Anti Gas Training

This photograph pops up on social media from time to time. I am not sure where it originated but it is normally described as gas training for Brighton Police and for the Southern Railway Police. It is the sort of photograph that lends itself to a caption contest but this is not my intention here, although a few suggestions do come to mind.

There are a few files in the National Archives describing the the arrangements for anti gas training for railway police (eg MEPO 2/3024) and during the war itself a debate took place about the type of respirators that should be issued to the railway police.

For many the issuing of respirators brought home the fact that the UK was about to face total war. The civilian services suffered significant losses and worked themselves beyond the point of exhaustion in their efforts to protect the population. The record of the railway and dock police forces in this regard was second to none. We owe that generation a great debt.

Respirators were again issued to BTP officers escorting Travelling Post Office (TPO) in the 1960s in the aftermath of the so called 'Great Train Robbery'. After the Tokyo Sarin attack in 1995 CBRN became, and remains an important part of BTP's Counter Terrorism work.

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Films for Thought

While searching the index to the material held by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) I stumbled across a couple of items relevant to this blog. Film footage can sometimes feel like a peep hole into the past. Each individual that appears would have had their own story to tell. Perhaps this is a theme I will return to in relation to the footage which catches – sometimes only in passing – railway, dock or canal police officers. The two IWM clips that caught my eye were: A 1942 film showing war work being carried out by women on the Southern Railway. Includes a shot of a member of WPC, Southern Railway Police directing traffic at Waterloo. The commentary reflects the social assumptions of the time. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060021182 A silent 1940 film about the evacuation of children. Shows footage at the front of St Pancras Station with police officers including an LMS Sergeant. https://www.iwm.org...

Law and History 2: JUST THE SAME AS OTHER FORCES?

Reading through this before posting makes me fear that it is not historical enough for this blog and trespasses into contemporary issues. So be it. But I do feel it necessary to remind readers that this blog does NOT represent the view of the BTPHG. These ramblings are mine alone. It is rarely accurate to say that history repeats itself, but it is true that somethings that we think are settled in the past return to challenge us again. When I was a serving police officer in BTP I saw a steady evolution in the status of the force. The achievements of officers, particularly in facing the ‘decade of disasters’ (1980s) and the acknowledged expertise of BTP in dealing with certain classes of activity (terrorism, theft person, theft of goods in transit, major incident response, football disorder etc) all led to an increasing recognition that BTP was an equal member of the police family. In concrete terms this had been marked by the recommendation of ...

Second World War 4: Trapped in the Railway Police

Sergeant Phil Longland: Southampton Docks June 1943 (Photo: British Transport Police History Group) In the National Archives sits a rather tatty file from the Railway Executive Committee (1939-1945). It is accompanied by a note that says that the conservation department has been advised of its condition and that it will be subject of further evaluation. The note was added over twenty years ago. Looking after our national records is a long term process. The contents of the file shed much light on the under researched subject of the arrangements for policing the railways and docks of the UK during the Second World War. National emergencies create the need for emergency legislation. This was not an area of government that was particularly well handled in the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic but a war that included a very real risk of invasion meant that the scale of emergency powers granted to government ministers and officials is hard now to imagine. Not...

Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

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