Mark Rowe, the editor of Professional Security Magazine, writes after the Security Industry Authority (SIA) annual conference in Manchester in May.
Someone – an ABI member come to think of it – not at the conference grumbled to me afterwards that the SIA decided on something – that in-house security officers are not to be licenced like contract security guards – for political reasons. As the chair of the SIA, Baroness Henig, is a Labour working peer, and the SIA comes under the Home Office, naturally politics comes into it. The only mention of PIs from the platform came during Baroness Henig’s speech, saying that investigators, like bailiffs, will be licenced in 2012 – in three years, which is about where we’ve been for a year or two. Investigators are nearer to licensing than security consultants who have little or no prospect, though both were named in the Private Security Industry Act 2001, and bailiffs were not. But it’s politics, you see. Voters write to MPs complaining about bailiffs and wheel clampers, (numerically a small sector but taking up most of the SIA staff’s time on the phone). Angry constituents do not put pen to paper about PIs and consultants. The logic appears to be that if PIs want to be regulated, they have to behave far more irresponsibly and bother far more people than they are doing. I ought to add in passing that while Tony Imossi was there and I did have a word with him, this is me speaking. He did tell me that he put a question in – the audience could do that, for the platform to answer it at the end of the afternoon – but it didn’t come up. Read into that what you like.
I enjoyed the May issue of the ABI journal and the profile of Frank Martin, and not only for the photo of him with some men holding pint glasses with handles – maybe I move in the wrong circles, but I can’t remember the last time I saw or held one. The year 1950 when he set up his own detective agency in Kingston upon Thames was a very different time; and yet how often it turns out that there’s nothing new under the sun. One speaker at the SIA day was Dr Adam White of the University of Sheffield, who has researched moves towards private security regulation since 1945.
Now what I found fascinating was the private correspondence between the 1950 MD of Night Guards the guarding company that became Securicor, RD Godfrey, and the Metropolitan Police commissioner. I quote from Dr White’s research –
In these letters, Godfrey informed these high-ranking police officers that Night Guards had recently started an ‘Investigations Branch’ run by an ex-CID / Special Branch officer and, in order to expand this new service, Nights Guards wished to employ more ex-CID officers. Godfrey then enquired whether the Metropolitan Police would be willing to offer any assistance in this recruitment strategy.
As Dr White goes on, you could take this at face value; Mr Godfrey was looking for former coppers. Or, he was trying to get credibility from some sort of connection with the police, ‘a commercial advantage’. It did not get anywhere, by the way. As it happens, the security company did not get far. (A note to Eric Shelmerdine – Securicor also tried to get Scotland Yard to provide an article for their magazine – the police sent a polite refusal. But you can only ask in this world!?) To quote Dr White again –
… the Metropolitan Police proved to be extremely protective over its legitimacy. Prior to Godfrey’s correspondence, the Metropolitan Police were certainly aware of the growth of the private security industry and had already developed the beginnings of a policy stance towards these organisations.
The police wanted to hold on to what they had, and keep private security on the margins. The police even considered prosecuting the security company for impersonating police officers – for being a private army, in effect. (Securicor was short for Security Corps, come to think of it, and was started to protect the paying citizens of Mayfair against 1930s fascists.)
I’ve gone on about this for two reasons. First, this essentially private commercial effort is public thanks to the documents being deposited at the National Archives at Kew in west London. Anyone can read them, and it’s fascinating even after all these years to (in a word) spy on something not meant to be public. Secondly, despite the passage of time, is anything new? Take for example this from Dr White –
… in 1957, Sir Philip Margetson retired from his position as Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police to become a board member of Securicor. Significantly, Margetson’s employment history was utilised in subsequent years to increase Securicor’s leverage in its interactions with the Metropolitan Police. This signifies the beginning of another pluralist strategy which continues to this day – that is, private security companies putting former high-ranking police officers on their boards to both blur the distinction between public and private security provision and to enhance the bargaining position of the industry.
But what Dr White did not point out in his talk – and to be fair, there was only so much of 55 or so years he could fit into 30 minutes – was the irony that Securicor had been seeking legitimacy for investigators, the very sector that the SIA keeps putting off licensing. Something else that never seems to change is that for all the talk and effort towards regulation by the state, whenever there’s a problem in business that really wants solving – where the state’s employees can’t or won’t get involved – private investigators, often former coppers, step into the breach. For instance the National Greyhound Racing Club.
Just as horse racing had trouble with betting rackets and organised crime, so the greyhound world battled last century against forged betting tickets, or interference with dogs. From 1928, the year the Club began, every greyhound had an identity book or passport, detailing every race run. This was to kill the ‘substitution racket’. Each dog’s book was in the charge of the racing manager at the track a dog is racing at. Also, the sport’s organisers sought to prevent men trying to get at dogs before racing, because it’s less suspicious if a dog goes more slowly than expected, because a dog that runs faster than his common form is instantly suspected. To enforce all this, the Club had what I suppose today we would call a database – file cards, in those days before computers. If all this makes you feel nostalgia – or the article has been so long that you have become hungry – I once spoke to a greyhound trainer who – and this is what stuck in my memory – said that he was not allowed to feed a racing greyhound a Mars bar, as the chemicals would show up and merit a ban The director of regulation at the new Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) is Declan Donnelly, who was a former senior detective at – though maybe you are ahead of me already? – the Met.
