Review of Underworld Informers

Since "The informers"(based on a fine novel "Death of a snout")was made the whole issue of the police/informant relationship has been debated,set in Case Law,been the subject of numerous reviews,questions in The House etc with the result that officers are now obliged to register snouts at a central base and inform senior detectives of their existence and of every instance when they are used.Failure to do so renders them liable to the severest penalties under the Discipline Code including dismissal. Where there is a computer of course,there is a consequent security issue,so it is hardly surprising that many of the best snouts,"good 'uns",as they used to be called,were unregistered and therefore "illegal".My personal solution to this problem was to register two totally fictitious snouts and run my "good 'un" illegally and out of my own pocket."Socksie",as he was called for his aversion to washing feet that left them so ingrained with filth that he espoused the wearing of socks,was pure gold,was never sussed out and passed on peacefully at Leigh - on - Sea in 1998.Ironically his funeral was attended by several "faces" he had helped put away. Not so Inspector Johnnoe's "good 'un" who meets an untimely end causing the D.I. to do the honourable if not most sensible thing. Back in the 1950s the British public assumed that their police force caught lawbreakers using methods totally within the law.By the time "The informers" came out,cynicism had started creeping in and soon full - blooded distrust was common fired by the Hal Woolf affair,D.S. "Tanky" Challenor's antics at West End Central and the burgeoning awareness of major corruption in many big city forces. Coppers of Inspector Johnnoe's ilk were becoming an endangered species. There really were men like him,fearless and dead straight,dedicated to sorting out the villains on the ground.They had no targets to meet,no community awareness to be sensitive to,they just nicked toerags. Nobody likes snouts - "Socksie" was not a nice man - but no policeman can succeed without them.Johnnoe treads a fine and difficult line with his informant,as does every copper.Worse for him,his guv'nor does not believe in the use of snouts,making him either a puritan or corrupt himself - hard to know which is worse. Johnnoe is framed by the arch - villain after doing a little "off the books" spin of his drum and gets suspended for his trouble.Joining up with his snout's surviving brother and assorted hardmen,he gets things sorted,as they used to say. Britcop movies in general vary between the cheery cockneyness of "The Blue Lamp" and the ludicrously biased and semi - fictional "In the name of the father",via the sadistic "watch me I'm having a photogenic breakdown" nonsense of "The Offence". "The Informers",together with the criminally (ha,ha)underrated "The Strange affair" stands right at the top of the tree.It really is what it used to be like. Had somebody have done "Socksie" in back in the late 70s would I have risked life,limb and pension to revenge him?.I don't think so. Inspector Johnnoe was a better man than I.