By Tom Wood
Contributor
The Scottish police restructuring which took place half-a-century ago was a by-product of local government reform, but muddled thinking ensured it was the penultimate step in the journey to a national force.
It’s not that the service was unused to changing shape; from the very dawn of policing, forces have been amalgamating to meet new challenges.
What we now recognise as modern policing started in Glasgow in 1800, followed quickly by Edinburgh in 1805.
And proving that the concept of a new professional police force worked, the number of forces grew steadily during the first half of the 19th century.
But it was The Police (Scotland) Act of 1857 that opened the floodgates. The legislation encouraged towns and counties to establish police forces, and by 1859 the establishment of forces in Scotland had gone mad, with no fewer than 89 in existence.
With Scotland’s population then numbering less than three million, this may seem like a serious case of over policing, until you take a closer look and realise that many of these so-called police forces had just a handful of men.
It didn’t last long. The coming of the railways brought travelling criminals and other challenges that these tiny parish forces could not handle.
By 1899 many small forces had been amalgamated to leave 64, but even this structure was soon under pressure, brought about by the introduction of the motor car.
From no cars in 1900, by 1930 there were one million on the road, and hundreds killed in traffic accidents to go with them.
The policing of roads and the enforcement of the early road traffic acts brought a host of new challenges, and the need for specialist officers.
At the same time, the development of scientific investigative techniques following the famous Ruxton murder case of 1935 meant that all forces needed not only a specialist criminal investigation department, but trained fingerprint, photographic, and crime scene examination officers.
As the demands for greater professionalism grew, the economics of scale grew more pressing. Despite the desire to retain local policing, by 1939 and the outbreak of war, the number of forces in Scotland had reduced to 48.
The Second World War forced policing into another step change.
The police leadership of the civil defence partnership of fire, ambulance, rescue, and salvage services had been a major success, and demonstrated the synergies that well-led partnerships could bring. Besides, at the end of the war, the economic plight of the country meant there had to be some radical cost-cutting.
It was a time for new thinking for all public services, police included. Yet more police amalgamations followed so that by 1950, there were 39 forces left; four city and the remainder county forces of various shapes and sizes.
By this time, amalgamations were getting difficult. Most forces did not want to lose their identity or be forced into joining their neighbours. Most felt they were providing a good quality of service and some were, but others were antiquated and poorly funded.
One force pushed into amalgamation in 1950 had a chief constable who was 74 years old and who had been in post for 46 years.
Over the next decade, the questions continued, but all forces were now of a reasonable size and with strong local political support, there was little talk of further amalgamations.
The next phase of police restructuring came not as a result of questions about police efficiency, but about the effectiveness of Scotland’s local government, to which police forces had always been attached.
As the 1960s dawned, the pieces began to move. There were concerns over the value for money that Scotland’s 400 town and burgh councils, 33 county councils, and four city corporations were delivering. It was obviously grossly top heavy for a country the size of Scotland.
In 1963, a government white paper proposed a more streamlined model, with 10 to 15 regional authorities responsible for delivering major services such as police, education, and water supplies, while smaller district councils would deliver local services.
But then, as now, local government reform was a political hot potato, and the Conservative government of the day did not have the political capital in Scotland to deliver such a controversial programme of change.
It was shelved for the new Labour government of Harold Wilson to pick up.
Though Labour had more power in Scotland than its predecessors, reform was still problematic, so in 1966 it was decided to expose the ideas contained in the old white paper to public scrutiny, by means of a royal commission into local government in Scotland.
The commission was to be chaired by the High Court judge Lord John Wheatley, and it was an inspired choice.
Lord Wheatley, later Lord Justice Clerk, was one of the finest legal minds of the 20th century.
With a small group of committee members, he quickly took evidence from a wide range of interested parties and within just two years, he had produced his seminal report.
Recommending sweeping changes, there were to be seven regions and 37 districts; the regions being responsible for the delivery of major services including policing.
So it was that one of the most consequential police reforms came about, not because of concerns about policing, but because of reforms to its parent bodies.
“It may have been an expedient political fix, but it was no way to design an effective police service”
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The date for changes to come into effect was set for the summer of 1975, giving local authorities time to make arrangements for what was to be a huge change. It was during this planning phase that the first suggestions were made that a national police service might be the best option.
One of the strongest voices for reform over the years had been the Scottish Police Federation, which rightly saw fewer, larger forces as better for its members’ working conditions and prospects for development and advancement.
There was strenuous resistance at local political level, however, with one senior politician describing a national force “as undesirable and even dangerous”. In the end, a compromise was reached: there would be eight police forces.
One of these – Lothian and Borders – would cover two regional authorities, and the rest would match new regional authorities. It made democratic sense to align police forces with the new regional authorities they policed, but it led to huge inconsistencies in size.
Strathclyde was made intentionally huge to provide the tax base sufficient to support the poorer de-industrialised areas around Glasgow, while Dumfries and Galloway was responsible for two sparsely populated rural counties.
And so the amalgamations of 1975 inadvertently led to led to a disparity of size which would eventually contribute to their final amalgamation into a single force.
Strathclyde was a huge force, Dumfries and Galloway was tiny, and everyone else was in between. It may have been an expedient political fix, but it was no way to design an effective police service.
Had the 1975 police reforms been carried through with the efficiency of policing in mind, then a four or even three force model would have been adopted.
“The amalgamations of 1975 inadvertently led to led to a disparity of size which would eventually contribute to their final amalgamation into a single force”
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This would have created forces of sufficient size to deal with most eventualities; indeed it might have been a model that survived to this day, with better local political controls than our present national force.
As it was, the 1975 amalgamations were carried through with little fuss. While at the top of the new forces there were power struggles as regimes changed, on the ground the street cops got on with the job.
The change of a shoulder number made little difference on the street, but for specialist departments like CID it was trickier trying to knit together old established systems and practices.
The new arrangements were to be tested early.
The recently formed Northern Constabulary would be challenged when Renee MacRae and her young son disappeared, believed murdered, in November ’76, while the new Lothian and Borders force would meet similar challenges when two young girls, Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, were abducted and murdered in late ‘77.
For the next 33 years, the eight force model worked well, with larger forces assisting the smaller in times of need. The Lockerbie Air disaster of 1988 was probably the best example of effective mutual aid and cooperation since the Second World War.
It wasn’t until the early 2000s that thoughts turned again to further amalgamations.
It was argued, with some validity, that a whole range of public services in Scotland were ripe for reform, both to improve efficiency and to get better value for money.
The police service was no exception. It was believed that the smaller forces did not have the scale to meet the new challenges of the 21st century: cyber-crime, sophisticated terrorism, and historic investigations would be beyond them.
The eight forces would have to be slimmed down to meet these threats.
There was, however, always an ulterior motive – cost savings – and without partisan political support, policing was an easy target. Concerns about a democratic deficit were dismissed.
And so, with the usual ‘can do’ attitude, the eight old forces worked to make the transformation to Police Scotland. The rest is history.
Since its formation, Police Scotland has struggled to win adequate funding and now in its 12th year, has had more than a billion pounds stripped from its budget, leaving fewer officers on the street, and threatening the community policing model held dear for 200 years.
If the transformation of police and fire services to national bodies was meant to be a template for further change, it hasn’t happened. Local government and health boards in Scotland remain unreformed, with no political stomach to take it on.
It is a tale of constant change and challenge for policing in Scotland. But through it all, credit must go to the ordinary street cops who throughout the turmoil and change, simply got on with the job.
Tom Wood is a writer and former police officer