Quarterly Commentary
| Published date | 01 July 1946 |
| Date | 01 July 1946 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X4601900301 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
VOL.
XIX,
No.
3
POLICE JOURNAL
JULY-SEPTEMBER 1946
Quarterly Commentary
FIFTY YEARS
ON
THE Jubilee of the Chief Constables' Association, recently celebrated
by a Conference and Exhibition, at the opening of which a notable
speech was made by the Home Secretary, prompts reflection
both
on
the changes and theresistancesto change in the Police Service since 1896.
In
October 1896, when
the
Chief Constables inaugurated their
Association at a meeting held at the Holborn Restaurant, it is doubtful
whether any of the Chief Constables travelled through the streets of
London by mechanical propulsion. Any who did so were required by
law to be preceded by a man waving a
red
flag.
In
that
year Parliament
gave
the
motor-car its first of many enactments, in the Locomotives on
Highways Act, later enlarged and amended by the Motor Car Act, 1903,
and not finally overhauled and repealed until 1930.
Nor
is it likely
that
any of the Chief Constables attending the inaugural meeting completed
the proceedings by a visit to a nearby cinema.
It
is
true
that
the cinema
came into being in the same year.
It
is possible
that
most of the Chief
Constables would seek to embellish the occasion by purchasing, for a
halfpenny, a copy of the Daily Mail,
then
barely six months old,
pioneering the popular London
'daily'
at a price which rapidly
brought the newspaper into every home in
the
land.
The
effect on society of the motor-car, the cinema and of sensa-
tional and popular journalism may be difficult to assess. Each has
brought untold benefit to the community and entertainment to the
masses. Compared with the benefits the ill-effects are insignificant.
The
available reports of the Chief Constables' inaugural conference
contain no references to the possibilities for good or ill of the motor-car
and
the
Daily Mail.
The
reports of the 50th (Jubilee) Conference, at
which speeches were made by persons of no less eminence
than
the
Home Secretary, the
Lord
Chief Justice of England and Sir Frank
Newsam, indicate also that no opinions were hazarded upon the possible
developments and effect on police work of radar, the atom bomb, of
stratospheric travel, and other developments of the .present decade.
C
161
THE
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