There have been many deaths at the hands of police officers in Britain and the North of Ireland and numerous miscarriages of justice which do not have to be listed here. Instead, I want to highlight the countless daily exchanges between police officers and people of minority groups be that ethnic, religious, or people who suffer from a mental illness. I feel quite certain that most of these interactions pass off without rancour or incident, after all most cops are professional, good, people who are trying to do the right thing for everyone in society. However, there are interactions that do not run smoothly and while these may represent only a small proportion, the cumulative effect over several decades has embedded a culture of mutual distrust.

In What Goes Around which is set in England in the 1990s and my second novel More Than a Game – A story about football and other stuff which is located in Wolverhampton in 1981, both stories feature black characters coming into contact with aggressive police officers. Unfortunately, my imagination did not have to work too hard to create these scenes as my friends, relatives and I were on the receiving end of heavy-handed policing on many occasions. But there is one question that demands an answer: given that the youths of forty years ago have matured into middle age and the police officers they encountered are no longer on patrol, how is it that these scenes have replayed over and over until the present day? Black parents on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean tend to warn their sons, in particular, to be wary of the police; it is as if an inter-generational trauma is being passed on. As for the police, how is it that every new cohort acts in a manner similar to their predecessors when interacting with young black men? In January 2024, one of Britain’s most senior policemen, Gavin Stephens, said that black people should no longer experience disproportionate use of force, and that too little progress has been made to reform policing. While Stephens replied ‘yes’ when asked if the police were institutionally racist, following a debate on the subject in 2022 most of Britain’s police chiefs were against making any such admission and the prospects of any rapid reform looks remote.

Modern policing originated to protect the property of the rich and powerful, at a time when the poor were seen as a problem that had to be dealt with harshly. Britain’s police force was created by Robert Peel in 1829 who had previously established a ‘Peace Preservation Force’ in Ireland when he was Chief Secretary there, and to this day police are referred to as ‘Peelers’ in the North of Ireland. But in the 21st century there is now a case to have the police change its ethos, in deeds and not just pious words; from protecting property rights to protecting the human rights of all citizens and then perhaps everyone may find the justice they are looking for.

When a community loses faith in the police they may then begin to police themselves and that can also lead to all manner of tragedies and injustices. In the North of Ireland people ended up maimed or losing their lives, sometimes because of no more than a malicious rumour. In the community in which I grew up I did know of people who were burgled and then took the law into their own hands – only to end up in court themselves because of the beatings they dispensed to the thieves. I had heard of groups of youths in Birmingham setting up to protect their streets from racists only for them to degenerate into criminal gangs once the threats had diminished. In the novel, due to the absence of policing, the Brothers of Islam begin to patrol the Blackmore estate with the best of intentions but it is not long before the community activists turn into vigilantes. And without checks and balances it was ever thus.