It’s on desks about now: but below, from editor Mark Rowe’s introduction to the November print issue of Professional Security Magazine:
What’s a man now? What’s a man mean? Is he rough or is he rugged? Is he cultural and clean? So sang Joe Jackson in his song Real Men from his fine album Night and Day.
It comes to mind – even though it came out an unbelievable 25 years ago – because of the changes to security guarding, almost without anyone realising or having control over it. For instance: for me the most interesting thing in this issue – leaving aside that everything is interesting in the magazine – is on page 30. The Irish guarding regulator, the Private Security Authority, says that people applying for its licences are from 95 countries. One in eight are Polish or Nigerian. Guarding in the British Isles, once stereotypically a night-watchman job for ex-soldiers (from the Crimean War on) is a mirror of social change. The Lambeth College trainees (page 26) that SIA high-ups met at an official unveiling were, so I heard, a range of ages, in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Dare I say it, security is exciting and ‘with it’, if that is what the young people say these days. Look even at the SIA-badged security guard on the NSI advert (page 39) with fashionable stubble – what would an old sergeant-major make of that?!
Our only hope to keep ‘with it’, is, I suggest, not to change the width of our jeans – are jeans in this year anyway?! – but to keep informed and interested. It was pleasing for instance to talk to guarding people at the Crimex show (page 24) at Leicester last month who (without being asked!?) praised Professional Security as a good read and a magazine to keep turning to. Thankfully you need never be too old so long as you stay curious. Hence I must congratulate our long-time columnist Ken Rogers who is pictured (page 14) in mortar board having gained his masters in criminology. How he or anyone else works on a masters degree while doing other work I don’t know. Well done Ken!
You don’t have to talk to people to do with guarding for long before there are stories of guards pulling up to a pub, in a van from a firm you haven’t heard of before, and talking about how they work for £5 an hour. Or they are not badged yet. Such tales however stay just that -tales – unless the guarding people on the ground pass times and places to the Security Industry Authority.
Even taking the training and getting the badge do not necessarily equip the security guard to handle the crazy variety of human existence that is, say, in a retail store or shopping mall or warehouse or hospital. No-one can ignore the threat of terrorism but what security people are far more likely to come up against is the protester (page 58), the confused and upset (page 52) and the plain daft. I recall the young and unknown Joe Jackson, while on tour at Workington, out of boredom went into a clothes shop and tried women’s dresses on, according to his memoir A Cure for Gravity. How do you train to deal with that? The answer is, you cannot have a procedure on how to manage men who try on ladies’ clothing. You have to educate people to think on their feet and have the right words. That takes experience of people and less sitting in front of computer and TV screens … but that is certainly not a ‘with it’ thing to believe.
