Evening Post. FRIDAY,JUNE 23, 1933. FROM PEEL TO TRENCHARD

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 146, 23 June 1933, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY,JUNE 23, 1933. FROM PEEL TO TRENCHARD

Whon Sir Robert Peel' created the Metropolitan Police Force by the passing in 1829 of a Bill entitled "An Act for improving the Police in and near the Metropolis," he did so in the face of strong opposition from the champions of liberty and much ridicule from the wits. But within live months after the passing of, the measure he received the Duke of Wellington's congratulations on "the entire success of the Police in London," and was able to reply as follows:—■ I am very glad indeed to hear that you think well of the Police. It has given mo from-first to last more trouble than anything I over undertook. But tho men are gaining -a knowledge of their cluties so rapidly that I am very sanguine of tho ultimate result. I want.to teach people that liberty does not consist in having your house robbed by organised gangs of ' thieves, and in leaving the principal streets of London in the nightly possession of drunken women and vagabonds. Liberty has often masqueraded in strange disguises, but its opposition to Peel's Bill was surely one of the strangest. The. friends of liberty were called upon to x defend themselves against '"Peel's Bloody Gang," but it was only the liberty of the criminal that was imperilled. A'wise measure wisely administered redeemed London almost instantaneously from the reproach of a lawlessness which today seems hardly credible. The Force which effected that transformation at once became a model for the world, and it has retained that proud position ever since. What became- "the envy of less happier lands" more than a century ago remains so still, for they have not been able, to improve upon it. So admirable has been the success of the. Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 that even in the land o£, its origin 'no- radical changes have hitherto' been found necessary. It is astonishing to read in "The Times" of May 3 that the. constitution of the London Police Force "has undergone no major structural change for 104 years." It is a wonderful'testimony to the statesmanship of. Sir Robert Peel, to the conservatism of the British genius, and to the excellence of its administration, that the measure which he put through ah unreformed Parliament in 1829 still stands substantially unamended. Jn view of the revolutionary social changes that have taken place during that long period, and especially during the last fifty years, it is indeed infinitely more surprising that the system should have continued almost unchanged than that, as "The Times" says, it should disclose "some defects, abuses even, which the public will wish to see eradicated and ' which no one will wish to defend." "The Times" was, however, presuming too much on the universality of common sense when it suggested that nobody would wish to defend the defects which time has disclosed—perhaps one ought rather to say, which time has made—in an excellent system. There. is no fear that the denunciations of "Peel's Bloody Gang" will be repealed by the champions of liberty today, but the class-conscious oratory with which Mr. George Lansbury tickled the ears of a May Day crowd in Hyde Park showed that some of them are prepared to resist reform with more up-to-date, though not less absurd, nonsense.

The occasion both of Mr. Lansburyjs outburst and of the leading article in "The Times" was the annual report of the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police which was presented to Parliament on May, 2. After.about eighteen months' experience of the . office Lord Trenchard has arrived at the conclusion that certain "changes and reforms are very necessary in order to enable the Force to keep pace with the growing demands that are made upon it by new and steadily changing conditions. One of these conditions is the increasing power of the enemy with whom the police have to deal.

The criminal, says the Commissioner, has beebmefinore skilful, more mobile, and more. scientific; and. the methods of dealing with hini must not only keep pace, but get ahead of him. Supervision and organisation are more than ever necessary; men are needed-cap-able, not only of dealing with crime as it arises, ,biit of anticipating developments and adapting the machine to meet them in advance. ... . This need is recognised in the Defence Forces, in the Civil Service, and to avery large extent in industry, and the desirability, of applying the same principle to the Polico Scrvico is now> I believe, generally accepted. i' .- ■%;-,• When Lord Trenchard speaks of "adapting the machine" to meet the new requirements, he uses an argument which in its literal sense would be.too obvious to need discussing. Everybody, not even excluding Mr. Lahsbury this time, is agreed that the mechanical equipment of the criminal must be met by a similar and, so far as possible* superior equipment of the police. A.good example was provided in the report a few months ago of the organisation of a fleet of powerful motorrcycles by which the London police were said to be paralysing the motor-stealing industry- The mechanical equipment was necessary, and so was the

equipment of the human machine with the knowledge and the skill to use it. To this extent even Mr. Lansbury will see nothing wrong in education, but it is-presumably when Lord Trenchard pleads for a higher standard of general education for the whole Force that his critic suspects him of a design to "transform the police into an upper class force." But surely it is the duty of ,a Commissioner of Police to get the best brains and the best-educated brains for the Force that he can, and that this may give one class an advantage over another is not his fault. Lord Trenchard calls attention to the remarkable fact that, though the number of boys receiving a secondary education is about four times what it was at the beginning of the century, the number of. recruits who have not carried their education beyond the elementary stage is practically unaltered and constitutes between 80 and 90 per cent, pf the total. This country, he says, should not fall behind others in insisting, upoiv a reasonable degree of preparation for the Polico Service. The'old idoa that too much mental development was likely to make a policeman discontented with his job is obsolete. A wider general education, a more intensive special education, freer promotion, anda'release of the Force from a number of. supernumerary duties are among the excellent points in this new broom's programme.