Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

  Officers from LNER police at Hull forced to retire by a new rule lowering the retirement age from 65 to 60.:  Photo The Hull Daily Mail 17 September 1925 p6 Every day I count myself lucky for my police pension – especially in periods when other work is in short supply.   I worry about the future of serving officers and their reduced pension opportunities and the requirement for everybody to work longer before we receive our state pensions.   My interest in history reminds me that pensions have always been a source of campaigning for the police federations.   From the very beginning, even in the aftermath of the of the defeats of the 1919 strikes, the police federations have campaigned for a decent pension for their members.   The Railway Police Federation (now the BTP Federation) worked for decades for provision to be made for officers in retirement.   My research into the history of specialist policing reminds me that the pension issue is linked to the question of the age of retirem

  Research can be boring.   Not always of course.   Most of the time there is nothing better than wading through stacks of documents looking for the needle that provokes joy on discovery.   However researching legislation is particularly challenging and can be both tedious and difficult.   However there is no way around it.   Either we just tell stories about our history and in doing so reinforce the many myths of police history or we slog away.   I paint this rather glum picture because I have spent the last few weeks (in between more exciting activities and trying to earn a living) wading through the legislation that touches the jurisdiction of the British Transport Police.   In particular I have been trying to find the point when jurisdiction was expanded to cover places beyond the premises of the ‘Boards’   (ie railways, docks canals etc) in matter ‘affecting the Board’.   Why is this important?   Well it isn’t, this is niche history after all.   Why am I interested?   Because qu