The Case against Nationalizing the Police — A Note
| Date | 01 December 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6704001214 |
| Author | J. J. Tobias |
| Published date | 01 December 1967 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
J.
J.
TOBIAS,
B.Sc.Econ.,
Ph.D.,
Senior Tutor, The Police College, Bramshill
The
tjase
Against
Nationalizing
The
Police
- A
Note
In his review of Mr. T. A. Critchley's A History of Police in Eng-
land and Wales in the November issue of The
POLICE
JOURNAL,
Mr.
A. A. Muir pauses to deliver a sideswipe at my article in the Sep-
tember issue. One is always glad to be noticed, but as Mr. Muir
puts into my mouth words I did not utter I should be grateful for
space in which to make a mild protest.
Mr. Muir suggests that I claimed that
"one
should not try to
read too much into the lessons of history". What I did in fact
say
was"
it is always desirable to see what history can teach us;
but it is not always easy to interpret what she has to
say"
-
which is rather different. Mr. Muir goes on to summarize my
argument as
"I
will pick out from history what lessons
to
learn
and if you choose to interpret history differently, you
are-
guilty of
the sin of historicism." I did indeed venture to offer an interpreta-
tion of history different from that which Sir Ian Jacob and Pro-
fessor Goodhart
had
made; but as I am an historian perhaps I
have the right to do so.
Far
from asserting, as Mr. Muir sug-
gests, that my interpretation alone was correct, I said merely
that the trend that they see
"may
not"
in fact be there; I sug-
gested that what is happening
"could
be"
~een
not in their way
but in another. These comments do not seem to provide sufficient
grounds for Mr. Muir to make a charge of intellectual arrogance.
Again, I accused historicism (I called it an error and not a sin,
but let that pass) not those who disagreed with my view of police
history, which would be arrogance indeed, but those who assumed
without argument that an historical trend once detected should be
allowed to continue.
May I pass from mere mis-statements to a more substantial
point? Mr. Muir suggests that I know very well that all that i
..
to be said about national or local police forces was said long
before 1829. I must confess to cherishing the illusion that I had
said one or two things in my article that
had
not been said before,
and that I had made some points that had not yet been answered.
Mr. Muir has bombarded with his shot one small part of my
article; I would humbly suggest that the nationalizers have to
answer some other parts of what I wrote before their case is fully
made. Now that attitudes to authority are so different, for ex-
ample, have we not to think about the problem of leadership
more carefully than the men of earlier times? Did Mayne and
Chadwick say the last word about management in the 1970s?
December 1967 585
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