Lord Stevens

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and six.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens. As a fresh faced bobby on the beat in the early sixties, he patrolled London's Tottenham Court Road with nothing more than a whistle and a truncheon to keep rascals at bay.

Presenter0:41

In the seventies the hard working and hard drinking culture of the Flying Squad suited him well. His impressive ability to nail the villains won him the nickname Swifty Stevens. He took over at the Met in two thousand. It had just been branded institutionally racist and the morale and reputation of the force was at rock bottom.

Presenter0:59

He's widely credited with turning it around and regaining public confidence. Even in retirement, though, he's heading two major investigations, one into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the second, due to report any week now, on football bungs. But one of the most extraordinary tasks he's faced was in the aftermath of 9-11 developing our own response to terror attacks. So, Lord Stevens, how on earth do you start drawing up a response to what is essentially an unknown threat?

Lord Stevens1:28

Well, you have to remember, of course, that this city and country had been under attack for a very long period of time from IRA terrorism, so we were used to that. However, there's no doubt about it. I remember coming back, I was mid-Atlantic on 9-11, and then going straight to Cobra, and one of the members of the Cabinet saying the world would never be the same place again. I arrogantly thought he was wrong, because we dealt with terrorism. He was right, and I was wrong, and we had to rethink our response to terrorism.

Presenter1:54

At COBRA, then, just to be clear, that that's the government's emergency response committee that they set up at these times of extreme national emergency. That's right. When you were sitting at the table during those COBRA meetings, a very heightened sense of everybody having to do their job to the letter, of having to do it properly. Were there any discussions at that point that you felt that the threat might come from homegrown suicide bombers, or was it far too early to even contemplate that?

Lord Stevens2:20

It was far too early to contemplate that. There was no feeling of homegrown terrorism. That came later when two individuals were found out in Israel. One had blown himself to bits and blown some Israelis to bits, and the other was found in the sea off Israel.

Presenter2:33

These were the British suicide bombers who travelled there.

Lord Stevens2:35

Absolutely. I think it gradually set into us that, you know, we were up against something very, very special and we were going to have to raise our game and we were going to get our have to get ourselves ready both mentally and physically for what might be coming.

Presenter2:48

How did you feel when you heard about the attacks in London in July of last year? In fact, how did you hear about it?

Lord Stevens2:54

Well, I was in my flat and um I heard uh on the news um that there'd been power surges. Well, I I knew that wasn't the case, and uh my first thought went to my daughter, who's a who's a barrister.

Lord Stevens3:06

So I rang up to find out whether she was okay, which she was.

Presenter3:06

Uh so I rang up.

Lord Stevens3:09

Because she could have been using some of the lines that she had. Oh yes, she used the tube regularly. And uh for me it was it was fifty percent I didn't want to be there and fifty percent I did. Um for a very long time I mean myself and Dave Vanessa who's head of anti-terrorism, so David Vaness, um had mentally and physically geared ourselves up for this day and we'd been expecting it. Um so there was a certain kind of feeling, oh I wish I could have been there and uh but on the other hand you know immense responsibilities for those who are in charge and specifically for the Commissioner who's there at that time.

Presenter3:09

Because

Presenter3:11

Oh yes she used to

Presenter3:37

You first piece of music then.

Lord Stevens3:39

Yes, I I I uh am looking forward to hearing Jerusalem.

Presenter3:43

And why have you chosen Jerusalem? I mean, it's shamelessly British. It's well, some would say a bit triumphalist. What is it about it that appeals to you?

Lord Stevens3:51

Because it's shamelessly British.

Presenter3:53

Let's hear it.

Presenter4:55

The B B C singers and the symphony chorus singing Jerusalem recorded live at the last night of the proms back in nineteen eighty two. So, John Stevens, surprisingly you had no intention of becoming a police officer. You wanted to be a pilot.

Lord Stevens5:07

Very much so. I think I was influenced by my father, who had been um captain on Sunderlands during the war.

Lord Stevens5:13

And uh from the age of, I don't know, six, seven, I'd sat in the front of aircraft and uh got got a loving of that from him.

Presenter5:19

Uh now your father, and the man you know as as your father, brought you up from the age of of six. Uh you and your mother, though, had been on your own for a few years before that. Was was that a good strong relationship, a good bond?

Lord Stevens5:21

No

Lord Stevens5:25

Before that

Lord Stevens5:27

Oh, brilliant, yeah, yes. And my mother's a remarkable woman, still alive, and still remarkable.

Presenter5:31

So you moved from a small flat in Wimbledon to to this new house in Surrey when you were around about six. And you went off to boarding school when you were six and a half. That that's a young age. How did you handle that?

Lord Stevens5:42

Yes, I I think it was quite difficult. Initially I went to a school which I was taken away from after the first term because of some form of bullying, and then went to Taverstock Hall in Heathfield, which no longer exists, and had a far pleasanter existence there.

Presenter5:54

Uh you were you were a very gifted sportsman at school.

Lord Stevens5:57

Yes, I I I've always enjoyed sport, uh perhaps to the detriment of my academic studies.

Presenter6:02

Are you rec captain of which teams are you captain of?

Lord Stevens6:04

Uh all of the teams really. It was it was football, cricket uh and uh we did a bit of tennis there, so uh I had a really enjoyable time.

Presenter6:12

Were you very competitive?

Lord Stevens6:15

To be honest, yes, I think I was, and that's probably carried me through in life, I guess. A determination never to give up, and and it probably came from from school and sport.

Presenter6:24

Given that you like to be in control, it's interesting to me that you have a pilot's licence now. Would you always rather be flying the plane than be the one being flown by somebody else?

Lord Stevens6:28

It's not

Lord Stevens6:34

Oh, always. Um yes, of course. I I enjoy flying. It's been part of my life, a major part of my life. And I suppose that's part of my character. Um

Lord Stevens6:42

You know, flying is another instance of trying to look for perfection, which you never quite get. You never land the aircraft where you don't feel the undercarriage smoothly goes onto the runway and you don't feel it. You're looking for that all the while. So, I mean, flying is a kind of challenge. I like challenges. I suppose that's part of what I'm about.

Lord Stevens6:59

What's your second record? Well, my second record is Reach the Sky, played by the Central Band of the RAF.

Presenter7:04

And why do you uh why have you chosen this?

Lord Stevens7:07

Oh, this is incredibly immersive. Um

Lord Stevens7:10

I remember being at school in the common room looking out over at Kent over the hills and listening to this song about flying. I mean it this is about Douglas Barder who was an incredible hero, a man with no legs, who fought his way through real difficulty to become one of the aces in the Second World War. And I think this tune really for me gives an indication of what flying's about. When I hear it, I look to the blue sky and I think of actually going up there and through the clouds and the blue sky and the the freedom of it all. Brilliant, brilliant music.

Presenter8:09

Reach for the Sky, played by the Central Band of the RAF. So as we heard, you wanted originally, as a little boy, to be a pilot. Going into the police force was uh a second choice, but there was a history on your mum's side of the family of signing up.

Lord Stevens8:22

Yes, that's right. Uh um m my her father had been a PC uh for a very long period of time and uh he had uh told me about his policing experience which had somehow kind of rung certain bells in my my mind and uh policing wasn't second choice and it was because of a problem with eyesight. Uh the decision was made at about twenty um that my eyesight would be a problem later on in life. Um but here we are at uh sixty three, sixty four, sixty four, and uh still flying aircrafts and and and being passing my medicals.

Presenter8:55

How were those early days at Police Training College?

Lord Stevens8:58

I didn't like them at all. I it was learning by rote really, learning by word. It was a very regimented system. I did actually think that if tra the training school was anything like the real world of policing, I wouldn't wouldn't survive it and would have to go and look for something else.

Presenter9:14

And at what point did you decide to buckle down and see it through? Or did did you indeed decide at any point that you wanted to get out of training in college?

Lord Stevens9:21

Well, I failed my first two exams at the Trade School, which was interesting. And if I'd have failed the third, I might have been kicked out. But I just decided to get down and get up at five in the morning and learn these things weren't perfect, which you needed to do those days. No, I decided to see what it was going to be like in the real world. And as soon as I went to Totten Cook Road, as soon as I went on the streets, as soon as I started being involved in policing proper, I knew I was into something for the rest of my life.

Presenter9:48

So your early days on the beach, as we've said in Totten Court Road, in uniform.

Presenter9:53

How was life? What was it like?

Lord Stevens9:55

It was great. It was a fantastic experience. Tottenham Court Road at that period of time was policing an area which was the headquarters of the Beatniks, as they used to refer to as a very, very busy police station. You were the dust men and dust women of society. You dealt with things that other people fortunately don't have to see. You know, in the first three weeks of my being on the beat on my own, I had to go around the corner and deal with a man who'd come out of a building after an explosion, who unfortunately subsequently died, who was burnt from head to foot. And you had to deal with that for three to four minutes before the ambulance arrived, and then go on and follow that up. And that's just an indication. And people actually, quite rightly sometimes, don't understand policing and the rawness of policing. Quite frankly, at the end of the day, it takes someone to be very tough to do policing. And it's my favourite phrase, it's not for the faint-hearted. You couldn't do it just for the money, honestly.

Presenter10:45

And w as well as the police work, um, making friends with the local nurses in the local hospital.

Lord Stevens10:50

Well, that was part of the difficult type of duties we had to do. And I remember the Middlesex Hospital, of course, I met my wife, she was in the University College Hospital, the Middlesex Hospital. I was caught by the patrolling sergeant having a sack race down the casualty department at two in the morning. Fortunately, he didn't take it any further. But yes, that was part and parcel of enjoyment of being on the beat.

Presenter11:10

Is it true that you had to sit your police sergeant's exam three times?

Lord Stevens11:14

Yes, yeah. I I was enjoying myself so much as a detective constable.

Presenter11:19

Would would it be fair to say on that basis that the the job of top cop, as we like to call it, wasn't necessarily in your sights at that stage?

Lord Stevens11:23

But it wasn't necessary

Lord Stevens11:26

The thought of top cop uh was definitely not in my sights and I don't think anyone who knew me would have ever, ever thought I would have ended up as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Presenter11:34

We'll talk about that later on, but what's your third disc?

Lord Stevens11:35

Later

Lord Stevens11:37

My third disc is uh Rudyard Kipling's If read by Des Lynham. Um I I thought what type of description would I have for describing policing, this extraordinary job people do, which takes extraordinary people to do it, and um I think this describes it nearly. It's good enough, I think, for me, hopefully for others.

Presenter11:39

Rudyard Kipling's If Read

Speaker 311:56

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings. Nor lose the common touch.

Speaker 312:03

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you.

Speaker 312:07

If all men count with you, but none too much.

Speaker 312:11

If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.

Speaker 312:17

Yours is the earth and everything that's in it.

Speaker 312:21

And, which is more, you will be a man, my son.

Presenter12:26

Rudyard Kipling's If Read by Des Lynum. Summing up, You Believe John Stevens, What It Takes to Be a Good Copper. You were.

Presenter12:34

Uh, only two years on the beat, and then you were recruited to CID. That was quite a a fast journey, untypically quick.

Lord Stevens12:40

It was actually it was after eighteen months wh while I was still on probation which was was very quick and um it was something that I really wanted to be to be a Saudi officer.

Presenter12:48

Uh the the T V programme The Sweeney made the Flying Squad seem terribly glamorous. Uh was it?

Lord Stevens12:51

Yeah.

Lord Stevens12:56

I think the Flying Squad and detective work generally was portrayed in a a what can I say, probably a generous light in terms of the Sweeney, but there were certain parts of the Sweeney which was right about the hard drinking, the living on the job, the hard type of work that you did. I wouldn't say it was a totally correct portrayal of what went on.

Presenter13:17

No, I'm sure. It was TV after all. Let's talk about the hard drinking then, the drinking culture. I mean, how pervasive was it? How did it work?

Lord Stevens13:23

Oh, that was definitely part of the culture. And I, you know, I don't make excuses for it, but I think at the end of the day, it was necessary in certain aspects. You worked very, very long hours. Most of the time it was twelve, thirteen hours days. You know, you would see awful things in policing, you know, sudden deaths. You'd have to let people know about people dying in terrible circumstances. Dealing with very, very difficult people. You know, as I said, police officers are the dustmidden men and women of the streets. So all of this had to be dealt with.

Presenter13:57

And while you were working these thirteen hour days and then retiring down the pup to let off steam with the rest of your workmates, Cynthia is at home with very young children. W was she happy with you being away so much?

Lord Stevens14:01

Steam

Lord Stevens14:08

Ah, good question. I doubt it. But I mean, that was part of what we were doing. And.

Lord Stevens14:15

I I think it wasn't until university that I had enough time to really spend with my children. I think that's one of my big regrets.

Presenter14:20

Yeah, I mean that let's talk about that then. A fascinating point in your life. Something happens that essentially changes your life forever. You you move from being on the front line to this course at Leicester University. You go on it's a sort of police scholarship that you're given. Did they suggest to you that it would be a good idea?

Lord Stevens14:31

City.

Lord Stevens14:33

That's right, yeah.

Lord Stevens14:37

Well the the main reason was in 1962, at the end of 1962 when I joined the police service, there'd been a Royal Commission, there'd be no there wasn't any police officer in the country who got a degree at that stage. So they looked for talent inside the police service, so-called talent. And I was lucky enough to get one of these scholarships, which was a full-time degree course at Leicester reading for law. And the rub was that you had to pass all the exams.

Presenter15:01

Yes, well given I mean given that by your own admission passing exams was not your strong point, why did you decide to take it on?

Lord Stevens15:02

Mm.

Lord Stevens15:04

Is that

Lord Stevens15:07

I think it was an opportunity to end back to this business of challenge, being challenged by something. And I thought, yes, I think I could do this.

Presenter15:15

And it didn't just open up, as you say, your your mind, but you suddenly were allowed to live a family life, which really, up until then, had been a foreign land.

Lord Stevens15:24

Oh, absolutely. I had three years, tremendous years, with my children. And um it were years that I perhaps should have uh had before. And it it did change me. Um In what way? Well, I think maybe I was

Presenter15:34

In what way?

Lord Stevens15:37

Perhaps too certain about myself before I went to university. I perhaps, you know, policing, you've got to be absolutely sure about what you're doing.

Lord Stevens15:45

At university one had the opportunity to look at law, the philosophy of law, did legal debating and things of that nature. And that was a really privileged occasion.

Presenter15:56

What's your fourth record?

Lord Stevens15:57

My fourth record is um Jupiter from the Holtz Planet Suite. It's something I used to play on holiday with my children and uh they used to hear it time after time. I think probably got a bit sick of it.

Presenter16:08

Whether they liked it or not.

Lord Stevens16:10

Well, I'm afraid whether they liked it or not, I'd be interesting. I've never had the the guts since to ask them whether they like it themselves, but they did listen to that on a a larger it's a very, very uh favourite piece of music of mine.

Presenter17:22

Part of Jupiter from Holst's Planet Suite. So you progress steadily up through the ranks, stints in Hampshire and Cambridgeshire, later Cumbria. But for almost 15 years, John Stevens, your life seems dominated by one assignment: investigating suspected collusion between the British security forces in Northern Ireland and the paramilitary groups. Back in 1982, you'd seen the work of the IRA at first hand, at the Regent's Park and the Hyde Park bombings. Tell us about that.

Lord Stevens17:49

Yes, I remember vividly going first of all

Lord Stevens17:51

to Hyde Park, where the Blues and Royals had uh had a bomb exploded and the horses and terrible casualties there. And while we were there on the scene of sheer horror, we then got the news that we had to go up to Regent Park to see what had happened, and there the IRA had bombed uh a bandstand.

Lord Stevens18:08

You know, I always remember looking at the lake and it was a a a nice blue day and then the horror of what would be left down there, bits of bodies and the like, which is where the police come and have to deal with things. It was obscenity.

Lord Stevens18:21

At its worst.

Presenter18:22

I don't wish to be melodramatic about it, but is there always a little bit of darkness in your soul when you've seen that first hand, when you know what people are capable of?

Lord Stevens18:29

Oh, absolutely. And um I you do see that I mean darkness is is a good word for it and you see what people are capable of. Fortunately, only a small number of people who have have got perverted ideas uh and perverted aims. Uh but you keep that in the back of your mind, yes.

Presenter18:45

Yeah.

Lord Stevens18:45

Yeah.

Presenter18:46

Let's talk about the inquiry in Northern Ireland then. The s suspicion was that the officers had been stealing photographs of IRA members and sympathisers, passing them on to these loyalist groups who then put these people on their hit list. How did it feel to be investigating your own, as it were?

Lord Stevens19:03

This creates immense pressure because remember we were going over there to investigate the security forces at a time when the IRA were attacking them. Make no mistake about it, out of 28 that we took over, four or five never came back to policing because of the pressures. I learnt massive lessons from that inquiry. I should have actually been more aware of how much it was affecting them and how much it was affecting me in certain ways.

Presenter19:27

What sort of resistance did you meet then from within the RUC?

Lord Stevens19:32

Well, we worked I mean, we worked very closely. We wouldn't have got the results we did without having some very outstanding officers, one or two who died on the Chinook helicopter crash. These people wanted a job to be done. But take it from me, it was a very, very difficult and it's still not the easiest thing to be involved in.

Presenter19:47

Yes, I mean the students' inquiry, ju just to be clear, has gone on and on and on in different stages. You've had over is it over ninety convictions?

Lord Stevens19:51

And different stages you've

Lord Stevens19:53

That's right, yes. And uh large numbers of terms of imprisonment.

Presenter19:57

What's your next record?

Lord Stevens19:58

My next record, um

Lord Stevens20:01

is all I ask of you from Phantom of the Opera.

Presenter20:03

Little bit of romance.

Lord Stevens20:04

Exactly. And if one's on an island all by oneself, one's got to have a little bit of romance if there's a a bit of blue sea and the sky is blue and a few palm trees. Absolutely.

Presenter20:04

Yeah.

Speaker 220:15

Her eyes there tonight it morning.

Speaker 220:24

You love me no.

Speaker 220:28

I don't.

Speaker 220:32

Love

Speaker 220:34

Puts

Presenter20:44

Steve Barton and Sarah Brightman singing All I Ask of You from the original cast recording of Phantom of the Opera. So in 2000, John Stevens, you take over the top job, as we call it, in policing. You're in charge of the Met. Just the year before it had been branded institutionally racist by the McPherson Inquiry, which had been set up after the death of Stephen Lawrence. Did you recognize the characterization of The Met that you read in the McPherson report?

Lord Stevens21:10

I the the institutional racism was about the organization. I mean this is the difficulty of people understanding what institutional racism meant, that the organization was not geared up to dealing with ethnic minorities and dealt with things in a way that it shouldn't. But the way it came across and the way that people within the organization felt was that they had individually been accused of racism. You know there's a lot of anger about that. They just didn't feel that it was the right description of them.

Presenter21:35

But you did succeed in increasing the amount of ethnic minority officers. How important was that?

Lord Stevens21:38

Okay.

Lord Stevens21:41

That was massively important. And you know, London now at the moment is, what, thirty two percent ethnic minority growing up very, very quickly towards fifty percent. The Met must be representative of the people we please, and it was a major issue to get that ethnic minority up. We double the amount in our time.

Presenter21:56

Some people say, of course, that the Met should take the best people for the job, and that it should in a sense be completely colour blind, and that there are plenty good young recruits now, white, males and females, who are shoved to the back of the queue because they don't tick a box.

Lord Stevens22:09

Well I think we've got to be very careful with that, but you've got to remember, of course, we we expanded during my time in the Met from something like twenty six and a half thousand officers to over thirty thousand, so we were taking the best anyway. And the people who are prepared to join and do policing now are very brave people indeed. They take an awful lot of stick, they have to get out there, they're accountable in a way that we never were. And I admire all of them, and I really admire people who are prepared to join the police now.

Presenter22:36

After everything you you tried to do then, um Damalula Taylor is murdered in a dank stairwell in Peckham.

Lord Stevens22:39

Yeah.

Presenter22:44

Do you remember hearing about his death?

Lord Stevens22:46

I do. Um I I I remember vividly hearing about his death, and I remember of course meeting his parents and the whole horror of all of that.

Presenter22:55

His murderers, the Preddy brothers, were only put away a matter of a few weeks ago.

Presenter23:00

What went so badly wrong with that investigation?

Lord Stevens23:02

Well, uh I think it's been documented, you know, big mistakes were made in the forensic laboratory. Um perhaps we could have done things a bit better. Um and for me, during my commission commissionership, the fact that we hadn't convicted the people for that terrible murder was was the main nightmare, I suppose, for me.

Presenter23:20

You personally on occasions lay in bed at night and were frustrated, sad, angry that it hadn't gone your way.

Lord Stevens23:27

Yes, I think it was. And having met the the parents, Damalola Taylor's parents, who are people with immense dignity, I mean you can't help but respecting them and liking them. These things actually do touch police officers. You know, when you're dealing with relatives personally, you're looking in their eye, you're going to the scene. All of these things do affect you. Fortunately, at the end of the day, re-examination of the exhibits.

Lord Stevens23:51

Though we need we did secure convictions.

Presenter23:54

What's your next record?

Lord Stevens23:55

I I uh when I first went to prep school uh we used to start the term and end the term with Abide With Me, which was one of the favourite hymns I'm told of uh George the Sixth. And um I used to enjoy it more at the end of the term when I was going home, I have to say.

Presenter25:05

ABIDE WITH ME sung by the Huddersfield Choral Society. Politics and policing can be a a pretty uneasy relationship. Opening up the sun in October of two thousand one and seeing the headline Blunket Gives Top Copper a Roasting

Lord Stevens25:18

Uh can't have been my

Presenter25:19

Yeah.

Lord Stevens25:19

Yeah. Uh

Presenter25:19

Uh

Lord Stevens25:19

Uh

Presenter25:19

Proof.

Lord Stevens25:19

For you? Well, I had a few of those in my time from David Blunkett. It was quite difficult with David Blunkett to start with.

Presenter25:27

But

Lord Stevens25:27

Bye.

Lord Stevens25:28

I don't know, I wasn't his appointee, I guess, and uh maybe on occasions I I held my ground very firmly and forcibly.

Presenter25:34

So, this headline: Blunket gives Top Copper a roasting. What was he supposed to have been giving you a roasting about?

Lord Stevens25:41

Well, this was the point. He never, ever, on any occasion, ever gave me a roastie. That that was the problem. Well, I mean, the difficulty for me was, you know, going and having conferences and then getting another kind of narrative of what took place in the papers later was not a good way to progress. I mean, when people come in and give you a headline, which you don't know anything about, and then you read the headline and then you ring across and say, Well, what's happened here? And everyone denies saying it. And then, of course, the people that the headline's been given to, you know as well as they do, because it's part of part of the Commissioner's job to link in with correspondence in the papers as well. It's very unfortunate, but what I want to stress is for the last two to three years, certainly the last two years, we worked very well together.

Presenter26:22

You've retained the government's confidence clearly. I mentioned at the start these two big inquiries that are ongoing and due to report on shortly. First of all, let's talk about the Diana inquiry. You've said that you are surprised how complex the inquiry has proven to be. Can you explain that?

Lord Stevens26:41

Yes, it is highly complex because we're dealing with a large number of conspiracy allegations, over one hundred, and we're looking at every single one, which we're doing. The other complexity comes is because this happened abroad.

Lord Stevens26:55

And we've had to take the car back and bring it back to this country. We've had to recreate the scene. We've had to re look at the forensic evidence. We have now we're using leading edge technology to look at this particular incident.

Presenter27:10

You've said that some of Mohammed Al-Fayah's queries have been valid. That's a very interesting thing to say. Particularly what?

Lord Stevens27:18

Well, I'm not going to go into the details even with you, Casty, in relation to that, but there are certain aspects he's brought up which needed to be looked at, make no mistake about that.

Presenter27:26

Uh do you think I I mean I I appreciate that I'm maybe kicking at a very firmly shut door here, but um do you think people will be um shocked or surprised at some of the findings of your inquiry?

Lord Stevens27:37

We'll just have to wait and see.

Presenter27:38

Gonna get nowhere and move on.

Presenter27:41

The other inquiry then that you're doing is into these football bungs. Now I as an outsider to football don't know much about football. I'm I'm confused. If if people have broken the law, why would it not be that the police are investigating it? And if they haven't broken the law, why do we need to have an inquiry?

Lord Stevens27:55

Well, we've we've been asked to do a job, and that's the company I head Quest, which I'm chairman of, which is looking at uh the allegations which started, of course, by people within football saying that there's a problem. We don't know whether a criminal offence has been taking place at all at the moment. If there is a need to pass certain matters on or work with the police, we will do so.

Presenter28:14

Next record.

Lord Stevens28:15

Next record is The Band of the Royal Marines When the Saints Go Marching In.

Presenter28:20

And this one because it's just a stirring tune.

Lord Stevens28:23

No, it's uh when I when I was at school I I we got together a combined cadet force band and we were the first combined cadet force band to play American kind of jazz, which was something that's held by us. And uh I got some still got five or six very firm friends from school and they said if you don't choose that song, then I'm afraid we're going to be very disappointed.

Speaker 229:32

Uh

Presenter29:34

The band of the Royal Marines and when the Saints go marching in. Forty three years, then, doing your duty, and making sure that other officers were seen to do theirs. Commendations for bravery putting the villains away. On one occasion, remarkably, you ended up standing in the dock yourself. Tell us about that.

Lord Stevens29:52

Well, that was the wor my worst time in policing. Uh what had happened was an officer had chased a criminal across a flat roof which was six foot eight above the ground and had fallen through the centre of that roof, and as a result it was decided to take me to the Old Benny.

Presenter30:08

Was it entirely fair, do you think, that you were standing in the dock on such a challenge?

Lord Stevens30:10

Absolutely not. If we'd have been found guilty, my instructions that night as the Commissioner, and I would have resigned because I couldn't have carried on having been found guilty of not looking after my officers, would have been my last act really, I suppose, before putting in that resignation letter which I already had typed out, would have been to stop officers chasing people above two metres.

Lord Stevens30:33

Even if they were murderers or rapists, and the only test would be if that person they were chasing's life was in danger. Have you ever heard anything like it? I mean, it was quite extraordinary, and I was very grateful to be found not guilty.

Presenter30:46

Given all your commendations throughout the years, given that you'd risen to such a high rank, to actually be standing there in the dock and to see forty three years of hard work flashing before your eyes, how did that feel?

Lord Stevens30:55

How did that feel? The worst part of it, my first commendation had been in that same court for chasing people who'd committed an awful offence of violence in a club. My first commendation had been going, following these people on the top of a roof and more or less being nearly kicked off the top of a roof. Can you imagine how I felt to be in the same court, charged on that type of charge, bearing in mind I'd been in that court something like 38 years previously and been commended for such actions.

Presenter31:26

Sir John, you've spent um many years at the Sharp End, chasing murderers and thugs and armed robbers and drug dealers. Wouldn't it be nice just to shuffle off and play with the grandchildren, or tend the roses?

Lord Stevens31:36

Mm-hmm.

Lord Stevens31:38

No. I I want to do more of doing that. But no, I don't think if people still think I can do a a a good job of work and the things I'm doing, then for me um I I continue doing it. And the bottom line is that once I've started something, I will finish it, because that's what the job's all about, and that's what I'd like to do.

Presenter31:56

What's your eighth record?

Lord Stevens31:57

It's the uh part of the eighteenth-12 uh Tchaikovsky's uh

Presenter32:02

And why have you chosen this?

Lord Stevens32:04

I'm a great follower of history. One of my great heroes in a strange way is Napoleon. I mean, he was a brilliant administrator of law, brilliant, brilliant military leader, make no mistake about that. And I think it shows the the frailties of human nature, that peop a man at the top of his ability, if you like, before he marched into Russia, could make such mistakes. It just shows you that no one should think they're too powerful.

Presenter32:11

Brilliant.

Presenter33:29

The ending of Tchaikovsky's eighteen twelve overture and your eighth record. You get the Bible, of course, you get the complete works of Shakespeare. What other book are you going to take?

Lord Stevens33:38

I think I'd take the book Reach the Sky so I could link the music in with the book.

Presenter33:42

Right. And and and your luxury?

Lord Stevens33:45

Would be a seller of Polarget Champagne.

Presenter33:47

A whole cellar.

Lord Stevens33:48

A whole cellar I can mix the music, the book, the champagne, and look at the ocean and think of myself getting out of there.

Presenter33:54

Now, if the ocean were to sweep on to the sand and uh take away as many disks as it could, which one would you run to save?

Lord Stevens34:02

Well it would be Reach for the Sky, and because of its uh evocative nature and the way it would allow me to escape in my own mind in terms of listening to that music, I'd be flying as I listened to it.

Presenter34:13

John Stevens, or to give you your full title, Baron Stevens of Kirk Welpington, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Lord Stevens34:20

Thank you.

Presenter34:28

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.