“But nobody is ever told what would have happened.”

[C.S. Lewis]

Julia M, the Ambush Predator, appears to share my view that the behaviour of a few real police officers (and, perhaps predictably, a rather greater number of Interior Ministry troops) has been so exploited by the god-awful mainstream media as substantially to worsen the mutual respect of police and public.

While the reform (or perhaps, as an industrial archaeology enthusiast, I should say ‘restoration to full working order, repainting, and running in steam every weekend’) of the police force is long overdue, and forms part of LPUK policy, it is essential in the shorter term that we do not allow senior police officers (few of whom seem to have done very much actual policing), commercial journalists and the state propaganda service, in trying to persuade us that the police are now so scarey that we must all cringe when they pass and must never think about digressing from the agendae set us by the soap-operas, let alone actually opposing state policy, so to damage the ethical contract between ourselves and those we employ to maintain what we still call ‘the rule of law’ as further to compromise what we still call the ‘British constitution’.

Julia M says:

I’m sure normal service here will resume the next time some PCSO gets too far ahead of himself, or ‘elf and safety ostensibly prevents more officers from doing their job. But let’s remember why they are there.

And what would happen if they weren’t there. At all.

Remembering what would happen if they weren’t there is, I believe, perhaps the most significant distinction between a Libertarian and an anarchist. The latter always claims that in an ideal society police would be unnecessary; the former, though probably agreeing with this in theory, recognises that in practice society in the absence of police would be rather less ideal than it is now.

It is vital to remember that the police do not (despite the unrepressed creative urges of the minority) make the law. Parliament makes laws, and the police enforce those of them to which their remit applies. If we don’t like what the police enforce, we must get Parliament to change it. If Parliament won’t change it, then it’s up to us to change Parliament. This, too, is LPUK policy.