Not long ago it was almost taboo for Conservative papers to criticise the police. Now they do it every day, and from the heart. Officers should be worried

As her members geared up for their protest march in London, Jan Berry, the chairman of the Police Federation, was no doubt highly gratified to see the Daily Telegraph declaring that "rank-and-file police are right to take to the streets". By the time she reached the end of the editorial, however, her mood had probably darkened.

It started well enough: police officers had been treated shabbily by a government which, as one constable had told the paper, was behaving "like a Victorian mill-owner". (That's a bad thing in the Telegraph's eyes these days.)

Then came a frank admission that "the police cannot rely on the degree of public support that they would have enjoyed a decade ago". You might expect the Telegraph to deprecate this change and remind us of the debt we owe those who keep chaos from our doors. But no, it had things to get off its chest.

First, there were the speed cameras. "What people find galling," the paper declared, "is that the only time they see a policeman is when they break the speed limit, sometimes by a small margin." Then there were some hardy perennials: "Why is there so much red tape?" and "Where are the street patrols?" Finally, there was a rant against "the politically correct prating of senior police officers, for whom 'celebrating diversity' seems to be a higher priority than catching criminals".

The punchline may have called for the police to get their money, but by then it was obvious that the writer cared far less about that than about the iniquities of modern policing.

This was not an isolated case. In the previous day's Times, Martin Samuel had attacked the Cheshire Constabulary for "mealy-mouthed abdication of responsibility" in the case of Garry Newlove, the Warrington man murdered by teenagers last August. Far worse, he declared: "If contributory negligence were more than a common law defence, Cheshire police would be beside Mr Newlove's killers in the dock." You read that right: a Times columnist said the police were so dreadful, they shared responsibility for the murder - a large step further than even Mr Newlove's very angry widow had been prepared to go.

Whatever the state of support for the police may be among the general public, support among their usual cheerleaders in the Conservative press is now so feeble that Ms Berry and her federation should be worried.

Even the Mail, the copper's paper par excellence, though it backed the pay claim, could not allow the moment to pass without a sharp remark about the need to "look again at police perks, including retirement on gold-plated pensions after 30 years' service". It also reported pointedly elsewhere on the cost of police overtime, which reached £412m last year.

Forget the pay dispute, which is a sordid squabble over a paltry sum. What we are witnessing here may be a historic change, a new preparedness among these powerful papers to criticise not just the policies of home secretaries, but also the conduct of the police themselves.

Much of the anger, to be sure, is directed at senior officers, whose profile is higher than it ever was in the past, but if the good old bobby is still immune in principle, his pay packet is not. Nor is his overtime, or his pension, or his sick leave, or his productivity, or his attitude.

For party-political reasons perhaps, and also because the government has undoubtedly been slippery on the issue, the Conservative papers may back the pay claim, but they cannot - because it would be so patently false and unbelievable - portray the police as needy or in any general way hard done by.

On the contrary, as they thrash around for people to blame for the violent crime wave in which they so ardently believe, they are beginning to ask whether the police are really giving value for all the money we spend on them.

And these papers don't just trade in fear; they also trade in envy. Fewer and fewer people these days can count on a good pension, or so we are told, but how many can count on a "gold-plated" one at around the age of 50, as police officers can? The Mail is saying that it doesn't like this.

A moment of good taste

The Newlove case, incidentally, seems to have given rise to a striking instance of press restraint.

When the Mail looked into the backgrounds of the teenagers convicted of the killing, it discovered that the mother of one was an ice-cream wrestler - that is, someone who entertains men in pubs by wrestling in ice-cream with few clothes on.

Had this strange practice come to light in any less distressing context, the following day's papers would certainly have regaled us with picture spreads, interviews with practitioners and for-and-against opinion columns, at the very least. As it is, at the time of writing, there has been no follow-up at all. Remarkable.

Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University

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