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Public order - Sir Peter Imbert

01 January 1991

Public order - Sir Peter Imbert
artdoc May=1991

For the record - Sir Peter Imbert, Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police speaking to the Howard League on "Policing
the 21st Century", - extract on paramilitarism, 9.9.87

"The third subject for concern is the move towards
paramilitarism in the police. I accept that such a move has
occurred, if by that is meant that the police have better
equipment for dealing with violent disorder, or that there has
been more violent disorder in which that equipment has been
needed. There have been both long-running violent incidents,
with the miners strike and then the News International Dispute,
and more extreme but short-term violence, when PC Blakelock was
killed at the Tottenham riot.

In an era when there was less violence, and less extreme
violence, in situations of public disorder, a principle of
policing was "winning by seeming to lose". In other words, by
dealing with violent groups in a moderate way, and by the
police being seen to suffer injury rather than to inflict it,
public opinion remained on the side of the police and against
the crowd who used the violence. In the long run, the police
could be said to have "won" the confrontation. Long-running
events prevent such an approach;the police cannot consistently
"lose" in the short term, because the short term becomes the
long term and those who are using the force have their way. And
when violence reaches the point where a person is killed, the
question of allowing it to continue or recur does not arise.
Indeed, if in such cases the police are seen to lose, as they
were at Broadwater Farm, then faith in their competence as law-
enforcers is shaken".