Thirty-plus years ago as a young reporter on a newspaper in a small shire town, on occasion I would go out on what the news-room grandly called a ‘vox pop’, short for vox populi, ‘voice of the people’.
It meant asking passers-by what they thought about some piece of news. One man once called whatever it was ‘a right balls-up’, which I reported faithfully, only for the deputy editor to change it (I forget what to). Because ‘balls-up’ was too rude. Times change, public opinion changes, and so do our own views. In a country where the prime minister routinely doesn’t wear a tie in public, why not swear, and print it? Swearing comes in at least three types: by those who don’t know any better, by coarse people who want the conversation to be as coarse as they are; and by those in private security, the 999 services and so on who see life in all its coarseness: people threatened, assaulted, robbed, and sworn at. This is all a preamble to a veteran, well-placed private security man I spoke with at the funeral of Baroness Henig in south London last month, who put into words what I have been feeling; that the country is in a state. Pot-holed roads, and pot-holed institutions, and services. While we could make this a party-political matter, would anyone say that if Labour had been in power from 2010, and not the Conservatives, things would be much different? “We’re fucked,” the man said.
One sign of how the country is down in the dumps is the seeming inability for public policy to get done. It’s gone four years since the then Home Secretary Priti Patel (remember her?) stated that the Home Office was consulting on a Protect Duty, popularly known as Martyn’s Law; a legal responsibility for sites to counter terrorism. What’s the hold-up? Either the Home Office ministers and officials don’t really want to make the law, finding it too costly and unnecessary (which would make them despicably two-faced); or, perhaps more concerning, they are doing their best. As no doubt, police and crime commissioners are.
They face elections on May 2 (page 34). I am starting to weary of PCCs saying this crime and that – shoplifting, fraud, violence against women – has been going on for too long as if somehow it’s nothing to do with them. The only thing worse than having representatives like these is not having any with private security experience and interest; and the death of Baroness Henig, as a former chair of the SIA, leaves private security short of a voice at Westminster. Police and the military are never short of MPs or peers to make their case; perhaps that is what the campaign for Martyn’s Law has been lacking? Perhaps, for whatever reasons – the end of North Sea oil, the way that managers who add nothing sprout in big organisations like weeds (and to find out how to get rid of them, you employ more managers!?), Brexit or covid – the country can’t afford what it used to. That matters to private security because a health service or universities that are short of cash, can hardly splash out on asset protection. No-one would want to give up the internet, yet it brings cyber risks, to plan for (page 52), a further cost.
For some weeks to Easter I went out unusually little. Since then it’s been the other extreme. It continues to be enjoyable to go out, meet, and hear and discuss. For all Britain’s shortcomings, that freedom counts for a lot.
