A Manchester Martinet
| Published date | 01 June 1964 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6403700607 |
| Date | 01 June 1964 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
G. A.
MINTO
Cornwall Special Constabulary
A
MANCHESTER
MARTINET
In his epic life
of
Frederick the Great, Thomas Carlyle made a
remarkable statement:
"Happy
the
people"
he wrote
"whose
annals are blank in history
books".
If
this indeed be the case
the British police should be amorig the happiest
of
mortals for,
so far as history books are concerned, they are almost completely
ignored. In the past 130 years or so the number
of
really authoritative
histories
of
the Service could well be counted on the fingers
of
the
two hands and still leave a digit or so over.
It
isstrange and lamentable
that
the universities
of
the United Kingdom have chairs and lec-
tureships in every subject from bee-keeping to atomic physics and
yet, to the best
of
my knowledge, there are literally no facilities for
studying the basic fabric
of
British
civilisation-the
police.
What
a
chance for some philanthropist with a few thousand pounds to
spare-the
establishment
of
a
Chair
of
Police History! Unhappily,
pending the arrival
of
the ambassadors
of
Messrs. Littlewood and
Cope at my door, I am unable to do much
about
that
project myself.
Seriously, it is
not
without significance
that
the Armed Forces
of
the
Crown have long realized the value
of
astudy
of
their respective
histories-in
the inculcation
of
tradition alone they get much more
than their money's
worth-and
I
am
sure
that
similar happy results
would arise from the serious
and
systematic study
of
their great
story by police officers
of
all ranks.
These meditations arose in my mind the other day when I made the
acquaintance
of
along-dead policeman who, in his time, made a
great noise in the world. I do not say
that
he was a preux chevalier
in any way
at
all
but
his life is instructive insofar as it illustrates
how far
and
how creditably the present forces have travelled in less
than
acentury
and
a half. Nowadays, the denigration
of
the police
has almost replaced association football as the national
sport
of
Britain. Judging by the Press
of
1963, Attila the
Hun
was a pale
young curate compared to the average British policeman
and
the
late
Herr
Himmler could have most profitably employed his time by
visiting any police station from Land's
End
to
John
o'Groats.
He
would, I gather, have picked up some most useful hints on the
running
of
Belsen and Buchenwald!
As Others See Us
A few weeks ago, having become thoroughly bored by the per-
sistent attacks on the police, I wrote aletter
of
protest to a national
newspaper. In it I reminisced on my experiences (in a strictly
official capacity, be it noted) with a
round
dozen or so foreign forces
June 1964 268
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