Sir Robert Mark

Sir Robert Mark0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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On our desert island this week is the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Robert Mark. Sir Robert, have you ever experienced loneliness?

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No, I don't think so.

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Could you adjust yourself to it? Yes.

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I think I should just simply resign myself to it. What would you be happiest to have got away from?

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Well, uh uh the list would be so long as to monopolize the the remainder of this half hour. Um but

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Really, the atmosphere of doom and gloom, and general pessimism, I think, which seems to pervade this country at the moment.

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You come from a musical family, I believe.

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Well, in a limited sense, uh um we were all taught the uh piano when we were young. This was uh the thing to do when we were children, but none of us were really any good at it. The three boys all went to a good grammar school in Manchester, which was very keen on music, and we all played instruments. Mine was the clarinet. What's the first record you've chosen?

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Um the minuet in G by Bach, and I've chosen this because it's the very, very first uh musical recollection I have. I can see myself as a small boy under the dining-room table whilst my eldest sister banged this out on the piano with all the delicacy uh of a battery bricklayer. Perhaps that's why that it's imprinted in my mind.

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Cornell Zemplane playing the Minuet in G from the notebooks of Anna Magdalena Burke. What's your second record?

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The duet between Pamina and Papageno in the first act of Mozart's Magic Flute.

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This has a um

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a particularly sentimental, if perhaps rather painful, memory for me, because we we did, if that's the proper word, the magic flute whilst I was at school, and I still boasted a treble voice. And I in fact sang Pamina.

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I meant that she lived on my home design.

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Fear and Lord and Ho, Stand Hill and Lord.

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We'll play bangles, dear

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The first act duet between Pamina and Papagheno from Mozart's The Magic Flute, sung on this occasion by Pilar Lorenge and Hermann Prai.

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Now you told us about your school, Hulme Grammar School.

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You did rather well, though. You finished as captain of the school, captain of rugger, you took your higher certificate, and so on. What was your first ambition as a boy?

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Well, I really ra was rather a mixed-up kid. I enjoyed

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school life so much. I enjoyed the music, I enjoyed uh uh the stage, I enjoyed the games and the the Cadet Corps as it was in those days. The only thing I didn't enjoy was work. And uh like many boys of of those days, I didn't really think very much about uh

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what I should do until it was too late.

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What did you do when you left?

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What do you

Sir Robert Mark5:05

Andrew

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I w I I worked for a Scottish carpet manufacturer's for two years.

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Um and then I decided that uh this was not for me because, frankly, it was rather like the the Bank of England and other uh uh jobs in those days. You were paid very little during your your training period, but eventually I suppose at the age of thirty you had a very good job with a secure firm for life, and this didn't appeal to me awfully. So I wrote to the Colonial Office to see if I could join the colonial police, and I was told I was two years too young.

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And they suggested I should try the police in England.

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And I applied to the police in Manchester and was accepted. I may say, in those happy days, there was a waiting list. I had to wait after being accepted for two or three weeks before I could join. So you started pounding a beat. I believe they gave you quite a rough area to start with. Yes, indeed, Manchester had a curious system in those days whereby every recruit on leaving the training school did quite a long time on night duty. I think you'll find the records will show I did four months on night duty in the slums of Manchester as a kind of an introduction to policing.

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And you stayed with the Manchester Police until after the Blitz. Then you joined the Royal Armoured Corps. Yes. I joined as a trooper. I went to the Isle of Wight.

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to a training centre just outside Parkhurst prison. I can still recall the prisoners jeering at us as we worked hard and they didn't.

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And then I went off to Catterick, and from there I went off to Pre-Octu at Blackdown, which was the most terrifying place I've ever seen in my life. And from there, I was extremely fortunate. I went to Sandhurst, because at that time all Armoured Corps officer training was centred on 100 Sandhurst-Octu. So I went there for six months, and I must say, looking back on it, I think it was perhaps one of the happiest periods of my life. Well, I've got a wartime record down here for you, number three on your list.

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Yes, um it's the March Coburg which uh evokes very, very

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uh strong memories of Sandhurst.

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The Coburg march played by the band of Her Majesty's Lifeguard.

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Now, Commissioner, you finished as a major in the control commission in Germany, then back to Manchester as a police constable again. That was a bit rough, wasn't it?

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Yes, it i i in in financial terms it was it was really rather hard. On the other hand, the Manchester police treated me very well. Um I was promoted to a detective sergeant uh within a week or two of returning.

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And thereafter was really rather fortunate.

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I have another record here that takes you back to the war.

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It's a kind of signing off, if you like, of the war. I I happen to believe still that um

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This country went into the last war not for reasons of self-advantage, but for very high reasons of good sound principle. And I believe that many men who were my contemporaries who died in that war genuinely believed in the cause for which they were fighting. And indeed, I think many of us feel that very much today. And there is there's one hymn which sums this up, I think, in both words and music, and which I find particularly moving.

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You have a rank on the rank.

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And the hole is gone to miss it from the hole.

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All you had all the full all you had you gave.

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Save mankind yourself.

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The hymn, O Valiant Hearts, George Baker with Men at Queen Mary's Hospital for Limbless Men at Roehampton.

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Now after the war you were back in Manchester. When you were only thirty nine you were appointed Chief Constable of Leicester. You came into the national news when you saved the Leicester Council a great deal of money on a traffic scheme.

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Yes, uh this was the idea of of uh employing uh traffic wardens and indeed women traffic wardens in nineteen sixty one uh without parking meters and laying

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Very heavy emphasis, firstly, on making plain to every vehicle user what he was expected to do, and secondly, laying very heavy emphasis on prevention rather than trying to catch motorists out. I must say it seemed on the whole to work rather well, and it certainly encouraged good relations between the the police and the the population in Leicester. Had you set your sights at that time on the Metropolitan Police, on on Scotland Yard? Not at all. I I never had the faintest intention of.

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coming to Scotland Yard. Indeed, I I don't mean that unkindly or or improperly.

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Uh you must remember I I'm only the second.

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Professional police officer from the provinces without previous experience in the Metropolitan Force.

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to come to the Metropolitan Force since 1829, so it just simply wasn't a a a prospect that one contemplated. It was a complete surprise when you were asked to be assistant commissioner in 1968. Yes, it was. It was, in fact, towards the latter end of 1966. I was on Lord Mountbatten's inquiry into prison security when the Home Secretary, who was then Roy Jenkins, sent for me and asked me if I would like to come to the Metropolitan Police as an Assistant Commissioner.

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And I had, I must say, very mixed feelings about it. And I asked him if I might put a question to him. And he said yes, of course. And I said,

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Had he consulted the then Commissioner, and did he agree? And I long remember the eloquent pause before he replied that he has loyally promised to abide by my decision.

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A nice line. So you came to London, a very big place. Did it take you long to get the feel of it, uh, as a man cunion coming from Leicester?

Sir Robert Mark12:23

Yeah.

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Oh yes. M my first job as Assistant Commissioner Personnel meant that I was necessarily pretty far removed, as D Department was organized in those days from the force proper.

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and that uh at the end of a year I still knew very little about it. Then I was uh

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transferred to B Department, which was the Traffic Department, but was only there for seven weeks before uh Joe Simpson, the Commissioner, very sadly, died in harness.

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And I was appointed deputy commissioner.

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And when you were appointed Commissioner, you you set to and made a lot of changes. First of all, you you cleaned out a few pockets of corruption.

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Well, I did have the advantage, as it were, of looking at the whole machine from the point of view of an outsider.

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And of course, you're quite right. I did think that changes were necessary, but I really must emphasise that they were.

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They were discussed and considered very carefully by a group of senior colleagues within the Metropolitan Force and with the Home Office, so that they weren't, as it were, Napoleonic gestures. They were very carefully considered changes made by a group of professional people. Yes. How many indictable crimes a year are committed in the metropolitan area? I think we're touching on about 400,000 now.

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Now despite manpower difficulties you've got the crime rate down in certain areas. Your policy of forming specialist squads to concentrate on specific forms of crime has paid off. Where particularly? Well especially in the field of for example armed robberies or the hijacking of uh high value lorry loads and this kind of thing. Deliberate attacks on high value targets by professional criminals. We're having a very satisfactory rate of success in dealing with this kind of thing. We've been talking about police work in in terms of dealing with crime, but there are so many other growing responsibilities that you have in the police. Football hooligans, security, vandals, endless demonstrations, traffic build-ups. Yes. It seems never ending.

Sir Robert Mark14:33

Yeah.

Sir Robert Mark14:37

Yeah.

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Well, that yes, this is right. Um people tend to think of the police in fictional terms. You know the kind of thing Dixon or or Barlow and that kind of thing in the middle of the morning.

Sir Robert Mark14:47

Thank you.

Presenter14:48

Yes, I do. But in fact, um we serve a very much wider social purpose than that. We're a kind of uh shock absorber. We're the oil which allows the machinery of society to work without too much friction.

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We've got to record number five. What's that going to be?

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I'd like to make a complete change of mood now, and I'd like a record by Tom Lehrer. I'd like this for a particular reason.

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I'm one of those people who feel that the United States of America are really rather hard treated by their television and cinematographic image. And I I believe that a nation that can produce Tom Lair and Damon Runnyan can't possibly be as bad as as the image which it projects on the television screen.

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Be prepared.

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That's the Boy Scouts marching song, Be Prepared!

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As through life you march along, be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well.

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Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't

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Cannot cover bets. Keep those reefers hidden where you're sure that they will not be found. And be careful not to smoke them when the Scoutmasters arrive.

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TOMLEYRARS BE PREPARED In certain areas you're establishing that crime doesn't pay. Are you getting the support you need from magistrates and judges? Reading the newspapers, it seems one can get in worse trouble for a traffic offence than for mugging an old lady.

Presenter16:21

Well, it's easy, of course, for newspapers to pick on an individual case and create the impression that justice on the whole works unsatisfactorily. I don't think there's the slightest doubt at all in any policeman's mind that we get proper support from the judiciary, if that is the correct phrase to use, because it isn't really the function of the judiciary to support the police. It's the function of the judiciary to administer justice.

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So far as the magistry is is concerned, of course I'm a very, very uh strong uh believer in the lay magistrate uh uh system, which I think on the whole works uh very well indeed.

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In London, of course, there are or there have been problems because of the immense workload.

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and the impossible task facing the magistrates' courts. And I do think that as I allowed myself to say at the Police College not very long ago,

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That the courts were tending not to see the problems of the police even in realistic terms. But I think the exhortations of the present and the last Lord Chancellor have gone far to correct this. And I think that especially in recent months there has been a significant change in this connection. You were a campaigner for a majority jury verdict in criminal cases. You got that, didn't you? Well, again, Roy Jenkins introduced both that and pre-trial disclosure of defence alibis in the 1967 Act. What are the other changes you're after? I'd like to see the end of the caution and the limited compellibility of the accused. And I'm not alone in this, of course. The Criminal Law Division Committee, which consisted of 17 very distinguished lawyers.

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all in fact supported well they didn't support my recommendations, they they made these recommendations of their own volition.

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Your great personal success, Commissioner, has been your patient and resolute handling of the Spaghetti House siege and the and the Balcombe Street siege. The other great recent police success, of course, if I can use that word success, has been the the gallantry shown in the bomb incidents.

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Yes, I think this um

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This is perhaps not sufficiently understood by the public.

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The whole point about approaching terrorist incidents is that.

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The police must try to gather evidence to identify the perpetrators. Now this can be a very dangerous and very protracted exercise. It means people risking their lives to diffuse bombs in order that all the evidence possible can be gathered from the unexploded bomb.

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And the courage of the bomb disposal men and the dedication of the bomb squad is really, I think, one of the most remarkable chapters in the history.

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of the Metropolitan Force.

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The tab record number six.

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I've chosen the Muldow because I I really believe that there is no such thing as good taste or bad taste or highbrow or lowbrow in music.

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Music is a matter entirely of emotion.

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The Maldar from Smetener's Mav Last, played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik.

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Now in your career you've shown every quality of resourcefulness. Are there any skills that would be particularly useful? Are you good at making things, for example? No, I I must confess to you that I I resign myself to an early death. Oh dear. Unless I'm rescued, that is of course. No fishing? No fishing, no. I I'm I was born in Manchester where I think a BBC comedian called George George Martin once remarked that it was the custom for the birds to wake people up with their coughing.

Sir Robert Mark20:55

Uh

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Oh dear.

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Back to music. What's the next disc?

Sir Robert Mark21:12

Uh

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I'd like the Fantasy Impromptu by Chopin. It's a kind of throwback, if you like.

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A day or two after the end of the war, I was recalled from the Czech frontier to 21 Army Group Headquarters.

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and as we were gathering there I noticed a um a concert to be played by Solomon, the pianist.

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Uh there was no uh program.

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and I went eagerly to this hall, to find it absolutely packed solid. I think it was the Corzahl at Badernhausen.

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and it was packed absolutely solid with the brutal and licentious soldiery, who were not only in the seats, but were lying on the along the gangways and even on the stage and I managed to fight my way in and get reasonably near the piano.

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And Solomon came in and was entirely informal, took off his jacket, gave it to somebody and said, Now I can't satisfy all of you, but I'll play a couple of pieces from each of your favourite composers for as long as I can. And I managed to get this shout in for Fantasy Impromptu, and he played it like an angel. In fact, he went on playing for

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two and a half hours, and as he walked out the troops got up and cheered him to the echo.

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Unfortunately, Commissioner, we haven't been able to find a recording by Solomon. I understand you have one by Rubinstein, which I've no doubt will be.

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Equally enjoyable.

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Arthur Robinstein playing Chopins.

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Fantasy impromptu.

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Which brings us to your last record. What's that? When I think that I've spent nearly thirty-nine years now in uh service life of one form or another, and I still retain a considerable affection for the services, uh I think on the whole that I uh uh looking upon it as my last record, I I'd I'd rather like uh the Royal Marines band playing Sunset, because uh I I think on the whole um

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It incorporates the most beautiful of all the bugle calls of any arm of the services.

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Sunset by the Band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines. If you could take just one disc out of your eight.

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Oh, I think I'd I'd choose the Mulldow. It would be very appropriate to the island. And uh

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impersonal and yet uh oddly comforting in a way.

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The Moldau from Smetener's Mavlast. And one luxury to take with you?

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A very large, warm, bug proof sleeping bag.

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Can be done. And a book, apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias. Well, I'd really rather like to haggle with you about this. I I'd I'd prefer, if I may, a television set in mint condition that didn't work.

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Yes, I think we can stretch a point. You can have that. But one that doesn't work? Yes, I I derive great pleasure from thinking of the number of party political broadcasts or unofficial strike leaders or instant wiseacres uh whom I wouldn't have to watch and

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Once a day I would look at this thing and reflect that sometimes there is no sight more beautiful than a blank television screen. You'd miss Kojak, too.

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Yes, I think I I'd put up with that.

Presenter26:16

Thank you, Police Commissioner Sir Robert Mark, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Presenter26:21

Thank you.

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Goodbye, everyone.

Sir Robert Mark26:30

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