IN HIS DIMBLEBY lecture this week, Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, raised an ancient taboo and brought it crashing down, truncheon-like, on decades of class snobbery.
Most educated, middle-class people, he declared, are simply too snooty to join the police. When potential recruits claimed they lacked the “courage” to join the boys in blue, “what they actually mean, by and large, is that they thought that, interesting as it was, they were of too superior a class or educational background”. Class divisions may be crumbling elsewhere, but the British police force, he pointed out, is still primarily composed of the “striving lower-middle class, predominantly white, predominantly male”.
Sir Ian, of course, is partly talking of his own experience. As an Oxford- educated, upper middle-class, poetry-quoting intellectual and apostle for multiculturalism, he is about as far from the traditional image of PC Plod as it is possible to get without being a Rastafarian. Famously, he was once spotted discussing the theory of evolution with novelist Ian McEwan at a Hampstead party. Robocop he isn’t.
But by acknowledging that he is himself an unlikely policeman, Sir Ian has identified one of the central social flaws in British policing. The police are, and were always meant to be, protectors of the middle class; they were never intended to be recruited from that class. “The police are the public and the public are the police,” declared Sir Robert Peel. In truth, only one portion of the public was expected to join the ranks. The first of Peel’s nine principles of policing stated: “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.” The preservation of public tranquillity was paramount; the police were there to protect the property and peace of mind of the Victorian bourgeoisie.
In Sir Ian’s words, the police service “was not intended to be an occupation for a gentleman”. Peelers or bobbies, as the affectionately condescending nicknames suggest, were essentially servants. The policeman was expected to get on with his job, defer to his social superiors, defend the Establishment and not complain, which is what made Gilbert & Sullivan’s take on police life so wryly subversive:
“When constabulary duty’s to be done
(to be done),
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one
(happy one).”
Dixon of Dock Green, with his comforting working-class accent (“evenin’ awl”) and bicycle clips, is the mythical British policeman: avuncular and wise, tough on the dangerous classes, reassuring for the middle classes, and never remotely uppity towards the ruling classes. He never thumped anyone, never swore and he knew his place. You wouldn’t catch Dixon of Dock Green expatiating on evolutionary theory with trendy novelists.
In the heyday of British policing, the copper was regarded as a hallowed figure, upholding dominant moral values. One historian has described them as “domestic missionaries”. Yet they remained domestics, regarded by the middle class as social inferiors with flat feet and ballbearing eyes: above reproach, but essentially below the salt.
In more recent popular culture, fictional policemen like Adam Dalgleish and Inspector Morse are portrayed as cultured, intellectual types, devotees of classical music and poetry. But in reality the educated middle classes still hold the police force at arm’s length. The upper ranks of the police force have never been accorded the social cachet they deserve. When a soldier is commissioned, he becomes an officer and, in theory, a gentleman; no such social elevation is conferred on a promoted policemen. Margaret Thatcher spoke wistfully of creating an officer class, but without success.
Police work is intellectually challenging and comparatively well paid, yet it lags behind other areas of public service in attracting talented graduate recruits of all social backgrounds. In part, this is because in this country they are cherished in theory, but patronised in practice. Part of the Middle England animus against police today comes from a perception that they are oppressing the middle classes for middle-class crimes like speeding, drink driving and taking drugs, when they should be clamping down on the criminal (for which read: lower) classes.
For most of the past 200 years, the British police have been expected to get on with crime fighting; to be seen and not heard, and if possible not seen either. “The test of police efficiency is the absence of crimes and disorder and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them,” said Peel in 1829. Thus, the force has usually evolved in isolation, with its own “canteen culture” and language.
As Sir Ian pointed out this week, the police have “always been separate and silent . . . broadly left alone to get on with the job”. The management structure has stood virtually unchanged since the 19th century and at times, separated from wider British society, the force has festered with corruption, racism and sex discrimination.
Sir Ian Blair has been accused of political correctness and pandering to ethnic minorities, when he should be putting police on the beat and crooks behind bars. Doubtless his comments about condescending middle-class attitudes towards the police will be seen as elitist social engineering, a bid to refashion PC Dixon with an RP accent, a taste for modern novels and a university degree.
Posh police are not the solution to crime, but the attempt to make the force more reflective of society as a whole is unanswerably the correct one. How can police tackle racism and Islamic radicalism with so few minorities in police ranks? How can gay-bashing be dealt with if homophobia flourishes on the force? Above all, how can the police become an efficient crime-fighting body, with all the intelligence and organisation that requires, if the educated middle classes look down their noses at them?
The British police force must adapt or fail. That is not just a theory of evolution; it is an open and shut case.
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