About 80 years ago, the historian G.M. Young asserted with nationalistic complacency that the most efficient institutions in Britain were the joint stock banks, railways, trade unions and police, all founded a century earlier by the same Conservative government. We may pass over the fall from grace of the first three, and here consider the condition of that once-proud figure, the British policeman.
He has had a terrible week. The inquest verdict on the victims of the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster has been set aside, after revelations that senior officers systematically falsified and suppressed evidence to transfer blame from themselves to the victims. Elsewhere it has been discovered that in October an officer masqueraded as a tourist and claimed himself to have heard the Tory chief whip abusing policemen at the Downing Street gates, an allegation that forced Andrew Mitchell?s resignation as chief whip.
Sir Brian Leveson, in his recent report on press excesses, was naive enough to acquit the Metropolitan Police of anything worse than incompetence in conducting its abortive 2007 inquiries into phone-hacking at the News of the World. But other informed people take a bleaker view, recalling the astonishing parade of serving and former senior officers who attended Rupert Murdoch?s parties.
Police leaks to the media, either for cash or self-serving motives, have often resulted in innocent men being treated in print as known criminals. I remember the old Fleet Street sage Bill Deedes shaking his head as he said: ?Once upon a time, if the police brought in a suspect for questioning, his identity was kept secret until he was, or was not, charged. Not any more.?
More than 30 years ago, when police detection skills were being discussed at a country dinner party, I was intrigued by the cynicism of the views expressed by a barrister present. Today Igor Judge, the brief in question, is Lord Chief Justice. I often wonder if he now thinks better of the force, and doubt it. Juries have become chronically sceptical about police evidence, and who can blame them?
Again and again, officers are found to have told less than the truth about their actions, as some did during the inquiry into the 2005 killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, an entirely innocent man mistaken for a terrorist, at Stockwell tube station. terrorist, at Stockwell tube station.
So-called police ?marksmen? have several times shot dead deranged men who could have been taken into custody with minimal risk to officers or the public. A striking example was lawyer Mark Saunders. In 2008, he was trapped in his house in Markham Square, Chelsea, and armed only with a shotgun, but a senior officer is reported to have told his team: ?He?s been taking pops at the Old Bill and that changes the rules.? A coroner?s jury accepted police explanations for shooting Saunders, but some of us thought the episode iniquitous.
The force long ago abandoned the doctrine of minimum force. Officers now seem to rejoice in posturing in paramilitary garb, heavily armed and even hooded. The latter is especially indefensible in a democracy.
Successive home secretaries have striven to get a grip on the police but all have failed. The coalition government has made an attempt ? admirable in principle, though botched in execution ? to impose closer scrutiny and supervision through the introduction of elected local police commissioners.
Few people doubt that the Mitchell leaks were prompted by malice towards the Tories for their attempted police reforms. The chief whip admits using intemperate words to galvanise officers to open the Downing Street gates. But the allegation that Mr Mitchell called them ?plebs? ? the capital charge against him ? never sounded convincing. Much more likely, a disaffected officer said: ?He talked to us as if we were just plebs.?
David Cameron is right to treat the incident seriously. If any officers on Downing Street duty that day suspected that the colleague who leaked the story had told a pack of lies, they do not seem to have shared their views. Attempts by the Commissioner of the Met to argue that the case against Mr Mitchell remains broadly intact deserves contempt, and would be so treated by any judge.
We should not idealise the past as a golden age of policing. Some innocent men were hanged, suspects routinely beaten up. Corruption was endemic, especially in the Met: Dixon of Dock Green was probably on the take. What was different then is that malpractices were tidied away in the closet. There was a social compact. The police accepted a duty to protect the middle classes ? even sometimes from the consequences of their own minor misdemeanours. Instead, they focused on keeping the criminal class where it belonged, by means that society found it convenient not to inquire closely into.
That era is long gone: some modern policemen enjoy giving the middle class a hard time, which is a bad thing, although on the credit side it is almost unthinkable that social privilege would now allow an offender to escape justice.
It has been recognised for decades that policing is dogged by poor leadership. Few senior officers would rise above the army rank of sergeant-major. The notion of creating an officer class, ringfenced from the ?canteen culture?, has often been discussed and rejected: every policeman would strongly resist it.
We are at a near-impasse: our policing culture is badly tarnished; the Police Federation?s conduct during the Mitchell saga looks even more disgraceful now than it did last month. Too many policemen are overpaid, under-managed, of doubtful competence and ? worst of all ? of indifferent honesty and integrity. It will be a sorry story if this government, like its predecessors, backs off from reform. Heaven knows, in the current climate the police have no reservoir of public trust and goodwill to draw upon. And yet policemen seem serenely confident they can see off this government too.
Many nations? policing suffers from some or all of these problems, entwined with the nature of the job. However, even G.M. Young would struggle to express satisfaction with today?s British bobby.
Tales of tarnished coppers make the case for reform, writes Max Hastings
The writer is an FT contributing editor
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