Allister Heath talks to a deputation of US police chiefs drafted in to help John Reid in his do-or-die battle to restore faith in the criminal justice system. Is this New Labour’s Dirty Harry moment?
It was as if the two men had suddenly burst out of nowhere. ‘You’re coming with us,’ one of them growled as they pounced on Caroline, grabbing her by the arms and starting to drag her down a dark side alley. It was the early hours of Saturday morning in central Durham, about a mile from the cathedral, a part of the city which is never deserted; so my friend, a 22-year-old medical student, lashed out screaming and kicking as hard as she could. For a split second, the kidnappers hesitated, allowing her to break free and run for her life.
But Caroline’s nightmare was soon compounded by the almost surreal ineffectiveness of the authorities. Durham City police station, which used to open around the clock, was closed, the manned presence replaced by an intercom. Despite repeated promises, officers never came to see her, blaming overwork. It took 14 hours and five phone calls before Caroline was finally granted an ‘incident number’; her ordeal may not even be recorded as part of the government’s crime figures, buttressing the laughable claim that crime is under control in Tony Blair’s Britain. One police operator informed Caroline that her attack wasn’t ‘a violent incident’; nobody seemed to care that two dangerous maniacs were still on the prowl in central Durham.
When I was told of Caroline’s brush with disaster last weekend, I was reminded of Irving Kristol’s famous line that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. But then I realised that in today’s angry, crime-ridden Britain, where many of us have friends or loved ones who have been mercilessly robbed or assaulted, a conservative is simply anyone who — perhaps against his better instincts — cheers on Clint Eastwood when, in his role as the rogue San Francisco cop Dirty Harry in those old 1970s movies, he ruthlessly hunts down and takes out criminals.
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