WHEN WAS THE FIRST RAILWAY POLICE FORCE CREATED?
Q When is a
police force not a police force?
A When it polices
the railways and docks (amongst others)
WHAT IS A POLICE FORCE?
A sure way of irritating members of the British Transport
Police force is to remind them that BTP is not a police force. BTP is not the same as other forces and it is
painful for us as amateur police historians to note that BTP is still treated
differently to other forces, despite decades of excellence in policing. The ‘force’ question is just one of the anomalies
that still exist and I will revisit some of the others in future. This is
not an exercise in semantics but rather it is a question of how railway, dock
and canal policing developed as a sidebar to mainstream police structures. The
anomalies are a product of history and therefore sit comfortably with
historians. The modern operational and political fallout is for others.
I am not a lawyer but have been around this subject for many
years and have been lucky enough to discuss the issue with civil servants,
police historians and specialist lawyers.
The description ‘police force’ is a term of art. In other words it has a strict
definition. The definition can be found by
reference to the Interpretation Act 1978 which itself draws on the Police Act
1996. A ‘police force’ is a force
maintained under the 1996 Act. Other
forces (such as BTP) are treated as if they were police forces when legislators
think this is a good idea. Therefore
parts of the Police Act and numerous other pieces of legislation treat BTP, or certain
groups within the force (such as Assistant Constables etc) as if it were a
police force. These provisions allow,
for example, BTP to give mutual aid, for
BTP officers and staff to possess firearms etc.
But unless BTP is explicitly included in legislation then it is excluded
as a police force and only exists as such within the limits set, and for the
purposes laid out, in its own legislation: the Railways and Transport Safety
Act 2003. The potential for BTP to be
left out in error or through a lack of understanding is an ever present danger.
Successive governments have had the
opportunity to sort this out but have declined to do so and have seen the odd
legal position of BTP as an opportunity to have their cake and eat it, ie the
force does not appear as a cost to the exchequer (except in limited and specialised
cases) but can be used to supplement the geographic police forces when
required. This sometimes creates
oddities as officers transferring between BTP and other forces have found. Police Regulations do not apply to BTP (separate
‘mirror’ regulations can be made by the British Transport Police Authority). A glance at current police force recruitment
advertisements continues to demonstrate the unevenness of the playing field. BTP officers have no statutory guarantee of
future equality of pay and conditions. Some of the battles fought by the BTP Federation
since 1921 are still not fully concluded.
BODIES OF CONSTABLES, EMPLOYEES AND POLICE FORCES
We often proudly point out that there have been railway
police constables since the 1820s.
Although there have been attempts to dismiss these early officers as
railway operatives it is now clear from reading contemporary accounts that they
conducted constabulary duties in addition to functions that related to the movement of
trains and the protection of revenue.
But all railway and dock constables were employees of the companies they
served. Indeed another historical quirk
that still exists is that BTP officers are still employees (unlike officers in
local forces) as well as holders of the office of constable. This was a stumbling point in the recent
(successful) battle to get BTP included within the Police Covenant. By being employees of companies, and later of
the British Transport Commission (and later still of the British Railways
Board), there was no need for a stand alone force structure. By the beginning of the 20th
century we see railway police stepping aside from the operational railway hierarchy
that employed them. The British Transport
Police History Group (BTPHG) holds copies of correspondence from Captain
Horwood, the Chief of the Norther Eastern Railway Police (and later
Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis), attempting to clarify the employee
v constable question. In his letters and
orders he often refers to his officers as a ‘force’ but the truth is the
railway police sat outside the definition of a police force even then. Victorian police legislation is largely about
the funding of forces. All the Acts, including
the Police Act 1890 and the Police (Scotland) Act 1890 (both of which dealt
with pensions) ignore the existence of the railway and dock forces.
Horwood and his fellow chiefs were in charge of railway
departments that included persons who had been sworn as constables. They did not lead police forces as such. At best it could be said that they were in
charge of constabularies, ie bodies of constables. As a modern Appeal Court judgment points out:
all police forces are constabularies but not all constabularies are police
forces.
THE BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION POLICE
If we fast forward to the birth of BTP (as it was often
known even when it was formally the British Transport Commission Police) in
1949 we still do not see the creation of a force. The 1949 Act was a private piece of
legislation and policing is not even mentioned in the long title, it was dealt
with in that part of the Act headed as ‘Miscellaneous’. Section 53 allowed the BTC to appoint persons
to be sworn or attested as constables by magistrates (or Sheriffs in Scotland) and
outlined their jurisdiction. That’s
all. It did not create a police force
within the meaning of the Police Act 1946 and nor did it create a policing
organisation akin to such a force. The
Police Committee (originally chaired by Field Marshall Slim) did great work but
they were not a police authority or watch committee – they operated without a statutory
basis. The BTC
Police was bigger than almost all of the 133 police forces in England and Wales
(probably second only to the Metropolitan force), but it was not legally a
police force.
The first statutory reference that I can find to the BTP
being a police force (albeit in the limited sense that still applies) is the
British Transport Police Scheme 1963.
This Scheme was a statutory instrument introduced to meet the
requirements of s 68 Transport Act 1962.
The section refers to the Transport Police (note no ‘British’) and the
need for it to operate as a ‘joint force’.
In the 1963 Scheme BTP is described as a Police force and various
provisions were made for the administration of the Force. It was still not a ‘police force’ in the
wider sense but the existence of the organisation, as opposed to individual constables,
was recognised in law. In many ways it
is this Statutory Instrument, rather than the BTC Act 1949, that marks the
origin of the modern force.
DOES THE BTP COUNT?
Or rather, is it counted?
The existence of specialised police departments to deal with offences on
the railway and in docks meant that unsolved crimes were not always adopted by
local forces for statistical purposes. This was important at locations with large
railway stations, docks or goods yards.
It was only the railway companies and their police that maintained cross
county figures. Indeed the national
nature of railway and dock policing is one of the reasons that BTP exist. The police historian (and BTP Chief Constable),
William Gay, estimated that there were more thefts from the railway in the
decade around the Second World War than in all the other forces combined. Were these figures every incorporated into
national figures? We don’t know and can
only guess that some probably appeared in national figures. The Metropolitan Police had a system until
the late 1980s that saw crimes ‘cleared’ by arrests by BTP officers
incorporated into their statistics – but not the uncleared ones! Until recent times the Home Office did not
see it as their responsibility to collate crimes that had not been reported to Police
Act police forces.
Currently offences on the railway are largely subject to the
same counting and reporting rules as those that occur elsewhere. The statistics around police officer numbers
are interesting. The latest guidance on
police statistics tells us that BTP is included in the statistics for the total
number of police officers in the country but are not included in other data
sets such as the calculation of the average length of police service or
officers on restricted duties. BTP is
not included in the figures for the ’uplift’ of 20,000 new officers promised by
government (BTP has received no funding for new officers from this programme)
but the BTP headcount (including any new officers) is included in the total
number of officers. As for the use of
powers BTP’s use of stop and search powers is included in national statistics
but the use of Fixed Penalty Notices (especially important in automatic
enforcement at level crossings) are not counted nationally.
DOES IT MATTER?
The issue of the status of the BTP is a matter for
government. Historically one of the
cultural attributes of BTP and its officers has been a certain amount of legislative
wishful thinking backed up by a massive dose of pragmatism. But it is right that the historical, as well
as the contemporary, record is accurate. For most practical and practitioner purposes
BTP is a police force and so were the railway and dock forces before it. The law needs to catch up. Hopefully there
will be a new chapter in BTP history when the force can enjoy the same legal and
constitutional status of other forces.
In the meantime BTP officers will do what their predecessors did – get on
with the reality of policing the railway.
NOTES (Full references on request)
Police Act 1890
Police Act 1946
British Transport Commission Act 1949
Transport Act 1962
British Transport Police Force Scheme 1963
Interpretation Act 1978
Police Act 1996
Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003
Police Regulations 2003
McKinnon V London Borough of Redbridge CA EW Civ [2014]
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