|
|
 |
| |
Former London top cop Sir Ian Blair |
Pause for applause that never came
Sir Ian Blair was dogged by his own contradictions, writes Illtyd Harrington
Policing Controversy. By Ian Blair.
Profile Press £20
IN 2005, Ian Blair became the 24th Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police since 1829.
Later he was ousted by Tory mayor of London Boris Johnson in the autumn of 2009. His challenging role was to head a force of 32,000 constables plus 15,000 support staff working to an annual budget of £3billion.
A graduate entry from Oxford University, he has worked his way up through the ranks in a charmed life.
In May 1985 he was a DCI in Kentish Town and later in charge of the identification of those who died in the King’s Cross Tube fire.
After a period in the Thames Valley police, he was appointed the Chief Constable of Surrey. And as he points out coyly: “I was the first outsider for many years.”
This is one of the carefully slotted expressions of success throughout the book. Ian is often puzzled, surprised by those he fostered. He smarts at their ingratitude – understandable in a man who wanted to be an actor. Applause and more applause he craved, and recognition. (Sadly, he failed his audition at the Oxford University Dramatic Society.)
Returning to the fold of Scotland Yard – a bear pit rather than a fold – in 2000, he noted a growing and persuasive demand for accountability if not control over this vast public organisation. It came with the advent of Ken Livingstone as the first elected mayor of Greater London.
And the Metropolitan Police Authority was born. But the Home Secretary maintained his historic role in the appointment of a Commissioner of the Metropolis. The poor Queen has to sanction the appointment with her signature, although Blair, not with much conviction, instances the previous Home Secretary’s involvement before the outbreak of partial democracy and the rendering of the old cry “no taxation without representation”. He was invited to lunch at the Reform Club by the permanent secretary at the Home Office who suggested that he apply for the position as head of the Met when John Stevens retired to the House of Lords.
The Home Office Mandarin approach was to keep it safe from the common people of London. “We must not submit to the tyranny of the majority”. All settled over what I take to be a modest lunch in a club where Sir Humphreys of this world sort things out.
Blair, like his predecessors, is a staunch Christian. God, it appears, was the invisible member at the tiny appointments panel.
Characterised as a liberal, it must be said that the Met was a restless and wilful beast. A predecessor Robert Mark – a man of relentless honesty in the late 1960s – wittily remarked: “The basic test of a decent police force is that it catches more criminals than it employs and the Met is failing the test.”
Blair’s liberalism was further challenged by his passionate advocacy of 90 days’ detention for being a terrorist suspect – a view even opposed by the head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller.
Then there was the nasty and acrid taste of the cash for honours inquiry which he breathed a sigh of relief over when no action was taken.
Downing Street was purity itself, evidently (I thought it seemed to have been disinfected with Jeyes Fluid).
The death of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian, on a Tube train in Stockwell on July 22, 2005, sent shock waves throughout the hierarchy in the Yard. Blair maintains that in another era the two armed officers would have been honoured.
Ian Blair’s hubris soon turned into nemesis. The failed bombing attack on Londoners on July 21 by Islamist terrorists placed him firmly in the firing line himself.
His premature and eager explanation of Menezes’ death he now claims was based on faulty information.
Loathed by the Tory members of the MPA who scented blood, Blair’s position began to be untenable. His flirtation with the press ended in acrimony. He was now at the sharp end of a media blitz led by the Daily Mail. The chickens were coming home to roost but the vultures pushed them aside. Inside the gated community of the Yard, he stood like Julius Caesar in his vanity as the assassins sharpened their knives. Only Mayor Livingstone, once the curse of the establishment, remained vocally loyal to him.
Blair’s Christian tolerance was tested further by Brian Paddick, the openly gay assistant commissioner, who insists that Blair knew the truth about the terrible mistake over de Menezes before he claimed to.
His woes grew when another top cop, Tarique Ghaffur, earmarked at the time to plan the security for the London Olympics, alleged racial discrimination and croneyism, and stormed out of Blair’s office unmoved by the incense of conciliation.
The sound of approaching Destiny could be heard coming down Victoria Street to the Yard. A right-wing mob thirsting for his blood. Boris and the Tory toffs got what they wanted, leaving Ken Livingstone and the disgraced Home Secretary Jacqui Smith among the dwindling membership of his admiration society.
Blair has written a copper’s brief claiming honour and transparency. It is very hard to put him in the company of saints , blessed martyrs and the ranks of the angels.
At his rather dismal leaving do, a Guardian writer looked at him and came to the conclusion: Ian the man with the rock-ribbed ego.
• |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
