“Use it or lose it”, those of us of a certain vintage will recall, was the slogan to save hundreds of local post office branches in the 1980s. Largely unsuccessful at the end of the day, it was perhaps the first real sign that institutional regard for community presence and purpose was on the slide.
Whether vandals or visionaries, the proponents of the policy of centralisation set in motion one of the most fundamental shifts in how the public interacted with an institution of the state in ways few today would raise an eyebrow at. At its core was the notion that the public should go to the service rather than the service to the public.
Across the Highlands and Islands, and rural Scotland more widely, post offices were the first domino to fall. They were quickly followed by dozens of small local primary schools, GP surgeries, hospitals, secondary schools. After that came banks, ambulance stations, satellite council offices, fire stations, and so much more.
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Each closure was preceded by a sham of a public consultation going through the tiresome ticking of boxes everything has always demanded. Each consultation promised no diminution in local service with some creatively suggesting the alternative would be an improvement on what it was replacing. Despite this, local voices would oppose, local bureaucrats would ignore, and the closure would happen regardless. Another piece of the soul of our communities was torn out as those who oversaw the decisions rarely had to live with their consequences.
Democracy it seems is not for the people after all.
The latest convert to ignoring the needs of rural communities is our national police service, which has embraced the undervalue, underfund, and undermine tactics with considerable gusto. Rural police officers have been dragged from the villages to police their nearest town for years now, leaving their stations empty and beats unpatrolled. Little wonder the police PR machine is able to “sell” the need to close these stations to a public that has long since given up on believing their voice will be listened to anyway.
Rural crime is not regarded as real crime. Despite occasional press releases and appeals, the theft of agricultural equipment, of livestock, of fuel, isnt taken seriously. Rural roads are racetracks in the winter and car parks in the summer. Lay-bys are latrines, and entrances to fields temporary camp sites or hotspots for fly tipping. A belief that nothing “big” happens in the sticks leads to complacency and an ambivalence to the realities of rural life. The arrest and court appearance of a suspect for the Aberfeldy murder is unlikely to see that underlying attitude change any time soon.
Whilst police station closures are nothing new, the speed with which rural Scotland in particular is now losing its police stations is genuinely alarming. Outside of our main towns and cities policing is a concept rather than a reality. Not that long ago there were 11 police stations in the Hebrides. Today the archipelago is (in)effectively policed from three, and with a lot fewer officers. The picture is the same wherever in rural Scotland you look. The gangs we hear so much about criss-cross many historic county lines before they reach our towns and cities, and there is not a uniformed soul to deter them from doing so.
The fact policing is now done to our communities rather than with them reveals a frightening void in our democratic institutions. Community needs and aspirations are a poor second to what the police service is willing to provide. Local police commanders are deployed to expand their CVs and for the advantage of the police service, not the betterment of their community. This renders them powerless as to speak out about the real challenges can be career ending. The one ism which has always been tolerated and promoted within the police service is face-ism, and having a critical voice is one way to make sure yours never fits.
The past few weeks have revealed the depressing realities of corporate group think and message management. The decades-long moral failure in the contaminated blood scandal, and the determination to defend at all costs the Post Office’s reputation which saw innocents convicted have at their heart a disdain for the public who are to be managed rather than served.
One fundamental problem in adopting a “use it or lose it” justification for police stations is that policing will always be a service that needs to go to the people. In that regard alone, it stands apart from post offices, banks, schools, and hospitals. It needs to remember that policing is more than just how a crime is reported. It is an essential part of the very fabric of our society and a critical part of the heart of many of our communities. If policing reduces itself to “just crime” it can forget calling on public support when it really needs it.
The former Green MSP and land campaigner Andy Wightman’s book, The Poor Had No Lawyers, paints a depressing picture of what can happen when institutional thinking puts people at the bottom of the priority list. The past 45 years have shown that too many of our public and national institutions have fallen into the trap of doing just that to the people who call the Highlands and Islands home.
These new clearances are not driven by the greed and violence of the 18th and 19th century but are delivering the same outcomes. It is not the case now that the people have no lawyers, but they definitely have no police.
It would be wrong to lay the blame for this entirely at the feet of the police service, as cuts and austerity meant the axe was always going to fall somewhere. Unfortunately, those swinging the axe have no real understanding of what policing rural communities means. How could they, they think the best place for the Assistant Chief Constable overseeing policing in the North of Scotland is in a castle in Fife.
Calum Steele is a former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation
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