Don't Get Mad, Get Murderous

I don’t know about you, but I tend to judge revolutionary groups by just how much mayhem they cause. I’m not condoning it, but, if you really feel strongly about something, and you can’t settle it by democratic means, you should almost certainly leave a trail of blown up cars, robbed banks, assassinated politicians and burned out embassies in your wake.

Britain’s own The Angry Brigade took a gentler approach, trying to avoid hurting anyone if possible but, ultimately, they proved to be utterly ineffectual and got caught and imprisoned, so it was not a massively successful policy. I’m glad that they didn’t kill anybody, of course, but they might have got further if they had.

So what were they so angry about? Well,  is was all about that bloody System that people often rail about, the capitalist world that, in their eyes, grinds people down and reduces them as human beings. They hoped that by sending a few letter bombs and machine gunning some empty embassies they would incite the working man to rise up and violently revolt against their oppressors. Typical middle class radicals, really: banging on about freeing the proletariat but expecting them to do all the dirty work and the killing and dying while the instigators talk about who’ll be in charge of what in the new order.

Hilary and Anna. Hilary is on the far left , Anna is too.  

In 1972, ‘World In Action’ interviewed two out on bail Brigade members, Hilary Crick and Anna Mendelson. They don’t have much to say for themselves (Hilary is particularly, almost smugly, uncommunicative), and refuse (or are unable to) present a coherent view of events, or even something approaching a defence. Anna tries, but generally drifts off the point very quickly. That said, it must be remembered that these are two people in their early twenties who are under enormous strain and are each facing up to 15 years in prison, so their reluctance to incriminate themselves, and their inability to think straight can be forgiven, especially it is not thought that they were major players in the group.

Perhaps the final word should go to Jim Prescott, the only working class member of the group, a man who was prepared to kill and maim for his cause, but wasn’t allowed to and spent 10 years of his life in maximum security prisons anyway: ‘I realised that I was the one who was angry and the others were more like the Slightly Cross Brigade’.

What a very British revolution.

The Hunt For The Ripper

Ever wondered why it took Yorkshire Police so long to catch Peter Sutcliffe? It certainly wasn't for want of trying. In this 1979 'World In Action' programme we get to see the headbanging complexity of a pre-IT investigation, and the repetitive, time consuming graft required to make even the most basic of connections. 

Inspector Bob Browne is the unlucky devil responsible for tying up thousands of false leads, red herrings and loose ends. Horribly, every thing they need to know about the killer is already in that room, but they just don't know where. Bob talks the reporter through one of the processes. He looks on the verge of tears.  

"Bob, what happens when a suspicious vehicle is reported by a member of the public or the police to you?"

"Well, if we had a partial number we would come to this vehicle index you can see here and this index is cross referenced so that we can trace a vehicle through make, colour and / or a partial registration. If for instance we were told that the car was a white Volvo and we had no registered number then we could check in the index and look under white Volvos.

All these cards in this system now relate to Volvos, and it would be a matter of looking through to see if we could find one of the relevant colour to start with. Having found the colour we could find the registered number from this card, then go to the relevant box and then we find the corresponding card which includes not only the vehicle number make and colour but the details of the owner by his name and address."

"So you have the vehicle and now you have the owner. Is there any way you can find out anything about the owner?" 

"By going to the master index at the other side of the room, the owner there should have another card on which we will have his personal particulars so far as this inquiry is concerned, i.e. whether he’s been seen or not and if so why, whether he was a witness, a suggestion and whether in fact he has been interviewed or not.

We have in the system at the moment somewhere in the region of 160, 000 vehicles. The names in the main index are in excess of a quarter of a million people."

My lovely wife, who works for (South) Yorkshire Police, tells me a partial plate enquiry on the national database now takes approximately two seconds from start to finish. Wherever he is, I hope Bob knows that. 

Spy vs Scrounger

This 'World In Action' programme from 1983 starts with a raid on a gypsy camp in Essex, before showing us some nice extracts from the Fraud Investigator's Guide.

The programme is pretty one sided, focusing on cases where offences are committed out of sheer desperation or where the charges were apparently trumped up (although no actual evidence is provided one way or another) - cases where fraud is carried out purely for personal gain do not seem to exist - had they never heard 'Wham! Rap' ('give a wham, give a bam, but don't give a damn, 'cause the benefit gang are gonna pay')? To add balance, a former DHSS investigator is dragged in to discuss methods of detection, and is interviewed as if he had been a member of the Ton Ton Macoute. 

In the end, however, they conclude that far more money could be reclaimed by going after those guilty of tax evasion, but cracking down on benefits cheats seems to appeal to the public's baser instincts and scores cheap political points - and I can't really disagree with that. Phew, aren't you glad we don't live like that now?

Claimant - Scrounger

Snooper - Spy

Interestingly, the ongoing conflict between the spies and the scroungers is largely a Cold War, fought in disguise and at a distance, hence the John Le Carre tribute title. The man in the fisherman's hat is not the Phantom Flan Flinger on his way to the Tyne Tees studios, but rather a loft insulator by trade, and a benefit cheat by necessity (or is that the other way round?). Either way, I expect the hat comes in handy. Nasty stuff, that fibreglass