The story so far: a file at the National Archives sets out how the Metropolitan Police trialled the infant technology of closed circuit television over the 1960s across London.
To leave Croydon for a while, a higher-profile use of CCTV was at the anti-Vietnam War march on the weekend of October 26 and 27, 1968, that climaxed in Grosvenor Square in London’s West End, outside the United States embassy (since moved south of the Thames, to a purpose-built site in regenerated Nine Elms). Cameras were in place at the Home Office; the National Gallery (that is, facing Trafalgar Square, a traditional place for protesters to rally), 48 Grosvenor Square and 48 Upper Cross Street, to cover all four sides of Grosvenor Square.
In a letter of October 30, 1968 Chief Supt Gerrard described the cameras as ‘invaluable to the officer in command and they contributed to the successful outcome of the operation. It was the first time we have used this media and was in the nature of an experiment with equipment provided by [the Met Police’s] research and development branch’. The irony therefore is that the Grosvenor Square demo was doubly a watershed: hailed at the time and since as the height of 1960s youth rebelliousness, yet in fact a landmark beginning for the surveillance state. Police had hired GPO land lines for the weekend to carry the images; Gerrard asked to keep the lines (expecting further protests to follow; by January 1969, a camera was proposed on the Europa Hotel in Duke Street to better cover Grosvenor Square; and others on the Treasury Building in Parliament Square, and on the railway bridge at the south end of Northumberland Avenue.
Gerrard asked also for ‘the necessary control equipment in Operations Room’; presumably at Scotland Yard; four 23-inch screens, a control panel and VTR, presumably standing for video tape recorder, as Gerrard reported that ‘a limited amount of video tape recording was carried out. Results were rather disappointing due mainly to the fact that when disorder did occur the light was falling and reproduction was poor. However there was little cost involved as the tapes can be wiped clean and used again. There is no doubt that the recording of incidents for future analysis is useful and we would like to try video tape recording again.’ Having enough light to make the (monochrome) CCTV better was evidently still a problem – and would be for decades to come – because Gerrard hoped that the Met’s engineers would fit cameras with ‘light intensifiers’.
A clue to some political interest in CCTV came before the Grosvenor Square demo; at the request of the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, ‘an additional line will relay pictures from Operations Room to the Home Office, the cost to be borne by Home Office’. A microphone, presumably beside the monitor and operator, could add a commentary to the videotape. Those cameras to manage the Grosvenor Square demo had come from the Croydon experiment, which had finished in September 1968; Chelsea’s experiment had not started yet.
As for the background to Grosvenor Square, in a letter as early as August 29, 1968, Met deputy commander EP Bellamy wrote that after a conference on public order, ‘the commissioner said that the time had come to consider the use of closed-circuit television in connection with public demonstrations’. In other words, CCTV was approved from the very top. On August 31, knowing the demo was set for late October, police met with the owner of a house in Grosvenor Square – the Duchess of Argyll – where police proposed to mount a camera. As for four cameras around Westminster, one would go on the roof of the Home Office, shared with the Commonwealth Office; which was described as ‘very security conscious and require more information regarding personnel etc than we are able to give at present’. As for a camera on the National Gallery, the building owners the Ministry of Works were agreeable. As for around Grosvenor Square, one would go at number 33, home to AA Worldwide Travel. Also suggested was a fourth or fifth floor window of a South Audley Street flat; and the Canadian High Commission in Grosvenor Square; except that the attaché was evidently away on midsummer holiday. Meanwhile the Met engineers had had trouble making camera mounts in Chelsea, and felt hard-pressed to meet the October deadline in Grosvenor Square. Thinking more long term, the engineers wondered about using microwave, wireless, equipment to send images, rather than GPO lines.
For all the faltering steps so far, other countries with their own problems to solve were interested. In May 1968 letter came from James Wiley, director of the mayor’s committee for community renewal in Detroit, reached Scotland Yard via Croydon police station. The Croydon experiment had indeed had worldwide publicity.
Briefly, the four pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) cameras in Croydon overlooked about half a square mile of shopping streets and car parks. A police officer viewing the screens had a radio to talk with police on the streets. The Met wrote back to Wiley that the statistics were ‘not complete’ and police had ‘no firm conclusions’ yet; ‘however preliminary findings are that publicity is the most potent factor in achieving a drop in crime in the immediate vicinity, possibly accompanied by a slight rise in the surrounding area’.
Wiley had also asked about CCTV on roads for traffic control. The Met confirmed its use in congested west London and on a two-lane motorway leading into and out of the city; presumably the M4. Loop detectors fed information to a screen, and a computer, which automatically adjusted traffic signals. Interestingly, police had already learned that CCTV operators got fatigued; the letter advised that ‘no officer monitors the screens for more than three to four hours’. Answering a question of Wiley’s, the letter told him ‘there is no appreciable increase in arrests. The deterrent effect is probably short term. The cameras are stationary but can be moved if required.’ It sounded like CCTV was a flop. The word inside the Met was similar; on February 29 a meeting heard the results from Croydon were ‘so far indefinite’ and even suggested crime decreased in the immediate area when the cameras were not working; ‘Croydon was not an ideal site for the experiment and more effective results should be obtained when the equipment was moved to Chelsea’. Another sign that police couldn’t make much of the CCTV was the suggestion that police leave dummy cameras in Croydon when the real ones went to Chelsea.
While Croydon’s cameras were fixed, one of the two at the council’s multi-storey car park had to be moved to the roof of British Home Stores (BHS) in Church Street. The others were on Westminster Bank at 1 High Street; and the clothes store C&A at 122 North End. Again, police felt limited by GPO cabling, because when in June 1968 police asked that a camera overlook Surrey Street market, the GPO insisted that police use the run of cable for five years. Police called that ‘uneconomic’.
A sergeant and four constables of the SPG had ended their work with the cameras on April 22, 1968, and local officers had taken it up. A Croydon superintendent on March 15 had asked for CCTV at Surrey Street as an important ‘missing’ link in the town centre’s overall coverage. That area had ‘a great deal of preventable crime’ such as larceny and cycle thefts; ‘…. local thieves dispose of stolen property in the vicinity’. The superintendent had contracted JE Pine, manager of BHS, to ask the department store to take a camera outside its premises. ‘I have found him to be extremely co-operative …. However he asks that we contact the security officer Mr Carr at the estates department, Marylebone House, Marylebone NW1’. As an aside, ‘security officer’ here means not a front-line guard but much higher-ranking in the civil service sense.
The case of Surrey Street showed the potential use for surveillance machinery; and how important it was to get installation right first time, by knowing the district. Police in March 1968 were saying that plain-clothes officers soon became known. A detective superintendent noted that ‘whilst the cameras are producing no spectacular results of a tangible nature the re-siting of one of the existing cameras to cover the marketplace may improve the position’. Mr Lyscom, chief security officer at BHS, promptly rang Croydon police station to agree to a camera on its building.
A progress report on January 31, 1968 – that is, the first full month of the experiment -described how the SPG patrolling and monitoring ran from 9am ‘until darkness renders them ineffective’. The report suggested that the publicity was having the ‘most favourable effect’, that announced the CCTV to the public from January 4. Police had stopped and searched some 72 people, for various reasons. Frequently observation by officers eliminated someone suspect, ‘making a stop unnecessary, whereas a uniformed officer would be compelled to move in earlier, because he had been seen by the suspect’. On January 8 police had seen a Jaguar saloon going the wrong way down two one-way streets, and patrolling officers were radioed and stopped the car.
An earlier report of January 4, the first, secret, two weeks of the trial, detailed three crimes committed within view of the cameras, ‘which remain undetected’. Other crimes happened inside premises; or after dark, when cameras were not in use. The monitor did see two men on the morning of January 4, carrying motor parts, and directed police to the scene by radio. One of the men, wanted on warrant, was taken to the police station; the first arrest resulting from the cameras.
Photo courtesy of the National Archives, file Mepo 2/9956: a window ledge view of the two EMI cameras covering the horse and carriage drive of the Thai royals around Trafalgar Square on July 20, 1960 on the second and final day of their visit. Note the umbrella raised in the open carriage due to torrential rain – which was enough to cause the uncovered cameras to break down.
Continued: click here for part five.
