Department of Law, University of Leeds

POLICING - UNIT 1 - THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF POLICING

Part 1:4 - 'STANDARDISING THE POLICE'

David S. Wall, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies

Objectives - To engender an understanding of the mechanisms which led the various models of police organisation known as the 'new police' to become, or be seen as, a unitary organisation. Namely, the depoliticisation of the police and the development of the 'English Policing Image.'

Critchley, T.A., (1967) A History of the Police in England and Wales 900 - 1966, Constable, London. - Chapters 6 - 9.

Emsley, C., (1996) The English Police, 2nd Edition, Wheatsheaf Harvester, London. - Chapters 3-6.
Rawlings, P. (2000) Policing: A Short History, Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

Reiner, R., (2000) The Politics of the Police, 3rd Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Reiner, R. (1995) "From Sacred to Profane: The Thirty Years' War of the British Police", Policing and Society, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 121-128.

Wall, D.S. (1998) The Chief Constables of England and Wales: The socio-legal history of a criminal
justice elite, Aldershot: Dartmouth. Chapter 3.

(a) The constitutional position of police organisations in the mid-to-late 19th century. - There existed three main types of police force after the County and Borough police Act, 1856, the Borough, County and Metropolitan forces. (There also existed the City of London Police who were small in number). Each was subjected to similar managerial processes.

• Police Authorities - In the boroughs Watch Committee were responsible for all aspects of policing (including operational policy). In the counties Standing Joint Committees (Quarter Sessions composed of magistrates before 1889) were responsible for the administration but not operational policy of policing in the counties. The latter function rested with the Chief Constable. The Home Secretary is the police authority for the Metropolitan Police Area.
• Management and accountability - The Watch Committees delegated powers to a trusted head constable in the Boroughs but (technically) retain overall control. Watch Committees were composed of elected councillors. Standing Joint Committees in the Counties appointed chief constable to manage county police. Standing Joint Committees were composed equally of elected county councillors and magistrates. Metropolitan Commissioners pass policy decisions down the chain of command via intermediaries. Until 1976 Metropolitan Police Commissioners were ex-officio Magistrates.
• Home Secretary - The Home Secretary had overall responsibility for general policing matters but local (and the greater) responsibility rested with police authorities. Except in the Metropolitan Police Area (where the Home Secretary was, and still is, the police authority).

Special constables being briefed in the late 19th Century

• Police Expenses Act, 1874 - Increased the treasury grant from a quarter (as of 1856 County and Borough Police Act) to a half. Problem of small borough forces arose again.
• Municipal Corporations Act 1877 - Prohibited new small boroughs (with less than 20K population) from forming police forces.
• Local Government Act 1888 - Did reduce number of the smallest borough forces by forcing them to amalgamate with larger forces (usually county).
• Police Pensions 1890 - The police were given a legal right to a pension after twenty five years service. Was previously discretionary. The problem was that pension funds were discrete to each force and problems arose where a person moved from one force to another.
• Police Weekly Rest Day Act 1910 - Gave police officers a day off each week. The Police Weekly Rest Day Committee was very important in that it highlighted the lack of understanding that the Home Office had about both policing and police officers. It also highlighted the ignorance of politicians about the origins of chief constables.

The police officer who needed standardising
(c. 1887)

• Increased demands made of the police due to the war - The First World War placed a many new demands and responsibilities upon the police which the they were hard pressed to fulfil. The fact that many officers left their forces to go to war didn't help the situation. All that were left were retired and ex-constables who were drafted in. A few officers were prevented from leaving the police and some of the part-time voluntary Special Constabulary were employed on a temporary full-time basis.
• A great number of county Chief Constables rejoined their old regiments for the duration of the war and the Police Review (which was running a campaign to encourage the appointment of all Chief Constables from within the police) commented that as the forces had run perfectly well without the (externally recruited) Chief Constables during the War, why then reinstate them ?
• The response to those demands: Police Union and militancy - In 1916 the Police Union was formed, the Government of the time was against it. The government was systematically discrediting labour organisations as communist. On Tue. 27 Aug. 1917 the Police Union threatened action unless the following conditions were reached.

• Police pay was increased
• A sacked member reinstated
• The Police Union was officially recognised

• 6000 officers came out on strike. The Commissioner made promises and averted further action but became the scapegoat and was removed from office. He left along with his promises. Further action followed a year later.

• Recommendations - Desborough was very broad in its recommendations and sought to standardise many aspects of police organisation.
• Standardised police force organisation and conditions - Police pay, for example, was for the first time, not to be related the pay of an agricultural labourer.
• Internally recruited chief officers - The principle of recruiting chief officers from within the police was accepted (although not adhered to for many years) (Regulation 9).
• Police Act 1919 - Before the Desborough committee could report the Home Secretary rushed the 1919 Police Act through Parliament. It didn't make provision for a police union but for the creation of a police federation.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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"Constable says - you were doing forty miles an hour, Sir"
Motorist whispers, "Make it seventy, I'm trying to sell him the thing"

• Royal Commission 1929 and the Select Committee on Police Forces Amalgamation. - Identified the problems of the police as being rooted in the quality of senior command.
• Trenchard and the Hendon Police College - Trenchard proposed a police college to train and fast track future senior officers and solve the Metropolitan Polices' problem of finding suitable senior officers.
• The effects of Hendon on the UK police. - Created great disquiet (as the promotion of ordinary officers was frozen to allow the Hendon graduates to fast track). Hendon closed at the outbreak of war and never re-opened. In the 1960s the graduates occupied the most senior ranks in the UK police.

• War-time regulations - The introduction of war-time regulations decreased the powers of local government over policing and enabled central government to increase its own control (especially over the appointment of the Chief Constable).
• Regulation thirty nine - Gave the Home Office much control over policing, control which it retained after the war.
• War-time structures - regional forces - During the second World War the police were reorganised into large regional structures that were composed of amalgamations of local county and borough forces. Whilst most of the large wartime forces were disbanded after the war they did tend to seed the idea for larger police areas and demonstrated that they could be operated.

Offences Against the Person Act 1861
Police Expenses Act 1874
Municipal Corporations Act 1877 and 1882
Police Pensions Act 1890
Police Weekly Rest Day Act 1910
Police Act 1919
War-Time Regulations

The Position of police after the County and Borough Police Act 1856 - There were three separate traditions of policing, in boroughs, counties and Metropolitan police each with different command structures and accountability.

• The police officers (all men) were civilians in uniform, the latter being a tradition that remains to this day.
• Between 1856 and 1918 various legislation improved the lot of the police and its organisation.
• 1874 police expenses act increased treasury grant to one half.
• 1888 Local Govt. Act reduced smaller forces.
• 1890 Police Pensions Act gave police officers the right to a pension after 25 years service.
• 1910 Police Weekly Rest-day Act gave them a day off a week.

The Police Union was formed and there were two police strikes after demands for better pay and conditions were made. The police were bought off with hollow promises. and although the Desborough Committee was formed to look into police conditions of service the government pre-empted its report by passing the 1919 Police Act which prohibited the police from being unionised.

The Desborough Committee looked into all aspects of police organisation and made recommendations about pay and conditions - it started to see policing as a career and a sort of profession. However the Home Secretary could make rules about what the police should do but it was up to local chief constables and their police committees to enforce them.

The inter-war years were important in the development of policing.

• The police didn't join the general strike in 1925 which indicated a shift in their overall ideological position from being anti-government (or pro-labour) to pro-government.
• The problem of controlling the police has always been the problem of controlling the police managers (senior ranks). This was one of the finding of the 1929 Royal Commission into the Metropolitan Police. As a result of the Commission, Trenchard grafted a hand picked officer cadre onto the Metropolitan Police. Many of these officers later left the Met to enter senior positions in the provincial police.

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