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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2022
POLICING THE CRISIS (1)
They park outside a municipal block of flats and we climb the stairs to a flat on the third floor, the two uniformed police officers in front. The door is open and they walk in announcing themselves to the elderly resident ‘It's alright dear, we’re here now. What can we do for you?’ She explains about having heard noises around her door at night and one of them makes a series of comforting remarks, indicating gently that she isn't to worry, they are ‘here now’ and will take a look round. The tone is kind and reassuring. They offer to make the old woman a cup of tea. She seems to be known to them but I feel very out of place, and embarrassed. I feel the two officers are deliberately showing me their policing, demonstrating to me something they want me to know, and this is confirmed when we walk back down to the patrol car and one says, ‘We shouldn't have really done that, taken you with us like that. But it's not all like you think.’ It was a performance for my benefit, and I was affected by it. Their kindness to the old woman was genuine, her relief to be visited and attended to, equally so.
In 1980 the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) began to publicise central government's contingency plans in the event of a Soviet nuclear strike. Norwich is situated in the middle of East Anglia not far from what were then the largest US airbases outside of the USA, at Mildenhall and Lakenheath. As part of a group researching these plans I drove my moped to a radio mast on the edge of town that was widely suspected to be situated on top of one of the Regional Seats of Government. These are camouflaged fortified bunkers where the local civic hierarchy would be housed while the radiation fallout from a nuclear explosion killed everyone else and made government a bit difficult. I drove down the lane to a small and apparently empty lodge where a notice informed me that I was on Ministry of Defence property that was private and didn't welcome trespassers. So, after peering further down the lane I turned around and drove home.
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