Comment: The Met’s Stephen Lawrence outrage is the just the tip of the iceberg
By Des Brown
In May 1977, six former members of the Metropolitan Police's obscene publications squad were jailed having accepted £100,000 a year (over £640,000 in today's money) from porn dealers.
Detective chief superintendent Alfred Moody and commander Wallace Virgo were sent down for 12 years each. The judge, Justice Mars Jones, paid tribute to Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Robert Mark for his persistence in exposing the corruption, claiming he had "done a great service in tackling this problem". He also praised the press, without whom "it is doubtful whether much of what we have heard would have come to light". He added: "The whole country owes them a debt." Condemning the officers, he said the "cancer of corruption which existed in the obscene publications squad has now been exposed and exorcised".
On taking over the Metropolitan Police in 1972, Sir Robert Mark famously remarked that "a good police force is one that catches more criminals than it employs". He was referring to the culture of corruption – notably in the obscene publications squad – deeply ingrained from constables right up to chief superintendents. Malpractice and dishonesty overshadowed the whole of the CID. The Met then was 'self-regulated' – all allegations of corruption being investigated internally, meaning that bent CID officers would investigate bent CID officers.
The classic response at the time to revelations of corruption was that the officers in question were one or two 'bad apples' (there's even a 1976 episode of The Sweeney called Bad Apple) when, in reality, it was an entire orchard.
Were he alive today Sir Robert would have found some aspects of New Scotland Yard different and depressingly familiar at the same time. There has been a frenzy of revelations regarding bribed police officers not investigating the News of the World phone hacking scandal. There are reports that the special demonstration squad (SDS) infiltrated political groups that sought to expose corruption in the Met and campaigned for justice for people who had died whilst in police custody. There are allegations by former undercover officer Peter Francis on Channel 4's Dispatches that undercover officers attempted to discredit the family of Stephen Lawrence to cover up their own failings. The New York Times reported on June 24th that the "allegations lent new momentum to a case that has entangled successive British governments and has come to epitomize a wider pattern of disarray, malfeasance and corruption that has dogged Scotland Yard for years".
Simon Jenkins in The Guardian on Monday went so far as to describe this world as "a murkier culture of specialised units, secret operations and semi-private militias….a world of guns, surveillance, infiltration and espionage. Its officers are loyal to each other, but that is all. Their ends justify their multifarious means. In the Lawrence case, it appears the end was to protect the reputation of the police from justified criticism."
QC Mike Mansfield was on the Today programme yesterday calling for a Leveson- style inquiry, but I doubt that would lead anywhere significant. Another 1970s phrase springs to mind: closing ranks.
All of this alludes to the bad old days of policing. The obscene publications squad, the West Midlands serious crime squad and the special patrol group (SPG) were all discredited and disbanded in the 1970s and 1980s. The West Midlands serious crime squad are synonymous with the miscarriage of justice that was the Birmingham Six and the SPG with the death of teacher Blair Peach in 1979. Nowadays, all that is remembered of the SPG is a reference in the 'Constable Savage' sketch in Not the Nine O’clock News.
It is true that most constabularies the length of the UK are now miles better than they were back in the dark days of the 1960s and 1970s and have done a great job in reducing crime. Most officers are a credit to the force. This isn't a question of the integrity or honesty of the police service in England and Wales. The litany of malpractice over the past 40 years usually leading to two specific forces: the Metropolitan Police and South Yorkshire Police. The September 2012 report into the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in 1989 revealed a list of malpractice by the South Yorkshire police which sounded straight out of Red Riding.
For those not familiar with these fantastic quartet of novels and trilogy of Channel 4 films, it's best summed up by an exchange in Red Riding: 1980 (broadcast 2009), between assistant Manchester chief constable Peter Hunter, who's been sent to discover why the West Yorkshire Police (after five years and 13 murders) haven't caught the Yorkshire Ripper, and reverend Laws (Peter Mullan), who clearly dislikes and distrusts the police. Hunter asks: "So, when someone kicks down your door, shoots the dog and rapes the wife, who you going to call?" Laws responds: "Certainly not the West Yorkshire Police. They'd already be there, wouldn't they."
However, it is the South Yorkshire Police which held our attention last attention. The publication of the Hillsborough Independent Panel report into the disaster which claimed the lives of 96 fans in April 1989 concluded of the SYP:
"It is evident from the disclosed documents that from the outset SYP sought to establish a case emphasising exceptional levels of drunkenness and aggression among Liverpool fans, alleging that many arrived at the stadium late, without tickets and determined to force entry.
"Eight years after the disaster it was revealed publicly for the first time that statements made by SYP officers were initially handwritten as 'recollections', then subjected to a process of 'review and alteration' involving SYP solicitors and a team of SYP officers.
"Some 116 of the 164 statements identified for substantive amendment were amended to remove or alter comments unfavourable to SYP."
In most ways, the Met is a much better organisation than when Robert Mark took charge. However, the scandals are actually far worse Whereas the police corruption scandals of the 1970s were associated simply with money (the obscene publications squad) or officers doing the wrong thing for what they believed was the right reason in the intense of heat of the moment (the West Midlands serious crime squad), the current revelations are actually far more worrying and dangerous in their implications. Now it's characterised by its sheer misanthropy and self preservation. The killings of Jean Charles de Menezes and Mark Duggan, for which no one has been held to account, and the current Peter Francis allegations are just two examples. In comparison, no-one actually died in the police corruption scandals of the 1960s and early 1970s. And in regard to the South Yorkshire Police, nothing in the litany of police malpractice of the 1970s compares to the negligence of Hillsborough.
On TV, the UCOS team in New Tricks or the fictional constabulary of Midsomer are the ideal coppers we all wish the police force would be: jovial, totally honest and loyal to the service. In the real world, the picture is continues to be depressingly different.
Des Brown is a blogger behind Be Not Afeard the Isle is Full of Noises, about the cultural, social and political life of Great Britain. He also writes for the Newcastle Free Press and The Moscow Times.
The opinions in politics.co.uk's Comment and Analysis section are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the website or its owners.
