It used to be said, in the days before the relaxation of the law, that when a gay man was chased down a dark alleyway in Soho by a policeman one could never be sure whether he was going to arrest you or take you back to his place. No doubt using his shiny helmet to light the way.

The golden age for the British bobby was from the twenties to the fifties, personified by Jack Warner's constable in the movie The Blue Lamp, where he was murdered by a working class criminal, improbably played by the late, and very closeted, Dirk Bogarde. Warner successfully transferred this screen persona to the small screen in Dixon of Dock Green; beloved by Mary Whitehouse's moral minority.

Geoffrey Gorer, in his book The English Character, described the British bobby as being 'for many the ideal model of masculine strength and responsibility'. To the general public the police were not only the upholders of law and order but also guardians of public morality; operating on the front line against the criminals and perverts were threatened to corrupt decent society and drag it into a quagmire of immorality. Perverts, of course, included practising homosexuals.

Traditionally, the gay community has viewed the police with suspicion. The use of 'pretty policemen' to entrap cottagers and the policing of cruising areas has caused many gay and bisexual men to distrust the boys in blue.

Take, for instance, Quentin Crisp's comments on the police, which may be rather extreme but fairly accurate on how many felt towards the police:

'Though they did not arrest me until 1943, they knew that I was in a weak position and constantly threatened me for their own and one another's amusement.... Even now I could never wittingly become acquainted with a policeman; nor would I, except under torture, betray anyone to the authorities.'

Strong words, indeed, but not all felt as Crisp did:

'He was a very large man, very fair in colouring, plainly of great strength. His expression was absolutely English in its complete absence of curiosity, its certainty that it knew the best about everything, its suspicion, its determination not to be taken in by anybody, and its latent kindliness.'

The above description is of a character from The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole, who was one of the most successful authors of the twenties and thirties, based on his chauffeur, and lover, of twenty years, Harold Cheevers.

Cheevers was a bluff, burly Cornishman, who had served in the navy and the police. He was a supreme athlete and had once been revolver champion of Great Britain. Despite being married with two sons, Cheevers and Walpole were lovers until Walpole's death in 1941. Before his death, Walpole had commented that: 'I have found a human being I can utterly trust and believe in.'

Walpole had searched for years for what he called the 'ideal friend' before he found love on his doorstep with his ex-policeman lover.

J.R. Ackerley, author of My Father and Myself and literary editor of The Listener, also longed for such a companion, but never found him, despite servicing two generations of the police force.

Ackerley's friend, E M Forster once expressed in a memorandum to himself the desire to 'love a strong young man of the lower classes and be loved by him and even hurt by him'. Thanks to Harry Daley, Ackereley's 'intellectual policeman', Forster's wish came true when he was introduced by Daley to Bob Buckingham, a married London bobby, remaining lovers for half a century.

Legend has it that when Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, heard that Tom Driberg, the infamous Labour M.P., was planning to marry, he made the infamous aside about 'buggers can't be choosers', or words to that effect. If true, it shows Wilson's ignorance of the facts, as Driberg's sexual preference was fellatio. He once performed, what I now believe is called the Clinton manoeuvre, on a strapping young constable beneath Waterloo Bridge; which brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'bobby on the beat'.

(c) Howard Watson 2000