Peter James - Death Comes Knocking - Policing Roy Grace's Brighton

In the nick of time we had reasserted our control of the police station. Now we could get back to singling out the troublemakers and allowing those peacefully protesting to do just that.

After considerable discussion, I agreed with Jane’s request that we should employ what was, at that time, the most controversial tactic available. We were going to contain the anarchists.

The Metropolitan Police had recently been berated for this ‘kettling’ but, properly used, it is a very effective non-violent way of suppressing disorder. I knew I would spend the next days justifying this to a scandal-hungry media, but I had a community and dozens of cops to protect.

With our strengthened numbers, we were able to isolate the anarchists and identify the ringleaders. We ensured that we found out exactly who the hard core were and gauged whether they should be arrested for any previous offences before letting the innocent go, one by one. We might want to talk to them later when we started to trawl the CCTV, so collating their names and addresses before letting them trickle out was essential.

This show of strength marked the beginning of the end of a day that, as well as the attempt to invade the police station, saw shops overrun, Brighton Town Hall put under siege and a Brighton University building occupied. However, due to the effective preventive policing, just five people were arrested. More would follow, but we never let the disorder get to the point that we needed to lock up dozens of thugs as that would have tied up an equivalent number of valuable cops.

Some officers faced the anger and missiles of a minority of violent protestors for over twelve hours, and all showed remarkable resilience and restraint. There are distinct parallels between Grace’s fictional world of crime investigation and its factual counterpart across all areas of policing. In Dead Man’s Time , the hours and commitment he is expected to give to the job cause him to reflect carefully, like I did, on how he will rise to the challenge of fatherhood. Each of the officers I had deployed had families and friends who would be wondering when they would next see them and would be desperately worried for them during the conflict. Few received the accolades they deserved.

In the days that followed, the armchair critics surfaced providing their ill-informed opinions that we had been either too harsh or too soft. Some even asserted that it was our, not their parents’, responsibility to scoop up the kids and take them home for their safety.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

This was just one of a succession of protests and marches. The opening of a factory in Moulsecoomb that manufactured components for fighter planes provided plenty more.

Activists frequently besieged the EDO MBM factory, often supergluing themselves to the railings in an effort to stop production. Occasionally the protests became more intense, characterized by violent attacks on police and wholesale disruption to the city.

Some would seek out secondary targets, such as multinational businesses, to attack. Forgetting that innocent local people worked for these firms or shopped, ate or banked in them, they would terrify anyone in their quest to overthrow the distant oligarchs who ran them.

In one particularly sickening episode dozens of children were trapped in McDonald’s by a baying mob, protected only by a thin line of brave young officers denying the thugs access. The attempt to overturn a parked police van outside just added to the intensely frightening ordeal.

Early in my tenure as Divisional Commander, protestors had managed to break into the factory and cause thousands of pounds of damage. A Hove jury unexpectedly acquitted those responsible. Their defence was that their actions were justified given that they ’had an honestly held belief’ that they were preventing war crimes.

The private view of some supporters of direct action was that the acquittal should have prompted the protest group to take the moral high ground and become more measured in their future activity. It was no secret that business owners, residents and some politicians were fed up with the seemingly endless rounds of protests, blockades and marches. For a city that thrives on tourists, it was not good for trade.

Others, however, had different ideas.

In late 2010 a huge protest was advertised, aimed at noisily expressing ‘universal’ disapproval of EDO MBM. On the face of it, this is exactly what the police were there to facilitate. The right to peacefully protest is the bedrock of any healthy democracy and, despite what some detractors may say, our job was to allow that to happen.

We never simply dusted off previous plans when preparing for a big event such as this. No two protests are ever the same and to use a previous strategy and tactics would smack of complacency. We would of course learn the lessons from before but I always insisted that, despite the huge extra effort involved, every deployment be looked at from scratch.

In Not Dead Yet my dual role as Divisional Commander and Gold is expertly narrated. Peter James deliberately puts me — or rather my alter-ego Chief Superintendent Graham Barrington — at the centre of running fast-moving critical incidents while still taking care of the rest of the city’s policing. This was very much as it was, and intentionally so. I worried that to parachute in a strategic commander for a specific public order event, where that person may have no other stake in the city’s interests, would risk a disjointed policing style and cause someone else — me — to pick up the pieces if it all went wrong.

As Gold commander, given previous attempts to attack EDO MBM, I instructed we seek the Chief Constable’s authority to establish a designated protest zone at the end of Home Farm Road leading to the factory. This was right next to one of the main roads into and out of the city and perfect for the purpose of a visible and vibrant protest.

Word got to us, however, that some hard-core anarchists intended to disrupt our plans. We discovered that a squat had been established in Ivy House, an old cottage nestled in the woods at the back of nearby Wild Park. Dozens of protestors were to spend the night there dossing down, enabling them to give us an early-morning surprise by approaching the factory from the rear.

Of course, we had a plan for that. As the protestors awoke that damp autumnal morning they were met with a ring of police officers encircling their temporary home. Leading this squad was Chief Inspector Jane Derrick. No accident that, once again, such a capable and charismatic leader would be the one chosen to set the policing tone for the day.

As the squatters emerged into the misty dawn chill, each was wearing a full-faced black balaclava — not indicative of people just wanting to make a legitimate political point, in my experience. Prepared for such an eventuality, Jane was authorized to order them to remove the offending masks.

This created the first stand-off of the day. Compliance in their minds would indicate capitulation. Defiance would mean certain arrest. It was likely that some planned to be arrested during the course of the day but not this early, in an isolated wood miles from the public gaze. The only cameras to play up to here were those held by the police evidence gatherers and the one fixed to the police helicopter hovering over their heads.

The Silver commander, Chief Inspector Nev Kemp, and I were in the command suite nervously watching the soundless CCTV pictures being beamed from our eye in the sky. Our bacon rolls going cold, we were transfixed by this stalemate. We could not afford to fail this first test.

I could make out Jane having an animated conversation with the group’s self-designated spokesman. Her body language suggested that she was using her charm, her impeccable reasoning and her indefatigable patience to get her point across — ‘You are going nowhere with those masks on.’