Plodding on – Labour must back Britain’s police

By Toby Perkins MP

The battle lines are being drawn. Britain heads nervously towards significant public sector industrial action and the recent unrest provides a worrying backdrop. Yet one group that won’t be striking feels just as concerned and betrayed as any other group of workers. They are Britain’s police.

There are many ways in which constables stand alone as public sector workers. This includes the fact that holders of the office of constable are constantly on duty – obliged to take action should they witness law-breaking at any time of day and night. They are also banned from party political activity and legally banned from strike action.

With unprecedented levels of concern about the capacity of police forces in the face of swingeing budget cuts, and just a fortnight after the nationwide riots, there could scarcely have been a better time for me to spend a day out on the beat with Derbyshire Police’s ‘C’ division.

I had already met with Police Federation representatives three times in parliament and had met with senior officers at Derbyshire Police HQ and at Chesterfield Police station. But having heard from them about their concerns, I actually wanted to see the job first hand.

I was keen to learn more about the pressures that constables faced and in particular to learn how they felt on a night out sans alcohol. My wife also seemed to think that witnessing drinkers through clear eyes would be informative for me. I ‘shadowed’ a PC, Richard ‘Alby’ Illingworth through a twelve hour shift starting at 3pm on Friday afternoon and finishing at 3am Saturday morning.

I observed an experienced copper ‘doing his job’. His job combined many roles: a social worker, a counsellor, a traffic cop, a friendly neighbour, a detective, a professional busybody, a re-assuring presence and a last line of defence.

Amongst the many lessons I learnt, three stand out. Firstly, being asked to attend a road traffic accident when two teams were already present because we were the only ones who had a breath testing device. I had assumed that all cars would have one, but in actual fact there are far fewer devices than cars operational as a budget saving. Therefore, more officers and cars were at the accident than needed to be – an example of how spending less can lead to less efficiency, I wondered?

Secondly, I witnessed an officer spending half an hour with a teenage girl whose domestic crises kept resulting in calls for service, this time for allegedly pulling a knife on her mother. The crime detection long over, he stayed to help the girl talk through the causes of her behaviour in an effort to prevent further calls on Police time. Clearly acting to reduce the likelihood of crime in the future, I wondered whether Theresa May would have thought that this fitted in with her ‘one priority’ view of policing.

Finally, the moment when with two rival groups of young men who had been fighting inside a Chesterfield pub squared up to each other outside and that feel of violence in the air, the awareness that frightened people were looking towards ‘us’ to step forward when all your instincts told you to step back.

Throughout my time with police officers, their commitment to their job shines through. Alongside that is a real sense of betrayal at politicians in general and Theresa May and this government in particular. They are appalled at the attacks on their working conditions, with the changes to police pensions viewed particularly bitterly. They are sickened by the two faced portrayal of police forces as inherently inefficient and the pretence that the front line is protected; and they fear that they will be increasingly operationally exposed by the cuts agenda.

The police of Britain are respected and admired across the world. Implicit in that relationship is an expectation of goodwill and good faith between those who serve and those who govern. That goodwill is at risk and whilst professional police will carry on doing their duty, they do have a right to expect that Labour – the guardian of the public services – will also be at their back in the face of the Tory cuts agenda, a role we must not shirk.

My respect for the constables I met and the police force in general was only enhanced by what I saw. A good team of proud people, who in the face of provocation and under extreme pressure were resolutely…plodding on.