by Len Causton (Inspector BTP Ret.)
One morning I received a phone call from the Superintendent at Area Headquarters, someone I had previously known from Training School and working in London. He told me that the Det. Chief Inspector had been attending meetings at the Leicestershire Police Headquarters but would not tell him what it was about. He had been told it had nothing to do with the Force. I was asked to make some discrete enquiries.
None of my contacts in the local force knew anything about it. A couple of weeks later I had a call from the DCI telling me to expect an envelope addressed to me. I was not to open it until the following Sunday morning when I was to go to my office, open the letter and phone the number in the text, pass the message contained in it, then go home and forget about it. I phoned the Superintendent and told him about the DCI’s message. He replied that whatever it was obviously had something affecting the railway, so I was to come in on the Sunday with my duty officers, plus those on Rest Day. He would authorise the overtime and for other officers from other districts to be on standby.
Sunday morning saw me in the office at 7am, at 7.30 I opened the letter, phoned the number and passed the message. It was purportedly from the signalman at Melton Mowbray stating that a passenger train had just been hijacked at the station. The Superintendent was advised of the message at home in Birmingham. His reply was “I’m on my way, get out there and find out what’s going on”. We knew the area fairly well as there was a BR train testing facility at Old Dalby, an ideal location for an exercise, out in the country and an enclosed area of land with an Army base next door. I set off with 3 other officers, our first point of call was Melton Signal Box where we found the DCI sitting in a corner of the box playing the part of the signalman who had been overpowered and tied up. He was not happy to see us and told me that I was instructed to pass the message and go home. I said he had been overridden by the Supt. and we were instructed to get involved. Leaving the DCI as he was, we went onto Old Dalby, drew a blank there but saw a member of staff doing some work on the track. He was asked if he had seen any stock being sent up the line recently and replied that a rake of coaches had been sent up to the disused Holwell Works industrial site. Even after an hour on the road we beat 95% of the Leicestershire officers to the site. We checked in at exercise control, welcomed and told to await further instructions but warned not to get into a position where we could be seen from the train or you would be classed as “killed”, taking no further part in the exercise. Officers from the Leicestershire Force and more of ours from Birmingham, Derby and Nottingham gradually arrived as did some army personnel. When the senior officers from the Police and Army had formulated their initial response, my officers were given the task of containing the area as we had some knowledge of it, so this we did. Later two helicopters arrived with a number of SAS troops and a load of equipment. I was in the control with the Superintendent when the SAS Commanding Officer approached us and asked if we could obtain an exact copy of the train to be delivered in a couple of hours to a siding just outside Melton Mowbray. An officer from our Mobile Support Group from Birmingham was teamed up with a member of the SAS, went forward with him to a place where they could see the train without being seen themselves. Our officer’s job was to note the type of coaches making up the train and report back to us. We then contacted the BR controller at Derby who had some knowledge of what was happening, and a replica set of coaches duly appeared. The train driver was advised on arrival not to look out when he heard a lot of banging and crashing of doors, eventually someone would tap on his door and say he could return the stock to Derby. The SAS apparently looked at all the coaches, measured doors and windows had a short discussion on how they were going to achieve their objective and returned to the site to prepare.
As this was an all day exercise the Army contacted one of their bases and eventually a full mobile kitchen turned up, by this time there were up to 100 people involved and in a short time everyone had had filled rolls and a drink, and before the afternoon was finished a full two course meal that was as good as you could get and plenty of it. The afternoon was spent just passing the time away whilst the SAS and support troops prepared all their equipment and organised their tactics. It was dark by 6pm, suddenly without warning the two helicopters with the SAS onboard took off, one with a bank of massive lights slung underneath, within a minute there was a lot of crashing and banging, soon Army Cadets who had been the hostages started being dragged into the control area physically. All done and dusted in about 5 minutes flat, advised to stand down, job done, but what an experience. The SAS are certainly someone not to be messed with.
On Friday 26th February 1982, I received a call from an Inspector I had previously worked with in London saying “See you at Hutton Hall on Monday for the Course”, my initial reaction “What Course?”. “The three months Inspectors Course at the Lancashire Police Training School in Preston”. I knew nothing about it, so promptly phoned the AHQ in Birmingham, who contacted FHQ in London. Someone somewhere had forgotten to send the papers for my attendance to AHQ, or they had been lost en-route. Yes, I was going, information being sent to me urgently. Wheels move quickly when required, by the end of the day I had all the information, cover had been arranged for me at Leicester and arrangements made at home for my absence during the week, home at weekends.
There were 20 of us on the course from 5 different forces. We had daily lectures on all sorts of subjects, visits to Industry, Prisons, Training Centres etc. all in groups of 4, and the next day we had to do a presentation to the others on the course on what we had found out on the visit. My main visit towards the end of the course was to Heathrow Airport along with a West Midlands, Lancashire and a Hong Kong Anti-Corruption Officer. At the end of the visit we again had to do a big presentation about the security arrangements there to the rest of the course. Other groups visited the Scottish Police College, Air Sea Rescue in Wales, the Prison Service and a large Security Firm. We also had visiting speakers amongst them Shirley Williams, the then Northern Ireland Secretary, Lord Longford the prison reformer and Lord Scarman who wrote the “Police and Criminal Evidence Act”, whom I had the dubious honour of entertaining to Coffee and Lunch on his visit. As he was giving a lecture on his “new act” it was attended by a number of Chief Constables and other Senior Officers of the northern Police Forces as well as the other courses being held at Hutton Hall. It fell to me as ‘Duty Pig’ for the day to give the vote of thanks afterwards, not a task that I looked forward to as there were many more prominent people than me who could have done it, but all went well. The 2 Chinese Officers were great to be with, always had a water boiler on the go if you fancied some noodles during the evening. When we went out on our weekly evening visits to a brewery or other location by coach, we always stopped at a Chinese restaurant, they would go in and come out with bags full for a supper on retuning to Hutton Hall, always at cost price too. One evening we took one of them up to Soho to top up his supplies at a Chinese supermarket. Police could travel on the underground on a Warrant Card, one ticket inspector shouted “What’s that?” as we went through the his barrier, we shouted back that he was with us, his Warrant Card was in Chinese! Whilst on the course we were all asked to write a 16,000 word essay on any Police related topic, that had not been previously done on another course, and to do an hour long presentation on it at the end of the course. I did mine on the difficulties of policing Football Specials with refence to the different types of coaching stock used. It went down well, the different projects being stored at Hutton Hall for future reference by researchers.
Another big project for me at Leicester was the Nuclear Flask Train Crash Exercise held in July 1984. I attended a number of meetings with BR and the Nuclear Fuels. My task was to write the Police Operational Order for the security of the route and crash site at BRs Old Dalby Testing Centre. The exercise was to prove that a Nuclear Flask would not be damaged in a train crash when a Locomotive and four coaches was to run into one at 100mph. The exercise was a success with no damage to the flask, and we prevented any demonstrators from gaining access to the site. Sixty plus officers were used on the day.
In the early 1990s, we had a major re-organisation in the Force. I left Leicester to run a centralised Prosecutions Department at the AHQ in Birmingham. We dealt with over 60 Magistrates Courts, 12 plus Crown Courts and 20 plus Crown Prosecution Offices handling 200 cases a week, not all ending in prosecutions. On a visit to the Birmingham CPS Office one morning I bumped into the Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor, whom I had known when he was based in Leicester. He asked me to represent our Force on a committee on “Pre-Trials Issues”, with a representative of each of the Local Forces, the Magistrates, Crown Court, and someone from the Attorney General’s Office. Birmingham CPS Area was to be the pilot area to try out the new scheme when devised. The system as devised is very much as the Courts run now, whereby cases destined for the Crown Court pass directly from the Magistrates to the Crown Court on the first hearing, whereas there used to be a number of hearings before Magistrates and even mini trials before a case was passed up to Crown Court, a massive saving in time and money.
I retired in 1996 after 28½ years of service. I had worked with and met some really lovely people over the years, Police, Rail Staff, Members of the Public and some real Pillocks of the first order!
End of Part 3
See Part 1 Part 2
Also see: Memories of the Royal Train