The Trusty Servant

On 17 January 1980, a few days before his 81st birthday, Lord Denning, then Master of the Rolls, delivered his judgment on the Birmingham Six, accused of bombing pubs (page 323 at C) “If the six men win, it will mean that the police were guilty of perjury, that they were guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were involuntary and were improperly admitted in evidence: and that the convictions were erroneous … This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say: It cannot be right that these actions should go any further.” The first part of this analysis was entirely correct. Unfortunately, he underestimated the extent of the police’s enthusiasm to convict the obvious suspects (a group of five Irishmen detained trying to board the Belfast ferry and another man who had seen them off at the station). The men were not finally acquitted until 1991.

Even longer ago, I remember Robert Mark cleaning up the Met. I was greatly impressed by his integrity and determination at the time (and enjoyed his 1978 autobiography, ISBN 0002160323).

Unfortunately, the natural trend of any service organisation is downwards. It is classic Red Queen stuff ( “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”, Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter II). Even within service organisations, the police service is a special case. The problem is that everyone is unpleasant to the police. Burglars, hooligans and white-collar criminals obviously hate them, but so do “law-abiding” motorists, who think it outrageous that they were stopped for speeding.

In any embattled group, loyalty becomes the highest virtue, and that inevitably extends to not ratting on bad behaviour by your colleagues. So John Stevens made his reputation (before he became Commissioner) helping to clean up the Met all over again. This time it was harder – the bad apples had got better at avoiding detection, avoiding leaving enough evidence for prosecution, and being vigorous in defending themselves.

Sadly, as I watched Ian Blair defending his officers for shooting the wholly innocent Jean Charles De Menezes on a tube train at Stockwell, obstructing access by the IPCC to the crime scene, mislaying the CCTV tapes, taking no disciplinary action, and finally promoting Cressida Dick, the gold commander at the time, I could see another clean-up becoming necessary by one of his successors.

Certainly, the record of the police since 9/11 has been lamentable. The security services have been even worse. There have been well-publicised arrests, but usually of the wrong people (the Great Ricin Plot 2003 – with no ricin and no convictions; the 2004 Old Trafford bomb plot – 400 police in dawn raids manage to uncover some Manchester United t-shirts and old ticket stubs; the 2006 Forest Gate spectacular – 250 police and the innocent, unarmed Mohammed Addulkahar shot in shoulder; etc).

Certainly, there have been a handful of successful prosecutions, but with the extraordinary expenditure by GCHQ, MI5, and MI6, and the even more extraordinary, and little-understood powers they already have, and use, to tap into the minutiae of every citizen’s life, I think we are entitled to expect rather more.

Then there has been the repeated and ludicrous over-hyping of the dangers. Ian Blair said that the car bomb outside Tiger Tiger on 29 June 2007 would have caused destruction and death on a scale London had not seen before if it had not been defused (by his brave policemen). Complete drivel. It had no chance of going off. Cans of petrol and cylinders of gas do not explode, they burn. If you want an explosion, a little more sophistication is needed. The bomb-makers were ludicrously incompetent, as was amply demonstrated when they tried to drive their next “car bomb” into a Glasgow airport terminal and succeeded only in causing a minor fire.

Of course, the whole terrorist scare is ludicrously overblown. The number of casualties is relatively trivial, compared, for example, with medical negligence or car accidents, but relentless media hype seems to have succeeded in scaring the once phlegmatic British.

These idle reflections were prompted by Alex Carlile, the “Independent Reviewer of Terrorist Legislation” explaining on the Today Programme this morning that we should seriously consider giving the government the 90-days internment powers it seeks, or maybe even longer. He felt that the issue was simple: no one should be imprisoned without trial for a day longer than necessary, or for a day less.

Fortunately, I was in my bath, recovering from my morning run, or I would have fallen off my chair. Has he read any history, or done any homework? Is he totally naive? Why not get rid of Habeas Corpus and defence lawyers whilst he is at it? More to the point, why on earth was he appointed the independent reviewer – well I guess that last one is easy!

I do have considerable faith in the judiciary. But they are not going to get really tough with the police and start routinely denying requests to keep terrorism suspects imprisoned without trial (absent compelling and detailed justification) until after some notorious mistakes. Given that most suspects are poor Moslems who are unlikely to strike the press as appealing victims, it could take years before the police and security services’ evidence is treated with appropriate scepticism. At least the current one month limit provides some kind of backstop.