The Enforcer: My role in bringing CCTV to Scotland

Oct 12 2008

BRITAIN is the world capital of CCTV with more than four million cameras. Few realise the seeds of our surveillance society were sown in Airdrie by Pearson - the town's police chief at the time.

IT was an unlikely conversation that led to the arrival of a police camera in Airdrie - the first of its kind in the UK.

A group of teenagers was using a youth club as a base to carry out attacks across the town.

I paid a visit to try to talk through the problem but I wasn't welcome. I warned the troublemakers their club would be closed if we could not resolve things.

As I made for the door, a girl stopped to speak to me.

She suggested we put up a camera facing the entrance to the club and monitor it from the station to match their movements with the times of the break-ins.

By the time I was home, I was planning a series of cameras to clamp down on the criminality in the town.

I was aware one of the biggest hurdles would be people's human rights.

I was fortunate the local MP - the late John Smith - had a real understanding of the legal issues the scheme would raise but he accepted the benefit it could bring outweighed the challenges.

Next, I formed the Airdrie CCTV Development Trust.

Then I decided it was time to seek the public's support. Despite my fears, there were very few objections.

In February 1992, I laid out my ambitious plans in a report to headquarters, seeking permission to go ahead with the necessary building work at the office. I took the absence of a negative reply to mean 'yes'.

It was a tight timetable but in October 1992, the system went live.

Eleven cameras could pan, tilt and zoom in to live incidents around the town and the pictures recorded to be used in the courts.

To allay public concerns, I arranged a formal launch. I invited John Smith, by then Labour Party leader, to switch on the cameras.

Once again I sent a report to headquarters about the November 7 launch. Again it was met by silence.

I presumed I had been given the green light. At 7am on the open day I was preparing for the launch when I was told the chief constable was on the phone. I thought it was a wind-up but Leslie Sharp was indeed on the line.

He told me that he had had no knowledge of my launch but had heard about it on the BBC news and he would be along later.

By the end of the day, 11,000 people had trooped through the police office to view the CCTV system.

It became clear that the silence from Strathclyde Police headquarters was so deafening because someone thought we would never be able to deliver our scheme - how wrong we proved them.