Restore police to their role as public guardians

SIR – Edward Leigh-pemberton (Letters, September 21) states that in 1960 virtually every rural village had its own police officer. This was the case from the inception of the British police under Sir Robert Peel, and it lasted up to the Eighties.

Peel’s initiative was to standardise the police force as an official paid profession, to organise it in a civilian fashion, and to make it answerable to the public. He insisted that “the police are the public and the public are the police”.

A police force exists to prevent and detect crime, maintain public order and prosecute offenders. These objectives can only be achieved by a publicly accepted, uniformed presence on the streets. Recent governments have all but abolished the Peelian principles, removing the police from their core raison d’être. It is time that the British public wrested control of their guardians back from the politicians. Alan G Barstow

Onslunda, Skåne, Sweden

SIR – My parents retired to Cumbria in 1965, with my father refusing to install a telephone.

When our son was born the following year, it was arranged for my husband to phone the local policeman who then cycled down the lane to my parents to congratulate them on the birth of their first grandchild. Mary Foster

Liverpool