December 1999 Volume 80 Number 12
"serving the protectors"
| December 1999 Volume 80 Number 12 "serving the protectors" |
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| By
Brett Williams |
hen Queen Elizabeth wanted to find out about the perils of British policing, she called for Police Federation of England and Wales chairman, Fred Broughton. She invited him to lunch after hearing a radio broadcast last year, in which he expressed grave concerns for the future of UK law enforcement.
He expected to be just one of hundreds of guests, but found that his hosts, the Queen and Prince Phillip, had invited only six.
Over lunch, the Queen asked Broughton why he was “worried about the future of policing”.
And he explained why, just as he has to Prime Minister Tony Blair, international police union conferences and his 126,000-strong membership.
He sees the traditional role of British beat cops and patrol officers as under threat of extinction.
As keynote speaker at the Police Association’s annual conference in Adelaide last October, Broughton revealed that deeply slashed budgets had already devastated Britain’s front-line police services.
Working with consultants, his federation found that government cost-cutting had amounted to £583 million in the four years to 1998. And, to avoid electoral backlash, politicians, he said, were using private industry to supplement strained police services.
“In the UK and Europe, national companies are now running so much of what used to be policing,” Broughton told PASA conference delegates.
“The private security industry (is used to police) shopping malls and low-priced council housing estates. And local governments are using their own personnel to produce a lower tier of policing.
“The words they’re using now are ‘neighbourhood wardens’, and these are the people who are going to patrol the streets; to deal with people.
“The difference here is, we (police) attempt to affect behaviour, which is the most difficult job. What are they (wardens) going to do when people get restless and violent?
“If we withdraw into central police stations, investigating crime and specialist roles - and lose the patrolling police role - then what on earth is going to happen?”
Broughton even hinted that the ’70s futuristic film, A Clockwork Orange - which depicts England as overrun by street violence - may rightly represent his country’s future.
He also warned that the British agenda of reduced police numbers and services was “so relevant to where you (Australians) are right now”.
But Broughton, 52, explained his federation’s meticulously-planned yet simple counter-agenda: partnership with the community. He insisted that, from such a bond, police unions could draw strength with which to undermine the political process.
“The community knows only too well what’s going wrong and what they want from their police service,” he said.
“When they’re in trouble they want us there. Even when they’re not in trouble, they want to see us in uniform and they want the visible reassurance of knowing the police are around. That’s the base of our strength.
“The patrolling police officers and their link with the community give us the strength to argue so many things about policing.”
Police Federation of Australia president, Peter Alexander, welcomed Broughton’s British perspective, and said that Australian police had similarly suffered governments’ economic rationalist attitudes to police budgets.
“I think we learned a lot from Fred in just revisiting that very basic relationship between front-line police and their community,” Alexander said. “If we lose sight of that, we’re missing the big picture.”
Broughton - a policeman for 32 years and federation chairman since 1994 - first served his federation as a local representative 25 years ago. He has served continuously through to his current chairmanship.
He said he was drawn to unionism by a pay disparity issue in 1976. London bus drivers were earning more than police officers of five years’ experience.
“I thought: ‘I either leave the police, or if I stay, I’ve got to get involved and improve these conditions’,” he said after the conference.
During his police career, Broughton served with Royalty Protection, CID and Diplomatic Protection in central London. Of his time in operational police work, he said: “I miss it like mad.”
Broughton described the British police approach to industrial negotiations as persuasive rather than adversarial. But a campaign tactic used by his federation in a mid-’90s pay dispute was perceived by some as highly threatening.
“We put together the biggest meeting the world’s ever seen of police officers,” he said. “We put into Wembley (Stadium) 26,000 police officers. They travelled from all around the country - in coaches and trains.
“It scared the shit out of every politician in the land. Tony Blair was in opposition and said: ‘I just hope you never do this to me’.”
The federation placed strict bans on alcohol, banners and misbehaviour. Members were guaranteed of ejection from the meeting for breaches of the bans. And, to illustrate their patriotism and commitment to policing, the entire gathering sang the national anthem at the end of the meeting.
“We said: ‘What you’re doing to us is wrong’,” Broughton explained. “We rode on the back of the police profession, not militancy and threats. The threats were all perceived - and we enjoyed that they perceived it as a threat.”
Broughton believes his federation to be one of the world’s most powerful unions. Its key strategy, he said, was to “get to the centre of decision-making”. But from there, he insisted, its role was to influence “professional issues” such as crime and powers before pay and conditions.
“Your secondary role is the pay and conditions because you ride on the back of the professionalism to actually ensure standards,” he said.
And, to enhance its position on the cutting edge of industrial relations, the federation retains three members of the British Parliament on salaries of £20,000 per year. Acting as political advisers, they reveal their parties’ views and likely actions on police-related issues.
The federation in turn seeks to use the advisers to influence party policies.
But also invaluable, Broughton insisted, was global information sharing among police representative bodies, particularly those of English-speaking countries.
“We have to understand what’s similar between us, and all the issues affecting the way we represent individual police officers,” he said. “Chief officers, the civil service and, of course, politicians do it, so if we don’t do it, we’re way behind.
“We’re all going through the same stuff, so we should all be supporting each other.”
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