On the Beat

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 523, 1 July 1949, Page 10

On the Beat

|So much has been heard of the London "bobbie" that it was something of a relief to find that the word was not once resorted to in the BBC programme This England-The Policeman. Constable Martin is just an ordinary men, over 11 stone, over five foot 10 and with a four-inch chest expansion. He gets a living wage, can expect an adequate pension, often works divided

duty or has to make an appearance at the Magistrate’s Court at 10.0 am. after being on the beat from 10.0 p.m. to 6.0 am. Like a schoolteacher he tends to be on duty even in off-duty hours, but unlike a_ schoolteacher he hasn’t got all his exams behind him, and is forced to lick his pencil in private as well as in public. He is grilled by barristers and grumbled at by old lags, confided in by lost children and roundly abused by not-so-drunk drivers. Yet in spite of all the stings that Patient Merit (alias Constable Martin) takes from the unworthy, listeners are not left with the impression that the administration of tha law is merely a vocation and has as little, materially speaking, to offer as nursing or the devotional life. The compensations of the policeman’s lot are cleverly brought out-the feeling of security in the job and the sweet satisfaction of being always (or almost always) on the right side of the law.