What can the bloodstains on clothing tell you about a murder? I had no idea when in 1979 at my first MP’s constituency surgery in Bakewell an elderly couple tipped open a old suitcase onto my desk. Out tumbled clothes that their son had been wearing when a woman was murdered at a cemetery where he worked.
The bloodstains had faded to grey but my constituents argued that the pattern showed he had encountered the dying woman, but not killed her.
Their 29-year-old MP had (and still has) no useful opinion on who killed Wendy Sewell, but when I looked into it I could see that the conviction of this 17-year-old with learning difficulties had been unsafe. The police had broken important rules. After being questioned for nine hours without a solicitor, his “confession” was in language he would never have used. More surprising than the fact that words had been put into a suspect’s mouth was the realisation that officers had been so idiotic as to think it wouldn’t be noticed.
Nearly three decades after the murder — and through no agency of mine, though I did my best — his conviction was overturned and he was released.
After that I began to notice everywhere, as I had not noticed before, what shockingly low standards of police competence and honesty were passing almost unremarked. Later I kicked myself for believing the police’s story about Hillsborough; and I’m ashamed of having looked away from troubling allegations of police brutality at Orgreave, just because I didn’t support the miners.
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Through the 1980s a few of us argued unsuccessfully against the Metropolitan Police’s campaign of sending “pretty policemen” into bars and toilets to arrest any gay man who smiled at them more than once, wrecking thousands of lives. Later, as a journalist, I found myself able do more. As soon as dupes like Zac Goldsmith and Tom Watson started flirting with flimsy nonsense about a “top-people’s paedophile ring”, it was clear that the police totally lost the plot. I never believed stories about Leon Brittan, Field Marshal Lord Bramall and Ted Heath, shook my head sadly when Paul Gambaccini was axed from my BBC radio programme, seriously doubted allegations against Cliff Richard, and watched in dismay as Harvey Proctor — entirely innocent — lost career, home and reputation after officers lied to him about his privacy and then tipped off the media.
Three years ago I wrote on these pages about a horrific murder that was getting scant attention. Bijan Ebrahimi, a vulnerable person in obvious need of support, was arrested and taken away by the Bristol police on no evidence except that a local rabble had decided (utterly wrongly) that he was a paedophile. Without charge the police then delivered him back to the rabble. A neighbour beat Mr Ebrahimi to death and burnt his body. My Times colleague Sean O’Neill and I were among many who did not want to let this story drop. Misconduct proceedings, assisted by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, were completed this week. Two officers have been dismissed and two jailed.
From that early MP’s constituency case, two impressions have stayed with me, to be reinforced again and again over the years. First, Britain’s police seem able to collude without fear of any colleague ever breaking ranks. Hillsborough offers breathtaking proof of that. The great scandal of Hillsborough is not that a police force wanted to cover up: it was that it was possible to cover up.
The second impression is of low calibre: a sheer lack of intelligence, all the way to the top. Police officers are paid better and can retire earlier than schoolteachers. How are we ending up with such poor standards of elementary competence?
From my balcony in London 37 years after that first Bakewell surgery, I watch the Met’s river police doing the marine equivalent of wheelies all day, roaring up and down wearing black rubber and pretending to be paramilitaries on what they doubtless call exercises but which curiously coincide with sunny weather; and I reflect on those early lessons.
“The great scandal of Hillsborough was that it could be covered up at all
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Something has gone very badly wrong with policing in Britain. I doubt it’s recent and suspect it’s been gradual. I wonder whether it’s partly just that these days we notice, and worry that in the absence of anything sufficiently pressing for the media to call a “crisis” we’re going to carry on, watching the haemorrhaging of respect for our police and nervous about saying or doing anything that might make us look like left-wing pansies who are soft on crime. Then we sadly conclude that for politicians and journalists, discretion is the better part of valour.
I hope not. A straw in the wind was how much public admiration Theresa May won for getting herself booed by the Police Federation. For the fact is that, just as the marketisation that our health service needs can probably only be pushed through by a left-of-centre government, it is only governments of the right that have the political elbowroom to tackle the police.
Having inveighed for years against the proliferation of public inquiries I never thought to find myself calling for one. But politicians are going to need not only expert thought and advice, but political cover, for wholesale police reform. We used to have royal commissions, and they used to matter. Is the time not ripe for a big, three-year Royal Commission on Policing in England and Wales?
We cannot know what answers it might propose but we can take a stab at the questions that could give it focus. There should be no attempt to reopen particular issues of alleged police malfeasance, and these should be examined only as evidence-gathering. The big questions should be around (1) structure; (2) recruitment; (3) leadership; and (4) culture. These are obviously linked.
Is dividing the police into 43 forces compatible with the right command structure and cultural change? How real is local accountability? Are police and crime commissioners (their election went almost unnoticed on Thursday) worth the candle?
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Are procedures for trouble-shooting and investigation sufficiently arm’s length? Are the customary arrangements for disciplining, suspension, dismissal, sick-leave and early retirement too forgiving? How might we reward rather than punish officers who speak out?
Should there be procedures for acting on courts’ verdicts and judgments where these cast doubt on the honesty or competence of police evidence?
All these questions imply that something is wrong with the police. It is. Badly wrong: let’s make no bones about that. Is there any willingness at the top to do anything about it? I honestly don’t know.