Some said that a serving member of a police force should not write a history of it. He would not be sufficiently detached. He would not be allowed to expose those vested interests of politicians and police officers that cause and cover up inefficiency and corruption. If he attempted first to write it as an academic thesis, said others, his topic was so wide that it would have to be shallow. What’s more, muttered a third group of critics, the Victoria Police should not have chosen a historian who was ‘a yobbo from Reservoir’. So attempted insult was added to rigid dogmatism.
Yet a thesis was written, and professors from three universities passed it for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Melbourne University Press saw a good book in it, and accepted the manuscript for publication under its distinguished imprint. Researchers will be glad about that, as they find in the book a context and leads for their own work. And ordinary people will enjoy the book too: it is easy to read and full of interest, but will make them pause to think straight about police and the community. The book does expose vested interests, failures and cover-ups. Over and over again the Victoria Police is shown as being moulded, for good or for ill, by its political masters, its own members, and the general public—or sections of it. Some men and women in the police will think at first that their official history is too critical, but they—and everyone else—should soon realise that it is notably evenhanded and unflinchingly honest, a good ‘police book’.
Inspector R. K. Haldane—the ‘academic’ and the historian—is also a ‘real’ policeman in his colleagues’ terms. No mere theorist, he would know how to lock up a drunk. He was serving as a constable at Preston when he began a part-time course at La Trobe University, and later served as a detective at Broadmeadows and Bairnsdale. Over the years, while still a working policeman, he took an honours BA in legal studies, and then his PhD in history, boldly and calmly trying to describe—not excuse—the police force as part of the people, to understand from within and assess from without. His degree of success was impressive.
The achievement is not Inspector Haldane’s alone. Mr S. I. Miller, as chief commissioner, wanted a proper history, not public relations fluff, and he stuck to this determination through all the years, doubts and objections that followed. What he got was an official history that is both appreciative and critical—the best of all public relations.
You hold in your hands a book that two policemen willed, though others called it impossible and undesirable. Read it and judge for yourself. My bet is that you will decide for Miller and Haldane.
John Barrett
Reader in History
La Trobe University