Government reviews of pay and staff, and senior resignations have destroyed rank-and-file goodwill within the force, writes SANDRA LAVILLEin London
THE PARALLELS with the 1980s are everywhere: in the burnt-out buildings, the looting, the anger of an apparently disenfranchised youth and the agonising over what caused an urban uprising which police have labelled the worst disorder in memory.
There is one significant difference, however. During the riots of the 1980s, when Brixton in south London, and Toxteth in Liverpool burned, and PC Keith Blakelock was hacked down with a machete as he fled for his life in Broadwater Farm, in north London, the police could count on full support of the government. Margaret Thatcher was in power and the police were seen as an unquestioning arm of the state.
Yesterday, as David Cameron sat around the table with home secretary Theresa May and senior police officers, the ambience was not a warm one. Relations between the country’s top police officers and the coalition government’s Conservative leadership are at an all-time low, with senior Tory sources briefing against the country’s top officers and they, in turn, speaking openly of the “stupidity” of government policy.
Cuts to frontline policing – an estimated 12,000 officers are to go as a result of budget reductions – the determination of the coalition to impose elected commissioners, the attacks on the public service pensions of both rank-and-file and senior officers and the Winsor review into pay and conditions have all served to increase tensions.
The departure of the former Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson – with his broadside against the prime minister as he went – and the withdrawal of political support from assistant police commissioner John Yates, leading to his resignation over phone hacking, heightened tensions again. The relationship between the police and the government – the authorities who should be working together to bring order to the chaos and violence – is severely fractured, if not irreparably broken.
A senior police source has said privately that the government holds the police in utter contempt and, while the service is resilient, the government is starting to lose goodwill from both rank-and-file and senior ranks. Asked to put their lives on the line night after night, the rank and file feel unsupported and vilified by the government, sources say.
This Friday the deadline closes for applications for the biggest job in UK policing – that of the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan police force.
Whoever is appointed will be the third commissioner to be appointed in three years – Sir Ian Blair was forced out by London mayor Boris Johnson, and Stephenson quit, apparently unsupported by the prime minister. The field of candidates is said by Kit Malthouse, the deputy mayor for policing in London, to be strong. But those considering applying have been weighing up the atmosphere and analysing the way the job has become a political football.
Bernard Hogan-Howe, heavily favoured by some senior Tories, is a favourite. But Cameron’s apparent desire to impose Bill Bratton, a former New York commissioner, has again infuriated those at the top of the British police.
Whatever difficult decisions were taken yesterday at the meeting to quell the fires and rage in London and other cities, the task of mending relations between the government and their law enforcers might prove an even tougher one. – ( Guardianservice)