Author: Norwell Roberts
ISBN No: 9781399800891
Review date: 08/05/2024
No of pages:
Publisher: Two Roads, Hachette
Publisher URL:
https://www.tworoadsbooks.com/titles/norwell-roberts/i-am-norwell-roberts/9781399800891/
Year of publication: 14/12/2022
Brief:
I am Norwell Roberts
price
£10.99, Paperback, February 2023
Norwell Roberts was born in 1945 in Anguilla, and moved to the UK in 1956 to join his mother in Kent, in the white suburb of Bromley. The sub-title is, ‘the story of the Met’s first black officer’, and he relates how he learned of his successful application to join the force when it made headlines in the Daily Telegraph, in 1967.
At once we have an insight into the occupational culture of the police, where the individual’s welfare – or even that he had a valid point of view or a thought in his head – wasn’t bothered about by the authorities. Norwell’s story is a reminder of a bygone and different-looking age (different even in terms of a copper’s uniform), reminding us what the police were like in the years when many people now adults were growing up. The body of the book – policing from the late 1960s, to the 1990s – is at once familiar and as far back as Stonehenge and Julius Caesar.
The Met’s culture was police station-based. Well into his career, Norwell was having to endure a spiteful manager. For example; when Norwell applied for a transfer, and didn’t hear about it, when he asked the manager, the application (on paper in those days, of course) was still on the desk. Norwell showed understanding of the strings that held the Met together like any large organisation; and (as important) which ones to pull. He made a phone call and duly got transferred to another station, where he was appreciated.
That and other stories of how Norwell was badly treated did make me wonder whether such spite was because of racism, or because some men (usually men in those days) did that to anyone who was not a sporty, chummy bloke like them – anyone who spoke differently, anyone who was intellectual, a woman? In Norwell’s opinion, it was racism.
The nature of Norwell’s fame is intriguing. Someone is famous usually and has an autobiography published for achievement – you have become fabulously wealthy, prime minister or a prominent politician, you’ve captained your country at a major sport, and so on. Norwell has stood out because he was the first black officer; although as ever there’s nothing quite new under the sun; Norwell acknowledges a handful of much earlier black and mixed race officers.
He made national news as soon as he joined. He reached the rank of detective sergeant and gained the QPM. Others, later, became other firsts – the first black chief constable, for example. Policing doesn’t happen in a vacuum and arguably the police have done relatively well to reflect society in their staff. Where incidentally are the black judges, magistrates, generals? The difference, then, is between achievement, and attainment. Norwell didn’t attain a high rank; but he achieved a lot by simply staying the course.
In retirement he is doing charitable things, such as making friendly phone calls (of particular help during the covid lockdowns). He’s a Freemason, a Past Master of a Lodge, and besides online and at bookshops you can buy his book at Freemasons’ Hall.
In his view, there’s still progress to make in acceptance of people for who they are; but, we are far better off than in 1960s Britain, or indeed the United States. What’s now called for, he feels, is education; such as Black History Month. Arguably more disturbing than the things said and done to him by people who wanted to hold him back or spoil his life while serving in the Met are things he relates more recently, such as when he was stopped by police while walking. The implication, he was a suspect because of the colour of his skin. He relates how he gave the officers his name, and added ‘QPM’. Facetiously they replied, ‘what’s that, something you bought on ebay?’
Either those officers had not heard of the QPM – the police’s equivalent of the OBE – or if they had, they were being disrespectful. The incident throws up questions about how well police are trained – more expensively than ever (all round) by universities, much to the misgiving of senior police. It speaks also of the engrained ‘canteen culture’, not that workplace canteens are around much any more. The difference between Norwell’s time as a serving officer and now is that the nasty things said are on a WhatsApp group, and can spill out; and have prompted the Met to task Baroness Louise Casey to lead an independent review of its culture and standards of behaviour.
London Fire Brigade, meanwhile commissioned an ‘Independent Culture Review‘, which reported last month, that ‘women, Black, Asian and minority ethnic, LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse staff experience poor treatment and do less well in their careers’ in LFB. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services this month moved London Fire Brigade (LFB) into an enhanced level of monitoring, citing that ‘behavioural problems’ highlighted are ‘deep seated and have not improved’. Norwell’s book is at once a personal story and shows how one man fits into, and can do his bit to shape, wider occupational and social culture – but that the racists and misogynists don’t disappear like frost in an afternoon.
