Hendon and after
| Author | K. A. L. Parker |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8005300302 |
| Published date | 01 July 1980 |
| Date | 01 July 1980 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
K. A. L.
PARKER.
formerly
Receiver/or
the Metropolitan Police district (/967-74)
HENDON
AND
AFTER
In his article in the Police
Journal
of
January-March
1979(vol.
L11
No. I p. 15) under the heading
"Hendon
-Historic Milestone" Sir
Ranulph
Bacon, a former Hendon student who finished his
distinguished career as Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan
Police. ended his fascinating survey of what he rightly called
that
"highly controversial experiment" by wondering what would have
happened to the Metropolitan Police College but for the accident of
war. No one can say for certain, but the Metropolitan Police
and
Home Office files now available in the Public Record Office do
throw some light on the subject.
It
is now possible to give a fuller
account of official attitudes to Hendon
and
the Trenchard concept
after Lord Trenchard had resigned as Commissioner.
and
of the
considerations
that
led up to the establishment in its place of the
national college at Ryton in 1948.
Acentral figure in all this was
Sir
Philip Game, who served as
Commissionerfor over nine years, from 1935to 1945.Game made his
mark in four clearly separate periods of public service, and was an
officer of considerable distinction. He first came to the fore as a
senior staff officer in the British Army in France in the early days of
the Great War. As a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1916he underwent what
was for him at first
(but
not for long) a highly unwelcome
transformation into asenior staffofficer in the Royal Flying Corps.
This was the result of an urgent plea by Brigadier-General Trenchard
(as he was then) to
Sir
Douglas
Haigfor
afirst-rate staffofficer to sort
things
out
at the newly established headquarters of the Royal Flying
Corps, of which he was in command. This Game did so successfully
that
he remained Trenchard's right hand man not only during the
war
but
through
all the post-war battles first to preserve and then to
develop the Royal Air Force. Game eventually retired from the
Air Force as Air Vice-Marshal, having been Air Member for
Personnel
and
one of the most senior officers in the R.A.F. for
several years. He then embarked on his third period of special
responsibility, as Governor of New
South
Wales. There he soon
found himself in the midst of the most bitter political controversy,
and
after strenuous efforts to hold the balance between the parties he
eventually felt compelled to dismiss the
State
Premier in
circumstances not unlike those surrounding the recent dismissal of
Gough Whitlam, the Commonwealth Prime Minister by Sir
John
Kerr, the Commonwealth Governor-General. As in the recent case,
an election followed
and
the out-going Premier was defeated.
The
219 Police Journal July 1980
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