In 2008, the Met concerned itself with the fate of Tariq Aziz’s cigar case
This week I found myself thinking about Tariq Aziz’s cigar case. I recall it was a simple leather sleeve, designed for a trio of fat Cubanos. Saddam’s foreign minister’s cigar case had been seized by the Met’s Arts and Antiques Squad at Scotland Yard. Popping my head around their office door on an unrelated matter, the affair came up in conversation (it was in the news). “Here it is,” said the DS in charge, passing me an exhibit bag containing the controversial piece of war booty. He tried not to roll his eyes.
Aziz’s cigar case fell, technically, under an arcane piece of Iraqi ‘cultural relics’ legislation passed by the UN. Someone had presumably snitched (possibly an ally of Ken Livingstone’s) on the intrepid journalist who’d found the case while combing the ruins of Aziz’s Baghdad villa in the aftermath of the invasion. And, like an over-officious parking attendant, the Met obliged, demanding the case be handed over pending a proper investigation.
The journalist in question? None other than our very own Boris Johnson, who was running for Mayor of London at the time. As if a political opponent might report him for ‘stealing’ a cultural relic? Heaven forfend.
Anyhow, this came rushing back when Boris popped up again this week, this time to criticize a Metropolitan Police appeal for witnesses to war crimes in Gaza. War crimes in the Middle East? A matter for London’s finest? Huh?
Why?
Not unlike the Iraqi cigar case affair, the Met’s actions were part of the UK’s long-standing international commitments to a supranational organisation, in this case the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in the Hague. UK police are obliged to support ICC enquiries by virtue of international treaty, no less. It just so happens, in this instance, the police unit concerned is ‘hosted’ by the Metropolitan Police Counterterrorism Command (SO15) under the aegis of National CT policing.
If that all sounds as clear as mud, welcome to the wacky world of national police responsibilities.
Which force, or part of a force, wins a slice of the national responsibility pie is traditionally an area awash with politics, turf and prestige. It’s also, increasingly, a distraction from stuff the person on the Clapham omnibus expects from the Met (like, you know, dealing with thuggery and stabbings).
Therefore I think this affair, although over-confected by Boris, is significant in other ways. A police force lambasted by its national watchdog for being unable to manage basic crime - a force in ‘special measures’ - is ostensibly charged with monitoring war crimes in a highly-contested and politicized conflict 2500 miles away?
When ‘lawfare’ goes wrong - Phil Shiner was the solicitor found to have misled the courts over war crime allegations against British service personnel in Iraq
After Boris’s article, politicians and commentators sharpened their quills - surely this was another example of the Met’s lack of judgement and impartiality; even if the extent of their involvement was putting up posters at Heathrow appealing for witnesses. As for partiality, Israel has a notoriously difficult relationship with the UN (under which the ICC falls).
The ICC’s glory days were, arguably, after the wars in the former Yugoslavia, when it admirably indicted war criminals complicit in genocide. But, for the police? Aside from forensic and casualty bureau support (at which UK policing genuinely excels), it isn’t as if post-conflict interventions have been terribly effective, fair or successful. There’s even a growing point of view that this paralegal dimension has itself become a domain of war, one where activist lawyers have become well-renumerated shock troops.
Now, I’m hardly shy of criticising the Met on this issue - I think they suffer a dangerous organisational blind spot when it comes to Palestine, especially on public order policing. I’ve written so here and here. Which is why I understand why the story provoked the response it did.
But first, let’s talk about Boris’s criticism. Is the story, as the Americans say, a ‘nothingburger?’ Or is Boris merely grandstanding (Who? He?). Whatever one might think of him, Boris is clever. He was also married to one of the UK’s most gifted barristers (Marina Wheeler KC). I’ve no doubt he absorbed knowledge via a process of spousal osmosis. And, incredible as it seems in retrospect, the man was also foreign-bloody-secretary.
QED, of course Boris knew the Met’s position regarding the ICC before he put pen to paper. So what was he up to? Personally, I think (1) earning a crust with his journalism, (2) bashing the Met when it’s fashionable politically, (3) bashing supranational bodies, a significant bone of contention within the simmering Tory civil war (think ECHR and immigration, for example.) Then, to be fair, there’s (4) which is Boris demonstrating a full-bodied and consistent support for Israel.
The poor old Met, stuck in a bind, took its usual ham-fisted approach, offering a technical and anodyne explanation for its actions. But, technically, was it wrong? Wasn’t the Met merely carrying out government-mandated instructions issued back in 2019? Well, that’s probably a question for His Majesty’s Government and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Both were led, of course, by one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He didn’t seem overly troubled about it back then, did he?
As an aside, was Boris also aware of the dodgy regimes UK policing does do business with? I remember working in a domestic extremism unit as an online investigator, circa 2013, when a delegation from Saudi Arabia arrived.
So perhaps Boris is flipping a nothingburger, but in politics that doesn’t really matter, does it? The message - The Met wasting time with politically-biased fripperies - has been heard. The actuality comes a poor second. I’m sure, somewhere inside the game of 4D chess that is the Tory civil war, this all makes some sort of sense.
The other issue Boris’s intervention highlights is the legacy of the Met’s near-imperial status in British policing, now as motheaten as an old cardigan in a charity shop. It also reveals wider structural anomalies in UK law enforcement, as competing agencies tip-toe around the vacuum the Met’s disintegration is leaving behind.
So let’s take a look at why seemingly arbitrary parts of policing end up with such esoteric-sounding responsibilities.
With its operationally-independent constabularies (you there, at the back, stop laughing), the UK traditionally had no central police force. No FBI or Sûreté Nationale. Those were seen as potentially authoritarian and Bonapartist, the sort of thing unnecessary in freedom-loving Britain. Besides, the last thing the Establishment wanted was a dozen different varieties of government plod sticking their noses into murky parts of the political machine. The French suffer terribly from this, with half of the state bugging and spying on the other half for political advantage.
Now, thanks to that far-sighted and munificent legal reformer Tony Blair, we have a central law enforcement body (originally SOCA - the Serious Organised Crime Agency), which after a rebrand is now called the National Crime Agency (NCA). If war is too important to be left to generals, the legal clerisy of New Labour reasoned, then serious crime was too important to be left to police officers.
Initially led by an ex-head of MI5, the semi-quango was scathingly known as ‘MI7’, as it couldn’t make its mind up if it was a spy agency or an enforcement body. It was, most observers agreed, mediocre at both. Its remit was, and remains, vast - financial investigation and cybercrime alone are huge responsibilities. It even, controversially, absorbed online child protection in 2010.
To be fair, the NCA has changed since 2006. To the point where, like a virus, it’s ready to spread. The NCAs critics (disclaimer - I am one) point out its opaque governance arrangements and tendency to be run by (and occasionally for) civil servants with questionable law enforcement experience. In the SOCA days, I remember the place being full of police-phobic former Customs investigators. Even now, the NCA is colloquially known as ‘No Cops Allowed’.
The NCA crest, featuring what I call ‘The Disco Leopard’. It’s so awful, it’s kinda cool
The police were split on this new arrival - the larger forces might have resented the new ‘Federales’ impinging on their turf but, for smaller services, the NCA meant more resources and potential secondment opportunities.
Meanwhile, post 2010, poorly-led, underfunded police services (politically undermined by Whitehall) stood little chance of resisting the NCA virus. Slowly but surely, chunks of the serious and organised crime world were siphoned off to the NCA, with regional intelligence units overseen from the centre. Oh, and how police middle managers wailed as NCA officers took all of the sunny overseas drug liaison roles! An obstacle, though, was the Met.
Why?
It was bigger than the NCA. It had more experience. It didn’t really need the NCA on its ground. Now, the turf wars between the two are interesting (I have a little first-hand insight), but those will have to wait for another day. Nonetheless, as the Met began to degrade / self-destruct (take your pick) after 2010, power began bleeding away from the service.
The big national responsibility the Met did retain, though, like the pre-1997 Hong Kong of the Met’s empire (latterly dressed up as ‘National CT policing’) was Counterterrorism. SO15, the biggest police CT unit in the UK, is part of the Met and works closely with the Security Service, MI5. I personally think MI5 find the police malleable in a way the NCA wouldn’t. MI5, therefore, prefers the status quo. For now.
As you might know if you’ve been following my Substack, SO15 was born in October 2006, an unholy union between SO13 (the Anti Terrorist Branch) and SO12 (Special Branch). The Omen-esque Damien that resulted, SO15, wanted all the sexy CT stuff but not the strange, esoteric and unsexy duties accumulated over the years (my old desk, at times, felt like the ‘X’ Files given some of the bizarre stuff we were asked to investigate).
The War Crimes team is, presumably, a similar anomaly. Marooned on a lonely part of the CT organogram, like the omelette chef in an Indian restaurant. Like other stuff investigated by ‘Counterterrorism Police’ that isn’t terrorism, such as voting fraud and Official Secrets Act investigations. In fact, non-CT work takes up about twenty percent of SO15’s time. When this was pointed out back in 2006, the new SO15 overlords rolled their eyes. Dissenters were exiled to distant police gulags stations. You can get a flavour of the process here.
MPSB ‘C’ Squad officers, circa 1998, receiving their latest bizarre request from ACPO (TAM) (Terrorism and Allied Matters)
Which is a roundabout way of saying Boris Johnson’s nothingburger actually has some meat, just not the way he meant.
The piecemeal way police responsibilities have evolved means they map poorly across UK law enforcement PLC (which includes the NCA). It’s why a police force nominally responsible for a capital city finds itself ‘investigating’ war crimes allegations for the UN.
As someone who served in the Met during its pomp, part of me is sad to say this but say it I must; the service must change. The empire is dead. Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State in the early 1960s, said of Great Britain that it lost an empire but had yet to find a role. Well, the Met’s in a better post-imperial position; its role is both urgent and unambiguous.
And so the Met must look at every aspect of activity - no matter how well hidden behind the high walls of counterterrorism - and ask; how does this add value to our critical mission for Londoners?
There are only two answers.
The stuff that isn’t? Well, the NCA’s all grown-up now. The time for cherry-picking’s over; they’ve had the sexy stuff, now it’s time for the rest. They wanted the powers, the resources and the disco leopard… now it’s time to absorb the stuff they didn’t want. Let’s see if they’re up for the challenge, shall we?
And yes, that includes politically-motivated stunts like investigating Israel at a capricious and partial UN’s command.
Happy New Year Dom… glad to see you back.
The point you omit to mention is this, I believe. The MPS gets extra resources - cash and personnel - by virtue of its additional responsibilities. They are, in themselves, a legacy of the fact that until Beaujolais John agreed to change it, for historic reasons the MPS’ ‘police authority’ was the Home Secretary which, (sorry Counties), made it special and unique.
It was quite obvious to me that once the MPS came under the parochial ‘Mayor of London’ that it was quickly going to become political and also Tuppenny Ha’penny London local politicians were going to posture and pose that the MPS needs to lose its national responsibilities so those resources could be redirected to address “London’s problems”. (I believe in the end it was the Green’s Caroline Lucas who flew this kite a few years ago? I may be wrong.) It’s a great grandstanding piece for them, showing their pro-London credentials.
Of course, lose the responsibilities, lose the resources so when (not ‘if’, sadly) the Met becomes the Londonshire Constabulary to be redesigned by Chairman Khan in a year or so, they may find that, like the ‘Capital City Precept’ the counties will be bidding to get a share of that. The way public order has gone, with the MPS seemingly unable or unwilling to bear the brunt of large scale events and calling on mutual aid seemingly at least once a year now, I see that the Londonshire service is going to be very much smaller.
Of course, NCA, MI5, SFO old uncle Tom Cobbley and all will be setting out their pitch to hive off these central functions that they can, getting with them the funding and resourcing, and actually, it makes sense for that to happen.
The future policing arrangements for London twenty or so years down the line will be infinitely smaller and less ambitious than the Old Metropolitan Police I fear. West Mids has something like 7.5k officers according to Google and includes Birmingham and covers a population of 2.93 million (figs from Google). That would make a future MPS around 15-18k personnel I estimate. That is assuming that it stays a unitary body of course, and not broken into a Central and Outer London Constabulary, as was mooted in the 1990s.
Politicians should be careful what they wish for.
The majority of War Crimes investigated are ones where the suspect or informant is in the UK, usually London. I think there is a role to prosecuting them. It can't be right that someone who incited the butchery of 80,000 people is living scott free in E16. Also it's dealt with by a single pod and they aren't that busy with it. NCA don't appear to have the appetite to take on any CT functions either.