1:50am Saturday 22nd November 2008
MY VIEW:HOME Secretary Jacqui Smith has finally spoken some words that many around these parts have been expecting and hoping to hear.
She has given her backing to Essex Chief Constable Baker’s battle against crime and unruly behaviour and his promise to send officers out to see every crime victim.
She said: “I think Roger is on to something in recognising what people want. They want visible policing.”
Hip, hip hooray! Let’s hope the Home Secretary and her political pals have finally come to understand we desperately want to see many more coppers out and about in our neighbourhoods.
We also want those coppers to have the full and unflinching backing of decision-makers to bring more law-breakers to court. Then we want judges and justices to hand out tougher sentences.
In my early years as a reporter, I spent much time recording hearings at Southend’s old courtrooms, sited behind the old police station in Alexandra Street.
People were fined for the likes of riding their bikes without lights after dark, riding cycles on pavements, being drunk and disorderly in public, using foul or abusive language in public, displaying threatening behaviour.
If you got nicked by an old-time copper in Southend, you knew you’d be up before the local bench and be fined or worse if found guilty. Then, as the landmark Sixties came and went, society became more lenient.
But in gaining more personal and general freedom, so standards began increasingly to slip. Today, violence of attitude, action, language and widespread disregard of the law or even neighbourliness is now common currency.
So if Jacqui Smith can really support and encourage police chiefs in beginning to move the pendulum back, maybe there is some hope. But I wouldn’t put money on it.
qIN those far-off times, Southend had its own committee of film censors. At least one of that council-elected group, a nice chap named Trevor Murray, retired solicitor and trustee of the grand local Bust fund, is still around.
He will recall I used to scoff at such busybodies previewing new films, deciding what was deemed fit for public consumption and what must be banned. How dare such individuals rob us of our freedrom of choice?
They packed up in time, conceded defeat, gave in as film producers, directors and actors determined what was publicly acceptable and how far boundaries could be pushed. It seemed to me the right and proper outcome. At that time.
Now, with the wisdom of experience, sickened by the constant public diet of murder, mayhem, violence, filthy language and explicit sex, maybe those of us who derided the “puritans” weren’t so smart, after all.
Maybe that’s why Chief Constable Baker this week won his belated pat on the back from Home Secretary Smith for “recognising what people want”.
It could almost make one want to laugh, hysterically and cynically, if things weren’t so bad in many areas of life today.
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