Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

  Chief officers of police like to boast.   They are, generally, proud of their force and can be forgiven for the pleasure they derive from the actions of those they command.   They are at their most boastful when in the company of their peers.   George Stephens, the long serving Chief of the Great Western Railway Police, took the opportunity of a meeting of the Police Chiefs Conference of the Railway Executive (the wartime body that brought together the mainline railways and the London Passenger Transport Board during the Second World War) to tell of the good work of one of his officers. An unnamed special constable had challenged a group of men leaving the dock at Penarth in South Wales.   Three of the suspects stopped but the fourth made off.   The special constable drew his issue revolver and shot the fleeing man, wounding him in the thigh.   Alas there are no details of what happened to the suspects including the one brought down by the officer.    The issue of weapons to officers

                                       Image Reproduced with permission: BTPHG                                                 If there is one thing that makes the UK different from other European countries is the blessed absence in recent centuries of the experience of being invaded and occupied.   It is easy for us to forget that for those who were living through the Second World War the prospect of an invasion was painfully real.   We came very close to sharing the fate of our closest continental neighbours. The risk of invasion created the need for a considerable amount of planning most of which is now public.   Even today emergency planners must consider the prospect of war as a potential civil, as well as military, disaster.   During the early part of the war there was a lot of debate around the role of the police should an invasion take place.   The role of the civil police in occupied Europe has a mixed history and the photographs of officers in traditional uniforms saluting