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Operation Countryman & Historical Police Corruption

Yithian

Yithian

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I've just bumped into this topic and find it fascinating. Similar topics have cropped up on the verges of my (limited) reading around the Jack the Ripper / Yorkshire Ripper cases, but I didn't have any of the larger picture.

The short version is detailed here:

Operation Countryman was an investigation into police corruption in London in the late 1970s. The operation was conducted between 1978–1982 at a total cost of £3 million and led to eight police officers being prosecuted although none were convicted. The initial allegations of corruption were made by a "supergrass" — an informer occupying an important position in the criminal underworld — who claimed that some officers, including members of the elite Flying Squad (nicknamed "The Sweeney", a shortened version of the Cockney rhyming slang, Sweeney Todd) which dealt with commercial armed robberies, were receiving bribes from criminals in return for warnings of imminent police raids or arrests, the fabrication of evidence against innocent men, and to have charges against guilty criminals dropped.

The investigation initially targeted officers within the City of London Police but spread to include the Metropolitan Police based at Scotland Yard. Codenamed Operation Countryman because of its use of officers from so-called 'rural' police forces of Hampshire and Dorset, the investigating team came to be disparagingly known by London officers as "The Sweedy." The investigation was ordered by the then Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, and began by examining police activity around three major crimes:
  • a £175,000 payroll robbery at the offices of the Daily Express newspaper in 1976
  • a £225,000 robbery outside the headquarters of Williams & Glyn's Bank, London, in 1977
  • a £200,000 payroll robbery at the offices of the Daily Mirror newspaper in 1978. During this robbery, Antonio Castro, a 38-year-old guard working for Security Express, was shot and killed.
As the investigation proceeded, it began to emerge that the corruption was not limited to "a few bad apples" within the forces but was "historically and currently endemic" and "widespread throughout the hierarchical command rather than confined to those below the rank of sergeant."

In August 1978 officers began investigations into corruption within the London police services. The unit was initially accommodated at Camberwell police station in south London. But following attempts to interfere with the team's documents, records and evidence, it moved to Godalming Police Station in Surrey, outside the Metropolitan Police District.

Operation Countryman faced massive obstruction from both senior management and the lower ranks of the police. Much of the investigation's evidence was obtained by police officers going undercover as police officers.

Asst. Chief Constable Leonard Burt told his investigation team not to pass any evidence it obtained against Metropolitan Police officers to the Met Commissioner, David McNee. Shortly before his retirement in February 1980, the Chief Constable of Dorset Constabulary, Arthur Hambleton, the superior of Burt, made allegations that Countryman had been willfully obstructed by Commissioner McNee and Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Thomas Hetherington. In May 1980 Leonard Burt returned to Dorset Constabulary and responsibility for Countryman passed to Sir Peter Matthews, Chief Constable of Surrey Constabulary. He ordered that all evidence already compiled during the investigation be passed to the Metropolitan Police to be dealt with by their own internal investigation unit.

After six years, and at a cost of over £4 million, Operation Countryman presented its findings to the Home Office and the Commissioner. Parts of the report were leaked to the public. Despite Countryman's recommendation that some officers should face criminal charges, no officer was ever charged with a criminal offence as a result of the investigation. Dale Campbell-Savours said that "over 250 police officers were forced to resign and many faced criminal charges after investigations revealed that police membership of particular [Masonic] lodges formed the nucleus of a criminal conspiracy."

Questions asked in the British Parliament have, on several occasions, called on the Home Secretary to release the findings of Operation Countryman, but such requests have been refused as these are protected by public interest immunity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Countryman

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Here's a retro-cool 'World In Action' documentary (whose broadcast the MET allegedly tried to prevent):

Cleaning Up The Yard


And here's the Hansard report of debate concerning a proposed Amendment to the Police Act (1964) that attempted to ban Freemasons from serving in the police force (in 1988). It was a ten-minute-bill debate and--like most attempts at legislation via that means without government support/time--it failed.

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/...ct-1964-amendment#S6CV0136P0_19880628_HOC_186

Includes this gem of an exchange:

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South)
On a point of order. Mr. Speaker. In the interests of the happy procedures of the House, I want to raise this matter before we embark upon the ten-minute Bill. I understand that the Bill requires police constables to give information about their membership of freemasonry. Freemasonry involves a direct pecuniary interest and advantage to any member of the freemasons. I hasten to say that I am not a freemason.

If hon. Members have a direct pecuniary interest in a matter, they are not allowed to vote on it. This does not involve general legislation. Because the constables covered by the Bill could be members of the lodges of which hon. Members are members, there will be a direct link. I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will listen to the arguments advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and conclude that hon. Members who are freemasons, but who are not, unfortunately, required to make a declaration to that effect, should stay out of the Division Lobby when the vote is taken, thereby avoiding any suspicion that they are voting for, or against, the Bill for their financial benefit.

§Mr. Speaker
I think that we should wait to hear what is said in introducing the Bill. Like the hon. Member, I am not a mason. I understand that it is very difficult to find out who is a mason.

§Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)
Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. If you will not take the advice offered by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (M r. Cryer), perhaps the hon. Members concerned will roll up their trouser legs when they go into the Lobbies.

§Mr. Speaker
I shall watch most carefully.
 
Key Section from the Hansard text (although all worth a read):

Over three years ago, Sir Kenneth Newman, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan police—and at that time the most important police officer in the country—made exactly the point that I make now. In the book "Principles of Policing and Guidance for Professional Behaviour", he and his colleagues identified the special dilemma of a police officer who is a freemason, and the conflict between his service declaration of impartiality and the sworn obligation to avoid any activity likely to interfere with impartiality or to give the impression that it may do so. Sir Kenneth went on to say: A freemason's oath holds inevitably the implication that loyalty to fellow freemasons may supersede any other loyalty. One who is already a freemason would also be wise to ponder from time to time whether he should continue as a freemason. That view was shared by Sir Kenneth's successor and by at least five other chief constables, who immediately issued similar advice and guidance. In response, freemasonry closed ranks. The new and powerful lodge of St. James was forged, made up almost exclusively of Metropolitan police officers, some say as an act of defiance and a calculated insult to the commissioner. Its tentacles ran deep, with strong Conservative connections.

Sir Kenneth's concerns were prompted by a long history of problems involving freemasonry in the police force. One example that he must have had in mind was Operation Countryman, in the mid-1970s, when over 250 police officers were forced to resign and many faced criminal charges after investigations revealed that police membership of particular lodges formed the nucleus of a criminal conspiracy.

If revelations of wrongdoing and insidious corruption are not enough, what about the worries of the sergeant on the beat passed over for promotion for a less experienced or less able but better connected colleague, the disciplinary complaint against an official inexplicably overlooked, or the drunken driver who is not breathalysed?

Today, masonic penetration of the police force appears to be greater than ever. A survey in 1981 revealed that an estimated 33 out of 50 chief constables were freemasons. It has been alleged that 50 per cent of the active membership of the Police Federation are freemasons. The latest authoritative study suggests that as many as one in five of all policemen are masons. The author of that study concluded: An astonishing number of policemen are freemasons—out of all proportion with the population as a whole. I am told that in London alone at least four lodges are made up entirely of freemason policemen. Just what are they doing?

Source:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/...ct-1964-amendment#S6CV0136P0_19880628_HOC_186
 
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Sir Robert Mark:

In the February of that year, the Head of the Flying Squad was suspended after it was alleged that he had vacationed abroad with a pornographer, and nine days later Brodie was taken to hospital suffering from stress. Mark set about purging the CID, presenting whenever possible the uniform branch as the purveyors of "real policing".Divisional detectives were put under the control of the uniformed commanders; Detective Commanders were put under the control of uniformed Deputy Assistant Commissioners; A10 was fully established under the command of a uniformed officer; responsibility for dealing with pornography was switched to the uniformed branch; and promoted detectives were moved back into uniform for a minimum of two years. Within two weeks Mark had informed CID that they were the "'most routinely corrupt organisation in London"'.

Obituary
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/o...thless-in-rooting-out-corruption-2097551.html

Enjoyable Documentary Extract:

Extracted From 'The Lost World of the 70s'.

This is generally very interesting and also features Sir James Goldsmith (he of the Referendum Party and father of Zac), Lord Longford & General Sir Walter Walker, war hero, Gurkha Officer and all-round martinet, whose 'Civil Assistance' group was practically an anti-Left private army that scared the pants off the government for 10 mins in the 70s.
 
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From what I've read of Sir Robert Mark, he had balls of steel:
___________________________________________________________________________

At one stage he threatened to put all 3,200 officers in the CID back into uniform and start again from scratch unless they conformed to his standards. The measures he took led to 450 officers leaving the Yard as a result of or in anticipation of disciplinary moves.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11456705
 
Yithian said:
I've just bumped into this topic and find it fascinating. Similar topics have cropped up on the verges of my (limited) reading around the Jack the Ripper / Yorkshire Ripper cases, but I didn't have any of the larger picture.

The short version is detailed here:

Operation Countryman was an investigation into police corruption in London in the late 1970s. The operation was conducted between 1978–1982 at a total cost of £3 million and led to eight police officers being prosecuted although none were convicted. The initial allegations of corruption were made by a "supergrass" — an informer occupying an important position in the criminal underworld — who claimed that some officers, including members of the elite Flying Squad (nicknamed "The Sweeney", a shortened version of the Cockney rhyming slang, Sweeney Todd) which dealt with commercial armed robberies, were receiving bribes from criminals in return for warnings of imminent police raids or arrests, the fabrication of evidence against innocent men, and to have charges against guilty criminals dropped.

The investigation initially targeted officers within the City of London Police but spread to include the Metropolitan Police based at Scotland Yard. Codenamed Operation Countryman because of its use of officers from so-called 'rural' police forces of Hampshire and Dorset, the investigating team came to be disparagingly known by London officers as "The Sweedy." The investigation was ordered by the then Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, and began by examining police activity around three major crimes:
  • a £175,000 payroll robbery at the offices of the Daily Express newspaper in 1976
  • a £225,000 robbery outside the headquarters of Williams & Glyn's Bank, London, in 1977
  • a £200,000 payroll robbery at the offices of the Daily Mirror newspaper in 1978. During this robbery, Antonio Castro, a 38-year-old guard working for Security Express, was shot and killed.
As the investigation proceeded, it began to emerge that the corruption was not limited to "a few bad apples" within the forces but was "historically and currently endemic" and "widespread throughout the hierarchical command rather than confined to those below the rank of sergeant."

In August 1978 officers began investigations into corruption within the London police services. The unit was initially accommodated at Camberwell police station in south London. But following attempts to interfere with the team's documents, records and evidence, it moved to Godalming Police Station in Surrey, outside the Metropolitan Police District.

Operation Countryman faced massive obstruction from both senior management and the lower ranks of the police. Much of the investigation's evidence was obtained by police officers going undercover as police officers.

Asst. Chief Constable Leonard Burt told his investigation team not to pass any evidence it obtained against Metropolitan Police officers to the Met Commissioner, David McNee. Shortly before his retirement in February 1980, the Chief Constable of Dorset Constabulary, Arthur Hambleton, the superior of Burt, made allegations that Countryman had been willfully obstructed by Commissioner McNee and Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Thomas Hetherington. In May 1980 Leonard Burt returned to Dorset Constabulary and responsibility for Countryman passed to Sir Peter Matthews, Chief Constable of Surrey Constabulary. He ordered that all evidence already compiled during the investigation be passed to the Metropolitan Police to be dealt with by their own internal investigation unit.
Click to expand...


The reference to The Sweeney is very interesting, because this puts me in mind very much of the scenario in one of `The Sweeney` TV show's cinema spin offs: I think it's just called `The Sweeney 2`. (I've never bothered to find it on youtube or anything, but maybe now I will).

The film concerns police orruption at a very high level, which our Sweeney heroes find themselves up against. In this version it is the Americans who are the culprits - and they have political motivations. I believe Colin Welland scripted it.

I was very impressed by the film at the time - saw it ages ago on TV but it has stayed with me. It seemed to have an intense urgency about it - and it is interesting to note that it came out in the same time period as the incidents that you have posted occured. Interesting.
 
In the Irish masonic constitution there is a specific clauses in one of the oaths that deals with secrecy which says that murder, treason and like crimes are excepted from secrecy and left to the individuals conscience.

I believe the Scottish does too, thought not sure about the English one.
 
Yithian said:
Why no input from @maximus otter?
Click to expand...

Never served in the City.
Never served in the Met.
Not a Mason.
Almost embarrassingly honest.
Was never offered a bribe, and certainly never solicited one.
Would have alerted my supervisors to any corruption l suspected in fellow officers.
Didn’t even know that this thread existed until l was notified of Yithian’s seeking my input.

maximus otter
 
And while re-visiting this topic I discovered that a full-length publication on the investigation came out earlier this year.

A19VvhRPrSL.jpg

The consensus seems to be that while it is well-researched the author (a former detective) is not a professional writer and narrates in a heavily partisan fashion (he's anti-investigation and believes most of the alleged corruption was the product of calculating crooks taking advantage of naive country coppers).

Must say, might still buy a copy.

Edit: have ordered--who the hell came up with that cover artwork?

Edit2: It is completely unacceptable typography to have the descender on the 'p' not merge with the first stroke of the 'u' beneath, as the 'r' and 't' do.
 
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maximus otter said:
Never served in the City.
Never served in the Met.
Not a Mason.
Almost embarrassingly honest.
Was never offered a bribe, and certainly never solicited one.
Would have alerted my supervisors to any corruption l suspected in fellow officers.
Didn’t even know that this thread existed until l was notified of Yithian’s seeking my input.

maximus otter
Click to expand...

That's a full enough response!

I thought that you might have heard rumors or at least had a sense of the atmosphere given that--if I'm not mistaken--you were serving in the early 80s (though, as you say, not in the Met).

From those articles above (and having no family connection to the police), I was interested to read of territorial tensions and ruffled feathers between the Met and Kent police when the former strayed into the latter's territory unannounced during the investigation of Kenneth Noye's killing of Detective John Fordham. It might have been journalistic licence, but the author made the two forces sound like competing fiefdoms.
 
Yithian said:
I thought that you might have heard rumors or at least had a sense of the atmosphere given that--if I'm not mistaken--you were serving in the early 80s (though, as you say, not in the Met).

...I was interested to read of territorial tensions and ruffled feathers between the Met and Kent police...
Click to expand...

We had a couple of ex-Met bobbies in my force, and I spoke in general terms to them concerning corruption. One had been in the Met in the "good old bad old days" of the late 60s/early 70s. I recall him telling me about attending a disturbance call, to find one of his detective sergeants holding a local turd by his ankles out of an umpteenth-floor window in a flat block. Apparently said turd had short-changed the DS, or the monthly protection money was late...

The Met has an aura of being a law unto itself, and they regard anyone in uniform outside the M25 as "carrot crunchers".

As to Countryman, obviously we were aware, but we thought of it (on the rare occasions when we did) in much the same way as you yourself might regard revelations about a paedo sex ring among a group of teachers in Tajikistan: superficially relevant, but only mildly interesting.

maximus otter
 
This may not sound a promising title, but Appendix C: CID Corruption is very good. The initial page or two on 'the first detectives' is a bit of a flimsy preamble (we all know that coppers mix with criminals and informants), but if the topic interests you I'd suggest picking up there and reading the whole section (from p. 285).
​
The Influence of Intelligence-Led Policing Models on Investigative Policy and Practice in Mainstream Policing 1993-2007: Division, Resistance and Investigative Orthodoxy by Adrian James​
​
[A thesis submitted to the Department of Social Policy of the London School of Economics and Political Science for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, September 2011]​

Extract:​
Alderson (1982: 1) (Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall Police 1973-1982) has argued that the Countryman inquiry was ‘wound down’ for “political reasons”. Initially, the team was tasked with investigating two robberies in London. However, the extent of the corruption that it uncovered was hugely embarrassing for the Home Office which was responsible for the administration of the Met. Alderson (1982:1) noted that he knew that the Home Secretary William Whitelaw and a former Minister of State Lord Harris “had said that Countryman was getting into channels that it was never intended to do, deep into the Metropolitan Police and that it was unlikely that there would ever be another Countryman exercise - at least not like that”. Alderson’s impression was that “Countryman was not pleasing the Home Office... because the inquiry was widening and becoming so much more serious than anyone had contemplated... it was becoming something of a scandal” ​
​
Source (Downloadable):
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4187662.pdf
 
It seems appropriate to adduce the Daniel Morgan murder here, which doesn't obviously reduce concerns about corruption in the Met in a later time-frame: the 80s and 90s. I was riveted by the first series of the Untold podcast a couple of years ago, and didn't realise that a second series had been released. Quite apart from the shocking details of the murder itself and complete failure to hold anyone to account for it - it is difficult to avoid the sense of ranks closing - it also raises intriguing avenues of enquiry about the uncomfortable close relationships between Met officers and Fleet Street.
 
Yithian said:
And while re-visiting this topic I discovered that a full-length publication on the investigation came out earlier this year.

View attachment 13107

The consensus seems to be that while it is well-researched the author (a former detective) is not a professional writer and narrates in a heavily partisan fashion (he's anti-investigation and believes most of the alleged corruption was the product of calculating crooks taking advantage of naive country coppers).

Must say, might still buy a copy.

Edit: have ordered--who the hell came up with that cover artwork?

Edit2: It is completely unacceptable typography to have the descender on the 'p' not merge with the first stroke of the 'u' beneath as the 'r' and 't' do.
Click to expand...

Typography and cover art aside, this is a remarkable book. I read the first fifty pages last night. What you're getting is a very partisan insider's account of the background, conduct and fallout of the enquiry from the perspective of a flying squad detective and his contemporaries (whom the author has interviewed and quotes at length). There are issues with clumsy composition, lapses of tone and irritating anti-PC asides, but the content is extremely valuable. The tone is one of an old man spinning a very long yarn in his local, but this old man has a remarkable memory for detail and can give you the pertinent points of every subject's biography at the drop of a hat. I wish the author could have been the main source for a book written by a professional, but we have what we have and it's frequently enthralling.

I've been so struck by what I've read that I'm tempted to disect the whole book and extract the facts/dates/figures into a more quickly accessible form that lays out the chronology and connections (there has been a lot of flicking back and forth to remind oneself who each officer or criminal was).

This should be a film in the style of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy.

Edit: Sample passage:

Nevertheless, Lundy permitted the constabulary officers full, unrestricted access to all the supergrasses. It would have been a matter of politeness for the two officers from Dorset to have announced their arrival at Whetstone in 1979, rather than barging in, unannounced, to see Fowles and Jones; unfortunately they did not.​

'I blocked them from coming in', Mike Bucknole told me, 'but Superintendent Corbett was there and he said it was all right for the Countryman officers to see them. Apparently, the first thing they asked about was corruption, especially here at Whetstone, and the next thing I heard was Ray Fowles screaming, "Get these cunts out if here!" I don't know what information Fowles had about police corruption, but I did get the impression that it was third-hand.' [p. 31]​
​
edit 2: already talk of Freemasonry and officers checking who else was 'on the square' and Stephen Knight's famous book, The Brotherhood is in the bibliography.
 
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A new book is in the offing and I'm likely to order it. Putative publication date 1/3/19.

Screen Shot 2018-12-29 at 18.58.34.png


Crossing the Line of Duty explores, for the first time, how the Sweeney (the Flying Squad), the Elite Serious Organised Crime Unit and the Obscene Publications Squad (the Dirty Squad) descended to unprecedented levels of corruption in the 1960s and 1970s, leading the infamous gangster Charlie Richardson to say that ‘the most lucrative, powerful and extensive protection racket ever to exist was administered by the Metropolitan Police’. Sir Robert Mark, who became commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and cleaned it up, said that it was ‘the most routinely corrupt organisation in London’. During his time as commissioner, 50 officers were prosecuted, while 478 took early retirement. Using Metropolitan Police files obtained under Freedom of Information, which have not been accessed since the 1970s, author Neil Root can finally tell the story of how both the Flying Squad and Obscene Publications Squad of the Metropolitan Police became systemically corrupt in the post-war years, and how they reached a nadir in the mid-1970s. It also shows how this culture of corruption has been a blueprint for Met Police corruption today, and how the enormous near-autonomous power wielded by elite squads allowed the corruption to fester and grow.

Source:
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/crossing-the-line-of-duty/9780750989206/
 
Fascinating stuff but also deeply worrying. I've never understood how in an advanced democracy like ours the police can only be investigated by fellow police, reminds me also of the trouble John Stalker had investigating The R.U.C. during the troubles in Ulster.
My own anecdote comes from when I used to dabble in a little hashish dealing back in the mid eighties, myself and a colleague were shown a kilo block of Lebanese from which we wanted to purchase a couple of ounces. The local Hells Angels we were negotiating with on the sale couldn't wait to show us the Metropolitan Police stamp clearly visible on one side, took a while to sink in that (wait a minute ... so that means ...but ?).
Thanks also for the "World in Action' clip, too many brilliant pieces of investigative journalism to mention went into that programme over the years.
 
Tol from Leeds said:
Fascinating stuff but also deeply worrying. I've never understood how in an advanced democracy like ours the police can only be investigated by fellow police, reminds me also of the trouble John Stalker had investigating The R.U.C. during the troubles in Ulster.
Click to expand...

Interestingly, the Kirby book I cite above explicitly contrasts the cost and effectiveness of the RUC investigations with the overspend and net failings of Countryman. I can't personally comment on the former as I've very little knowledge about it.

More generally--and I merely repeat, not endorse this--the counter-argument to an external body investigating the police has consistently been that a) it will cause the public to lose faith in the police, and b) that police morale will suffer and the vital esprit de corps will be lost. In the first case, the effects could be very damaging to society; in the latter, highly damaging to police recruitment and retention.

The retorts to these points are fairly obvious.

The constant complaint in Kirby's book (as a serving Flying Squad officer), however, is that the Countryman detectives from outside the Met & City Police Forces simply did not understand the systems they were investigating. That problem would be compounded with non-police investigators, and former officers would be as open to the cries of 'whitewash' or 'corruption' as serving ones. I don't know how far practice (then or now) differed from constabulary to constabulary, but the picture I've been slowly developing of the situation in the 60s, 70s and 80s is one where the London police effectively had a whole different culture and way of doing business owing, at least in part to the sheer quantity, variety and regularity of crime they were dealing with.

Maximus Otter may (or may not) be able to confirm or deny this.
 
Yithian said:
a) ...an external body investigating the police...

b) Maximus Otter may (or may not) be able to confirm or deny this.
Click to expand...

a) At the time of which we are talking, every public body investigated itself. Doctors investigated doctors, lawyers lawyers, politicians politicians, soldiers soldiers etc. To single out the police as uniquely capable of, or inclined towards, concealing misdeeds flies in the face of facts.

Today we have the Independent Office for Police Conduct (formerly the Independent Police Complaints Commission). How many public bodies still investigate themselves?

b) The Met certainly had the reputation of having their own culture and way of doing things. Whether that was true l have no way of knowing.

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
b) The Met certainly had the reputation of having their own culture and way of doing things. Whether that was true l have no way of knowing.

maximus otter
Click to expand...

I don't have the details to hand, but that book portrays the London detectives as having independently pioneered and carved out a framework for the employment of supergrasses that was acceptable to the DPP and the courts: how they should be handled, what they must do/pledge to qualify and what typical immunities and reductions in sentences they might be offered.

The implication is that such deals and relationships were as rare as hens' teeth outside the capital.
 
maximus otter said:
Today we have the Independent Office for Police Conduct (formerly the Independent Police Complaints Commission).
Click to expand...
.....for England & Wales.

However, in Scotland, that function is covered by the Office of Police Investigations & Review Commissioner (PIRC), and the Office of the Police Ombudsman (OPO) in Northern Ireland.

(The relevance of Scotland in the context of "The Met" is that it has a larger population than eg Norway, New Zealand or Jamaica, constitutes just over a third of the UK's land mass, and has (including islands) somewhere around five times the coastline of England....yet all this is policed by less than 18,000 Officers. Whereas the Metropolitan Police Service has around 32,000 Officers....)
 
Yithian said:
A new book is in the offing and I'm likely to order it. Putative publication date 1/3/19.

View attachment 13880

Crossing the Line of Duty explores, for the first time, how the Sweeney (the Flying Squad), the Elite Serious Organised Crime Unit and the Obscene Publications Squad (the Dirty Squad) descended to unprecedented levels of corruption in the 1960s and 1970s, leading the infamous gangster Charlie Richardson to say that ‘the most lucrative, powerful and extensive protection racket ever to exist was administered by the Metropolitan Police’. Sir Robert Mark, who became commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and cleaned it up, said that it was ‘the most routinely corrupt organisation in London’. During his time as commissioner, 50 officers were prosecuted, while 478 took early retirement. Using Metropolitan Police files obtained under Freedom of Information, which have not been accessed since the 1970s, author Neil Root can finally tell the story of how both the Flying Squad and Obscene Publications Squad of the Metropolitan Police became systemically corrupt in the post-war years, and how they reached a nadir in the mid-1970s. It also shows how this culture of corruption has been a blueprint for Met Police corruption today, and how the enormous near-autonomous power wielded by elite squads allowed the corruption to fester and grow.

Source:
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/crossing-the-line-of-duty/9780750989206/
Click to expand...

This tatty looking paperback is a brilliant read. The authors were all ITV journalists (back when ITV did real journalism) and the focus is the corruption exposés of 1969-1972. It is really a series of in-depth investigative journalism articles, spliced and moulded into a unified piece, and the rather trashy cover (published 1977) conceals some decent sociological insight.

I will post extracts as they grab me.

SmartSelect_20190221-131754_Gallery.jpg
 
Yithian said:
A new book is in the offing and I'm likely to order it. Putative publication date 1/3/19.

View attachment 13880

Crossing the Line of Duty explores, for the first time, how the Sweeney (the Flying Squad), the Elite Serious Organised Crime Unit and the Obscene Publications Squad (the Dirty Squad) descended to unprecedented levels of corruption in the 1960s and 1970s, leading the infamous gangster Charlie Richardson to say that ‘the most lucrative, powerful and extensive protection racket ever to exist was administered by the Metropolitan Police’. Sir Robert Mark, who became commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and cleaned it up, said that it was ‘the most routinely corrupt organisation in London’. During his time as commissioner, 50 officers were prosecuted, while 478 took early retirement. Using Metropolitan Police files obtained under Freedom of Information, which have not been accessed since the 1970s, author Neil Root can finally tell the story of how both the Flying Squad and Obscene Publications Squad of the Metropolitan Police became systemically corrupt in the post-war years, and how they reached a nadir in the mid-1970s. It also shows how this culture of corruption has been a blueprint for Met Police corruption today, and how the enormous near-autonomous power wielded by elite squads allowed the corruption to fester and grow.

Source:
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/crossing-the-line-of-duty/9780750989206/
Click to expand...

Published today (and out of stock!?).

There's a digital preview available here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product...c16-d4b886747c64&pf_rd_r=TVJVCKKSNMN09P9FQEZF

It looks slightly tabloidy, but I admit it's tempting.
 
Just been reading about the Dirty Squad in another context; they certainly grew into their name - a very, very seedy bunch, indeed.

It's worth pointing out that in an age where many bridle at any hint of internet censorship, and appear to believe that we have entering a new dark age from some not long passed golden era of broad social and literary freedoms, this lot were lining their voluminous pockets, and making lives miserable, on the basis of sensibilities regarding public morals that we would find utterly laughable now - not because we have become hardened, but because they were utterly laughable*.

I've actually just read another of Neil Root's books, The Murder Gang; again, a real eye-opener for those who assume standards - this time, journalistic - are in decline. (The 'Murder Gang' was the name given to a particular group of hardened journalists in the heyday of tabloid crime reporting - to be fair, a mixed bunch, but even the best of them would have been up for contempt of court these days, and deserved it.)

*On this subject, I would highly recommend Jeremy Hutchinson's Case Histories, by Thomas Grant. Hutchinson - Royal Navy veteran, criminal barrister and all round good egg - defended Fanny Hill, Lady Chatterley's Lover and Last Tango in Paris (as well as Howard Marks, Christine Keeler, Charlie Wilson, George Blake...)

Part II: Is This a Book You Would Even Wish Your Wife or Your Servant to Read? is so entertaining that I read it three times over.
 
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maximus otter said:
...The Met has an aura of being a law unto itself, and they regard anyone in uniform outside the M25 as "carrot crunchers"...
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During a Radio 4 documentary some years ago I recall one retired high ranking police officer referring to the British police at the time as representing generally the best, but occasionally working alongside some of the worst, in the world; the worst, he stated, working out of West End Central - on Savile Row, no less. (I can't remember exactly who the guy was, but he was a northerner, and clearly despised the Met of that period.)
 
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