Sir David McNee, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

This is an old piece about the ex Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, that put IGP Musa Hasan to shame. But then when you are a millionaire what is there to be ashame about, unless the money is DIRTY.
****************************************************************************************
In his office in Scotland Yard, Sir David McNee, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, reminisced about the career which has brought him to his present post as Britain's chief police officer and regretted the fact that his salmon fishing days are now so few.
"This is my fifth year as Commissioner and I've hardly had a rod in my hands all that time. But when I go off on leave to the West Highlands with my family and friends I like to fish for salmon. There's nothing quite like it. But on a number of occasions during my time down here I've been called back from leave when some emergency has occurred."
"I was on holiday in Spain with my family when Airey Neave was murdered at the House of Commons. I had to leave them and fly home quickly."
"And when we heard about the siege at the Iranian Embassy I was on holiday with my wife in Scotland and decided I'd better get back to the Yard."
"Now my wife says she can't let me out of her sight for ten minutes."
"My senior colleagues are always interested to know my holiday dates, because they feel that once I get away something terrible is going to happen in London."
"It's sad for the family when the old man has to leave them, but I'm afraid it's part of the job."
Born near the centre of Glasgow, David McNee was the son of a railwayman.
"My father drove the Royal Scot among the other great engines of the day and as a little boy, I wanted to follow in his footsteps."
"I have distinct childhood memories of going to see him at Glasgow Central Station and being lifted up on to the footplate to be shown how the engine operated. My father worked a short week during the lean days of the nineteen thirties and I know it was difficult for him with a young family to support. There was a great deal of unemployment when I was a child, and we lived in a tough area of Glasgow. In those days you were posh if you had a water closet inside the house."
"There was much deprivation. People were poor, but honest. There was no rioting in the streets because of unemployment."
"One of the messages I try to get over today is that you can be unemployed and deprived, but at the same time remain honest."
"My father and mother were committed Christians, as am I, and I was brought up in a very religious home. In that part of Glasgow the church played a significant role because they tried to take young men off the streets, keep them going, give them something to do and something to eat. When I was fifteen I couldn't get away from school fast enough. I worked in the Clydesdale Bank as a general dogsbody, running errands, licking stamps. After that I joined the Navy."
He applied to join the police force at the end of the war, while still in the Services and was given a release which enabled him to leave some months early, in 1946. So in the April of that year young McNee became a policeman.
"Some of the most enjoyable, happy days were as a constable on the beat," he said. "There was such comradeship, with most officers just coming out of the Services. They were active men with the experience of living with others, with loyalty to one another and devotion to duty - just what I had expected of policemen. I spent five years as a uniformed officer in some of the tough areas of Glasgow and then became a detective. I believe people who have a burning ambition to succeed often don't but I never had such a burning ambition. I did my job to the best of my ability and wasn't always looking over my shoulder at who was being promoted or worrying about whether I should have been promoted. I let my work speak for itself, and hopefully at the end of the day, the bosses selected the right people for promotion. Whether they did so in my case, I leave to your judgement."
"But, like every other young man, I always wanted to get on to the next rank."
And rise through the ranks he did, to become the chief constable of his home city. During his time as a detective there a historic crime was committed in London in 1966 - the cold-blooded murder of three policemen at Shepherds Bush.
Police were seeking a man who had a Glasgow connection and was thought to have gone into hiding there.
"I was a detective inspector and word came from the Metropolitan Police that he was in Glasgow. We undertook surveillance and inquiries trace his brother and then the suspect himself to a house in the east end of the city. Being devious we got the door open without him knowing we were there and then we were on top of him. There was no struggle and no gun. The guns used in the crime had been discarded. We took him into custody. He was tried, convicted and sentenced. A lot of good came out of that case and as a result the Police Dependants Trust was created and many people have benefitted from that over the years."
David McNee was appointed deputy chief constable of Dunbartonshire in 1968, chief constable of Glasgow in 1971 and chief constable of Strathclyde, the second largest force in Britain in 1976.
He had fought the hardened criminal fraternity and was known to them as "The Hammer." On a table near his desk is a golden hammer on a stand, inscribed to Sir David. It's really made of phosphor bronze and was fashioned by one of my chief inspectors whose hobby it is. My senior officers, presented it to me at one of our luncheon parties," the Commissioner told me. You don't apply for this job as Commissioner of Police. You are invited to accept it. I was asked to come to London to see the then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, and I had a long interview with him. But then he went to Brussels to become President of the European Community and Merlyn Rees took his place, so I was interviewed all over again. My wife Isabella and I met in church circles. I used to sing, standing beside her as she played the piano in the church. As a young man I had studied voice production under a singing teacher, but I was never a choirboy. I preferred to sing solo."
"Isabella and I got to know each other and we married in Anniesland Hall in nineteen fifty-two. Our wedding reception was at the Grand Hotel in Glasgow, a beautiful place which no longer exists. The construction of the inner ring road swept the hotel away in its path and one of the city's central landmarks disappeared for ever. We've always been a very happily married couple and to this day I still stand beside the piano and sing, while Isabella plays. We don't perform in public any more - we only do it for our own enjoyment."
"When we first came to London I bought a house in Surrey, but because of the nature of my job it was felt that I should come and live near the centre. So now we live about ten minutes from Scotland Yard."
Commissioner McNee is clearly a tough man but despite this, a tender heart beats beneath the rugged exterior. He told me there are occasions when his duties bring tears to his eyes. We sometimes have commendations ceremonies here at the Yard, where we honour brave police officers and I would be less than human if I was not affected." Take young PC Olds, in his twenties, shot and very badly injured by a robber. He will never walk again. It shatters me. And PC Trevor Lock, that great lump of good nature, involved in the Iranian Embassy siege. We had quite an emotional evening here the night he was freed. He had his wife with him, and yes, I shed a tear then. It doesn't matter how tough you are, how high the position you hold, it brings lump to the throat. We're all human, made of the same stuff. At some of the ceremonials. I attend, I am affected."
"I'm not ashamed of my feelings. I'd be ashamed to say I never shed tears."
The Commissioner is a quietly spoken man. Even when his officers have been savagely attacked in the streets by mobs and the police verbally attacked for doing their duty, he only responds with mildly phrased language.
I asked him whether it was difficult to bite back what he would like to say.
"I think that's true, but I don't think it's the role of a chief police officer to be too controversial. I was spat at in the street outside the Grunwick factory during the disturbances there and it hurts me when my young officers have to put up with that sort of things and worse. But my role is to carry out my duties as prescribed in the Police Act - to maintain the peace, protect life and property, prevent and detect crime, make the streets of London safer. I have to enforce and uphold the law and I don't want to be seen as a political policeman. I see myself as a professional police officer, apolitical, standing in the middle and upholding the law.