Police in protest rally over pay

Police officers are gathering in London for a mass march and rally in a protest over pay.

Officers are angry that a 2.5% pay rise has been backdated to only 1 December for officers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Police Federation, which represents officers, has applied for a judicial review of the decision by ministers.

The Home Office said it had a responsibility to make sure pay rises were in line with government policy.

Police say the rise is effectively a 1.9% increase, unlike Scotland where it has been backdated to 1 September.

Police officers have launched a courtroom bid to overturn Jacqui Smith’s decision to cap this year’s pay award at 1.9 per cent.

The Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, confirmed that it had applied for judicial review of the Home Secretary's decision not to back-date officers’ pay award for this year.

Alan Gordon, the federation’s vice chairman, said the federation had engaged a firm of London lawyers, which had filed the application in the High Court yesterday.

He told The Daily Telegraph: "We put it in yesterday. The fact is that that the Home Secretary has exceeded her parliamentary authority. It is all about making a political point.” ..….

MPs from across the main parties gave their backing to the police cause at a meeting in the Commons with Federation chairman Jan Berry this morning.

Labour backbencher Martin Salter, a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said ministers had to honour arbitration decisions because the police did not have the right to strike.

"If a group of workers who are keeping our communities safe has not got the ultimate recourse of withdrawing its labour, then I think it is incumbent on the employer to honour the independent review."

The Reading West MP said it was "absolutely right" that inflation was kept down, but money for the full pay increase had already been handed out to police authorities.
He added: "I think we should respect our police as much as we ask our communities to respect them."

Others offering support at the meeting included Tory MP for Monmouth and HASC member David Davies, Lib Dem frontbenchers Dr Evan Harris and Susan Kramer, and former Conservative minister Sir George Young.

Sir George insisted that if Gordon Brown had asked ex-home secretaries Charles Clarke or John Reid to reduce a police pay award they would have told him to "get lost"..….

The marchers will form a "mass queue" outside Parliament to lobby their MPs.

This smaller rally, consisting of 3,500 officers in Westminster, will be followed by Police Federation chairman Jan Berry presenting a petition to Downing Street and meeting Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. 

March starts on Park Lane, junction with Achilles Way
Route takes an hour and goes through Hyde Park Corner, Victoria Street and Horseferry Road before ending on Millbank outside Tate Britain art gallery.

Afterwards people with tickets head for rally at QEII Conference Centre or Central Hall next door, others head for Parliament to queue and lobby their MPs.

Like the situation 90 years on, the government of the day was fielding competing public sector pay demands and just a month before had denied MPs' requests for more pay. Today it is Gordon Brown - in August 1918 it was David Lloyd George.

Back then a London policeman's wage was compared to that of an agricultural worker or unskilled labourer. The cost of living during the war had more than doubled but police had received a pay rise of only 3 shillings since 1914.

"We policemen see young van-boys and slips of girls earning very much more than we get," said a policeman during the 1918 strike, "and - well, it makes us feel very sore."

Large numbers of police officers had been sucked into the army placing a greater strain on those left at home, some of whom spoke of working a 96-hour week, with leave restricted to one day a fortnight.

And so, two months before the end of the first world war, police officers went on strike for the first time. They would do so again in 1919.

On the August 30 1918 around 12,000 marched on Whitehall. The next day policemen would march down Downing Street, a street the police had blocked to marching Suffragettes. A Scotland Yard official watching the march said the police were "mutinying in the face of the enemy".

The government couldn't believe it. Class unrest was spreading and here was the government's disciplinarians joining in. The Guardian called them "Bolshevik Bobbies".

By the end of the August 31, Lloyd George had returned from France and offered terms that ended the strike the same day.

The terms, however, sowed the seeds of disagreement today - the police union was disbanded and the Police Federation put in its place.

The policemen of London accepted the deal, but in 1919 the policemen of Liverpool were still dissatisfied and went on strike again. This time events turned violent with four days of rioting.

Though a redoubtable organisation the Police Federation is bound by statute - which are refreshed frequently, the last being in 1996 compelling its members not to strike.…