You may know Janice McMahon of first aid materials supplier Steroplast from exhibiting at Security TWENTY Manchester in July. You may have seen her on the Association of Security Consultants (ASC) stand at shows, such as the International Security Expo at London Olympia last week, with the PAcT (public access trauma) kits, that we featured in the August edition of Professional Security Magazine. Chances are you’re likeliest to have seen her on BBC1 TV’s The ONE Show.
The Beeb got hold of the story of PAcT kits and monthly training for night venues and hotel staff in Manchester, as part of the city’s response to the Arena bombing of 2017, which led to Figen Murray’s campaign for Martyn’s Law. Figen was also interviewed for the show. Janice, pictured, recalled: “They wanted to watch some training going on, through CityCo [the business crime reduction partnership in Manchester] and city council.” As Janice said, counter-terror police may also attend, to deliver the official ACT training to non-security people.
What made an already unusual experience yet odder was that the interviewer was Kevin Duala, who Janice ‘knew’ as a children’s TV presenter from bringing up her daughters. They and other family were around at Janice’s to watch the appearance. “I had actually gone out of the room because we didn’t know when it was going to be on. Next minute, they shouted ‘mum, mum, you’re on telly!’. That’s quite surreal, seeing yourself on telly. They did about four and a half hours of filming, to get that small 40-seconds. I was a little bit nervous, but they just made you feel at ease; it was OK.”
The ONE Show reported how Manchester City Council has supplied some 177 of the kits to venues; hence the regular training to keep staff in the forever-changing hospitality sector knowledgeable about their use, whatever the emergency, for example to use tourniquets as a response to catastrophic bleeding (all-important in cases of stabbings) in the precious minutes before paramedics and ambulances can arrive on the scene.
Labour speeches
Figen and husband Stuart were on the front row at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last week for leader Sir Keir Starmer’s speech. The prime minister praised Figen and other criminal justice campaigners. Figen and Stuart the next day were at the Olympia Expo, to hear more praise from Home Office minister Dan Jarvis, who a fortnight earlier had signed off the impact assessment on Martyn’s Law, more formally known as the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, brought before Parliament on September 12.
Dan Jarvis said: “Figen, you are an inspiration, you have been the driving force behind the Bill, and I am incredibly grateful to you and to everyone in your team who has worked so hard to campaign for this important legislation. It is designed to strengthen public safety by improving protective security and preparedness at public events and venues. It is the first of its kind internationally, but we know that other countries are watching the progress of this policy with interest.”
More in the November edition of Professional Security Magazine.
