Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

                                                        The Former Reception Area of BTP FHQ Tavistock Place.   Yesterday whilst walking between King’s Cross and an appointment in Bloomsbury I called in to 15 Tavistock Place for a cup of coffee What was once BTP FHQ is now part of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.   The old reception area is now a public café.   It seemed strange sitting there surrounded by people working on their laptops and drinking tea. Tavistock Place was FHQ for around a quarter of a century and represented a major step up from the facilities offered at Park Royal, the first FHQ for BTP.   For a while in 2005, after all the other departments had moved out our team, The Counter Terrorism Support Unit, had the run of the place.   A surreal time in many w...

  In Memory of the 31 People Who Lost Their Lives And To the Hundreds of Others Who Suffered Because of the Fire King's Cross 18th November 2025 Some General Thoughts in the Context of The King’s Cross Fire (38 Years On) It strikes me that officers of the British Transport Police, and its ancestor forces, have probably attended more major incidents than any other police force of a similar size.   It is therefore sad that we lack a comprehensive set of personal accounts from officers who attended these dreadful events.   From the many train crashes, terrorist outrages and wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through to the continued terrorist attacks and the pandemic of the 21 st century I have seen but a handful of recollections written by the officers who were actually involved in these massive events in our history. These big events result in the production of vast amounts of formal paperwork which is very useful to the historian and to those whose job it...