful to the police but we wouldn’t overdo it. We usually had bikes with us and while we could avoid police on foot, we would often be stopped and questioned by the many who rode what we called Noddy bikes. These were 200cc Velocette water-cooled (and so very quiet) crosses between a scooter and a motor-bike. They were very effective at relatively silently patrolling much greater distances than possible on foot. They were quite slow however, and I wonder if they were phased out without any replacement through unpopularity at having fun poked at them and their inability to keep up with faster bikes or cars. If a faster, electric (so even more silent) version could be found or designed, I think they could again be very effective.
In 1961 we still hanged criminals, not many it must be said but about six a year. It was enough to demonstrate that the State had authority.
When we abandon hanging in August 1964 it was NOT by popular demand but thanks to the feebleness and vanity of our worthless MPs. Thus we have ‘sowed’ and now we must ‘reap’,
Yes we are certainly reaping what we have sowed. Some crimes should be a death penalty but we have lost the courage to carry it out. A life for a life is pretty just.
During the first long,big lockdown in 2020 the police,at least their cars were highly visible in my locality and in my city driving around,here,there,they were high profile,high vis – after decades of not ever seeing one. People wrote letters to the local papers about it.
I only saw the ubiquity of the police as I was out and about all day enjoying the sunshine,picnicking in the park,ignoring lockdown,just like Boris,just like him and his chums I knew it was all my eye and Betty Martin. I actually got reported to the police,someone emailed to tell me,for being out so much. I laughed. I didn’t bother worrying about the knock on the door that never happened. In the first lockdown we found out that the Nazis didn’t have to try that hard. Most people are curtain twitching Luciens.
Maybe the police are too busy investigating “hate incidents” to go after real criminals.
Much less risky for Plod.
Always seems to end in Plod’s humiliation at the hands of Harry Miller though.
Who, of course, is a retired policeman!
He was an old school copper so could see the wrong in a non crime hate incident, incidentally invented by a lesbian senior officer who had to resign from her force when she accidentally emailed candidates for a staff officer post stating that she didn’t want a white male heterosexual officer in her team. She was allowed to resign and keep her pension, of course.
Had the sender been a male heterosexual pushing back against homosexuals , what would have happened ?
The World would have ended is the answer to your apposite question.
He’d have been charged and jailed, I expect.
Oh yes. You cannot say marriage is for a man and a woman. That is classed as hate speech.
Here are the statistics produced by the government regarding the ethnicity of the prison population.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-system-statistics-2020/ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2020
One of the striking things is the disproportionate number of blacks figuring both as victims of lethal crime and in the prison population. 38% of young murder victims are black and the prison population is 13% black compared to a black population of about 3%.
These are shocking figures that indicate where the focus needs to be directed to reduce violent crime. I am frequently writing here against fetishising skin colour and the promotion of diversity but it is clear that the extraordinary disparity of blacks involved as victims and perpetrators of serious crime requires serious attention. What are the cultural drivers for this disproportionate criminality and what might be done to reduce the amount of prison resources currently being devoted to black offenders? I don’t believe it is simply down to discrimination. Clearly there are other factors at work.
Unfortunately there seems to be a reluctance to tackle this issue other than on the superficial grounds of discrimination.
The incidence of crime varies enormously between different countries. When people migrate you might expect their propensity to criminal behaviour to alter to the dominant indigenous group. However if the newcomers don’t integrate they will not be influenced by their hosts community and may carry on as though they are still living in their country of origin.
Haiti,Colombia,Albania
If you state that 13% of the prison population is black that is open to two interpretations.
The left/liberal option is to say that that proves the police and the courts are harsher on black people, so they get more and longer sentences.
If you advance the other interpretation you are, of course, a racist.
Pretty ironic that airing concerns about young black men stabbing each other and wishing to stop it results in being called a racist by people who idolise Black Lives Matter…
BLM is not about black people but about marxism.
The racist reason is that more black people do crime. However and I’ve known a lot of them,there are moral upstanding black people,people of faith and high standards of behaviour. The ones that do crime try to hide behind those upright people.
What I suspect is that a particular demographic of afro-carribean Brits that emigrated to Britain at a particular time (1950s and 1960s) and then integrated into a violent English yob subculture, bringing with them their own yobbishness. This then likely festered with the assistance of a welfare state to produce an underclass of people with a violent and anti-social disposition.
To my knowledge, this group of people earn disproportionately less money and commit disproportionately more crime when compared to all other ethnic groups.
As such, including them into the pool of “all blacks” risks obscuring more than it illuminates.
If we stratify black groups into their constituent origins and cultures, many of these simple racial explanations disappear.
Here’s a US example of this since I don’t have UK data, but I’ll wager similar forces are at work: When I was studying arrest rates of black people in the USA I noticed that if I stratified the data by nationality, foreign black people living in the USA were no more likely to be arrested than their white counterparts.
But since American-born “ghetto blacks” were 7 times as likely to be arrested as everyone else, including them in the analysis with foreign-born blacks created the impression that anyone black was at risk of being arrested, when this was not the case.
Unfortunately, stratifying data in a nuanced way often dissipates the claim of systemic racism because race as a sole, or predominating factor, does not survive stratification.
I am therefore unsurprised that the government’s data set is full of lazy categorising that will please race baiters, but provide little useful data for actual solutions.
Many thanks Hayden for that thoughtful and insightful analysis.
I suspected there was probably an explanation along these lines. Like you I have noted that black immigrants to the US have outcomes on most metrics much more similar to immigrants generally rather than US “ghetto-blacks” whose behaviour Dr Sowell attributed to the adoption of southern Cracker culture.
If there is a rational explanation for behaviour one is at least one step nearer helping to solve the problem than trying to explain it away under cover of discrimination on the grounds of skin colour for which there is little objective evidence.
All blacks are not the same any more than all whites are. There are cultures and subcultures.
I remember hearing a radio programme a few years ago about West Indians who immigrant to America. They apparently do economically better than most other groups because they have benefited from quite an old fashioned British school system.
That is true. There are some wonderful black people from Africa now in the nation of Britain.
Hayden – that’s a really useful analysis. Thank you!
Repeat post removed
No policing issue enrages the Left as much as Stop and Search – a policy that the vast majority of frontline police officers say works, much to the eternal annoyance of the hair-triggered offence pedlars of the left.
Stop and Search is always held up by the liberal left as a blatantly racist policy. But is it? The numbers suggest it is merely an effective, targeted approach to an observable problem.
Look at it another way – The vast majority of violent crime is perpetrated by Men. How is it that the liberal left don’t accuse the UK’s Criminal Justice System of Institutional Sexism?
Frontline police officers are hampered by the attitudes of some of their own senior leadership – who appear to be as much politicians as policemen. Even the former Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, now a director of the College of Policing openly criticises the UK’s criminal justice system as a racist institution.
No race is innately predisposed to be involved in knife crime more than another. However, it is statistically indisputable that some cultures are significantly more likely to be involved in knife crime than others.
For the Police to ignore such obvious and observable correlations just to appease the sensitivities of Guardian columnists or activists would be entirely self-defeating and, frankly, a gross dereliction of duty.
But in this peculiar age, woe betide any politician who tried to make that point out loud. They’d be subjected to the confected ire of the professional outragistes on twitter and be forced to apologise in time for the News at Ten or face losing their job.
The numbers tell a pretty obvious story, yet try using such hard-and-fast stats to show that there are at least worrying correlations between two data-sets and – if you’re lucky – you’ll probably be told, ‘Yeah, but that’s just your opinion!’ or worse you’ll be accused of bigotry.
And so the police will be told not to racially profile those they stop and frisk for weapons. Meanwhile young boys will continue to get stabbed and gangs will attack each other with machetes in broad daylight, but at least we haven’t hurt anyone’s feelings!
Absolutely Paddy – for the Leftwaffe disparities in outcome are proof of discrimination when they are convenient (as is the case with racial disparities in incarceration) but are otherwise ignored (as with gender disparities in incarceration, which in the USA are 23x skewed towards men).
If they are to be at the very least consistent they should be up in arms about “the war against men”.
“Leftwaffe” made me chuckle!
Ive both read and heard on radio that what draws these young children of about 9 into the gangs that will criminalise them is,one factor is,a desire for money. That staggers and shocks me. I know I had a comfortable childhood with two parents but when I was 9 I never ever gave money a thought,OK I was a weird kid,I also never gave a thought about what gender I was or my “sexuality”. I read Swallows and Amazon’s and grew things in our garden. Why would any kid want actual money. Why would a child even think about money. Its a mindset so alien to me I can’t even see how it works. As an adult you need money to pay bills but children don’t pay bills.
I used to visit youth prisons and you are right. I would put it down to a weak or no relationship with a father. A very high proportion say 95% were in this category. It could be part of West Indies culture but I am not sure about African culture. I am not talking about blacks in general just of the category of blacks in prison. Whites in prison have a similar background where there is missing a relationship with a father. It is uncanningly true. Society is more and more becoming like this and a relationship with a father is getting less and less.
Lower average IQ and higher testosterone is the basic answer.
A conservative government that I would consider voting for would:
The current Tory government fails on every one of these counts and therefore will not get my vote.
Arriving at Heathrow the other day I noticed that her Majesty’s Border Force were unable to process a few passengers coming off a plane in good time. They were chronically understaffed, woefully useless, and had zero urgency to do their jobs. The passenger schedule would have been known months in advance and, yet, despite this, someone in charge was unable to plan for this basic requirement, much less implement it.
If the Tory’s cannot even manage a small queue of holiday makers coming off a plane, what makes them qualified to deal with a country wide immigration policy, either conceptually or practically?
The same incompetence seen in their Border Control section is now reflected at every level of government.
The woeful state of the police is therefore completely unsurprising.
The trouble, now, is who to vote for given that labour’s sole aim appears to be optimising retweets of vapid Twitter posts by Guardian readers.
The problem is that so many are employed in state or quasi-state bodies that any serious effort to introduce rigour and effectiveness in the service will result in kickback that will result in any government being voted out. It was only the Winter of Discontent chaos that enabled Thatcher to introduce some improvements. Unfortunately we face a winter of discontent under the conservatives that risks putting an even more useless Labour Party into power. I know voters who had abandoned Corbin’s Labour only now to be tempted back by the siren voices of Labour that all that is needed is to spend more and tax the rich.
Unfortunately the covid lockdown and response to Ukraine are going to scupper the Conservatives unless Liz Truss proves a lot wilier than I give her credit for.
She has some good point but I understand she visits WEF as does Sunak. That is frightening.
Every job spec should stipulate the prime objective of the job, and focus on achieving it.
Instead, in the police and many other institutions, time, effort and taxpayers money is spent on so many irrelevant, unproductive, activities designed to pander to left wing, “woke” ideologies.
Law and order is no longer properly enforced, and crime pays.
Similarly, teachers struggle to maintain order in classrooms of unruly children. Sadly the parents are often less than helpful. Education should be valued as the foundation for a successful future – as in the Michaela Community School.
A new PM needs to get a grip and reverse this tragic slide into chaos. Sensible people know this, and will vote for tough action.
You overlooked the real #1 .. restore and respect a recognition of the individual’s sovereign right to bear arms.
I am still astonished that a civilized nation does not allow it’s citizens from arming themselves. I can’t imagine being fearful in Austin Texas .. folks are polite while driving too, as it is assumed you have quick access to a firearm. Living in the Northeast for awhile where folks don’t have that habit .. the drivers were MUCH ruder and used their car horns freely.
Handguns were banned in the UK after a man called Thomas Hamilton entered a school in Dunblane in 1996 and killed 16 pupils and one teacher, wounding 15 others.
What would you do in Texas if someone took his guns to a school and shot children?
That’s happened many times in the USA but many criminals have firearms and you probably need them in the USA to protect your life and home.
Shoot him dead – that’s what I’d do. In Texas, any responsible teacher or citizen in general would support the US Constitution by carrying a firearm, knowing how to use it and being prepared to use it.
I am astonished that a ‘civilised’ nation allows its citizens effectively unlimited access to guns of all sorts. I believe that the figure for gunshot deaths in the USA p.a. is over 40,000, that for the UK c.100.
I’d prefer a car horn than a bullet.
Hear, hear, Hayden! I agree with everything you’ve said. I especially endorse your point about removing/repealing the pernicious Non-Crime Hate Incident [NCHI] process that UK police so enthusiastically implement.
It is worth reminding ourselves that the longest-serving Home Secretary in the UK, one Theresa May MP. chopped some 25,000+ jobs from the police service when Cameron’s Tory administration had one over-ridding policy – cut budgets.
It is also worth acknowledging that the tsunami of woke that has drowned democracy in the UK has occurred during a long, uninterrupted period of Tory rule. Even the BBC has a director-general who was once a Tory councillor – and consider how that organisation drenches us daily in woke programming from dawn until dusk until dawn – relentlessly! People who believe that Tories believe in small-C conservative values and traditions are deluded! They are fully members of the Woking Class.
We live in a society that protested massively at the murder of a young, middle-class London woman, but has hardly squeaked about the slaying of an octogenarian on his mobility scooter, or the murders of lower class women outside of the London focus. Nobody held street protests and vigils for the likes of them.
Britain of the 2020s is a profoundly fractured, dysfunctional society in which today’s politicians of all political parties are woefully unsuited to leadership and government, and who lack the courage to stand up to the evils that crowd in upon us. How quickly the national memory forgets the true courage that was needed to stand up to Hitler alone in the world; how savagely the national character denigrates and rejects its past and sees only shame where glory once prevailed.
Political Woke likely started with Cameron and endorsed by May..
Couldn’t put it better Julian!
The question is who will get your vote. Labour?
The police have been been sidetracked from their primary function which is to police and secure public spaces. They have retreated from those spaces and the vacuum has been filled by drug dealers, violent thugs and homeless addicts. Many urban areas resemble those of Hogarth’s “Gin Lane”. We need a new body of robust men of above average stature to reclaim the streets in the model of Robert Peel’s “Bobbys” but I we won’t get one.
That is because the police have become increasingly bureaucratic, feminised and graduate . We need to return to a force that can overawe the criminal elements of society. They also need to know they will be backed up by the Courts and not required to pursue woke crime and excessive paperwork. The police force should return to a force dedicated to protecting citizens rather than supervising citizens.
The long march through the institutions has converted MPs, the senior Civil Service, the BBC, the NHS, education, and the Police Service to manageralism. Managers are great at administrative tasks but seek to avoid any blame. Their individual careers are more important than the objectives of their organisations.
There is enormous resistance to changing manageralism and people who try to do so are soon sidelined. Until things get to be too awful to be borne.
But it’s not a force. It’s a service.
Thanks Tony
A service of what?
Too right.
And as much as I despair at this country’s dissent into ‘social justice’ leftist lunacy, it would on balance be slightly more bearable if the people in charge weren’t also repeatedly lying to us about putting the breaks on, or god forbid, actually making any substantive move whatsover to reverse the inexorable slide to chaos, disorder and degeneracy seen across nearly every dimension of society.
Sure, when it suits, the Tories talk a good talk as to resisting this (completely unwanted by the vast majority) societal transformation, but they are clearly completely unwilling or unable to do anything to stop it. And whether the latter or the former – I frankly don’t care. They have taken me and millions of others for fools: wearing a Conservative skin suit whilst happily standing by as our institutions become parasitised and used to inflicit leftist agendas wherever and whenever they are allowed (yes allowed) to extert influence. All this whilst ploughing on with a globalist strategy indistinguishable from all the other governments in the west – save perhaps Hungary.
As I’ve said before, when you cast your vote at the ballot box, you are doing nothing more than voting for the mask you wish the train driver to wear before they take you along the hideous preordained route.
I realise that it’s none of my business, and you have every right to tell me so, but whom do you intend to vote for?
No probs.
I’m fortunate enough to have an SDP candidate in my area so I’ll vote for him/them.
I know it makes no difference, but at least I’m voting for a party that I believe to be honest and one which aligns with my values.
My tory mp is as woke as can be and I don’t vote for her any more except when I voted so Boris could achieve Brexit. The local conservatives continue to pur her forward at every election. Either they are woke or they are concerned to continue to get a safe seat.
Good point about Hungary. It’s vilified in the mainstream media, and yes, there are issues here that need to be addressed, but you can still walk about at night in relative safety, even in the capital.
The Tories are criminally blind? Man, wake up. The entire Western world has been cowed into turning a blind eye when it comes to crimes committed by “protected classes”. In the US, huge crowds can set fire to cities, loot at will, create utter mayhem, commit violent assault, and mayors will “give rioters space” to do it. In the UK, Rotherham was allowed to exist for decades with police simply looking the other way. Not a member of the correct demographic? Better hope you never have to protect yourself, because if you do, you’re the one going to jail.
You are right to bring up Rotherham in a discussion about failures to deal with crime but the police were not “simply looking the other way“. Crimes were covered up by the police and others, including Westminster politicians. What happened in Rotherham was worse than Watergate and the same thing was happening in other places at the same time. However, the full story of what happened is unlikely to be told because even though a lot of information is already in the public domain no-one has found it and put it together in a way that tells the story.
It is still happening in other cities even now. Someone should write a book about it but I suspect they will be arrested for racism.
Someone has written a book (“Easy Meat: Inside the British Grooming Gang Scandal” by Peter McLoughlin) and according to the reviews I’ve seen it is very good. However, it and at least one other book he has written has been delisted by Amazon because he wrote a book with Tommy Robinson. Besides, “Easy Meat” was published in 2016 and a lot more information has come out since then.
The best way to get the story to as many people as possible in a way that is understandable and does the story justice is on TV or online. There is enough information for a book but it wouldn’t reach a mass audience because it would be ignored or pigeonholed. I don’t think it could be made into a radio programme or a podcast because there is too much information and in order to understand it you need to be able to refer back to other information. A current affairs magazine or a newspaper could do it but they wouldn’t. However, if it was done correctly a TV documentary on a quality news channel or a series of online articles could tell the story but first you need the information and ideas.
Worse: Islamophobia.
Rotherham was allowed to exist. Do you not mean that the rapes and abuse of hundreds of white women by a certain race was allowed to exist? That has been happening in other big cities even now by the same race.
The public is lazy and cowardly when it comes to politics.
Nearly everyone leaves the provision of democratic representation to everyone else.
In consequence politics has become the refuge career-option of people who want money, privilege and self-importance in large quantities but have little knowledge and information, no talent to speak of, no managerial experience or competence, and above all No Courage.
Come elections, the public votes lazily for the party they suppose the Least Dreadful; refusing to be brave and vote for new small parties which offer a better grip on the national situation. (Yet voting for small parties is the one tactic which gets actual Results. Voting UKIP, as I did, 2013/14 extorted a referendum on our EU membership from D Cameron’s government. Voting Brexit Party, as I did, in the May and June of 2019, extruded the treacherous T May from Downing St in short order.)
Lazy and cowardly? How many people have the time, space and resources to devote any spare time from work/family/etc to playing real life chess against (at best) self-aggrandising grotesques?
If it is one’s calling, and it can be, then it should be pursued
Good point Peter. Voting for myriad small parties can perhaps lead to weak coalitions where little in the way of future policy is agreed, however, if memory serves me well, in the 2015 UK elections UKIP gained about 15% of the national vote which would of equated to around 80 parliamentary seats in a system of proportional representation. Now that could have been an interesting situation and one that i feel sure would have encouraged true, small ‘c’ conservatism.
Good point but the trouble is that they have no representation in many areas plus they are all small and compete against each other. If they could unite maybe they will get further.
Recent data from France shows that the 7% immigrant community commits almost 50% of the crime in major cities.
When a larger proportion of the general population become criminally inclined the police haven’t a chance
It could be the same in Britain.
“Tories are criminally blind” is an absurd way to brand an article. I do wish Unherd would stop doing this, especially when the intention is to suggest that Tories are blind to criminality.
No attempt to discuss the context of wider social and cultural change either, just a list of examples of where policing is falling below expected standards, plus no mention of the Met Police coming under the aegis of a Labour Mayor.
The murder of Thomas Harrington was indeed shocking. There have been shocking incidents in every era. Were the Tories responsible for the murder of Jamie Bulger, or Labour for the murder of pub-goers in Birmingham at the hands of the IRA?
There does indeed need to be a return to basic policing, a normally benign presence in public spaces. Whether that will help reduce the amount of increasingly sophisticated criminality online or through highly-organised gangs to which the police have to devote increasing amounts of time and resources is another matter. Reference to these issues might have given the article greater balance. As it is, the article is a failure of “criminally blind” (sic) proportions.
Someone needed to say it and I think he did well.
The crime most of us encounter is that of fraud or attempted fraud whether on line or by telephone. That is something that needs to be tackled not simply through an invigorated force – and graduates are useful here – but through a banking system that prevents stolen proceeds being spirited out of the jurisdiction.
The banking system fixes are crucial. Nobody ever says anything about the accounts to which money is fraudulently transferred. Either the account owners can be identified and prosecuted for abetting fraud or the bank has not properly verified the account owner (we all know of the lengths that banks go to supposedly prevent money laundering) and should be forced to compensate the victim and be themselves prosecuted.
I am less keen on automatically compensating victims as that is potentially a route for criminals to rip off banks. But all the money laundering and “know your customer” regulations appear to be woefully operated if accounts can be set up and criminal proceeds transferred abroad without a slew of prosecutions resulting against those opening the account and those in the bank who failed to implement the regulations effectively so that the criminals can make off with the loot.
The banks have become like the police in the sense it is almost impossible to speak to them.
Where does one start? The Kafkaesque Orwellian Tory creation of ” hate crime” that eliminates burdens of proof and a plethora of other burdens on prosecution, in a shockingly dystopian manner? The appalling level of training and leadership in the Police? The abominable levels of ” On the ground command and control” of Police due to no Officer /NCO system? The covering up and protection of corrupt police by their own?…
It is currently the worst of both worlds; ridiculously permissive, then heavy-handedly authoritarian, with hapless case prioritisation. There is a lot of wrong-headedness at the managerial level.
We in the U.S., of course, have many problems with police and policing, But usually, cities and towns elect mayors, and the chief of police reports to the mayor, who can fire the chief of police and appoint a new one (sometimes, the city council may be involved). So we know who’s accountable. If there are problems with the police, the mayor, an elected official, is accountable. I can’t figure out who’s accountable in the U.K. It seems like no one is. There’s a national body called the College of Policing, that is an independent force, and sets guidelines for the whole country. As far as I can tell, the head of the College of Policing is not accountable to anyone. The College of Policing seems to be behind the non-crime hate incident, seems to love the non-crime hate incident, and won’t give it up, even when ordered by courts to do so. Is it also behind the general Woke capture? I don’t know, But it seems to me that police governance in the U.K. needs to be perhaps re-structured but definitely clarified. There should be some kind of clear link between voters and the police, through their elected representatives.
National bankruptcy since the 2008 Financial crisis stalks every area of government. We have been on the slide ever since. Covid and now Ukraine have provided the final coup de grace.
Don’t forget the £2.6 Trillion of debt that accounts for public service pensions that the Government have to pay.
The *Tories* are criminally blind?
“in a suburb of West London”. *Labour* Mayor.
“Greater Manchester Police failing to even record crimes, never mind solving them”. *Labour* Mayor.
Joker.
Boris was a good London Mayor as it happens.
Many ways to solve this issue: 1. civil guard or civil defence groups at a local ie street to street level to identify and if necessary act against organised criminality – drugs, fraud and violence which at present involves a large % of police and a significant % of the judiciary as well as ODCs. 2. use the budget given to the current “police” and “courts” to decriminalise, medicalise and support the drug users who create so much of this crime. 3. Once this process has started to bear fruit restart policing based on a duty to guard the civic space NOT to enforce political ideologies which are opposed to an open society. 4. Once these new coppers are in place ensure they are not allowed to coalesce into large cartels as is now the case. IMO the best model is the Spanish one where the Guardia, Local and Nacional compliment each other though there is a strong spirit of competition as to who can get the crooks first. Its easier for them as sex work and low level drug markets are either legal or softly policed and after 1975 the cops were very happy to drop the requirement to police peoples sex lives, political beliefs or choice of reading material.
Also i am keen to add that in the absence of police societies usually start their own – look at pasrts of Essex + Surrey where there are “private” police paid by residents. Same as parts of South America where there are 1000s of “private guns”. Not ideal but better than nothing.
It may come to that if the police do not get off their backsides.
The Police started by John Peel as forces trying to protect their areas voluntarily. This progressed and spread to the whole world as government police forces. Maybe the time has come to resurrect vigilante forces to protect our own areas if the police are not going to do it? I lived in a part of London where Jewish people had vigilantes to protect their children on the way to school etc.
Cant say I’ve heard a peep from the so-called Tory Right during all the last 12 years over the long-since-underway change in the Police from guardian of the Queens Peace to tool for socially engineering the UK’s instantiation of a global population/culture/economy.
Like Priti Patel’s open borders such matters’ inviolability seems to be off limits for serious discussion. Almost as if there is an unacknowledged agenda in play with the genteel charade of voting at the local school hall a sop to the dog-walking worthies of Rushdie-land.
I wonder how much more highly taxed we need to be? How much new counterfeit money (despite this tax) should be printed and inflation created before journalists stop blaming “underfunding” for public sector failure.
The NHS has wasted billions in paying for eight times the price for the Pfizer vax. There have been criminal proceedings agains Pfizer but this is what happens in nationalised industries where profit is not as important as the tax payers will pay.
The author states that there has been no bout of national introspection spawned by last week’s horrors. As a paid-up member of the tier that manages such faux-spontaneous ‘conversations’ carried out for the rest of us by the same metropolitan voices who review the papers, pop up on Question Time or take the country’s pulse behind a paywall the lady really shouldnt protest so much.
A most important point has been raised. We have a choice of descending into lawlessness and living in fear or the government sorting the problem by employing the right person to do it with no time spent on woke stuff and LGBT matters. We need to deal with robberies, violence, murder, rape etc. not using the police force to deal with spurious matters such as hate speech, wrong pronouns etc.The people in this country need physical protection first and foremost with stiff sentences handed out for those who break the law. Why have laws that cannot be upheld?
I could wax lyrical about this, but someone else has done it already (shame Mr. Oxley didn’t find it). If you want to know why 21st Century policing is FUBAR, I suggest you check this podcast out. The accompanying book and blog is also very good.
https://www.tjfbook.com/podcast
Prison still works because locking criminals up reduces their opportunities to commit further crimes. And the longer they are locked up, the greater the reduction.
A good way to deal with the situation and that I would implement in the unlikely situation I was in power,good thing im not,is every person who starts to transgress the law,after 3 infractions,which is a sign that they are going down the path of lifetime criminality,I would have the male ones vasectomised so they can never pass on their criminal genes,and it would make them sad which is good. Yes,I know this is eugenics,so be thankful I don’t hold power then. Further I would have any young woman who has born.a child by them forcibly sterilised,just to be nasty really. After all the females are complicit in this criminality by enabling it. I don’t want the death penalty brought back but I find the argument against it,the one used in the 1960s specious.
If there is no death penalty there will be less serious crime and murders because criminals will know they will be shown mercy so they will forbear from the coup de grace on their victim. I turn this round on its head,anyone who commits a murder/very very horrible serious crime and is in no way deterred by the knowledge that the punishment for such is death is so stupid that they don’t merit grace and forbearance. The thing is removing the death penalty does not seem to have deterred many from murder but neither does the implementation of the death penalty. As the saying goes you can’t cure stupid.
Now,aren’t you glad I don’t have any power. I am.
It should be pretty obvious to someone who can stand right back and assess the history of leadership.
The first rulers were criminals – whoever was best at intimidating everyone into handing everything over of course – it’s a no brainer!
If you are a sufficiently terrifying criminal you can get everyone to tell you that you are not and that you are wonderful and it is all because of God and they will die for you since its the only way not to draw the wrong kind of attention, but have the hair tousled by a happy monster instead. Nice eh? Makes your kids safer.
That is how the baseness of the State and the Government was assured from the start and apart from the fact that the conformity resulting from a history of repression – now unnoticed but still continual – is a form of integrated fear strong enough to cause anger at the threat of discord represented by non-conformity so the conformist eradicates the need for the criminal intimidation to show itself, but it is always ready in the wings in “The National Interest”.
This form of rule has never changed.
Until we have democracy proper, whereby the non-criminals take over we are condemned to live in an unavoidable ethos of moral inversion – we are the opposite of what we say we are when push comes to shove.
It is too terrible to ask, except I must, so tell me reader who is more deserving of jail between – first – the people who set up the society to be indifferent to the mass atrocities inflicted on innocent civilians and women and children in the middle east – second – the people who did them or – third – this foul wretch who killed a defenceless old man.
From this you will see that, despite the imaginary halos over our heads, in truth we are completely ok with mass murder, let alone individual examples, in fact through our insuperable indifference to justice we contentedly assist in the destruction of people like Assange and Manning who – oddly – believed that our society was not so merciless and pitiless that it wouldn’t do something about these awful crimes when they found out. Oh dear, Julian and Chelsea, bad mistake eh?
All that happens is we become ostensibly outraged when something bad may happen to us, but not otherwise- so we ensure widespread cynical cruelty because of this double standard which means we have absolutely no objection to the principle, just ostensibly, so that is what we must get is it not?
until injustice to one is actually recognised by us as injustice to all and we stand up, we stand no chance. The Police are just like us you see, because they are us!
When the baby wants something it doesn’t care what suffering may be involved in getting it, but that changes when it grows up – usually.
The problem is the Big Baby, who still wants what it wants because it wants it and still doesn’t see why the suffering of others is relevant to the getting of it – that is actually the military ethic if you think about it, so ponder that.
This was the original Ruler – the Big baby – and he is still here and praised to the heights and some in society are the same mentality as him- so – you do the math.
Britain is second to none in its adoration of all things military wouldn’t you say, well they will not be the only ones to kill will they?
My wager with myself is that – so perfectly inverted are we – nobody will get any of this.
Why are there two disabilities that are still used to describe events and people in a negative way? “Blind” as in the title of this piece and “tone deaf” which is used in Unherd articles on a regular basis. Is it because people with a sensory loss such as being blind or being deaf find it difficult to complain or is it simply because people out there do not understand how hurtful and nasty they are being when they use these terms – they just don’t think!
Time to wake up and smell the coffee!! People with a sensory loss are taking back the words that describe their disability in the same way others have. Find new terms to use and stop being lazy!
Do you also object to the use of the phrase “blind justice”? It’s a very old and important principle!
The “wake up and smell the coffee” is a pretty obvious indicator that this is a wind up. A blind man could see it.