Skip to main content

28th February - A Day of Anniversaries




 


Middle:  Moorgate 1975 (Source U/K)

Bottom:  Stechford 1967 (Source U/K)

Top:        Great Heck 2001 (Source BTP)


Today (28th February) is the anniversary of the Stechford railway crash ((1967), the Moorgate crash (1975) and the Great Heck crash (2001).   Between them 62 people were killed in the three incidents. 

The British Transport Police played a major role in each one, as responders and as investigators.  At Moorgate (43 dead) the force investigated on behalf of the coroner and supported the inquiry carried out by Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate.  At Great Heck (10 dead) the scene was secured by BTP and the criminal and coronial investigation was led by BTP.  But read the official accounts of these incidents and there is hardly a mention of BTP.  The major book about the Moorgate Crash, for example, makes two passing references to the force and in one of these gets its title wrong.  This observation is not an attempt to detract from the vitally important role played by local forces at the scenes of these tragedies.  Policing is not a competitive activity.  But somehow in the recording of history the role of BTP has been overlooked.

In the great scheme of life this isn’t important.  But it is important that the officers who did so much at the scenes of this incidents and who worked with other agencies to mitigate and investigate them  are remembered.

 Major Incidents have always been a speciality of the railway police.  No other force has experience of events that occur around the country.  I attended major incidents in Cumbria, London, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Kent and Leicestershire, and this is a short list compared to other officers of my generation, and shorter still than that which would apply to officers who served in the 1950s and 60s.  These tragedies are an important part of the history of the country and the railway.  They are also an important part of the history of policing the railway. All the three incidents that occurred on this date are in living memory.  There is still time for officers, serving and retired, to write down their memories of what they did and how the force responded. Of course this applies to any of the hundreds of major incidents that have happened over many decades,

This therefore is a plea to record and save our history while there is still time.


28th February 2022


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Give me a firm place to stand.........

  Is policing better today than it was 50 years ago?   Is this even a valid question?   My answer to both is   straightforward: ‘I don’t know’.   I suspect that most things are better and some things have declined but generally it is the sort of question that can take up a lot of time and enough hot air to power a dirigible.   I really DON’T want to start a debate on this because what concerns me most is my own shifting perspective.   As a grumpy git I find the sight of scruffy police officers looking bored and staring at their telephones really annoying.   I don’t understand why wearing a traditional helmet is so difficult and I don’t like the rather lightweight approach to discipline.   On the other hand my professional dealings with police officers show me that modern officers are bright, caring, thoughtful and determined to do the right thing.   As events demonstrate there is no shortage of brave people in today’s service. The horror...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more

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 ...
1 comment
Read more