Keith’s blue lamp will shine for ever... 5,000 police in farewell to hero PC
He saw himself as an ordinary man and his aspirations were noble in their simplicity.
At work he was just PC 4157U of the Metropolitan Police Service. His aim was to serve and protect the people of his city – where possible, with a smile.
At home his dedication to his wife Michelle and their five-year- old daughter Amy was equally unswerving. For his pains, he was pretty devoted, too, to his struggling local football team Charlton Athletic.
Yesterday, however, Keith Palmer was given surely the most extraordinary send- off a British police officer has ever received.
For, as we heard from the many people whose lives he enriched, there was nothing remotely average about the London bobby who died in defence of our democracy and the British way of life.
The scale and pomp of his funeral service was akin to that reserved for royalty and heads of state.
Having laid at rest on Sunday night, with the Queen’s express permission, at the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the Palace of Westminster – within yards of the place where he fell under a terrorist’s knife – his coffin was carried in a hearse two and a half miles to Southwark Cathedral.
Led by the Met’s ‘colour party’ comprising four officers, which is usually reserved for passing out parades and ceremonial events and which also required clearance from Buck- ingham Palace, the funeral cortege brought a large part of London to a standstill.
Some 5,000 police officers representing every force in england and Wales lined the route. They were joined by members of the other services plus countless thousands of Londoners determined to pay their respects and show their gratitude to the policeman who had given his life for them.
The streets of the capital fell near silent as the procession beat its slow, dignified path towards the cathedral.
To avoid the murderous route taken by Khalid Masood – who before knifing PC Palmer outside Parliament on March 22 had mown down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four and injuring 50 as he drove a rented SUV at up to 76mph – the cortege made a detour via Lambeth Bridge.
All you could hear was the click of polished black boots on tarmac and the rhythmic tapping of hooves of nine colossal, dark-coated Irish draught horses from the Met’s mounted branch, the so-called Black escort. How apt that the lead horse was called Lionheart, a timelessly english name, and one that encapsulated the selfless courage 48-year- old PC Palmer showed that Wednesday afternoon when, unarmed, he advanced towards Masood’s knife.
His colleagues tried to maintain their composure, but as organ music from the cathedral was piped into Southwark Street via overhead speakers, and the cortege came into view, I saw one policewoman discreetly raise her white-gloved hand to brush away a tear. This may have been a symbolic funeral carrying a message of defiance to the terrorists, but the wreaths of red and white roses that adorned the hearse – ‘No 1 Daddy’, ‘Husband’, ‘Brother’, ‘Son’ – spoke only of a family’s loss.
In all, some 50 of PC Palmer’s relatives attended, their grief shielded by the darkened windows of the sleek fleet of Jaguars that ferried them to the hour-long service.
The eulogy, delivered by the con- stable’s long-time colleague and friend Chief Inspector Neil Sawyer, told us what sort of man he was. Colleagues have in the past few days remembered ‘ the perfect policeman’. Mr Sawyer reinforced this image, recalling how PC Palmer won the Met’s top ‘thief catcher award’ after arresting 150 villains in a single year, and the diligence that saw him often turn up an hour before he was due on duty.
Yet Mr Sawyer reminded us that this ultra-professional and enthusiastic policeman was as fallible as the rest of us. During his early days in the Army Reserve, Mr Sawyer smiled, PC Palmer had failed to carry out a vehicle check – with the result that a wheel fell off.
He also fixed windscreen wipers on the wrong way round. Then there was the time he placed a bet on his beloved Charlton Athletic to gain promotion – only to see them relegated. Why, even the other evening, when fans began chanting PC Palmer’s name, the team promptly went a goal down.
‘How Keith would have smiled at that,’ he said. ‘His spirit will never leave us and he will remain an inspiration to us all. Keith’s blue lamp will shine bright for ever.’
A more sombre tone was struck by the Met’s senior chaplain, the Reverend Prebendary Jonathan Osborne. Following a reading by new Met chief Cressida Dick of W H Auden’s poem Stop All The
‘Message of defiance to the terrorists’
Clocks, he reminded us that PC Palmer had fallen while doing his duty in the shadow of ‘one of the world’s best known clocks’.
‘In moments as terrible as that, it is as though time does stop as we try to catch up mentally with what has just happened,’ he said. ‘It is impossible to take in the full horror of the moment. The events of less than two minutes… two movements of those hands, in which people lay injured and dying.’
Turning to PC Palmer’s widow and daughter, he continued: ‘Keith’s death has affected us in different ways, and to different degrees. For you, Michelle and Amy, that stopped moment in time took away your husband; your daddy. It took away a colleague and friend. And a friendly face... at those gates with whom someone had just had a photo taken.
‘A moment. The passing of the hands on the clock stole a life, and stole so much we had valued, and thought was safe and secure. So much that is at the heart of who we are as a nation. Keith was doing his duty, doing what he always did. he died for the democracy he was protecting. he died for the freedom we should treasure.’
he concluded with reference to
‘He died for democracy’
the saying ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’. Mr osborne said: ‘This good man did something. Gave everything. evil will not succeed. It has already been defeated.’ Some might think these bold words. yet as they boomed out from the speakers, filling the streets surrounding the cathedral, one gained the sense of what he was saying, and why he might just be right.
For at the barriers, people of every creed, every religion, every nationality – Londoners all yesterday – stood shoulder to shoulder, determined that something good must come of PC Palmer’s death. That it should unite them as never before against those who seek to destroy their way of life. ‘no race, no colour, no religion can come between us, and that’s what I am here to show,’ said Raouia Msamri, 23, a Muslim Moroccan student wearing a blue headdress.
Standing beside her, a middleaged Welsh woman agreed and offered her hand in friendship. It was a scene that would have brought a smile to the face of the average – and utterly extraordinary – PC 4157U.