Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

  The Daily Telegraph has reported that the British Transport Police intend to fund a bursary for black students to study law to ‘make amends’ for the actions of a corrupt officer (DS Ridgewell) and his associates nearly 50 years ago.   Ridgewell was corrupt.   He fitted up innocent young black men (The Oval Four and the Stockwell Six etc), was involved with organised crime groups and he stole large amounts of property.   The story of his downfall, imprisonment and death is well known but it is only in the last couple of years that the cases have come before the Court of Appeal which has quashed numerous convictions.   Ridgewell also targeted white men (including other serving officers) but the impact on the black community transcends even the horrors experienced by the victims of his crimes.   Nearly half a century on the issues caused by police corruption and racism of the 1970s still casts a long shadow. The Chief Constable of BTP is quoted as saying:   “Last year we issued an a

  I was never very good at managing people. I am a fan of the direct approach but there are limits and, in the end, most of the time leaders are trying to take their people with them. A carrot and stick approach is normally required. There are even times when a pure stick approach could be argued for. My ineffectual musings along these lines come from my latest excursions in the archives of the British Transport Police History Group (BTPHG). The memorandum below was clearly meant to raise standards – I wonder what inspired its creation and I wonder how successful it was (I think I know the answer). I am sure that there is no gossiping in the modern police service (!), although the phrase ‘general slackness’ did come to mind yesterday when I saw a group of officers from a large police force standing in close proximity to each other while they all stared at their telephones. But before I descend into full grumpy old person mode I would say that in almost every way policing has improved i

  I spent an interesting few hours today doing some research and, as always, I was distracted by other issues.   I was reading the Annual Report of the Chief Constable of British Transport Police for 1973 and what caught my eye was the section on terrorism.   From time to time I get the impression that some people think that terrorism was invented only a few years ago.   The lethal terrorist campaigns of earlier decades are often forgotten. In 1973 the RAILWAY in Great Britain saw: 5                           IEDs explode 5                            IEDs defused 1,314                   Telephone Bomb Threats 715                      Suspect Packages 38                        Suspect Cars 78                         Suspect Letters And 22 Other incidents That’s a total of 2,175 incidents and, as the Chief Constable pointed out, a major call on the resources of the force. Nobody was killed by terrorists on the railway in 1973, although fatalities did occur elsewhere