4 - ‘The New Detective Army’

Summary

JENKINSON's move to the Home Office did not remain a secret for long, soon becoming fodder for editorials on both sides of the Irish Sea. The staunchly Nationalist Freeman's Journal, for example, noted gleefully that ‘the peaceful serenity [of] Scotland Yard officialdom… has been rudely dispelled by… Mr. Jenkinson [who] is daily expected to promulgate a scheme for the reorganisation of the detective department, and [who]… has been practically allowed a carte blanche in its preparation.’ Pulling no punches in ridiculing this apparent ministerial folly, the paper depicted Harcourt as a hysterical weakling and Jenkinson as an insidious errand boy eager to prey on his paymaster's paranoia in the pursuit of personal profit. For British newspapers, however, the picture was somewhat more complicated.

The Liberal Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper tacitly approved of Jenkinson's appointment as ‘a sort of Minister of Police under the Home Office’, but was somewhat wary of the exclusively political nature of his office, asking wryly why ‘the ordinary citizen [could not] also claim the benefit of his services’ given that Scotland Yard ‘has not failed more conspicuously in attacking political than in trying to capture ordinary criminals’. That unease was more forcefully stated by the Conservative Standard which, while granting that ‘current arrangements [in combating politically motivated crime] are far from satisfactory’, depicted the new appointment as a betrayal of the Metropolitan Police. Mr Jenkinson had ‘done good service in Ireland’, but his presence at the Home Office would only weaken the ‘authority of the Chief Commissioner’ and further antagonize the provinces where ‘already the authority exercised by the Home Office in Police matters is regarded… with considerable jealousy’.

If such comments appeared, to some degree, to echo those of Jenkinson‘s critics in Whitehall (Anderson especially) it is because they were almost certainly based on controlled leaks, as the new ‘Minister of Police’ himself believed. Writing to Spencer only a day after the publication of the Standard piece, Jenkinson warned that newspaper chatter could go a considerable way towards harming the vital secrecy on which his new duties depended, railing at the same time against the inability of Scotland Yard men to ‘hold their tongues’.