The British Policeman: Exploring a 50s film with Leicester and Preston connections
Here’s another deep dive into Leicester history, emphasising once again the links between the football club and the city, and featuring a co-starring role for the club hosting our promotion party on Monday night.
In the late 1950s, a film was made for the Colonial Service as part of a propaganda campaign to show the world the wonders of life in the UK.
It was entitled ‘The British Policeman’, which follows a day in the life of ‘PC Jack Edwards’. The film had two messages. The first was to tell the world that the British Bobby is a trustworthy figure whose first concern is always the wellbeing of the people he serves.
The second was less direct, but no less important - to show daily life in the UK as so tranquil that the incidents PC Jack recorded in his pocket book were largely of the ‘cat up a tree’, or ‘boxes falling off the back of a lorry’ variety. At the very worst, he might have to deal with a robbery (unarmed, of course).
In the film, the location is not disclosed. It is referred to only as ‘a British city’. But it doesn’t take long for visual cues to reveal that the city is our very own.
It's an amazing window on Leicester in the late 50s - so fascinating that it merited further investigation. I wrote up the results of that investigation last year on Foxestalk, but after further research and some helpful comments from others, it was crying out for an update.
Right at the start we see PC Jack helping a man who's just arrived at the old St. Margaret's Bus Station.
Tied to the lamppost is a placard advertising that day's Leicester Evening Mail – in the days when the city had two evening newspapers. It's a bit difficult to see but you can just make out that it says 'Charnwood Motorway: Official Route and Plans'. That’s a very specific news story – and it could help us pin down the day it was filmed.
Those motorway plans were released on Wednesday 17th September 1958, and looking at the archives, that day's Evening Mail did indeed carry the details of the route.
The 'Charnwood' motorway was the Leicestershire section of what would become the M1. There had been huge controversy over the original route, as it passed very close to Bradgate Park. After a local outcry, the route through the county was shifted westwards, resulting in the well-known 'kink' in the line of the motorway as it stretches northwards.
The very first motorway in the UK was just about to be completed. It was the Preston by-pass, the road that would become part of the M6, and which many Leicester fans will be using as they head for Deepdale on Monday.
So, to confirm - we know that the footage at the Bus Station was taken on Sept 17th. The next question is: What was happening in Leicester that Wednesday? Anything connected to football?
Midweek home games were pretty rare then. We only played one home game on a Wednesday in the whole of 1958. But guess what – that game was on this very day. And the visitors to Filbert Street were… Preston North End.
A little later in the video, we see PC Edwards looking on as a train pulls into Central Station – in the days when the city had two main railway stations:
Maybe as the train pulled in, the passengers jumping down onto the platform included fans heading for Filbert Street.
In truth, though, we don't know if the shots at the station were taken on the same day. It looks like the video was taken over a period of several days, given the number of different scenes it features.
We do know that the Leicester-Preston game marked a number of historical milestones. Look at the number 11 in the Preston team – as shown in that same edition of the Evening Mail:
In the late 40s and early 50s, Leicester and Preston played out a series of FA Cup sagas. They are largely forgotten now, but they were truly dramatic occasions, and Tom Finney was the central actor.
To mention just one episode, on the journey to Wembley in 1949 we beat Preston in Round 4, thanks partly to Preston being weakened due to Finney playing much of the game with a broken jaw (yes – he stayed on the field). As his defeated teammates headed back north after the game, Finney was in the Royal Infirmary, with a black eye to go with that shattered jaw:
Perhaps that was the same ward in which Don Revie listened to the final on the wireless two months later.
Now in 1958, ten seasons on, Tom was still in the Preston line-up. No-one knew it, but this would be the maestro’s last ever game at Filbert Street.
You may have noticed two other intriguing names in that Preston team. Their half back line reads ‘Milne, Dunn, O’Farrell’ – two future Leicester City managers, one on either side of the pitch.
It was Gordon Milne’s very first game at Filbert Street, and he had just had an extraordinary 24 hours. He was doing his national service at the time, and on the Tuesday evening he had played for the British Army in a 1-0 victory over Rangers at Ibrox. After that game he dashed to Glasgow Station and got on the overnight sleeper to Preston, where he met up with his teammates for the journey to Leicester.
That long trip didn’t seem to have sapped Milne’s energy though. Reports of the game described him as a ‘great worker’, and his performance helped Preston to a 2-2 draw that left them handily placed near the top of Division One. The following week they won the return fixture 3-1 to go top and leave us struggling at the wrong end of the table (where we would spend the whole season before a late rally kept us up).
There are several other scenes in the film that deserve a mention. Two of them from the football end of town.
This frame shows a bicycle safety training course at the Cattle Market, with the familiar tower in the background.
You can see that location clearly in this aerial shot taken around that time. It’s the light area towards the top right. Cricket, rugby and football venues are all visible too:
Next, half a mile or so further south we see this scene in the film, with the Gas Works in the background:
That’s Swanscombe Road. In the shot below, the place where PC Jack is standing is marked with the arrow.
In the days before the Double Decker was built, and before the cooling towers of the power station dominated the scene, that end of Filbert Street was commonly known as the Gas Works End.
There is one more location that needs a mention. The scene with the boxes falling off a truck was filmed at the south end of Leicester Market:
That is very close to the Lineker Fruit and Veg stall, and I wondered whether a member of that family might have been close by on the day filming took place.
Well, have a look at the fellow in the middle of this crowd scene:
Here’s a close-up:
Barry Lineker, Gary’s father, was married the following year, and here he is with Margaret at the wedding:
Now let’s put those two faces side by side:
What do you think?
Let’s just call it ‘unproven’ at the moment until we get confirmation one way or the other.
In real life, PC Jack was quite a fascinating figure, though Jack Edwards wasn't actually his real name. His colleagues at Charles Street Police Station knew him as PC Jack Broughton, and the archives reveal that he enjoyed an 'ee-aye-ee-aye-ee-aye-oh' rise through the ranks of the force in the 60s and 70s. His name crops up frequently in newspaper reports, often in remarkable ways.
On 28th April 1953 the headline in the Mercury was: City Detectives Hung On To Stolen Car. The report told us that as a stolen car was racing down East Street in Leicester, 'Detective Constable Broughton jumped onto the nearside running board and Detective Constable Bestwick mounted the offside running board'. Between them they forced the car to slow down and 'collide with scaffolding outside the Lansdowne Garage'.
On 28th August 1964, the headline on page one of the Mercury was 'Sergeant Disarmed Man With Gun'. The report started like this:
Police Sergeant Jack Broughton approached a man in Leicester's Clock Tower area who, he knew, was not only armed with a revolver and ammunition, but was possibly carrying a knife.
As he drew near, the man thrust his hand into his pocket, but after a scuffle, the sergeant disarmed the man of both the gun and the knife.
He could also deal with football hooligans. On 23rd August 1969, Leicester beat Norwich 3-0 at Filbert Street, and after the game a group of Leicester fans 'confronted a smaller group of Norwich fans in Buttermere Street'. 'The Leicester youths were throwing pieces of brick, and both groups were shouting obscenities' a court was told, but Chief Inspector Jack Broughton 'arrested all nine of them'.
Wow. On his own?
In the original piece on Foxestalk I wrote this:
Reading these reports, it's no wonder he was promoted so rapidly through the ranks. He sounds like something out of a supercop cartoon series.
The makers of that old video really should have recreated some of his real-life capers rather than using those twee scenes of cats in factories and boys with toy guns.
But I couldn’t help suspecting that those stories were a little too good to be true. And in fact, there was one moment in his career which didn’t quite fit the narrative. It was only a minor incident, and there’s no need to go into detail here, but it suggested that Jack was a fallible human being like the rest of us. If you’re interested, see the Leicester Evening Mail or Leicester Mercury, 24th April 1963.
Broughton stayed with the Leicester police for 35 years, and died in 1991, aged 64.
This was a review of his career that appeared in the Mercury in May 1984:
That same week in 1984, Gordon Milne, who by now was the manager at Filbert Street, had the pleasant task of telling Gary Lineker that he had been called up to the England squad for the first time.
Gordon's still going strong today at 87, and if you’d like to read more about the Leicester – Preston connection, try this:
From Father To Son - The Key Moments In Four Decades Of Drama | PNE Online
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