Mrs Thatcher nodded. ‘Proper coppers,’ she said. ‘Proper coppers.’ I was sitting next to her on the top table at the Metropolitan Police Retired CID Officers’ annual dinner.
She was there to present bravery awards to three young officers who had risked their lives to tackle and disarm two gunmen in North London, even though they themselves were unarmed.
I was her warm-up act, the after-dinner song and dance man. The former Prime Minister wasn’t at her best, clearly in the throes of dementia but determined to be there. Conversation had been difficult.
Yet when Sergeant Stephen Hayter and Constables Michael Carroll and Richard Cousins came up to accept their awards, she became instantly animated, beaming with pride, shaking their hands, posing for photographs and offering heartfelt congratulations.
For a few brief minutes, the Iron Lady of old was back. No Prime Minister has ever held the police in greater esteem or given them firmer support, sentiments they returned in spades.
Police officers Taser and detain a sword-wielding man in Hainault
‘It must be good to be back among proper coppers,’ I remarked. She smiled and agreed: ‘Proper coppers, yes.’
I thought of that evening this week as I watched the incredible bravery of the young policemen and women who tackled the man now charged with the sword attack in North-East London which left a 14-year-old boy dead and four others, including two police officers, seriously wounded.
A doorbell camera captures the eventual detention of the suspect, who had been on a 22-minute rampage through the streets of Hainault.
First to approach him is a female officer, equipped with a Taser. He is carrying a sword. As she advanced towards him, she must by then have been aware that others, fellow coppers among them, were in a critical condition, to say the least.
Yet, despite the risk to herself, she got close enough to fire and brought him down. Other officers quickly subdued him on the ground. Another policewoman grabbed his sword and removed it to a place of safety.
None could have been absolutely sure he was fully incapacitated. There are reports that he had earlier been pepper sprayed and possibly Tasered but had managed to escape.
Commissioner Mark Rowley has admitted that Tasers can and do misfunction. So the officer who cornered the suspect could have stood back and waited for armed back-up, which arrived shortly afterwards. But she went ahead regardless of her own safety.
After the man was taken into custody, we learned that the two officers who had previously confronted him had sustained serious injuries. One, a policewoman, had to have hours of surgery and almost lost her hand.
Yet all the coppers on the scene ran towards danger. Their courage was awe-inspiring. I’d be the first to admit that the selfless actions of the female officers, in particular, go a long way to rebutting the doubts of those who question the suitability of young policewomen when it comes to tackling violent criminals.
Their exemplary response to this terrifying incident also serves to remind us that every day on the streets, officers — many of them not long out of their teens — are prepared to put their lives on the line to keep us safe. Over the years, I’ve gained a reputation in some quarters for being anti-police. Nothing could be further from the truth. Quite the opposite, in fact.
My dad served as a policeman in West London. He joined the Met when he was demobbed from the Royal Navy after World War II, pounding the beat in Fulham and later working for the CID.
He won’t have been much, if any, older than the officers involved in the Hainault incident, but will never have had to deal with savagery of the kind which is a daily fixture of life on the beat in our big cities today. We may just have fought a world war, but Britain was a far safer, gentler society back then.
I want our modern policemen and women to be able to clock on for every shift secure in the knowledge that they will return home safely at the end of it.
What happened in Hainault reminds us that, tragically, that can’t always be guaranteed.
Yes, I poke fun at the Old Bill. This column’s regular Mind How You Go Awards may take the proverbial but they are written with affection, if not always admiration.
What serious criticisms I’ve had have almost exclusively been levelled at the Common Purpose-brainwashed, careerist top brass, who are in thrall to all manner of wokery and political pressure, particularly from the hard-Left and self-appointed ‘community leaders’, while neglecting crimes like burglary which concern most of the people who pay their wages. Not the poor bloody infantry.
But this isn’t the day to dwell on that. Today we must extend our deep gratitude and admiration to those who stand between us and the villains, drug dealers, muggers and madmen who otherwise would take control of our streets.
No doubt the Heroes of Hainault will be in line for Commissioner’s commendations and more. I’m sure that they’ll definitely be up for bravery awards at the next annual jolly-up of my friends in the Ex-CID Association.
Mrs Thatcher may not be around to present the awards, but she would certainly approve.
Proper coppers.
Country boy Kaleb Cooper, breakout star of Clarkson’s Farm, which kicks off again tonight on Amazon, has been unspoiled by celebrity.
He was invited to meet Rishi Sunak, presumably because the PM thought some stardust — topsoil, more likely — might rub off on him, but came away unimpressed.
‘Let’s put it this way. If I go to a farm and the farmer says: ‘Kaleb, you know what, I’m going to plough that field,’ I know for a damn fact that the farmer is going to go out there and plough that field because he’s said so.
‘If the Prime Minister or anyone from politics goes to me: ‘Kaleb, I’m going to do this next week,’ they’re not going to do it, are they?’
Never mind Clarkson’s Farm, Kaleb should be presenting Newsnight.
Victoria Wood, above, rewrote Cole Porter’s classic in her own inimitable style
The head chef at a hotel in the Lake District has won an £80,000 sexual harassment payout after his male boss serenaded him with Victoria Wood’s ‘suggestive’ Ballad Of Barry And Freda.
It’s a rewrite of Cole Porter’s classic Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love) and is about a woman propositioning her reluctant husband for sex.
In this case, it was the male chef’s manager doing the wooing, one of a number of unwanted sexual advances.
Not that Wood’s deputy canteen manager from her BBC comedy Dinnerladies would have minded a few sexual advances from her shy boss, Tony. Victoria’s Let’s Do It is sheer genius, turning the mundane into gold dust.
Sadly, space limitations meant that some of the best lines were missing from the Mail’s coverage, though we did manage to fit in:
This is folly / Is jolly / Bend me over backwards on my hostess trolley.
My two faves:
Get drastic / Gymnastic / Wear your baggy Y-fronts with the loose elastic . . .
And the climax, so to speak:
Not bleakly / Not Meekly / Beat me on the bottom with the Woman’s Weekly . . .
Let’s do it. Call it 80 grand for cash!