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By: Bill Jack

Little Boy Blue

Pages: 304 Ratings: 5.0
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When the sixteen-year old Bill Jack applied to join Lanarkshire Constabulary in 1969, little did he realise he would be entering a world of outrageous and colourful characters, overseen by senior officers who had learnt management in the National Service of their youth. He found attitudes and practices, officially sanctioned and otherwise, which would be inconceivable in a modern police service. This was a world of small local police forces, now almost forgotten, and he considers himself fortunate to have seen and been able to write about the end of an era where hardly anything had changed in living memory, and which ended a few short years later when these old forces were swept into history. This is a hilarious though penetrating account of one boy’s introduction to the world of policing at the end of that era and his journey of discovery from wide-eyed schoolboy to police constable.

Bill Jack is a retired police officer whose service spanned almost 30 years, beginning as a police cadet in Lanarkshire and ending in the Gorbals area of Glasgow.  He later qualified and worked as a primary school teacher and is now a professional book indexer.  He is married with two children and two grandchildren. 

Customer Reviews
5.0
2 reviews
2 reviews
  • Martin Stallion

    The intention of the police cadet scheme of the 1960s-1990s was to scoop up potential recruits to the police service who might otherwise have found other careers by the time they reached the age of 19 and could join the force. Cadets were supposed to learn about and take some part in, policing while also being given time to further their general education

    It doesn’t seem to have worked out like that for Bill Jack, who joined the Lanarkshire Constabulary cadets in 1970. Well, he certainly learned about policing but not in the way that he was meant to. He encountered any number of time-serving or generally unenthusiastic PCs and sergeants, and the more senior officers pretty well ignored him unless they needed him to fetch tea or cigarettes. There was an attitude that the whole force was personally funded by the Chief Constable so that everything was done as cheaply as possible and any reimbursement of expenses was out of the question

    He has written a very funny account of his experiences, none of which deterred him from eventually signing up as a PC in the force, which shortly afterward became part of Strathclyde Police. Definitely a very different view of life in the Job

  • Police History Society

    The intention of the police cadet scheme of the 1960s-1990s was to scoop up potential recruits to the police service who might otherwise have found other careers by the time they reached the age of 19 and could join the force. Cadets were also being given time to further their general education
    It doesn’t seem to have worked out like that for Bill Jack, who joined the Lanarkshire Constabulary cadets in 1970. Well, he certainly learned about policing but not in the way that he was meant to. He encountered any number of time-serving or generally unenthusiastic PCs and sergeants, and the more senior officers pretty well ignored him unless they needed him to fetch tea or cigarettes. There was an attitude that the whole force was personally funded by the Chief Constable so that everything was done as cheaply as possible and any reimbursement of expenses was out of the question

    Bill has written a very funny account of his experiences, none of which deterred him from eventually signing up as a PC in the force, which shortly afterwards became part of Strathclyde Police. Definitely a very different view of life in the Job

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