4 Debunking ‘Peel’s Principles’
Sir Robert Peel (Home Secretary) introduced the Metropolitan Police in 1829. The ‘New Police’, as it was quickly termed by the press, was followed by similarly constituted urban and rural forces in the 1840s and 1850s. It is frequently claimed that Peel laid out a blueprint for this new initiative, often referred to as ‘Peel’s Principles’ or the ‘Peelian Principles’.
You can easily find various versions of these principles reproduced either in policing textbooks or online (see, for example, this list of Peel’s Principles [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] published by the Home Office). Some of the stated principles seem to foreground ‘policing by consent’. The second of Peel’s Principles, for example, is often reproduced as:
- To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
Principle 7 also contains an oft-quoted phrase - ‘the police are the public and the public are the police’. These principles thus give seemingly strong evidence of the determination of Robert Peel, as a reforming statesman, to institute a modern police force with policing ‘by the people, for the people’. There is, however, a problem with this.
- There is no historical evidence that these principles were written, or even held, by Peel.
Activity 2 Constable’s instructions for the New Police
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HP: for these newspaper extracts, we’ll need to provide them as plain text as well, for accessibility. Where I’ve had a go, please can you check?
The text reads as follows:
He must be particularly cautious not to interfere idly or unnecessarily, in order to make a display of his authority; when required to act, he will do so with decision and boldness; on all occasions he may expect to received the fullest support in the proper exercise of his authority. He must remember that there is no qualification so indispensable to a police officer as a perfect command of temper, never suffering himself to be move in the slightest degree by any language or threats that may be used; if he do his duty in a quiet and determined manner, such conduct will probably excite the well-disposed of the by-standers to assist him, if he requires them; but unless in cases of urgency, he ought not to interfere without having a force sufficient to prevent any opposition.
As far as historians can tell, Peel did not formulate any principles of policing. The instructions for the New Police were published in The Times on 25 September 1829, shortly before the Metropolitan Police first took to the streets. These do contain some passages from which we might infer Peel’s intentions for the police. For example, the passage above hints that constables should act in a manner which would secure public approval, but the text is far from stating this explicitly.
What sentences do you think support the notion of ‘policing by consent’?
Discussion
The Times ‘Instructions for the New Police’ do not provide any clear instructions around the principles of policing by consent or of a clear set of Peelian principles. This short excerpt does, however, instruct that the new police constables must be respectful of privacy, not interfere unless there is ‘urgency’ to do so, and remain polite, calm, and yet authoritative at all times. This could loosely be interpreted as a non-authoritarian style of policing, where officers respect the wishes of those they are policing.
If there is no historical evidence that Robert Peel had particular principles in mind when designing the force, why are ‘Peel’s Principles’ so often cited?
It appears that they were retrospectively created by the authors of early police histories and subsequent textbooks. From the 1950s onwards it was common for textbooks on policing to quote a particular book – Charles Reith’s The Blind Eye of History (1952) – which contained nine principles of police. Reith, in fact, just inferred what principles Peel might have held but subsequent authors cited the nine principles as historical fact. Actually:
The intimation [...] that Sir Robert Peel wrote or even held such principles is simply inappropriate [...] In short, the invention of ‘Peel’s principles’ can be found in twentieth century policing textbooks.
But if the development of the Metropolitan Police was not shaped by principles of public consent, what did motivate Peel and shape his thinking as he constructed the modern police?