Introduction
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has been at the centre of a storm in recent months and subject to huge turbulence. It has seen the departure of its serving Commissioner amid a series of scandals and errors of professional judgement and the appointment of a successor Commissioner committed to internal reform of the MPS. Problems that have arisen with the organisation need not be revisited here. It is enough to note that the kind of reform sought by Sir Mark Rowley will entail a frontal engagement with an organisational culture that has effectively undermined both public confidence in the MPS and its earlier status as the UKs premier police service.
An established precedent
Yet the size and nature of the challenge confronting the new Commissioner has in fact a clear precedent. It was just fifty years ago that Robert Mark assumed responsibility as Commissioner for the Met in 1972 and was to fundamentally reform the internal structure and management of the Metropolitan Police District [Mark 1978].
Arguably his task only replicated that placed on Lord Trenchard in 1931 which was, inter alia, to significantly improve the standard of recruits to the MPD and their integrity thereafter. One method adopted by Trenchard was the creation of a direct entry scheme to senior police ranks based on selection and attendance at Hendon Police College [Boyle 1962].
Ironically Mark’s first confrontation was to occur soon after his arrival at the Met as Assistant Commissioner and was to involve one of the last Trenchard graduates, Sir Joseph Simpson, whose opposition to Mark’s appointment was publicly acknowledged [1978:78].
Mark had been encouraged to apply for the position of Assistant Commissioner [AC] at the Met by the then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins and subsequently supported by his successor James Callaghan. It was based on a perception that the MPD’s declining reputation required fundamental change within the organisation. It was to fall to Robert Mark to introduce and pursue that course of action.
Facing up to the dictators
Mark’s future role and attitude to the MPD was in part to be based on comparisons with his earlier chief officer commands and his personal experience of senior management within the Met. As he noted, prior to his arrival, the only other outside appointment to a senior position in the Met had been that of Arthur Young ‘and he only lasted three years’ [Mark 1978:78]. On arrival it was made immediately clear to Mark that he was not wanted by the senior hierarchy. Indeed, at the end of his first week in post during which ‘he was to see nothing and no one’, the Commissioner was to drop a letter on his desk which proved to be an application form for the job of chief constable of Lancashire police. Simpson went on to ‘wonder if Mark would be interested in this?’ [Mark 1978:80]. Mark was to later comment on his reception among senior officers at this time that he felt rather like ‘the representative of a leper colony attending the annual garden party of a colonial governor’ and he was soon ‘left in no doubt that he was not alone in that assessment [Mark1978:79].
Following Joseph Simpson’s death in 1968 Callaghan at the Home Office was to invite Mark to take over as Commissioner. He refused to do so, not least, because he ‘had not a single friend or ally’ among police members; that his appointment would be bitterly resented by the very people he would need to make a success of the job and that he had ‘no doubt that some of them would lend all their endeavours to ensure the opposite’ [Mark 1978:94]. One consequence was the appointment of John Waldron as Commissioner and as Mark notes ‘thus began four of the most unpleasant years of his life’. He added however:
[This] ‘might have ended more happily for those who sought my departure had they not provoked me so far as to arouse an overpowering determination to withstand all that they could do’ [Mark 1978:95].
Identifying MPD weaknesses: CID
It was however not long before Mark began to identify significant weaknesses within the MPD. Because of his long previous experience in policing outside of London he was able to draw interesting comparisons between his previous commands and that of the MPD. This related, primarily to ‘wrongdoing’ by the police which was either accepted or deliberately overlooked within the police hierarchy. As he was to argue, one further overlooked fact was that this situation did not apply to the provincial police generally. As he noted:
‘I had served in two provincial police forces for thirty years and though I had known wrongdoing I had never experienced institutionalised wrongdoing, blindness, arrogance and prejudice on anything like the scale accepted as routine in the Met’ [Mark 1978:124].
This problem pertained almost exclusively to the CID which within C Department Crime enjoyed an exclusive autonomy supported by a separate internal appointment and promotion system. This was sustained by the extensive and traditional autonomy exercised by each Assistant Commissioner. In effect C Department was hermetically sealed from external oversight and internal accountability as it alone determined promotions for what was usually a life time career within that Department. As Commissioner the primary pressure was to bring the CID under proper control ‘for the first time in nearly a hundred years’ [Mark 1978:116].
The first major battle between Mark as deputy Commissioner and the CID was to arise with the media revelation that the commander of the Flying Squad had taken to holidaying abroad with a Soho pornographer and their ‘respective ladies’. As Mark was to argue the real problem within C Department was the unfortunate reality that the AC Crime believed too many of his subordinates to be untainted by corruption or other wrongdoing.
‘He was incapable of seeing or believing the failings of many of those on whom he relied for advice. He was too the inheritor of a tradition of solidarity which had been fostered in C Department for their own ends’ [Mark 1978:121].
The degree of solidarity exhibited within the CID was sustained by a high degree of elitism within the MPD. As he noted the CID regarded itself as an ‘elite body’, higher paid by way of allowances and factually, fictionally and journalistically more glamourous. Moreover ‘unlike its provincial counterpart’, it also enjoyed an immunity from external supervision and investigation’ [Mark 1978:122]. All of this facilitated what Mark was to describe as ‘institutional corruption of a minor kind’ [charging for bail; suppressing charges] but extended to more spectacular corruption involving officers concerned with major crime [bank robbery; illegal drugs; obscene publications].
Finding [and implementing] solutions
The solutions identified by Mark were, in his words, to rock the Met to its foundations by enforcing more significant change in five years than in the preceding century. It was very largely engaged in frontal assault on the established hegemony of C Department and the CID. This took the form of placing all operational detectives on divisions under the immediate command of uniformed commanders who were also made responsible for CID discipline and promotions. The investigation of all complaints and allegations of crime would be undertaken by a new department ‘A10’ commanded by a member of the uniform branch. And finally a system of routine ‘interchange’ would be introduced between CID and uniform ‘on a regular basis’ [Mark 1978:128-129].
This frontal assault was to be met by a systematic rear guard action by members of CID often using their extensive press contacts to provide alarmist headlines concerning the planned internal changes. It was at this point that maximum leadership skills appeared to be required to deal with a major internal institutional challenge and organisational culture that refused to accept what the Commissioner proposed for the CID. In response Mark was to call the representatives of the CID together and went to see them. What followed highlighted the strength of leadership and the absence of any misguided organisational loyalty which had traditionally hampered reform. As Mark explained:
‘They thought they were in for a placatory discussion but they were wrong. I told them simply that they represented what had long been the most routinely corrupt organisation in London, that nothing and no one would prevent me from putting an end to it and that if necessary I would put the whole of CID back into uniform and make a fresh start. I left them in no doubt that I thought bent detectives were a cancer and worse than the criminals with whom we had to deal. I did not ask them for questions. Having told them quite plainly what the situation was I left them in silence’ [ Mark 1978:130].
As a mark of leadership this transactional exchange was almost unexampled but indicated that the Commissioner was committed to a plan that would alienate many but undoubtedly improve the MPD organisationally. Openly refuting a culture within CID which had matured over a century was by any measure a supreme act of leadership and one which suggested this Commissioner did not seek friends but rather the respect of the service he led. This he ultimately achieved and by way of internal revolution and cultural destruction provided the basis for the MPD to climb out of the hole which preceding Commissioners had helped dig for it.
Quality of leadership can take many forms. And while that of Robert Mark’s may have been transactional it was in fact matched by an equally strong commitment to openness and ‘transparency’. This was to be reflected in his later decision to make the Met publically accountable. In what proved to be an extraordinary meeting with press, radio and TV editors at Scotland Yard Mark was to announce a complete change in policy regarding the release of information to the public.
He announced that in future the force was to be instructed that information not subject to judicial restriction, the privacy of the individual or the security of the state ‘could be released to the Press at police station level and that senior officers would be authorised and encouraged to speak much more freely than in the past. It reflected a view that the acceptability of the police in a free society depended on police willingness to be an open and accountable administration. An open and free relationship with the press was in Mark’s view the best way to demonstrate this [Mark 1978:134].
Conclusion
Robert Mark’s tenure of the Met was to end with his decision to retire in 1976 in protest at the proposed introduction of the Police Complaints Board (PCB) that year. His concern lay with the removal of disciplinary powers from chief officers and reflected the fact that as then constituted those powers had enabled him to engage so effectively in the removal of so many corrupt officers in the Met [Mark 1978:206-207]. In light of recent decisions made by the PCBs successor bodies in disciplinary cases it would appear that Mark may have been right in his assumptions after all [Dodd 2022].
Yet while Mark was to rise to the challenge of police corruption within the Met it is also the case that the problem was not to be overcome or ended with his departure. As the failed Operation Countryman [1978-1982] directed against corruption in both the City of London police and the Met was to clearly demonstrate, widespread corrupt practices within CID were found to be alive and well long after Mark had left the Met [Campbell 2021]. It also became evident that his frontal attack on C Department and CID was not opposed by all serving officers with the MPD.
In fact, much of the work undertaken by Mark was to be given whole hearted support from the uniform branch who had been well aware of the obvious shortcomings of C Department for many years. As he noted at the time ‘My most surprising discovery was that the uniform branch warmly approved of what I was doing and that the uniform branch was only too pleased to see someone deal with a department which had long brought the force as a whole into disgrace’ [Mark 1978:96-97]. The open support from senior uniform officers clearly provided a much needed buttress to Marks’ clearing of the Mets Augean stables.
Yet the position taken by Mark proved to be decisive and was to generate intense anger against him both professionally and personally. Thus, for Mark trying to establish friendships or otherwise encouraging officers to exercise greater integrity was never an option. Open and prolonged attacks against the CID was the only method which could be contemplated by this chief officer. In adopting this transactional management style, he did have however, the evident support of successive Home Secretaries which provided the political clout to support the reforms he intended to implement.
Thus, Mark’s challenge differed very considerably from that confronting Sir Mark Rowley, the newly appointed Commissioner [2022]. Rather than being rather finely targeted at one element within the Met the current cultural malaise would appear to extend across the MPS. Changing the organisational culture across a force as large as the MPS is likely to represent a significantly greater challenge than anything Mark confronted fifty years ago.
And yet one characteristic exhibited by Mark could still prove applicable. And that would be a professional commitment to re-establishing organisational self-respect even at the cost of alienating current serving officers. Where aberrant police officers are bringing the MPS into disrepute then Mark’s confrontational and transactional management style might still have a ready application. Identifying and thereafter removing officers engaged in disreputable activities from the MPS would be seen not as a sign of weakness but of strength. It is surely the case that, were he still around, Sir Robert Mark would readily concur with that proposition.
Barry Loveday, October 2022
References:
Boyle A [1962] Trenchard Man of Vision, Collins, London;
Campbell D [2021] Threats, bribes and murder: insiders lift lid on 1970s police corruption, The Guardian April;
Dodd V [2022] Daniel Morgan scandal: no police officers will face penalty, The Guardian August;
Mark R [1978] In the Office of Constable: An Autobiography, Collins, London.