England just changed its top leader for a new one–with enviable ease.
(In America,it ain’t quite so simple )
And that got me thinking: what are the security arrangements for the Prime Minister?
In the USA,presidential security gets a lot of public attention.
The president’s private airplane is Air Force One, and his limousine is special…and taken with him around the world --proudly described as “the beast”,fully armored like a tank.
There is an entire agency called the Secret Service which gets a lot of press.
And specifically,there is the image of the nuclear button. It is well known in popular culture, and reported by journalists that there is always one Secret Service agent physically near the president, with the vital job of holding the “football” : the briefcase with the top secret launch codes for nuclear weapons.
Of course, there are some differences: Britain’s prime minister is a little less important than the President of the USA. And unlike the US, the prime minister is not the ceremonial head of state, so he/she gets less formal attention. But the Prime Minister , like the American president,does have control over England’s nuclear missiles. So there must be some pretty good security around her, even if it’s much lower in profile than the American Secret Service.
Is this discussed much in the British press?
Not really, no, it’s pretty low key. The PM’s security is handled through the Metropolitan Police as the largest police force in the country, and y’know, being based in London. Here’s some details Protection Command - Wikipedia
Just reading The Black Door. Which is a history of British Prime Ministers relations with the security services since the start of the 20th century.
Good book. One of the stories tells of the attempted kidnapping of Alec Douglas-Home by Students while he was staying in Scotland with a friend. He managed to persuade them it would be a bad idea.
Where was his security?
His single bodyguard had asked for and was given the evening off!
I guess SO2-SO5 and SO7-SO13 must be in charge of things like providing the protective details for extraterrestrials and “mutants” with superpowers and stuff like that.
Douglas-Home gave the would-be kidnappers some beer as they talked - which worked - and afterwards didn’t make a fuss because he didn’t want his bodyguard to get into trouble. Heh.
SO1 – Specialist Protection (Now within the Protection Command)
SO2 – Crime Support Branch/Department Support Group
SO3 – Scenes of Crime Branch/Directorate of Forensic Services (Now part of the Specialist Crime Directorate as SCD4 Forensic Services)
SO4 – National Identification Service
SO5 – Miscellaneous Force Indexes/Child Protection (now SCD5 Child Abuse Investigation Team)
SO6 – Fraud Squad (now SCD6 Economic and Specialist Crime)
SO7 – Serious and Organised Crime (Renamed to Serious and Organised Crime Group, SCD7)
SO8 – Forensic Science Laboratory
SO9 – Flying Squad (Now in SCD7, but retains same name and role).
SO10 – Crime Operations Group (now SCD10 Covert Policing)
SO11 – Criminal Intelligence Branch (Renamed to Public Order Operational Command Unit, CO11)
SO12 – Special Branch (Merged with SO13 to create the Counter Terrorism Command)
SO13 – Anti-Terrorism Branch (Merged with SO12)
SO14 – Royalty Protection Branch (Now within the Protection Command)
SO15 – Counter Terrorism Command
SO16 – Diplomatic Protection Group (Now within the Protection Command)
SO17 – PNC Bureau (now the Police Information Technology Organisation)
SO18 – Aviation Security/Airport Policing (Now Aviation Security Operational Command Unit within Security Command)
SO19 – Force Firearms Unit (Specialist Firearms Command, SCO19)
SO20 – Forensic Medical Examiners Branch
Well - there is a bobby standing in front of No 10. Maybe they assume that terrorists don’t know that the PM is actually living in No 11. Cameron moved next door because it has more room for his family.
I think the whole door thing is mainly for show. The original houses behind have long since been converted into a interconnected maze of connected offices, meeting rooms and other facilities.
I imagine the main security for the lot is at 10, so everybody tends to just enter there.
And don’t forget there are massive gates at either end of Downing Street and who knows what sort of less visible electronic security systems. It doesn’t require a visible show of force everywhere.
I can remember when you could just walk through Downing Street as a short-cut to the park. But that was then…
It can go either way, as far as I know. Some streets have houses that alternate across the street like that, others are numbered up one side and down the other.
The other side of Downing Street is just the side of the Foreign Office building, so if there were never other buildings there, there wouldn’t have been a need to give that side numbers (or maybe that’s where 1-8 were).
Downing Street has been closed to motor traffic since 1973, and to pedestrian traffic since the early 1980s.
The street was originally constructed as a cul-de-sac - the western end was closed off by the now-demolished No. 14 Downing Street - and the houses were numbered sequentially in an anti-clockwise direction, starting with No. 1 on the northern side of the entry at the east end, and working all the way around to the southern side of the entry. This isn’t an uncommon way of numbering cul-de-sacs in the UK. The sites of nos, 1 to 9 are now incorporated into the Cabinet Office; the sites of nos. 15 upwards are now incorporated into the Foreign Office.
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