When constabulary duty's to be done, The policeman's lot is not a happy one.
— The Pirates of Penzance
To the U.S. tourist driving on the right but wrong side of the road, or hopelessly demanding a drink at midnight, the London police seem paragons of patience. Whether breaking up a race riot or gingerly plucking anti-nuclear squatters from the pavement, the brawny, pink-cheeked bobby almost never resorts to the panicky brutality of the French flic or the officious zeal of the German Polizist. Britain's police, armed only with a night stick, still believe in pounding a beat. Its streets and parks after dark are among the world's safest; and while an English householder is away on vacation, likely as not the bobbies will keep an eye on his front door. But in recent years, and particularly since the Profumo-Keeler-Ward scandals, Britons have come to suspect that their police are not only markedly less proficient at keeping the Queen's Peace than of old, but may also have become less scrupulous in upholding the traditionally high standards of British justice.
Smarter Crooks. When it comes to solving crime, it is still elementary to call in Scotland Yard. Last week, led by such wise old bluebottles as Commander George Hatherill, 65, the Yard's dean of sleuths, who speaks eight languages and has solved 17 murders, Yard men investigating the Great Buckinghamshire Train Robbery succeeded in rounding up nine suspects, recovered $761,367 of the $7,000,000 loot. Also on hand were Ernest Millen, boss of the Flying Squad, alias the Heavy Mob, whose 100-odd sleuths know more about the underworld than Dante; and the Terrible Twins, top Detectives Tom Butler and Peter Vibart, who have cracked many a big case together. Yet, so far at least, the gang's ringleaders were still at large. Even without such humiliations at the hands of master crooks, the lot of Britain's 76,530 policemen is an increasingly unhappy one.
The nation's police forces are critically undermanned (authorized strength: 82,313), sadly underpaid (sergeant's pay averages $3,000 a year) and, in many critics' eyes, undereducated. In recent years, police recruits have included not a single university graduate; only about 10% of all new bobbies have the equivalent of a high school diploma. British criminals, by contrast, are becoming more imaginative and technically proficient every year. As for Scotland Yard, even its staunchest admirers admit that the legend tends to overshadow performance. Of a record number of crimes reported in London last year, fewer than 25% were solved; police have recovered none of the $700,000 stolen in four major robberies from one bank during the past three years.
No Separation. As for the Profumo case, though an official inquiry into its security aspects is nearly complete, the government has given little assurance that it will lessen what the Economist recently called "the already cumbrous weight of suspicion that there is something nasty in the woodshed." Last week the Labor Party's "shadow" Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, called for a royal commission to investigate the roles played throughout by the government, judiciary and police.