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UNIFORM MATTERS
I’ve never been a particularly big fan of uniforms. At school I tried my best to look original in the turquoise blouse and maroon skirt that we were forced to wear. I gave myself a verruca by teetering around in high heels and made sure the skirt reflected the fashion(s) of the day (kilt if you must know – ugh!). Uniforms have always signified conformity; an attempt by the state, institutions or corporations to strangle expressions of individuality – to turn people into meaningless drones defined solely by the clothes they are wearing.
Police uniforms were a particular bugbear. Forget the image of the nice helpful bobby cycling around the local beat, my experiences of the old bill have been predominantly hard-faced, unstable, sociopathic monsters who shouldn’t be put in charge of a organising a game of bingo, let alone crowd control. Policeman 666 (I kid you not) was a particularly nasty piece of work. During an animal rights demonstration in the mid ’90s in Oxford town centre against a farm that bred kittens for vivisection, 666 (on a horse – poor creature) charged the crowd, sending people flying. Then there were the riot police – all clad in black, shields in front of their helmets, waving large batons. They may as well have been machines since any signs of humanity were well and truly hidden. There was no room for thought or opinion in their tiny minds. We, a group of caring, compassionate folk from all walks of life, were ‘the enemy’, to be taken down and brutalised. This wasn’t jobs for the boys, it was jobs for state-sanctioned thugs.
My typical reaction to seeing a copper was ‘Have I got anything on me that I shouldn’t have and are they going to beat me up?’ While I don’t have that response so much nowadays, I still automatically stiffen slightly when I spot police. Even though there are officers such as Superintendent Donna Adney who appears to be actively taking steps to prevent homophobic violence on the strip and to foster good relationships with the queer community, at the end of the day she is a law enforcer and, as far as I’m concerned, some laws have to be broken to prevent even greater crimes being committed against those who can’t fight back.
Despite my problematic relationship with the police, I nevertheless find myself strangely drawn to TV cop dramas, from The Bill to Law & Order. And you can imagine the quandary I find myself in lately, thanks to a new show currently screening on UKTV, called The Commander. It stars Amanda Burton, a 50-something actress who previously played a forensic pathologist in Silent Witness. Burton plays Commander Clare Blake and to put it bluntly – she’s damn hot and I like her! Sexually liberated, attracted to serial killers and danger, and happy not to play by the rules, Commander Blake has taken over where Helen Mirren left off in Prime Suspect. And she wears her uniform – very well in fact. I’m just grateful she’s not real.
Katrina Fox
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Opinion 
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