Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

THESE days, with their body armour, American-style nightsticks, handcuffs and pouches on their belts for CS gas sprays, our bobbies look more and more like Robocop.

But who would have foreseen the day when they might have radio aerials sticking out of the top of their helmets?

Yet, a whole 64 years ago, a far-seeing East Lancashire police chief did just that - in a things-to-come glimpse forward to the era when, as now, every officer was equipped with a two-way personal radio.

The notion of the spike on top of the police helmet acting as an aerial was part of the set-up envisaged by Blackburn's Chief Constable, George Looms, way back in 1933 in a talk he gave to the town's business chiefs.

Indeed, he was way ahead in his guesswork when he looked to the day when bobbies would each have their own "wireless pocket set."

"It sounds something like a joke, but it is quite likely that these things will be introduced in the next 10 years," he said.

In fact, it took the invention of the transistor in 1947, another 14 years on from Mr Looms's prediction, for the large valve-filled radio sets of his day to become sufficiently miniaturised before the problem of bulkiness - which Mr Looms agreed might prove a hindrance - could be overcome.

And it was not until 1964 that Lancashire led the way when the county force became the first in the country to give each officer his own radio - and that was only after its own radio branch took on the task of designing and manufacturing the equipment as no British company was willing or able to do it.

Even so, the first sets were cumbersome by comparison with those the police now have. That year, when the old Burnley force joined the radio revolution - ahead of many others in the country - the sets, each the size of a cigar box, were described as weighing "only a few pounds" and "not a hindrance" although the 30 officers equipped with them had to carry them in special chest harnesses. But if, back in 1933, Blackburn's prescient police chief was looking to developments in electronic technology to help make his men more efficient, some were much closer to reality.

For that, same year, Mr Looms was complaining that one eighth of his 174-strong force was occupied in controlling traffic and that, at the best of times, only up to 75 officers could be employed on "primary" police work on the town's beats.

Seven weeks later, he was able to take six bobbies off point duty and put them back on patrol - thanks to the inauguration of the town's first traffic lights at Billinge End. These, he explained at the official switch-on by the Mayor on April 10, were "on the latest principle" whereby a pad in the road on the approaches to them operated the signals.

Hardly had he spoken and an errand boy on a bicycle rode over one of the pads - and the lights failed to change. But that hiccough was eradicated when Mr Looms borrowed the lad's bike, rode across the pad and got Blackburn's modern traffic equipment working properly.

The same day, the town's other new traffic lights - at the junction of Jubilee Street and Darwen Street and a 10-lights set at Darwen Street Bridge - brought Blackburn up-to-date in the age of motoring.

However, if this scheme helped to put men back on the beat, the Chief Constable was anxious to ensure that they were where they were wanted when they were needed - and quickly. And he was already working on a high-tech scheme to deliver just that - in the form of the police box and pillar scheme he inaugurated the following June. Once a familiar part of the street scene, the now-vanished boxes and pillars enabled Mr Looms to deliver what are still-impressive guarantees of police response times. The network of 53 boxes and pillars he set up where the first of their kind in the country, in that, unlike those in other towns, people opening the little iron door did not have to pick up a telephone receiver or dial , but were instantly linked to the force headquarters and could ask for the police, ambulance or fire service.

"Nobody in the future will be able to say 'We never see a policeman down our street'," said Mr Looms. All they had to do, he added, was to go to the nearest box and simply ask for a policeman and within three minutes, or at most seven, if they were calling from the boundaries of the town, he would guarantee a policemen would be there.

At the official launch, the Mayor and civic officials toured the town making officially-sanctioned test calls from different boxes that had a fire engine, an ambulance and a police car turning out in time with the Chief Constable's predictions and visiting dignitaries from other Lancashire towns suitably impressed.

But the first real use of the system had come a few days earlier when a motorist, who knocked down one of the new pillars, used it lying on the ground to report the incident.

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