Mark Dawes, director of trainers NFPS Ltd writes that he has talked to three of the UK’s leading lawyers for content for his new Reasonable Force Audio MP3 Product Set, being released in October. The exercise has been absolutely illuminating, he writes.
So far I have interviewed John Wadham who is one of the UK’s leading legal experts on human rights and a former Deputy Chairperson of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) as well as being a Director of Liberty (a Human Rights Organisation) where he lobbied for a body like the EHRC for many years.
I have also interviewed Prof Gary Slapper who is currently the Professor of Law and Head of the Law Faculty for the Open University, who regularly writes and comments for the Times Newspaper and is also a member of the Corporate Manslaughter Team at 36 Bedford Row.
Finally, I have just interviewed Michael Mansfield QC, who has made his name fighting cases no one else would touch. He is famous for representing clients such as those wrongly convicted for the Guildford bombing and the family of Stephen Lawrence. As you may already know Michael Mansfield is one of the most respected QC’s this country has ever produced. As the Times put it: "Michael Mansfield QC, icon of all that is enviable about British jurisprudence: a battler for truth and the little man, a perennial defender of the outsider against the Establishment’s vested interests."
I was very lucky to interview Michael as he is in the process of stepping back from his day to day practice (he doesn’t like the word retiring), so I consider myself to be very fortunate to have had the opportunity to interview this ‘giant’ of lawyers who has never been afraid to take on the establishment in his pursuit of truth and justice.
Reasonable force
One thing I did learn was this. The laws that protect us are our laws. They are not the laws solely for the use of the police or government to enforce, they are ours, and they work in the vast majority of cases in our best interests.
I also learned that it is not lawyers or politicians that create the greatest changes in society, but ordinary everyday people who have taken on the might of the establishment and who have had the courage and tenacity to see that fight through.
I also learned that even today, many miscarriages of justice still occur, imposed on many people by the state and its agents which would go unnoticed if not for the courage of individuals like you who are reading this right now. And you don’t have to look too far for evidence of this to see what I mean. The case of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager who was murdered by racists is one example of how individuals when brought together under a common cause, have the strength and tenacity to challenge the State and to change the world they inhabit for the better.
Stephen Lawrence
For example, prior to Stephen’s death Neville Lawrence, Stephen’s father, was a pretty unassuming and quiet man whom you would probably not even notice if he passed you on the street. After Stephen’s death however, Neville and his wife Doreen were thrown into the public spotlight. They had to console themselves with not only the loss of their son but a huge task ahead of them, namely that of bringing the murderers to justice. They faced mountains of obstacles – even from the police whose handling of the case was less than professional to say the least, but as Michael Mansfield put’s it in his book – Memories of a Radical Lawyer; “I was affected by two ordinary, yet exceptional individuals who displayed remarkable courage and tenacity, changing perceptions and agendas for this and the next generation”.
There are many phenomenal examples of how ordinary everyday people have challenged the so-called experts and Michael Mansfield’s book should be on everyone’s reading list.
Kevin Callan
Another example of courage was that of Kevin Callan, wrongly convicted and sent to prison. Yet from within his prison cell, from where every last liberty and freedom had been taken from him, he found the strength and tenacity to challenge the experts on whose evidence and expertise the courts had relied upon that resulted in him being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Even after he lost his initial appeal he carried on until eventually he found an expert who proved that the experts who had provided the evidence in the original trail were wrong. This resulted in him being released from prison. But what if he had have given up? What then? Well not only would he have remained in prison but many others could have been wrongly convicted and sentenced too. One man did this. He changed the world he lived in by challenging the experts that shaped it up until then.
Reasonable force?
Now why am I telling you all this and what does it have to do with reasonable force. Well it has a lot to do with it. Many of you know that many agencies are teaching skills that don’t work. For example door supervisors now have to be trained in physical intervention but only in ‘non-restrictive’ physical intervention skills and ‘non-aggressive’ defensive skills. In short skills that are nice but which are limited. I hear time and time again from people who regularly complain to me about how poor their training was and that “it will never work”. Well my advice to you is this. Do something about it!
Silence and oppression
In Michael Mansfield’s brilliant book he quotes the following statements: “Silence is the handmaiden of oppression” and, when quoting Edmund Burke, the Irish born 18th century politician; "it is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph".
If any of you reading this have either had training that was useless or inadequate, for goodness sake, do something about it. Stand up and be heard. Do not sit there wallowing in the mire of your moans as your silence is deafening. But it is worse than that, you are being oppressed by your silence and the evil you are being oppressed by (in this case poor training) will continue to exist as long as good people like you and I do nothing about it. Yet everyone can make a difference as the Lawrence family and the case of Kevin Callan proved.
There is not only a legal responsibility on all of us to ensure that whatever skills we use work, there is a social responsibility too and the two are intrinsically linked.
Best practice?
What Prof Gary Slapper also commented on is that any Government sanctioned training should be based on a model of best practice and not minimal standards. This means that any training provided or sanctioned by a government department or agency must work. It would be socially, morally and ethically flawed if it did not, as it would invoke what is known as the ‘law of unintended consequence’.
What this means is that training that is inadequate and ineffective carries a huge social consequence and a potentially huge taxpayers bill, because any failure to adequately protect staff and others carries an increased risk of injury and even possible death, and this has a ‘social on-cost’ because it is the taxpayer that foots the bill.
In short, if you are paying for training that doesn’t work you are also likely to pick up the costs as a taxpaying member of the public when a case is challenged in the courts.
In other words, if, in an attempt to minimise risk a Government agency errs on the side of caution by providing less than adequate training, because they possibly believe that if they give staff more effective techniques they will abuse it and intentionally harm others (I personally find this model of thinking totally corrupt and contemptible as it shows how little faith they have in the people they license and what they truly think of them), what this will result in is that when explosive or aggressive situations do occur staff will be ill equipped to deal with them. And if these situations are not adequately controlled then we end up with a greater level of collateral damage which would possibly not have occurred had staff been trained to a more effective and competent level in the first place.
In essence, the attempt to reduce risk by providing less than adequate training has done nothing more than serve to increase it, and you my friend pay for it!
Firing blanks
In my world view of things this type of thinking it is the equivalent of sending our troops into battle to face an enemy who is firing live rounds at them in an attempt to kill them, but giving our troops blank ammunition because our Government doesn’t want to be sued in case they injure or kill the enemy.
I have always been motivated to provide the best value training I can which means my organisation and I continually invest in what we do.
To this extent we have just invested a lot of time and money in recording all of our course lectures as well as interviews with John Wadham, Gary Slapper and Michael Mansfield.
Audio Mp3 set
This audio Mp3 set that I was referring to earlier will be available for purchase on the October 25 as a Limited Edition Set at a discounted price for one week.
I believe that we are all better than what we, and indeed others, think we are, with a capacity to do great things.
My hope for this set is that it will place knowledge, support and power directly in the hands of those of us who work the front-line, allowing all of us to challenge those who wish to oppress us into accepting less than what we are or who wish to intimidate and bully us into doing what we know to be wrong, providing us with a true freedom of insight into what we know to be right, from some of the most eminent lawyers this country has ever produced. How much is this set worth to me – for me its priceless and I hope that it will be worth as much to you too.
When you consider now that a serious death and injury carries with it a potential fine of no less that £500,000 and a much higher chance of ending up in prison the information provided on this audio set is invaluable.
If you are interested in obtaining one of these audio sets visit:
