Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

  A friend and ex colleague sent me this picture today after seeing it on display whilst on holiday.   It shows BTP’s Specialist Response Unit (then part of the Counter Terrorism Support Unit - CTSU) during training, using advanced chemical detection equipment and wearing Gas Tight Suits (GTS).   The picture was taken in 2006 in the yard at BTP FHQ at Tavistock Place (1). In the period following the 9/11 attacks in the US, BTP rapidly enhanced its Counter Terrorism capability.   Work on confronting the Chemical, Biological and Nuclear (CBRN) threat had begun in earnest in 1995 in the aftermath of the nerve agent attack on the Tokyo Metro by the Aum Shinrikyo cult (2).       The railways policed by BTP and its predecessors have been targeted since the 1880s by terrorists, so the development of officers trained to handle terrorist incidents and threats is no surprise.   Experience of wartime operations also featured in BTP’s corporate memory. ...

  The second of my recent purchases is a clipping from Modern Transport Magazine from January 1949.   The article describes the new Railway Police School at Walton on the Hill, Tadworth, Surrey.   It expresses a hope that the opening of the school would bring a consistency to the training of officers from the various railway police forces which had come together as a result of the nationalisation of public transport.   The new force didn’t really have a name (sometimes described as the British Railways Police) at this stage and it took the passage of the British Transport Commission Act later in the year for the BTC Police to emerge in a form that we would still recognise. The article contains some photographs and a description of the tasks facing the railway police in the post war period.   It points out that it was the second largest force in the country with around 4,000 officers.   ‘Tadworth’ as it was universally known became the jewel in the rathe...