100DaysToOffload

“Day 15: Peelian Principles Etc.”

In Britain we are not policed by the government. We are not policed by the Home Office, nor by a devolved government, nor by the council. We police ourselves.

While we are all responsible for maintaining law and order, most of the work is done on our behalf by professional police. They answer to a police authority, whose composition is set down in law. But the police authority is not answerable to government.

This is different to the army: the army are directly answerable to the crown (meaning the executive branch of government) and act on their behalf. This is why the deployment of troops in Northern Ireland for decades was so significant: it represented that the UK government at the time could no longer rely on the population of the province to keep their own law and order. The police cannot impose order on wider society against its will.

Our policing is not perfect, and represents our society by that token. There are occasional bent coppers, as there are crooks in our society. There are coppers who are “uniform fillers” – as there are underachievers in society. But the vast majority are decent people, who give their best in a difficult job. When you and I are running away from trouble, they are running towards it ... on our behalf.

The system works pretty well. In the memes of “Heaven is a place where...” they usually say ”...where the police are British”. It's not perfect, just as wider society isn't perfect, but as long as they're running into trouble spots on my behalf, I take my hat off to them.

Thank-you for doing my job of keeping law and order on my behalf.

This post is day 15 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Visit https://100daystooffload.com to get more info, or to get involved.