NEIL BASU remains the most senior police officer in the country from an ethnic minority background. As the GG2 2022 Power List goes to press, Cressida Dick’s successor as Metropolitan Police Commissioner has yet to be announced, but several newspapers included Basu’s name among the “runners and riders” for the top job.
Whether he gets the post or not, Basu certainly made his presence felt as assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police in charge of specialist operations. He has also been the “National Police Chiefs Council lead for counter terrorism policing”. In other words, his job has been to work closely with MI5 in keeping the nation safe.
Since July 5, 2021, assistant commissioner Matt Jukes has taken his place at Scotland Yard while Basu has been on secondment leading the “Strategic Command Course” at the College of Policing and training the most senior police officers of the future. Basu has just completed this stint and it remains to be seen who takes over as the new director general of the National Crime Agency.
Over the last few years, Basu has been a familiar figure on television, reassuring the public every time there was a terrorist outrage.
In the last five years, there have been at least seven terror attacks, such as the ones at London Bridge, Westminster and Manchester Arena. On the face of it, it looks as though things have been quiet during the pandemic but Basu reveals nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, police have foiled 27 serious attacks.
“My utopia is never to have to be on television again,” he says. “The goal should be zero attacks. Every attack is an intelligence failure by definition. It might just have been unstoppable, a whole series of events that are unstoppable. But I will always take it as a personal failure. It’s something I think about every single day.”
Born in 1968, the son of a Bengali doctor from Calcutta, the late Pankaj Kumar Basu (a police surgeon for 40 years), and a Welsh mother, Enid Roberts, he has been in the force for 28 years, six of them in counter terrorism. He indicates where his loyalties lie with a “hashtag Basu, not black, not white, just blue”.
He has examined many of the underlying problems in society that lead “vulnerable and malleable” young people to be radicalised and encouraged to undertake acts of terrorism. Meanwhile, the real masterminds, responsible for the online grooming, seldom expose themselves to danger, allowing their brainwashed foot soldiers to seek “martyrdom”.
The pandemic has also seen an upsurge in computer fraud, says Basu. “The fastest growing current threat in the world is online enabled fraud. Policing is never going to be able to cope with that. No amount of bobbies on the beat is going to defeat that. A lot more people are living their lives online. So they’re becoming more vulnerable to it.”
What has made policing even more complicated are the shock waves from the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer in America.
In his personal life, Basu is a movie buff. He explains one of his favourite films is In The Heat of the Night, which was made in 1967, the year before he was born. It tells the story of Virgil Tibbs, a black police detective from Philadelphia, who becomes involved in a murder investigation in a small town in Mississippi. It stars Sidney Poitier as Tibbs and Rod Steiger as the racist white police officer who comes to show grudging respect for a black man infinitely cleverer than he is.
“I was a big Sidney Poitier fan,” recalls Basu.
“I was very young when I saw In The Heat of the Night. And of course, he’s a black detective. It was very unusual to see heroic black characters on television. And I thought the dynamic between him and Rod Steiger was really interesting.”
After the Black Lives Matter protests in Britain, Basu was invited to write a blog to “help the Police Federation of England and Wales celebrate Black History Month”.
“Now, I’m not black, I’m mixed race – White British (Welsh) and Indian,” he begins. “But I was proud when a black member of the Metropolitan’s Race Independent Advisory Group called me a ‘close cousin’ recently, largely because he knows I understand his struggle and that of his brothers and sisters, and that I have a long life experience of dealing with racism myself. I happen to be of mixed Indian and white British heritage, which means that I am the most senior BAME officer in the UK.”
He says: “I wrote a couple of blogs after the killing of George Floyd. The first was to ask my white colleagues to look out for officers and staff of colour who might be feeling anxious, both questioning their vocation (having watched a white police officer kill a black man on live TV), and taking questions from their own family, friends and communities about why they joined (the force). It mattered not that it was an act that happened thousands of miles away in a jurisdiction and policing system with surprisingly little similarity to our own British way of policing, it still hurt.
“But I made a mistake in that first blog, as my white colleagues also faced brutal and unfair chants of ‘racist’ as they policed the frontline with remarkable restraint and professionalism (a comment that wasn’t carried in my one and only TV interview on the subject). So, I wrote a second blog called ‘balance’ on the back of what had become a polarised and scarring debate. ‘If you’re not with us then you’re against us’ became the stupid battle cry.
“I am lucky to police the most diverse city in the world. Nine million people, over 40 per cent of colour, speaking every language and practising every religion under the sun.
“The burning platform (literally in the US), is our relationship with the black African and black Afro-Caribbean community, where in London we have by far the biggest confidence gap. Young black men have the worst experience in every aspect of society: health, education, employment and the criminal justice system. There is a reason for that, and years of inequality, deprivation and poor treatment play a huge part.”
Basu tells GG2 that there has always been emotional and cultural links between America and Britain’s black African and Afro-Caribbean communities. “It’s very deeply ingrained,” he says. “They look over the water and see that as being somehow parallel to their existence. Watching an atrocity on television is going to influence people here – ‘my brothers and sisters are being attacked’.
“George Floyd’s killing triggered a great deal of anxiety in the black community here. It’s not new for this country. It was coming on the back of Windrush. Also, Public Health England was releasing its report on how Covid had disproportionately affected people of colour. These things made for a kind of perfect storm. There have been other deaths in custody in the States – too many – but none of them triggered that kind of reaction.”
In Britain, even during peaceful protests, police officers “were being called ‘racists and murderers’. And, of course, black officers, were being equally abused and called traitors for joining the profession. All of this stuff is very, very difficult for a police force that’s actually quite young.”
Referring to the notorious killing of a black teenager by a white gang in Eltham, south London, in 1993, Basu says: “The vast majority of people who are currently serving in the police force in this country don’t remember Stephen Lawrence.”
He talks of the impact of negative publicity on police morale. “I feel sorry for the younger generation that they are not just reading the press but have 24/7 social media. It must be very difficult to keep your morale up or understand where you fit when you’re being bombarded by all of this – as well as being questioned by your family, or your friends. It’s heartbreaking people are thinking about leaving the profession. One police officer’s niece asked, ‘Is it true I am going to be killed by a police officer?’ ”
In his blog, Basu wrote: “The death of George Floyd horrified us all, and rightly so. All the good cops I know – regardless of heritage – were also horrified, but for many of my BAME colleagues I suspect this has been particularly shattering. At least, that’s how I feel. The way George died represented the worst of policing and will forever be a totemic image of racial injustice in America. His last words – ‘I can’t breathe’ – have become an anthem, and I desperately hope this is their moment for change, as Stephen’s senseless murder and the inquiry by Macpherson were for UK policing.”
He also declared: “I joined the Met in 1992, just after a BBC documentary called Black and Blue. It was powerful, depressing stuff, following the aspirations of young black and Asian police recruits – or more importantly, how those aspirations were shattered. Friends and family thought I was insane and I wouldn’t last 29 minutes, let alone 29 years. But here I still am, and I would do it all again.”
The way things were in the bad old days was portrayed in Steve McQueen’s five films on BBC TV – Mangrove; Lovers Rock; Red, White and Blue; Alex Wheatle; and Education.
Basu’s prime responsibility is to tackle terrorism. In his interview, he volunteers what he acknowledges is an unpopular view: “It’s one of the triggers that people don’t want to talk about for terrorism, which is effectively that the foreign policy of a country can affect its domestic politics.”
On the plots that have been foiled, he provides some more information: “Since 2017, we had seven terrorist attacks. We have disrupted and foiled 27 attacks, intent on murdering and maiming members of the British population. The 27 are plots which would have affected the fabric of society. Eight of those were right wing terrorist plans. One of the big learnings from 2017 was in order to more effectively disrupt more plots, we have to be even more closely integrated between the police, the security services, the government, as well as prisons, probation, local authorities and education.
“We all have to be much more connected and working towards a common cause.”
He stresses: “I don’t really want to be dealing with terrorists. I want to stop people becoming terrorists in the first place. Now, I’m not going to be able to do that because I don’t have the skills to do that. My skills are in tracking criminals down and prosecuting them. What I need are other agencies to help us deradicalise people at the point where they’re being radicalised, not after they’ve been radicalised.”
There is an important role for family and friends. “Watching for the signs that your children are being groomed by bad influence is one of the things that parents have an absolute duty to their children today. Now, that’s easy to say but incredibly difficult to do because they’re exposed to all kinds of things that are almost impossible for parents to police. Almost every kid from the age of 11 has got a smartphone, which is a hugely advanced computer that can access all kinds of things we don’t want our children to see. The pandemic has made things worse in my view, because children are away from lots of other positive influences like school and teachers and their friends. So I’m relying on family, friends, guardians, who have got close contact, who can spot behavioural changes in their loved ones – before it’s too late.”
He is a great admirer of Mahatma Gandhi: “He is my hero for leading the non-violent movement that changed an entire society.”
However, there is also the issue of whether to allow back those who joined terrorist groups in Syria, among them the schoolgirl from Bethnal Green, Shamima Begum, who is 22 now but was 15 when she ran away lured by the ISIS.
Basu responds: “I can’t talk about a specific case, particularly not one that is currently in dispute in the courts. We are a country that believes in human rights and democracy and we have to balance that against security. You should look at the individual circumstances of every case. If they are victims and have been coerced, they should be treated as such and not as criminals. But if they have willingly gone along and have been late to change their mind, they should still be held to account for things they have done. My job in this chain is to investigate whether someone is guilty or not guilty, and then put those facts before a court.”
He is proud of the team he has led: “I don’t say glibly – it is the easiest leadership job I’ve ever had. All those who work in my counter terrorism department do not need to be motivated to defeat terrorism. They want to get up every day. They do it willingly because it’s the right mission. And we love it."