In the 60s there was a tv show called ‘Dixon of Dock Green’. Arguably the first ever ‘cop show’ on’t telly. This was no Starsky and Hutch, this fell way short of CSI, lacked the legal intrigues of Homicide and the fly-on-the-wall gritty feel of Hill Street Blues. In fact, I think it safe to say that Dixon of Dock Green was the dullest, most mundane, drab, boring, tedious and unexciting show ever to reach the sreens. Until Big Brother came along, of course, and redefined ‘fucking mindless NOTHING!!!!!’ for the post millenial generation. Dixon never did flashy wheel-spins; his bike wasn’t up to it, nor his legs. No gun was ever fired, other than at an errant fox (presumably one that the dogs missed as this was rural Britain in pre-hunt-ban days) and there were no drugs, pimps, ‘hos’ or even any dark-skinned people of any type. Which wasn’t the racism we now know to be epidemic both in the police force and in the representation of stereotypes during later tv years, but merely a reflection of English Country demographics in the 60s.

I hated ‘Dixon’, the show, because it was soooooooo boring. But I loved ‘Dixon’ the man because he was like a PR film for the English Bobby. He rode round on said bike, pulling cats out of trees, helping people get back into houses after locking themselvs out, smiling, helping old ladies across busy roads (busy roads; rural England… busy-ish roads) and once in a while apprehending not just petty criminals but really really petty criminals. ‘Feeling their collars’. ‘You’re nicked, son’. At which point they’d give up and say ‘oh, its a fair cop’ and await handcuffing like true gentlemen. And Dixon, about 80 years old and incapable of any physical action more demanding than lifting a cuppa tea, woud oblige.

He was the definitive gentleman at all times. He never swore, spit, lost his temper, shagged someone else’s wife, wore an earring, got drunk, took drugs, voted Labour or supported Arsenal. He supped his occasional pint of bitter warm, in his ‘local’ and went home to his loving Mrs Dixon of Dock Green every evening for his ‘tea’.

Tosser.

Though really that was how the police wanted to be viewed and how the public really wanted them to be. Decent, honest, trustworthy, dependable. No-one called them plebs, no-one thought they would ever become what they seem to have become today. Institutionally racist, riddled with corruption, spying where they shouldn’t be spying and in many cases acting way above the law. According to the Ellison report.

Interestingly, on BBC’s Question Time last night, from Barking, an exceptionally multi-cultural area, the audience, when asked if the police were trustworthy, were divided in two. White folk thought they were whereas anyone of physically different colour or culture said they definitely weren’t and virtually all had tales to explain why on a personal level.

Ahhhhh, for the perfect world of the 60s…

Yeah, right.

Happy Friday

A xxxx