The 1960s saw in many ways the dawn of private security in Britain. It could only develop so far in its own right, though, without making connections to others, such as the police and government, as a file, HO 287/626, at the National Archives shows.
Leslie Scott was editor of a publication, Security Gazette, and was director of an ‘Industrial Security Bureau’ which had an office in London WC2. The other director was Sir Ronald Howe, decorated in the First World War, who had retired as deputy Metropolitan Police Commissioner and was chairman of the guarding company Group 4 (later part of G4S, now part of the multi-national Allied Universal).
In September 1963, Scott had approached a Home Office official, offering the Bureau as a ‘channel of communication’ between government and ‘private security organisations’. The official commented on file sceptically: “I formed the impression that Mr Scott was interested in finding a niche for himself and his organisation …. He is an assiduous name-dropper …”
Meanwhile Sir Philip Margetson (pictured) chaired the Federation of Industrial Security Companies. His career had been much like Howe’s; they had retired the same year, 1957, and Margetson had become chair of the guarding company Securicor (later to become the S in G4S). The federation was in fact two companies, Securicor and Factory Guards. A Security Transport Association covered companies looking after cash and valuables in transit, mainly works wages; Securicor, Security Express and Armoured Car Services.
R Harris of Burgot Alarms, RG Hooker the managing director of AFA Group which provided security products, Margetson with Securicor MD Keith Erskine were invited to a meeting by the Home Office in April 1965. They with Eric Cooper-Key, MD of Security Express and BAG Picton, MD of Factory Guards, made up a working party of ‘private security organisations’.
On meeting in August 1965, the working party agreed that ‘security organisations’ performed a useful function in providing regular escort for wages and other large amounts of cash and special services to private individuals and organisations which so far as the police were concerned were extraneous duties. There were bound to be limits to what the police could do in safeguarding property or cash in transit and chief constables were often in the position of having to refuse requests for these special police services, and advise the applicant to approach a security organisation.
There was some police agreement that they should vet applicants for security firms; so that those firms didn’t employ criminals. The Police Act 1964 had ruled on mock uniforms; in other words, the law was against the public mistaking a wearer for a police officer, even if there was no intent by the security officer to deceive.
A list of security companies as of June 1965 showed that most were tiny: for example Colchester Guard Dog Patrol, three employees; Night Security Patrol Services in Long Eaton, one; Factory Guard based in Evesham, 751; Securicor 1893 full time and 2556 part-time; Security Express 470. A total of 60 companies had 4017 full timers and 2599 part-timers.
A lunch in July 1965 was between senior civil servants such as the Home Office under-secretary of state Sir Charles Cunningham, four directors of Securicor including Margetson; Sir Richard Jackson, a former assistant Met Police commissioner; Sir Frederick Delve, a former London Fire Brigade chief; and Erskine. The private security executives wanted a ‘closer and more cooperative’ relationship with the Home Office.
Delve suggested it would be useful for guards on factory premises, besides protecting against crime, could give early notice of any fire. That would require some elementary training, ‘and he thought it would be in the public interest for fire brigades to give such training as was necessary’.
Beforehand, one of the Securicor directors had sent Cunningham ‘a short history of Securicor. It began as Night Watch Services in 1935 and had protected private houses, ‘and its blue uniform was becoming a familiar sight in north west London’. Because of the war, the company only had one man by 1945. A director, Lord Willingdon, was now president, ‘and in fact the majority of the executives and personnel of the company today have served in the armed forces many of them on regular engagement’.
In 1946, the company decided to protect inside commercial premises; an ‘armoured division’ began in December 1959 and by June 1965 had 650 vehicles and crews. In 1948 the company had 60 uniformed men; by 1952, 170; by 1960, 650. The company was now employing over 5000 men. Securicor was the only company spread over the country: with for example 80 in Liverpool, and 100 in Bristol.
Cunningham wrote a memo to the Home Secretary in April 1965. Significantly, Cunningham recalled a BBC Panorama documentary (‘rather over-dramatised’) about private security – that is, Cunningham was sensitive to how things looked in public. “…. Since then, the [private security] organisations have shown themselves sensitive to the possibilities of criticism and we have not heard of any substantial cause for public anxiety. The main firms have recruited retired senior police officers into their management and have shown themselves very ready to cooperate with the police.’
Cunningham set out the choice of a formal system of control, involving registration; or an informal, voluntary system. If formal, how to define who was doing private security; and would the Home Secretary be responsible? A register, ‘which would no doubt be used by firms in their publicity, might be taken by the public as carrying some guarantee’. The Home Secretary, then, would need to satisfy himself of the good character of the employees of the firms applying for registration. The Metropolitan Police commissioner had had an ‘informal talk’ with some directors of the main firms, about the idea of a central body to discuss problems with the police; and that could centrally vet candidates for employment as suitable or not.
As a January 1965 memo put it diplomatically, ‘it would be an exaggeration to say that the [private security] organisations are popular with the police but there is a general recognition that they provide a useful supplement of manpower …. In general their members are well behaved although there have been a few exceptions and the firms responsible for them realise very well that if they employed men who were not trustworthy their reputations would be tarnished very quickly’. The memo concluded there was no immediate case for regulation.
As for the police’s view, as a letter from Scotland Yard put it in August 1964, private security companies were ‘acceptable’, ‘so long as they do not usurp police functions’. Police had no reason to suppose the companies were making any real attempts to do so; they were a ‘necessary commercial service’.
Private security cropped up in the House of Lords in May 1964 during a long debate on the Police Bill (after it was debated in the Commons on February 18). Viscount Amery whimsically recalled acting in the Pirates of Penzance in a police uniform, and was told ‘that I was the image of a policeman‘. Lord Stonham replied that many private security forces were ‘actually clothed in second hand police uniforms from which the badges have been removed and which have been cleaned up’. That would be prohibited under the 1964 Act; Stonham added that ‘a well-known private security force …. clothes its men in uniform, but in a green uniform’; different, in other words, from the police’s black.
The authorities could have been forgiven for not knowing which single private security group to deal with. DV Young of the Birmingham Small Arms Company was chairman of the Industrial Police and Security Association, whose secretary TG Sanders was a former chief security officer of Imperial Metal Industries Limited and an ex-detective superintendent of Birmingham City Police.
In the Lords debate on uniforms, Lord Derwent said that ‘the police forces have been consulted and are satisfied’. The working party of private security men meeting in May 1963 had admitted that in most areas police uniforms were sold to dealers. The police had their way in the 1964 law; it did not matter whether the wearer intended to deceive, but whether the wearing was ‘likely’ to deceive; a peaked cap and navy blue uniform would be enough to be mistaken for police.
