The resignation of Sir Edmund Henderson, which took place on the 20th of February, was perhaps inevitable under the circumstances; but much regret was felt and expressed throughout the force when it became known that the Chief, who for seventeen years had watched over the security of London, and under whose rule the police had earned a high reputation for efficiency, was about to leave Scotland Yard.
During his tenure of office the peace had been so well maintained, and the police mechanism had worked so smoothly, that his experience had taught him to under-estimate the dangers that lurk below the surface in all large crowds, and to over-estimate the preparedness of the men under his command to deal with any possible outbreak. As he knew them, London crowds were well behaved, and London police were equal to any emergency.
The place vacated by the resignation of Sir Edmund Henderson was offered to Sir Charles Warren, a well-known officer of Engineers, whose talent for administration had been proved in Bechuanaland and elsewhere, and who now relinquished the Governorship of the Red Sea Littoral to take up the Chief Commissionership of the Metropolitan Police. The task entrusted to the new chief was definite if not easy. Before all things he had to restore the prestige which had suffered so severely on the day when the mob gained the upper hand, and he had to demonstrate, cost what it might, that the police could not again be defied with impunity.
After the occurrences of February 1886, there was a truce lasting some eighteen months during which the peace was successfully maintained in spite of the persistent hostility evinced by a large section of the public. But in the autumn of 1887, disorderly assemblages of the unemployed, led by demagogues, encouraged by foolish agitators, and reinforced with the scum of London, became so frequent and intolerable,[261] that Sir Charles Warren had to make a bold move in the interests of order, by altogether forbidding the use of Trafalgar Square as a place of public meeting. His action was endorsed by the Secretary of State, but only in such a half-hearted fashion that the forces of disorder, confident that they were the masters of the situation, determined to fight it out. Accordingly both parties prepared for battle. On the one side some six or seven thousand special constables were sworn in, and a large military force was held in reserve; on the other, defiance was openly preached, and adherents were canvassed. When on Sunday the 13th of November the mob began to assemble, they found that the Square and its approaches were already held; but, undeterred by the force opposed to them, and in no mood to return quietly to their homes, the ring-leaders, after a short parley, tried to break through the police cordon. In the course of the protracted struggle which ensued, several minor casualties occurred on either side, and although the crowd resolutely returned to the attack time after time, in the end the police were successful all along the line; the square was cleared without loss of life or injury to property, and the ability of the police to carry out the orders of the Government was satisfactorily demonstrated. Subsequently other attempts were made to reopen the question; but the result was the same. The next phase was the repetition of the familiar and easily disproved charges as to the alleged violence of the constables, many persons, who had attacked the police for their failure in 1886, now joining in the chorus anathematising their successes of the following year.
The entire responsibility for the instructions upon which the police had acted, belonged, of course, to the Government; and on the reopening of Parliament the focus of the agitation was transferred to Westminster, where the whole question as to the legal power of constabulary forces to prevent open-air meetings was debated at some length. In demanding an enquiry into the right of public meeting, Sir Charles Russell insisted that such a right existed by virtue of long-sanctioned custom, and contended that the Executive was not justified in vetoing any assembly that was not of itself illegal. The Home Secretary replied regretting the events of "Bloody Sunday," which he described as lamentable and distressing, but he denied that any right of public meeting, as such, was recognised by English law, and concluded by saying that "this series of meetings had exhausted the police, terrified the public, and made the veto necessary." Sir Henry James held that, whilst the purely legal side of the question was comparatively immaterial, the maintenance of the peace and considerations of the public safety were all-important; and urged that it was the duty of Government to employ such police measures as might be found necessary to prevent the undoubted liberties of the many from being interfered with by the intolerable whims of the few, even if the latter happened to be legally within their rights.[262] The common-sense point of view enunciated by Sir Henry James found general acceptance, both in the House of Commons and throughout the country; Sir Charles Russell's motion was rejected, and the public began to rally to the support of the police.
CHAPTER XIX
CONCLUSION
From the time when Rural Constabulary forces were instituted in 1839, until the date of the creation of County Councils fifty years later, the police authority throughout rural England had been the County Justices of the Peace in Quarter Sessions, to which body alone, in the several counties, was each Chief-Constable answerable, provided that he conformed to the general regulations laid down by the Secretary of State. During this period various changes, in addition to those of a more important nature already mentioned, were brought about, having for their object the better management of the police, or the more convenient administration of justice. In 1846 County Courts for the hearing of civil suits involving minor issues were established in the different shires; and, by the gradual enlargement of the jurisdiction exercised by these tribunals, the higher courts have, to a corresponding extent, been relieved of much petty business to the advantage of larger interests. In 1869 the office of High-Constable was formally abolished, any powers that he had anciently exercised having long since dwindled almost to the vanishing point. At first the Treasury contribution towards the expenses of the rural police had been strictly limited and quite inadequate in amount; but in 1875 the old limitation was suspended, first for one year, then for another, and finally indefinitely, until it became the rule for the public Treasury to provide half the cost for pay and clothing of all provincial police forces that, at the end of each year, are returned as efficient by the Home Office on the recommendation of the Government Inspector of Constabulary.
Following upon the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835,[263] some fifty Acts of Parliament, relating wholly or in part to municipal government, received the royal assent, and this at the rate of more than one a year; in August 1882 the mass of legislative amendments that resulted was consolidated and reduced to one Statute.[264] Amongst other police enactments, the formation of a separate constabulary, distinct from the county force, in any borough containing less than twenty thousand inhabitants, was hereby prohibited; but the control of local police forces already established was for the present confirmed to the existing Watch Committees, whatever might be the population of the borough concerned, and at the same time authority to enforce certain sanitary laws (e.g. The Public Health Acts of 1873 and 1875) was conferred on the Town Councils.