Key Reflections
* With an unfolding terrorist attack, it is essential to have well-drilled, experienced teams with the right skill-sets whilst making split second decisions in high conflict and highly charged situations.
* The pandemic and resulting global lockdowns have created a situation in which people are gestating over propaganda and imagery in their homes and becoming radicalised. The full consequences of the pandemic for terrorism are still to manifest and will unfold over time.
* The rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan will have consequences that could eventually impact on the UK directly, with the potential resurgence of al-Qaeda and other groups. British nationals may then be encouraged to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIS have also not been eradicated.
* The more the West withdraws from the CT sphere, the easier it gets for terrorist groups to become resurgent, especially considering that the terrorist ideology has not gone away.
* Threats posed by state actors are dealt with in a similar manner to those posed by terrorist groups. In both cases, there is a need for information sharing and cooperation among governments, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement.
TRANSCRIPT:
SG – Dr. Sajjan Gohel
NB – Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu
SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP Dive brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geopolitical current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs.
In this episode we speak to Neil Basu, who is the Assistant Commissioner for London’s Metropolitan Police Service Specialist Operations (Counter Terrorism and Protective Security) and was the National Police Chiefs Council lead for Counter Terrorism Policing. Much of his work has involved countering the threats from al-Qaeda and ISIS as well as state-sponsored actors. Mr. Basu is currently the Director for the Strategic Command Course at the College of Policing, which prepares police officers and staff for promotion to the most senior ranks in the service.
Please note, this podcast was recorded just prior to the explosion at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital on the 14 November 2021, which has now been declared a terrorist incident.
SG: Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, thank you for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive.
NB: Thank you, I’m flattered to be asked to do this, thank you.
SG: It’s a pleasure to have you. One question I’ve always wanted to ask you, and I’ll take the opportunity now, is what made you want to be a police officer in the first place?
NB: Interesting because it’s quite a long story, but I’ll try and be brief. So I grew up watching lots of heroes and villains on television. You know, I sort of laugh now when I look back at it; Audie Murphy in World War Two films, The Lone Ranger, John Wayne, all the people who sort of rescued people from evil. And if you think about every great Shakespearean tragedy, every great Greek tragedy, there’s a lot of this in there. It is the story of life as writers will tell you. And I guess there’s a little bit of the childish thing in me that thought that I could help make people safer. I could protect people and I didn’t really know what that was going to be when I was very young.
I wanted to be a soldier, and I had a very bad car accident. Physically, I couldn’t do much for about 18 months. So I drifted into university and it was in the ‘80s. And everyone wanted to be a business person, or a banker, or a lawyer, or make a fortune, you know, the kind of ‘loads of money’ generation. I didn’t really want to be at university but I got my degree, I got a degree in economics, and I did get a job with a bank and I came out and I worked for that bank for nearly two years, and I hated it. I didn’t like the values. I didn’t like the greed. I didn’t like the attitude. And I thought where were all those ideals I had when I was a youngster about helping to protect people, because it’s certainly not happening here! And I foolishly thought, because I was one of those graduates who left the university when the job market was booming that I could just get another job and I thought — my father was a doctor, as part of his practice he had a police surgeon contract in the Midlands and he had been a police surgeon for 40 years. Not that long when I applied, but he’d been a police surgeon for a very long time since the ‘70s. And a lot of people in my hometown were either — it was a military town — so they’re either RAF or they were police officers, and my Sunday League Football referees or rugby referees.
So I grew up with a lot of positive role models in both the military and the police and my father did this and I thought, “Well, I’ll tell you what, you wanted to protect people. This is a way of doing it. This is public service, not the private sector that you joined with all the values you didn’t hear and your dad’s a doctor, your mum’s a nurse. You’re not bright enough to be in medicine, but you might be bright enough to be a cop.” So I applied and there was an 18 month waiting list. So I came straight out of that; that reverie, thinking I‘d just easily quit the bank and join the police service and thought what am I going to do now to pay my rent, because I’ve already left the bank, for another 18 months. So I joined a sales company. Now if I talk about private sector values and the attitude of salesmanship, back in the 80s and early 90s, you’ll kind of understand where I’m coming from again.
So the reason I became a police officer was because I looked at my mother and father and their public sector values and the heroes they were to me and thought I want to be the kind of person that can hold my head up high saying I did something for the public. And my dad once told me a quote which I use all the time which is from Gandhi, I believe, which is “there is no higher calling than to lose yourself in the service of others.” Now I wish I figured that out when I was much younger, but at least in my mid-20s, I made the right decision. And that’s why I became a police officer. And that is the short version!
SG: Well, I’m glad you gave us the more detailed version. That’s absolutely fascinating and very endearing, I would say awe inspiring too, because that just shows you, I guess family values playing a big role too and the experiences of what to avoid as well.
NB: Yes, absolutely.
SG: So since you first joined, how has policing changed, both operationally, as well as in terms of recruitment?
NB: Well, there have been enormous changes. I don’t think people who are outside of the profession realise just how complicated a profession it is. If you think about the 10s of 1000s of pieces of legislation and law that society is bound to operate within, it’s the framework in which we all sort of live together in a society and the people who keep that together are the police. And having to make split second decisions in high conflict, highly emotionally charged situations or dealing with people who are incredibly vulnerable at the worst time of their lives. And these vulnerable people might not consider themselves vulnerable until whatever happens to them happens to them. Whether it’s assault, a traffic accident, being involved in a mass casualty event, like terrorism, or a train crash, it doesn’t matter what it is. The first people that people look to, to help them in those circumstances, tends to be the uniform on the street. It’s a police officer who’s got a split second to make a decision of what to do to help people. That is incredibly complex, and it’s only got more complicated.
So in the nearly 30 years I’ve been in, people were not expected and were not under so much scrutiny that they had to get it absolutely right 100% of the time, and that they would be examined in microscopic detail for making a mistake. And I think what’s changed is, there is no forgiveness for making a mistake anymore. And that is a crying shame because I think it puts people off public service, when they realize there is a terrible blame culture in society, and everyone’s looking for a scapegoat. And if you’re a very young police officer on the streets, making those kinds of decisions, that’s very difficult. I was a young detective, I had a massive caseload. I worked as a Detective and as a detective sergeant and police sergeant in Lambeth – Brixton and Streatham. It was incredibly busy. I think my caseload was as high as any officer has today. But the difference was, people rarely interfered with my work. My supervisors were less interested. I was unlikely to be in front of a public inquiry for making a mistake. I hope I did, and I think I did, a very professional job, but I certainly wasn’t under the kind of scrutiny youngsters are today.
The second thing that’s changed is when I joined and I was really proud of this, we were called the social service of last resort, because effectively when nobody else could help we could, and that goes right back to my answer to question one. I thought Brilliant. But we are now the social service of first resort, because 10 years of massive cuts has meant that almost every time there’s a vulnerability in society, there is no ambulance, there is no mental health care, there is nobody else to look after you. And so the first point of call is the police. Most of our daily crime bulletin is not crime at all. It’s high-risk missing persons who are either suicidal or very young and very vulnerable to awful people in society taking advantage of them. That dominates our daily crime bulletins. Now that’s London, but I guarantee that’s replicated across 43 forces. That is incredibly difficult. So when your own resources are challenged and your USP [Unique Selling Point] is to effectively cut crime and arrest criminals, and you can’t do that because only 20% of your work is now doing that. How do you square that? Incredibly complicated. So that leads me to your last point about recruitment. What kind of people are we trying to recruit who can deal with the demands of that, that I’ve just described to you? We are trying to professionalise the career, we’re trying to say to people “if you can cope with everything I’ve just described, you are operating at a master’s level. You should be given a degree because that’s what you do for a job.” We are trying to attract people who’ve got the intelligence to do a degree, they don’t have to have one, but they’ve got the intelligence to do it because this job is so horribly complex and very, very difficult and you need to be well read and well capable of absorbing a lot of information and acting very quickly upon it.
So the kind of calibre of person we’re looking for is, I can only put this…. is much higher, but we still want the street smarts and the common sense that comes from, not being naive, being mature, knowing a lot about life. So that’s never changed and should never change. And I don’t think we should go down the route of hiring merely master’s graduates from universities who don’t have that grounding in real life as well. So it’s complex. And we need to be very careful about who we recruit because we’ve spent two centuries building a reputation and I think everything that’s happened in the news recently, I don’t know when this is going out, but if you look at Wayne Couzens, one police officer can ruin 200 years of reputation – one – and there are 130,000 of us. And we all feel that that’s what he did to us.
SG: Wayne Couzens, for those who may not be aware, is the police officer who abducted a woman during the lockdown and then brutally murdered her. In terms of the recruitment aspect. As you are one of the most senior police officers not just within the UK but within the Five Eyes network as well — which involves Britain, America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — you’re also a person of Asian heritage as well. Do you feel your position can help demonstrate that law enforcement is a career for ethnic minorities to not only be a part of but to succeed as well?
NB: The short answer to that is yes. I mean, you really underestimate your impact on other people. You’ve known me a long time, Sajjan, you know I’m not an arrogant person, so I don’t really consider myself an Assistant Commissioner. You know, I say to Chief Constables — and I’m running a leadership program for future Chief Constables now— I say “you need to remember you were a constable once.” The difficulty with that, that’s very humble, and that’s very good, but you forget your impact on other people as you go up in the ranks. And as you become more important, and as people see you more often and therefore you forget what impact you’re having on their ambition and their willingness to succeed. And there is no doubt about it. Because I get a lot of feedback. I do a lot of mentoring in Black and Asian communities and with female officers and with people with protected characteristics, who look at you as a role model – that they can succeed if you can, and that is so true. I mean, it’s obviously far more complicated than that, but you should be willing to, to stand up and show those people that it is possible. And some people don’t want that. You know, when I was young, I did not want to be seen as an Asian police officer. I wanted to be seen as a police officer, and as a very good one. And everyone I meet who has protected characteristics, whether they’re female, Black, Asian, whatever their background, doesn’t want to be judged on that. It’s a bit like Martin Luther King said, they want to be judged on the content of their character and their technical capability. We all do. But actually, it does help to see other people in the room who look a bit like you, or sound like you who have the same background as you who are getting on. It really helps.
SG: Absolutely. And your humility is what has always struck me in every interaction and it quite frankly, has a cross sectional appeal. I see that being one of the most important aspects in this work that you do. If we move to, I guess, predominantly what brought us into contact in the first place is terrorism. During the peak of ISIS’ growth between 2015 to 2018. And in fact thereafter, you were very much on the front line of dealing with the threat to the UK. When an officer would brief you of an emerging terrorist attack unfolding, what would be the very first thoughts occurring in your mind?
NB: Yes. Do you know what, I always feel a little bit traumatised by the entire experience. For your audience. I’ve been in counter-terrorism for six and a half years I stepped down on 5 July 2021, 4 July 2021 was the first time in six and a half years I wasn’t permanently on call for a terrorist attack 24/7 365 days a year, and I do describe that Fourth of July as my very own independence day in some respects. Because the first thing that goes through your mind and you can’t help it because I’ve seen a great deal of death and destruction in my wider policing career, is how many people have died? How many people are about to die? How many more people are going to die because I can’t stop this? That’s what first goes through your mind and that the reason I joined the police in the first place comes absolutely front and centre in that moment. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that for a split second, you’re frozen, because you just think ‘oh my god. It doesn’t get any worse than this’. And it doesn’t, you know, terrorism is considered the — I mean, my colleagues in organised crime, which is where I made my mark, countering gangs and organised crime. My colleagues would say far more people die because of that, you know, daily around the United Kingdom than ever die in a terrorist attack. It doesn’t matter.
The consequences of a terrorist attack are the profound psychological damage to society that it causes. That’s why terrorists do it. And trying to say to yourself, “how do I stop this becoming even worse than it is?” Is the first thing that goes through your mind and if you are not equipped or resilient enough or competent or experienced enough to deal with it, you would freeze. I like to think we didn’t freeze and many of my colleagues in the Five Eyes have discussed in the past looking at how the UK responded in that terrible year of 2017 and we’ve obviously had five attacks since then, six attacks now since then. I think they were impressed that the UK didn’t fold under that pressure. And it didn’t fold because we are a very well-drilled, experienced team alongside our security service colleagues. So the next thing you start thinking of, after that split second of fear, you start thinking, “what’s my time-frame?” We use these terribly military expressions of collapsing time-frames. So “how long have I got to get my hands around this? Who is briefing me? How good are they? Do I trust them? Have they got enough detail? If they haven’t, and nobody has enough detail where are they going to get that detail from? How quickly can they get up on the threat? How quickly can we get more coverage on the threat? How quickly can we deploy resources ? Are they already en-route? And they are quite often already en route because this is a well-drilled machine And, have we got the right people with the right skills to deal with this? and what is the scale of it?”
So, you know, I’m due to give evidence again in Manchester in a few weeks time, you know, the scale of that was a bit like 7/7, almost unthinkable to the British public. So those are just some of the things [going through my mind]. I could go through a checklist of three or 400 things that go through my mind, which because of my experience go through my mind very quickly, but if you were sitting there going through them from one to 400, you’d probably spend the first day doing that and be fired very quickly!
SG: It seems very, very intense and also mentally demanding as well. Because in all my interactions with you, it has always been abundantly clear that you feel the loss of every civilian and police officer that has either been killed or injured as a consequence of terrorism. And you mentioned the Manchester attack, where so many young people were killed. I can tell you that from my own personal experience that was very emotionally challenging for myself. So how does one deal with that, whilst also ensuring that the investigations are ongoing and the perpetrators are brought to justice?
NB: Well, I think when people speak to people like me, they want the comforting answer that we’re professionals, we’re trained, we’re highly trained, we get on with this. I always go back to that remarkable quote, when a journalist was questioning George Bush on how he slept at night because of the war. And I think it was Afghanistan rather than Iraq, but it may have been the first Iraq war. And he said, “Well, I sleep like a baby.” And then they asked Colin Powell whether he slept like a baby, given what his Commander in Chief had said, and he said “oh yeah, I sleep like a baby. I wake up every four hours screaming. And I thought, you know, that is true. And people don’t want to hear it. But yes, it is incredibly challenging. And the reality is, because you are trained and this is what you were trained to do and this goes right back to the answer to your first question is what’s your core purpose of being here? Well, it’s to protect people—and you keep going until you are confident that people are safe. And you don’t stop and think about it until you’re convinced that that is the case. That’s what you do. And the resilience comes—I used to think resilience came from—and I’m training lots of people about this at the moment—asking them, “what makes you think you’re resilient enough to be a Chief officer?’—and the reality is I used to think it was, well, family and friends and, you know, colleagues and all of that support around you and your physical and mental fitness to do the job. And it isn’t actually—all of those things are incredibly important by the way. I don’t dismiss them at all, you need all of those things, but what you really need is a sense of purpose. You really need to know that you’re doing the right job and you’re in the right place at the right time. Because that’s what keeps you going because without that sense that you’re doing the right thing, it would be impossible.
SG: Absolutely. If we’re looking at the challenges that exist as they’ve evolved, what developments have surprised you over the last 18 months during the pandemic, which perhaps would have been hard to anticipate prior to the lockdowns
NB: Oh, I mean, you’re far more of an expert on this than I am, Sajjan. I think the two things that I think are—the really surprising things are…a lot of terrorists obeyed the government’s directions because they were probably as terrified of the pandemic as everyone else. In reality, the threat reduced because of that. It didn’t increase.
But what I felt—and I’ve said this publicly many times—what I was nervous about increasing was people sitting in their bedrooms, gestating over propaganda and imagery and getting more and more radicalised and more and more vulnerable because they didn’t have wider protective factors of society. They weren’t going out meeting people. They weren’t seeing other people who might have less extreme views. They would be intensely looking at stuff and developing more and more radicalised instincts. And I strongly believe that we are not going to see the full results of what the pandemic has done to people who’ve been in that environment for a long time. But it will happen. And because I’ve been out of it, I’m not going to speculate on what the motive is—and clearly can’t for some sub judice reasons on recent attacks.
But my biggest concern was always that malleable section of society being more and more drawn into propaganda on the web, which has become the de-facto war propaganda tool of choice for terrorists. So I don’t think that surprised me. I think what surprised me is we haven’t had as much of it as I thought might happen, but I think that we’re very early in the time-frame.
And the second thing—and I don’t want to get all political about it, I think it was a surprise to everyone—was the rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan. And the consequences of that for our future, I think, are very dim indeed. So I think I may have stepped down from this role, but my successor’s successor will be dealing with the same problems that I dealt with over the last six and a half years because of that move, is my view.
SG: Well, you touched upon Afghanistan, that’s something I was wanting to ask you also: are you worried about the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan that it could eventually impact on the UK directly? But with the potential resurgence of al-Qaeda, as well as other groups, which could then encourage British nationals to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan like we saw in the pre- and post-9/11 period?
NB: Yes is the simple answer. I mean, I couldn’t have put it better myself. Your question answers it. I’m incredibly concerned about all of that. And I think our ability to see that because of our experience should be highly attuned to that threat. I hope it is.
SG: This is probably almost an impossible question to answer: what options do we have to deal with this?
NB: We have legislative options that were put in place that would prevent people traveling to areas in which we know terrorist training is taking place. So the designated area offence. That was put in place as part of the learning from previous years, and that’s obviously a government decision, but it would be based on intelligence. So there is an option there to prevent travel.
We are doing what we’re doing every day—which is what we’ve been doing every day for many years—which is looking at the threat unfolding and taking covert and overt action against people that we think are either becoming radicalised or have become radicalised and are a serious threat. The danger is, of course, that the numbers become overwhelming for the resource that’s currently in it. And I think we’ve made that point very clearly to the government, certainly since I joined CT [counter-terrorism] in 2015. And the government has stepped up and has kept the resource where it’s required against the threat. It must continue to do that. I’m not being political about that, it just must continue to do that.
And it is very tempting in austerity and you know, we’re still in a pandemic, which will have years to run and the consequences of that and the consequences for budgets and the consequences for prioritisation. I get all of that, I know it’s a massive problem. But because of what’s happened, and lots of other effects on the world, terrorism is still going to be a clear and present danger for, in my view, my lifetime
SG: To that point, if we look at al-Qaeda’s terrorist rival, ISIS, do you still feel that ISIS is an existing threat or that it will evolve into different manifestations but still pose a challenge for all of us?
NB: Well, I mean, yes, they’re still a challenge, they’re still a threat. They weren’t eradicated…winning the war on the battlefield didn’t eradicate them. I think it was bin Laden who talked about becoming an idea rather than an organisation, because organisations are easy to target. It’s what military and policing and security services do very effectively. Capturing an idea is very difficult, and ISIS is still a very clear idea—an ideal for some people. And that is still a massive problem, so yes, they pose a continuing threat.
It’s much harder for them to organise—that’s great. Disrupting terrorist organizations, making them difficult to organise and plan and plot and communicate is absolutely what we should be doing. It’s definitely harder for them to do that. But the more we withdraw from the CT sphere, the easier it gets for groups to become resurgent, and the ideology hasn’t gone away…unless I’ve missed something, I’ve only been out of the game for four months. I don’t think I have…it’s still a very clear and present danger. And you know as well as I do that al-Qaeda had a very different business model to ISIS—a much more patient one and a much more long-term one, and that certainly hasn’t gone away.
SG: Absolutely. It’s a threat that, unfortunately, is going to impact on all of us at some point. I guess it’s a question of when and not if.
NB: Yes, and it’s just really important to reinforce….members of the public listening to this would be absolutely terrified by some of the things I’ve said, I suspect, but…the Five Eyes community has been incredibly effective in dealing with the terrorist threats. It doesn’t look like that because of the number of attacks against Western democracies, but the number of attacks that have been disrupted and stopped because of the effectiveness of that machine is really impressive. It’s a lot of stuff that no one ever hears about and will never know, but I think it’s important for people like me to be able to say it out loud. People are being protected every day and because that machine is good, and it’s resourced by governments, and it’s competent, capable, and full of experienced people. My view is, just, we need to maintain that.
SG: Do you think that’s part of the problem in the sense that, as you mentioned, the police are working 24/7, not just in the UK, but across many nations to foil and disrupt plots that perhaps don’t get the same attention as an attack does? And therefore there is this view in the minds of some that well, terrorism has diminished, it’s no longer the concern that it used to be, whereas in fact, officers are working all the time to try and prevent something very bad from happening.
NB: Yes, I think that’s true for the wider public, but it isn’t true for governments because they get briefings every day. And they certainly get personal briefings every week in the UK from intelligence professionals sitting alongside people like me. So I think we keep it front and centre—they get the intelligence feeds, so they know it’s important. And of course, in this country, we have the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), who sees all of the intelligence and effectively is independent of government and sets the threat level. And I know the people who run that, and I’m impressed by them, and I’m impressed by their access and their ability and their analytical capability, and we should pay attention when they tell us the threat is rising, and we should pay attention when they say the threat isn’t as bad as it was, and we do get consulted on that. But it is their independent decision, and they’re the people who see the full picture.
I think it is a problem keeping people’s focus on resource requirement because being able to put good prevention in place is incredibly costly. There is no doubt about it. Absolutely no one I’ve ever met would query the need to have all of the resources to respond to an actual attack.
It becomes a bit more of an esoteric academic argument to say I need all of these resources to prevent one. I used to laugh when I came into CT—I wasn’t used to looking at a daily crime bulletin and seeing nil return every day and thinking well, that’s a bit odd. Whereas of course, that’s exactly what you want. Every day, you want to see that nothing happened.
In our modern world of judging how effective and efficient our resources are, that is what you should be concentrating on: the fact that nothing happened. But actually it’s quite difficult to convince people that it’s worth the hundreds of millions of pounds of investment that it takes to make sure nothing happens.
SG: Right. Having a mundane period is actually a success that you in many ways want to keep and maintain.
NB: Massive. It’s always hysterical that my friends, and particularly my mother, say “Oh, I haven’t seen you on TV recently.” That is a good thing, mother, if you’re listening.
SG: Well, in terms of seeing you on TV, pivoting to another aspect that you’ve been involved in, in terms of the security challenges—is that of state actors that have posed a threat to the UK. Is there a different process involved when it comes to dealing with the threat of state actors as compared to, say, terrorist groups?
NB: There’s an awful lot of similarities in terms of the requirement for cross-government, international cooperation, intelligence and law enforcement, sharing of information. It’s obviously much harder because it’s the highest security levels possible. But the fundamental principles are the same. There is no single agency, no single government, no single part of Whitehall that can deal with that on its own. It needs to be a deep and broad approach to the issue. And that is a very clear and present danger. Long-term, it’s actually probably better dealt with by political means and a lot of other tactics that are way, way above my paygrade.
SG: Well, sticking briefly with this dynamic, we’re seeing right now accusations that Russia is playing a role in hybrid warfare to do with the migrant crisis on the border with Belarus and Poland. There are also concerns about cyber issues and hacking and state-sponsored activities there. Are you concerned about the role of Russia and China in terms of what they can do or potentially can do to another country?
NB: I’m hesitating Sajjan because I think the answer to that is yes, I am concerned about it. I think open source-wise you’ve only got to read things that journalists say to kind of understand that there is deep concern about the stability of the world and—I mean, this is a NATO podcast—the ability of NATO, United Nations, other countries to coalesce around threats and how they are manifesting themselves in other parts of the world are a very clear source of anxiety for people in the national security community. Nobody is taking these things lightly. And neither am I.
SG: As long as I’ve known you, as I was mentioning earlier, your humility has always stood out, which has huge value and appeal and inspires many people. But if you could go back in time, sort of tracking back to what we were discussing earlier, what one piece of advice would you give to a young Neil Basu that you wish someone could have told you about your career as you were about to take part in it?
NB: It’s a classic question, isn’t it? I mean, I have been asked it a lot, and it’s really quite hard to understand what that one piece of advice is. Because a lot of it’s gone really well. I hope no one’s listened to anything I’ve said today and thought, “My God, I feel sorry for him.” I mean, I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’ve had the most amazing career. I’m close to the end of it, but I consider myself a career detective, and being head of counterterrorism is pretty much as good as it gets.
The advice a very good friend gives me all of the time is relax and enjoy a bit more. That’s quite difficult because of some of the things we’ve talked about. The strong sense of purpose, figuring out very quickly or more quickly what it is about you that makes you who you are, and what is it that really gets you out of bed in the morning. And this is quite difficult to say to a 17,18, 19, 20, mid-20s, perhaps even early 30s person, because you’re still working all of that out. But if someone has the opportunity to say, everything I told you in the answer to the first question—that’s you, that’s really what makes you tick. So find something that delivers that for you, would be the best thing.
And don’t forget, it isn’t all about that, life isn’t all about that. Because I’m in policing, and I consider it a vocation, not switching off 24/7 365 sounds like a curse to some people. I consider it a bit of a privilege, and it is a vocation, it isn’t just a job. But it can become absolutely all-consuming. And I mean, lots of police officers and members of police staff who do incredible things every day and forget they’ve also got incredible families and friends, have hobbies and interests. And the one thing I would say is don’t forget. Find your purpose. Really be good at it, because it’ll make your job not seem like a job at all. But just remember to keep something back for yourself and the people who love you.
SG: These are pearls of wisdom here that I think we should all take on board. And I think it’s also important to point out the sacrifices that the police often make in terms of their personal lives because it has a huge bearing in terms of the work that they do, their commitment, how challenging counter-terrorism is. And then that has a knock on effect because police also have private lives too, which perhaps doesn’t necessarily get the attention that it could.
NB: Yes, absolutely.
SG: One final question then, Neil. You’re currently with the College of Policing. What does that entail exactly? And is it nice to be able to do something where you’re giving back to the police training aspect that perhaps is so important in producing the key future leaders in law enforcement?
NB: It’s just been the most amazing privilege. I kind of suspected that I would really like it. I mean, you’ve been incredibly kind to me, Sajjan, by calling me humble and recognising the humility in me, but this has not been an entirely selfless exercise because when you get towards the end of your career, and you’ve amassed all of this experience, you kind of want somebody to listen to you. Now, that’s not going to be my kids—sorry, kids, if you’re listening because you don’t want another lecture from Dad. But people who are on their way up this career who are 10 years behind you really want to listen. They’re like sponges. It’s like having children and rearing children in front of you again. I don’t mean to patronise them, I actually mean to praise them because they’re so eager to learn. So that’s a huge privilege to be able to stand there and give a few pearls of wisdom and hope that they take one or two things that might help them in what is a very hard profession. So it’s been an incredible privilege.
And the other thing of course is we’re all very fond of saying, “Well, it wasn’t like that in my day, he’ll never be able to do as good a job as me” and stuff. And then suddenly you meet 50 odd people on my course, and you think, my God, policing is in safe hands. So yes, it’s been brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
I think I read something about whether I would like to demystify anything about policing as a professional police officer or member of police staff, and there’s one thing I would like to say about them. We do an incredibly hard job but you said it in this podcast, you know, we’re not robots. They’re human beings who have very interesting, difficult lives just like every other member of society, and yet they still choose to get out of bed and try and protect people every day, and their job isn’t to be authoritarian and in conflict all the time. They do things that are horrific, and it takes a massive toll on them. And they do it because the vast majority of them are trying to protect people every single day. And I think the misconception is that they are somehow there to stop your fun. They are precisely there for the opposite reason: to make sure that you live in a society that’s safe enough for you to have some fun. And I sometimes wish that people would see us more as the human beings we actually are.
SG: Hopefully, this interview can provide that perspective that perhaps people were not aware of before. For me, I have to say, even though I’ve known you for quite a while, it has been very enlightening and insightful. Seeing so many aspects that I didn’t necessarily think about in detail before but it’s giving me a lot of food for thought for what actually the dynamics are and also the nuances of what police have to handle and deal with. So I’m most grateful to you for providing the time to be able to take a deep dive in what we’re actually talking about.
NB: My absolute pleasure, and thank you very much because I’ve found it’s been a very cathartic experience, Sajjan. Thank you.
SG: Well you’re most welcome, and thank you so much again for being on the NATO DEEP Dive podcast, and we hope to have you again at some point.
NB: My pleasure.
SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host Dr Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive
Disclaimer: Please note that the views, information, or opinions expressed in the DEEP Dive series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of NATO or DEEP.