Root and Branch

Now here's something you don't read every day - the left leaning Guardian newspaper setting aside party politics to praise the actions of a Conservative Minister, Theresa May, and her response to the demand for a 'root and branch' reform of the Police Federation, the police trade union.

Here's the 'killer quote from The Guardian's news report which follows Martin kettle's opinion piece:

"It is not enough to mouth platitudes about a few bad apples. The problem might lie with a minority of officers, but it is still a significant problem, and a problem that needs to be addressed." Polls show two-thirds of the public trust the police but May said: "We should never accept a situation in which a third of people do not trust police officers to tell the truth." She added that when only four in 10 black people trusted the police the situation was "simply not sustainable"

Quite so. 

Theresa May has ripped up the Tory pact with the police

The home secretary's brave speech stunned the coppers' union. It shows how far the Conservative party has come since Thatcher



By Martin Kettle - The Guardian


Theresa May is 'the most radical and effective police reformer to have occupied the home secretary’s chair in at least half a century'. Illustration by Matt Kenyon

Theresa May's speech to the Police Federation annual conference today was by any standards an extraordinary political moment. It wasn't the first time that this home secretary has made a speech that the combative police representative organisation disliked. But its frankness and toughness reduced the Bournemouth hall to stunned silence – and it underscores that the federation may have driven itself into a cul de sac of opposition and denial.

May's decision to cut off the flow of public funds to the federation – commonly known as the coppers' union – is arguably the single most aggressive act by central government towards the police rank and file since the defeat of the police strike in 1918, nearly a century ago. It is a sign that the heavily divided federation – which faces crucial decisions about new leaders and reform stances this week – is losing its fear factor for governments. And it completes an about-turn towards the police by the Conservative party – forced partly by the urgency of reform, partly by the federation's dunderheaded oppositionism, and partly by the fiscal climate – that would never have seemed possible in the law-and-order era of Margaret Thatcher. To be heading into an election year in a battle with the police would have seemed like a nightmare scenario back in the 1980s. Right now it looks surprisingly smart.

The home secretary's speech was not pre-released to the press. Nor were its contents shared with moderates in the current battle for control of the federation. The secrecy is hardly surprising. May's speech was political dynamite. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that if it had gone wrong it could have started a riot – a police riot – in the hall. It is tempting to call it the bravest speech in British politics since May's last brave one, when asTory chair in 2002 she told her party conference it was time to get rid of the "nasty party" image. If nothing else it is a reminder, amid all the tedious Boris Johnson hoopla, that shares in May as a potential Tory leader remain a sensible investment.

May's speech is certainly a good read. Better still, watch the choice clip on the BBC in which she reads out the charge sheet of police failures with which the force as a whole is currently confronted, beginning with the warning that "it's time to face up to reality". May then lists a long series of damaging incidents and acts of denial, from Hillsborough and the Lawrence case to the death of Ian Tomlinson and Plebgate – over which a fourth officer was dismissed from the force only yesterday – before concluding that it is time for the police "to show the public that you get it".

But May had more than tough words to offer. She also made serious threats. Back in January, Sir David Normington produced – remarkably, at the federation's own request – a devastatingly critical review listing 36 much-needed reforms. If they do not start implementing Normington, May announced yesterday, "we will impose change on you". May then announced that the public money that goes to the federation for its senior officials' salaries will be turned off in August. She followed that up by announcing that the federation will become an opt-in organisation.

This last move symbolises the truly historic change that May is committed to overseeing. The federation, which nowadays looks so like a trade union, and acts so like a trade union, is in crucial respects not a trade union at all. Uniquely, it is a statutory representative organisation, created by parliament, legally denied the right to strike and legally required to represent the entire police rank and file to discuss police pay and conditions. It has thus enjoyed unprecedented industrial power, including a form of workplace co-determination tragically lacking from the rest of British industrial relations culture, in return for unprecedented legal restraints.

The federation was created after an earlier rank-and-file police union called an all-out strike in the final year of the first world war, and only a few months after the Russian revolution. That strike was faced down, as was another in 1919 – and, in return for a pay rise, the federation was duly imposed on the police (not least out of official fear about strikes in the army).

May's move shows how far things have come, not just since 1919, but since 1979. Thirty-five years ago the federation cast its postwar non-partisan stance aside and effectively enlisted on the Tory side in the general election that brought Thatcher to power. Through the 1980s it became an echo chamber for authoritarian Thatcher-era law and order rhetoric, to the consternation of more thoughtful senior officers, and increasingly to the detriment of police-public relations. But its leaders were always confident that Thatcher shared their view that police were the thin blue line between order and anarchy.

The succession of police failings and scandals that May boldly listed yesterday – though she missed out the policing of the miners' strike – meant there would one day be a reckoning. New Labour was afraid of forcing the issue, anxious not to be pilloried as soft on crime. But May has been more audacious, as Tory reformers can be.

She has also had no choice. Public disapproval of the police has become increasingly widespread. Police reform has been unfinished business for too long. And in the case of pay and recruitment, it is unstarted. But the decisive driver of reform has been cost. Policing is labour-intensive and well-paid. Today even the normally defiant federation bowed the knee, voting in favour of the Normington agenda. All this has made May the most radical and effective police reformer to have occupied the home secretary's chair in at least half a century.


Theresa May stuns Police Federation with vow to break its power

Home secretary says that in their handling of sensitive cases some officers had displayed 'contempt for the public'

By Vikram Dodd - The Guardian

Theresa May at the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth: 'I am here to tell you that it’s time to face up to reality.’ Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters

Theresa May said on Wednesday that the legitimacy of British policing was in jeopardy following the Stephen Lawrence and other scandals, in an uncompromising speech that also pledged to break the power of the officers' once feared trade union.

The home secretary stunned delegates at the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth as she criticised officers for in some instances displaying a "contempt for the public" in their handling of sensitive cases.

Citing excessive stop and search inflicted on black communities and failures in handling domestic violence cases, May said problems appeared to lie with a significant minority of officers rather than just "a few bad apples".

She pledged to break the powerful federation, announcing an end to its automatic right to enrol police officers as its members, in effect curtailing the closed shop in policing .

As the home secretary took the stage she was greeted by polite applause, but when she left there was silence, as May warned that a string of scandals about corruption and the conduct of the federation itself risked destroying the bedrock of British policing, which is that officers exercise their powers through the consent of the public.

"If there is anybody in this hall who doubts that our model of policing is at risk, if there is anybody who underestimates the damage recent events and revelations have done to the relationship between the public and the police, if anybody here questions the need for the police to change, I am here to tell you that it's time to face up to reality," May said.

Will Riches, one of two candidates to be the federation's chair, said afterwards the reaction of delegates to the speech was one of "shock and bewilderment". Ian Pointon of Kent police branded the speech vitriolic. He said of the home secretary: "This morning she left as a bully."

May referenced Hillsborough, the death of Ian Tomlinson and allegations of corruption in the Lawrence and Daniel Morgan murders. She also cited the Plebgate affair, which cost Andrew Mitchell his cabinet job after he swore at a member of Downing Street's police staff, and the refusal of officers to answer questions from their own watchdog – which she said the federation encouraged.

She said: "It is not enough to mouth platitudes about a few bad apples. The problem might lie with a minority of officers, but it is still a significant problem, and a problem that needs to be addressed." Polls show two-thirds of the public trust the police but May said: "We should never accept a situation in which a third of people do not trust police officers to tell the truth." She added that when only four in 10 black people trusted the police the situation was "simply not sustainable".

She said it was unacceptable for officers called to help a woman who had suffered domestic violence accidentally recording themselves calling the victim a "slag" and a "bitch" and said this was an example of a deeper problem.

The home secretary said: "It is an attitude that betrays contempt for the public these officers are supposed to serve – and every police officer in the land, every single police leader, and everybody in the Police Federation should confront it and expunge it from the ranks."

May spoke in Bournemouth hours before the federation started to vote on a package of root-and-branch reforms seen as vital to save it from disaster. Outgoing chair Steven Williams said he and others in the leadership had been given no warning of the home secretary's new measures, let alone the tone of the speech.

May told the once feared federation that it must adopt all 36 reforms proposed by an independent review into its future. She said if the federation failed to reform itself the government would remove control of the organisation from its leaders and impose change.

She warned: "The federation was created by an act of parliament and it can be reformed by an act of parliament. If you do not change of your own accord, we will impose change on you."

Hours later the federation voted to adopt all 36 recommendations to reform the organisation, which has been accused of being unrepresentative and whose members feel let down by it according to its own polling.

May said she would end the automatic right of the federation to have police officers enrolled as their members. In the future officers would have to choose to join, and she also said they would have to actively choose to pay fees to the organisation.

The reforms, which will require legislation, are akin to changes forced by the Thatcher government on the once powerful trade unions.

Created by parliament in 1919 to represent rank-and-file officers, the Police Federation was intended to stop officers from joining unions with the right to strike.

May announced an end to public funding for the top officials of the federation, worth £190,000 a year. She also said the Home Office would use its legal powers to call in the federation's central accounts, and change the law to call in its other accounts held by local branches. This will include the so-called number two accounts held by local branches said to contain at least £30m in reserves.Anthony Painter, of the Royal Society of Arts and director of the independent review into the Federation which called for the whole sale reforms, said: "The opting in is the most significant part of the speech.

"It significantly weakens the Federation, it puts a hurdle to membership which isn't there."

After the speech, Sir David Normington, the chair of the review into the Federation and the former top Home Office civil servant, tried to calm delegates: "I think you have to channel your energies and anger into reform and you have to prove the home secretary wrong."

Tomorrow the federation votes for a new chair to lead the process of hammering out the detail of the 36 reforms.

Privately, federation leaders who backed modernisation believe the conference would have voted for change regardless of May's speech.