Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

  In Memory of the 31 People Who Lost Their Lives And To the Hundreds of Others Who Suffered Because of the Fire King's Cross 18th November 2025 Some General Thoughts in the Context of The King’s Cross Fire (38 Years On) It strikes me that officers of the British Transport Police, and its ancestor forces, have probably attended more major incidents than any other police force of a similar size.   It is therefore sad that we lack a comprehensive set of personal accounts from officers who attended these dreadful events.   From the many train crashes, terrorist outrages and wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through to the continued terrorist attacks and the pandemic of the 21 st century I have seen but a handful of recollections written by the officers who were actually involved in these massive events in our history. These big events result in the production of vast amounts of formal paperwork which is very useful to the historian and to those whose job it...

  The Birth Certificate of the Railways? This month saw the 200 th anniversary of the operation of the railways in the UK.   Am I alone in thinking that this celebration of human ingenuity has been a little under egged? There are parts of our history that leave me feeling rather uncomfortable but the amazing achievement that was the ‘invention’ of powered railways is something which we can all be proud of.   What a gift to the world and to the future!   200 hundred years of railways and many exciting things still to come.   A form of transport that is green, effective and capable of endless improvement. I am not a train spotter (insert some less pejorative phrase if preferred) but I have worked in close partnership with the railway industry for most of my life and have come to admire the individuals who really understand the system and who put safety before profit and the needs of the public before the corporate imperative.    I would have thought...

  A friend and ex colleague sent me this picture today after seeing it on display whilst on holiday.   It shows BTP’s Specialist Response Unit (then part of the Counter Terrorism Support Unit - CTSU) during training, using advanced chemical detection equipment and wearing Gas Tight Suits (GTS).   The picture was taken in 2006 in the yard at BTP FHQ at Tavistock Place (1). In the period following the 9/11 attacks in the US, BTP rapidly enhanced its Counter Terrorism capability.   Work on confronting the Chemical, Biological and Nuclear (CBRN) threat had begun in earnest in 1995 in the aftermath of the nerve agent attack on the Tokyo Metro by the Aum Shinrikyo cult (2).       The railways policed by BTP and its predecessors have been targeted since the 1880s by terrorists, so the development of officers trained to handle terrorist incidents and threats is no surprise.   Experience of wartime operations also featured in BTP’s corporate memory. ...

  Fig One:  Copy of Letter to the Reading Justices found in the correspondance of the Home Secretary 183 9 Last week I was at the National Archives working on some papers relating to an RAF Bomb Disposal Flight during the Second World War.   Naturally I found myself reading the Home Secretary’s correspondence file for 1839.   These research leaps will be very familiar to those who spend time in archives and libraries.   I have (mostly) given up researching the history of the railway police but it is hard to resist the temptation of surfing a catalogue and ordering a few extra files to pad out the task in hand.   On this occasion I found myself reading letters that had been sent to Lord John Russell (1) and in particular a of a letter sent by the Great Western Railway to the Justices of the Peace in Reading which had been copied to the Home Secretary. Fig Two:  Lord John Russell (1792-1878): later The Earl Russell.  Photo 1861. The early days of ...

  WHY DO NON HOME DEPARTMENT POLICE FORCES GET MISSED WHEN LEGISLATION IS BEING DRAFTED? Note: The Home Department is the traditional name for the Home Office and the Home Secretary is technically the Secretary of State for the Home Department.   In this and other pieces I tend to use the titles interchangeably.   I hope that by confusing my readers I can distract them from the boring nature of the blog itself.   One part of my work lies in the field of research.   This is not well paid and is a somewhat lonely pastime, but I do enjoy the thrill of tracking down information in archives, dusty corners of the internet and guiding people around bits of London. I find that there is often an overlap between the past and present, indeed life is a continuum.    The present is a product of the past.   The influence of what has come before is often apparent in what is done today. Frequently to understand the modern operating context we have to get pa...

I had a chat today about the challenges of managing potential football disorder away from grounds.   As always everybody was keen to remember that more than 99% of people attending football matches are there to enjoy themselves in a way that poses no threats to the King’s peace.    A sense of perspective is important in all public order and crowd management scenarios.   The subject of the history of the issue came up.   The problems of the 1980s and 1970s are still fresh in the mind and the lessons that were learned then are pretty well incorporated into modern practice.   Modern public order (not a phrase I especially like) policing and the co-operation between forces has a lot to recommend it.   Looking to the past the books by Mike Layton on the subject are worth a look.   The particular challenge of policing fans as they travel on the railway network has been a speciality of BTP for the whole of the history of the force.   Time consumin...