How did Britain ever have unarmed criminals?

The release of Harry Roberts, the man responsible for shooting dead three policemen in 1966, has sparked a vigorous debate about whether he should have stayed in prison until he died. The idea that ‘life should mean life’ for anyone who kills a policeman is a police-pleasing policy that the Home Secretary promised she would implement in a speech to the Police Federation last year. But a more interesting aspect  of the Roberts story is what it shows about the changing nature of Britain’s career criminals, and the values — if that is the right word for them — that they share.

Until quite recently, criminals in this country did not routinely carry guns. The relative rarity with which criminals went armed made it possible to have an unarmed police force. For most of the 20th century, policemen could be reasonably sure that when they tried to arrest a suspect, they would not be shot at. Had guns been carried by British criminals to the degree that they are carried by, say, criminals in the United States, the pressure to arm the ordinary British bobby would have been irresistible. It would also have been completely understandable. No reasonable person could require police officers to know that, in any interaction they had with a criminal, there was a serious possibility that they would be fired on — and they would have no means to defend themselves except by wielding a truncheon.

The fact that guns have not always been carried by criminals in Britain is in many ways surprising. Criminals, in their dealings with each other, do not have many options apart from the threat of extreme violence to enforce the deals and ‘contracts’ they make. Organised crime in particular has to use violence. And that, one would think, would mean gangsters had to carry guns.

And yet surprisingly, for much of the 20th century, they did not do so, even though two world wars ensured that there were plenty of guns in circulation and the penalties for being caught with an illegal firearm were significantly less severe than they are now.