We went to the beekeepers' annual dinner last night, and on the way stopped to vote in the PCC election. I firmly believe in the democratic process, and that if there's an election going I ought to vote in it. When my grandmother was born, women didn't even have the vote. Vote early and vote often, that's the slogan in our house.
I remember dutifully voting in the elections for the regional MEP, back in the pre-internet days of the late eighties or early nineties (remember those? It is like confessing that you lived in the Stone Age) and taking weeks to discover who had won, as it wasn't in the local paper. I did keep an eye out, but nobody seemed interested in reporting the outcome. Actually, nothing much has changed there as I still couldn't tell you who my MEP is, though at least nowadays I could look it up if I wanted to. As the PCC elections drew closer it seemed that history was repeating itself before the ballot, because none of the local papers had anything to say on the subject at all.
I was disappointed by that. I'd thought that maybe the East Anglian Daily Times could interview them over a few editions (starting with the candidates standing in Suffolk, naturally, but squeezing Essex in later). Or somebody could organise a debate between the candidates and report on it. Or there could be some town meetings, or a hustings, or something. And it would have been quite helpful if the BBC, or the Telegraph, or Guardian, or Independent, had explained quite what it was that the winning candidate would be allowed or expected to do. They can 'hold police forces to account' and they have the power to sack the Chief Constable. Apart from sacking the Chief Constable I wasn't clear how they were supposed to hold police forces to account. They could have a good moan at them, or grumble about them in the media (assuming they could persuade it to take any notice) but I didn't see what they could actually do, that would be any more effective than the threats of the English teacher at my school who couldn't keep order that if we didn't behave she was going to punish us in a minute. She never did punish us, we never did behave, and only one girl in the class (not me) got an A grade at O level Eng. Lit.
The PCC is supposed to set policing objectives, but not to interfere in operational policing matters. They are meant to act as a bridge between the police force and the communities they police, and relay the concerns and priorities of the community to the police. That sounds excellent, like motherhood and apple pie. Except that if the public say they want to see more police on the beat, is that a policing objective or an operational decision? Sounds pretty operational to me, deciding how many policemen and women are going to be pounding the means streets of Colchester and Harlow versus doing other police duties. Like traffic patrols on the A12. Or dealing with fraud, or domestic abuse. Or reporting animal sanctuaries to the authorities for having exotic owls. I'd have been happy to hear an informed debate on where the boundary lies, but nobody held one, or if they did it was kept a closely guarded secret.
I looked at the website with details of the candidates for Essex on it. Three were standing on political party tickets, or four if you count the English Democrats as a party, and there were two independents. I'm not sure that party politics belongs in policing. In fact, I'm rather sure that it doesn't. I read what they all had to say about what they would do if they became Police and Crime Commissioner, but it was a bit vague. Listen to the views of the community, put victims at the heart of policy, make Essex a safe and secure place to live and work. Yes, but what are you actually going to do? The UKIP candidate wanted a five year sentence to mean five years, a legal reform which I don't think will lie within the remit of the PCC, so he seemed about as unclear about the role as I was. Or he knew he couldn't actually do that but was saying so anyway because it sounded good. Whatever. The main policy of the English Democrats seemed to be to fly the cross of Saint George over police stations, which sounded quite sweet, but irrelevant to policing. The Conservatives were the most organised party, delivering a flyer to our house (in itself an achievement, professional delivery companies can't find it half the time) while a canvasser in a blue rosette was handing them out at Colchester railway station on Wednesday. Their candidate had worked for thirty years at senior level in national security and defence. That's what his biography on the Choose your PCC website said. Does that mean he was a spy? Or a software engineer?
I began to despair of the lot of them, and seriously thought about spoiling my ballot paper, to make the point that it wasn't that I didn't know the election was on, or couldn't be bothered to go out to vote. But I've always thought that voting for None of the above was babyish. In the real world you have to choose from the available alternatives, however unpalatable, and one of this lot was going to be the first Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex. I voted. Ours was the only car in the car park, and I could see from the number of names ticked off on our page of the electoral roll that not many other people had.
The Conservatives won, in Essex and Suffolk. It's not really surprising. East Anglia was a sea of blue in the 2010 General Election, with just Colchester and a couple of seats in Norfolk going to the Liberal Democrats. I haven't yet discovered what the turnout was*, but I shouldn't think it was very high. Maybe by the time we have to vote again we'll have discovered what it is that Police and Crime Commissioners actually do.
*12.81 per cent according to the Telegraph. That's abysmal.
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